Issue 1 : Emancipation Theory : Milton S. F. Curry

Emancipation Theory : Milton S. F. Curry
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The existence of virtually inescapable cultural hierarchies that must both be accommodated and at least partially embraced for inclusion—yet somehow subverted if one is to proceed or progress either individually or collectively with the self intact—become paralyzing binds. The haunting presence of the colonial patriarchy is very problematic in sustaining a self that is strong enough to withstand that assault. The division between the language of the colonized and that of the colonizer, and the use of the language of the colonizer to predetermine a structure of discourse that speaks about power, is ever-present.²⁹

With perspectives on colonialism and the formation of a new republic (United States, 1776), the exigencies of culture, region, religion, and power inevitably set into motion an inertia of realignments of rights and privileges. Before 1830, the abolitionists foregrounded a practice that still goes unpunished: the practice of misappropriation.

The political agenda of African peoples in the Americas has been consistent: a demand for inalienable rights and equality of opportunity. The political agendas of white liberals has shifted, from a desire to help to "level the playing field" to disgust with the success of those very efforts ("abolish slavery, but don't abolish inequality," in so many words). The freedom call from white liberals was shrill at best; it always sounded better coming from those who had actually been enslaved. Slavery was warped, cruel, and inhumane. It was a low moment in the history of this republic, a nation-state that bears deep scars from that era.

The reconciliation of the genres of literature and architecture into a legible coexistence for attack on the lack of culturally diverse ways of inhabiting/thinking about spaces of social dimensions requires a marked shift in the tone of this critique, from the site of literature to the site of architectural theory, and speculation on the transformation of the information wrought from the study of spaces of confinement and racially coded spaces in African-American fiction to the construction of white domination and structures of oppression at work in society. The unique place for a critical theory in architecture is for those so inclined to question the concretization of power and authority through our cultural institutions. Here I refer to architectural theory not as mainstream so-called architectural theorists do, but instead as Paul de Man refers to literary theory:

Literary theory can be said to come into being when the approach to literary texts is no longer based on non-linguistic, that is to say historical and aesthetic, considerations or, to put it somewhat less crudely, when the object of discussion is no longer the meaning or the value but the modalities of production and of reception of meaning and of value prior to their establishment—the implication being that this establishment is problematic enough to require an autonomous discipline of critical investigation to consider its possibility and its status.

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The black American, for example, has always communicated the confinement of racism through fiction and narrative. In linking the spaces analyzed with the space of architectural discourse and larger discussions of cultural theory, it is clear that the transformative moment for the artistic practice in engaging African and African-American experience, for example, will not come easily; the artistic practices to which we are accustomed are complexly essentialized and socially constructed. These texts, and my proposition of using them to inform an architectural praxis, poses interesting and contradictory questions about the appropriateness of their use. I fear, in this equation, the subordination of art to politics.³¹ In this new, revisualized field of black and "other" cultures, I hope that insurgent intellectual practice will not be pushed underground because it fails any predetermined litmus test.

Milton S.F. Curry