Indeterminacy and Architectural History: Deterritorializing Cosimo Fanzago
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This is a repository copy of Indeterminacy and Architectural History: Deterritorializing Cosimo Fanzago. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/8938/ Article: Hills, Helen orcid.org/0000-0002-9024-189X (2007) Indeterminacy and Architectural History: Deterritorializing Cosimo Fanzago. field. pp. 42-61. ISSN 1755-0068 Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. This is indicated by the licence information on the White Rose Research Online record for the item. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ 42 ISSN: 1755-068 www.field-journal.org vol.1 (1) Architectural History’s Indeterminacy Architectural History’s Indeterminacy: Holiness in southern baroque architecture Helen Hills This article is a critique of architectural history’s tendency to over- determine in thinking about practice and theory in general, and in thinking the relationship between architecture and spirituality in post-Tridentine ecclesiastical architecture in particular. It first demonstrates what is meant both by over-determination and resistance to interdisciplinarity within mainstream architectural history before critically exploring in relation to this how post-Tridentine architecture and spiritual life or religious devotion might be thought together, the sorts of relationships between the two that may be thought to take place, and asks where this relationship might be located. Suggesting that it might be profitable to follow Deleuze’s philosophy of the Baroque in refusing the tripartite division between a field of reality (the world) and a field of representation (in his case the book, in ours, architecture) and a field of subjectivity (the author, the architect), and rather to adopt like him, the notion of rhizome — without beginning or end, always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo, indeterminate. The article seeks to consider Baroque architecture as rhizomatic construction, rather than the usual (and unhelpful) preoccupations with it as dichotomous, expressive, or ‘propagandistic’. 43 www.field-journal.org vol.1 (1) Architectural History’s Indeterminacy 1 The term refers to the Alpine city of Last year I was invited to write a short paper on ‘architecture and spiritual Trent (‘Tridentum’ in Latin), where a life in Tridentine Naples’.1 My first inclination was to dismiss the idea: Council of Church leaders met in three phases between 1545 and 1563. Among there seemed so much that was wrong with the underlying assumptions. much else, the Council reaffirmed But in articulating what I felt to be wrong, I found myself on new ground. medieval teachings on the authority The ensuing problems might, I think, be pertinent to the aims of this of tradition, transubstantiation in the special issue of field in thinking about architecture and ‘indeterminacy’. Mass (repudiating Protestant beliefs in consubstantiation), the sacraments and This is, then, both a consideration of architectural history’s tendency to veneration of saints and relics. On the reductively over-determine, both in thinking about practice and theory Council of Trent, see H. Jedin, Geschichte in general, and in thinking the relationship between architecture and des Konzils von Trient, 4 vols (Freiburg spirituality in post-Tridentine ecclesiastical architecture in particular. How im Breisgau: 1958-75); John W. O’Malley, Trent and all that: renaming Catholicism might we think post-Tridentine architecture and spiritual life or religious in the early modern era (Cambridge devotion together? On what terms may architecture speak in regard to MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); anything as slippery as ‘spirituality’? What sort of relationship between R. Bireley, The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450-1700, (Basingstoke: the two may be thought to take place? And where would this relationship Macmillan, 1999), pp. 45-70. be located? Might we profitably follow Deleuze in refusing the tripartite 2 See G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A division between a field of reality (the world) and a field of representation Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and (in his case the book, in ours, architecture) and a field of subjectivity Schizophrenia, trans. by B. Massumi (the author, the architect), and rather, adopt like him, the notion of (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota rhizome, without beginning or end, always in the middle, between things, Press, 1987). For treatment of baroque intermezzo architecture as expressive of context, interbeing, , indeterminate? Baroque architecture as rhizome, and/or as representation of the will of perhaps, rather than as dichotomous, expressive, or ‘propagandistic’?2 the architect or patron, see S. Ostrow, Art and Spirituality in Counter-Reformation First, I turn to architectural history’s generally steadfast resistance to such Rome: The Sistine and Pauline Chapels in S. Maria Maggiore (Cambridge: ideas, indeed to any ostensibly theoretical intrusion at all — a resistance Cambridge University Press: 1996); which increases in intensity with regard to early modern architecture.3 John Beldon Scott, Architecture for This is neatly encapsulated in a recent edition of the Journal of the Society the Shroud: Relic and Ritual in Turin (Chicago: The University of Chicago of Architectural Historians (USA), which, for the sake of argument, can be Press, 2003). For an interpretation of described as the leading architectural history journal. Volume 64 n.4 Dec baroque architecture as ‘propaganda’, 2005 was a special issue dedicated to ‘Learning from Interdisciplinarity’. It see E. Levy, Propaganda and the contains 8 short essays encompassing less than 24 pages or one-fifth of the Jesuit Baroque (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). For the problems volume on inter- and multi-disciplinary issues. After this relatively brief with such an account, see Helen Hills, space dedicated to these ‘interdisciplinary’ reflections, follow four longer ‘Too Much Propaganda’, Oxford Art articles (totalling 110 pages). While each author might adopt knowledge Journal, 29(3) (2006): 446-453. from disciplines other than art or architectural history, none of its four 3 Of course, all scholarship is informed, principal articles pays the slightest attention to interdisciplinarity or to consciously or not, by theoretical the theoretical developments discussed in the first part of the volume.4 frameworks of some kind. I refer here, however, to the overt articulation of In one volume, therefore, we are presented with a strange chimaera theoretical or political approaches. — an architectural history which promises to be porous, to welcome While theoretical sophistication is ideas from other disciplines and between disciplines, to ‘learn from welcomed in architectural historical analysis of modern or contemporary interdisciplinarity’ (my italics), but which nevertheless in the same issue architecture, this is not the case with blithely turns its back on these challenges, ignores them in an untroubled pre-modern architecture (including familiar fortress island of architectural history, shut up behind a cordon medieval, Renaissance and baroque). The sanitaire. Of course, all disciplines harbour these radically divergent reasons for this are complex and have to date not been adequately analysed. approaches. But what is remarkable here is that there is no embarrassment 44 ISSN: 1755-068 www.field-journal.org vol.1 (1) Architectural History’s Indeterminacy 4 I am drawing a distinction between in such a brazen juxtaposition. The Editor’s ‘Introduction’ presents the ‘multidisciplinarity’ whereby scholars interdisciplinary ideas, not as inherently divisive issues for debate — but use additatively ideas and knowledge from more than one discipline (e.g. the rather as a bouquet of interesting ideas on which future architectural use by an architectural historian of the history might usefully draw, but the avoidance or ignorance of which history of mathematics or geometry), and presents no handicap to present-day architectural history.5 Indeed, the ‘interdisciplinarity’, or the development packaging presents them as a whimsical sideline. of approaches to problems and questions arising between, rather than within disciplines (e.g. sexuality), which then I wonder how this special issue now functions. As encouragement to require changes in the precepts and architectural historians to absorb some of the selected ideas labelled practice of all involved disciplines. ‘Learning from interdisciplinarity’? Perhaps. But surely far more readily as 5 Nancy Steiber, ‘Learning from reassurance, that it’s perfectly OK to ignore them, as the really significant Interdisciplinarity; Introduction’, portion of the same volume does. The message from this volume seems to JSAH, 64(4) (Dec 2005): 417-419. me to be ‘Business as usual’: either you can ‘learn from interdisciplinarity’ 6 Steiber structures her ‘Introduction’ or you can do real (autonomous) architectural history.6 Never the twain around the question ‘Is architectural history an autonomous field?’ Steiber,