Invisible Architecture: Ideologies of Space in the Nineteenth- Century City A thesis submitted to The University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities. 2014 Ben Moore School of Arts, Languages and Cultures 2 Contents Abstract 5 Declaration and Copyright Statement 6 Acknowledgments 7 Note on Abbreviations and Editions 8 Introduction 9 ‘Invisible’ vs ‘Ideology’ 11 The Constellation and the Dialectical Image 17 The Optical Unconscious 21 Architectural Unconscious 24 The City from Above and the City from Below 29 Reading Modernity, Reading Architecture 34 Cities and Texts 36 Chapters 1. Gogol’s Dream-City 41 Unity and Multiplicity 45 Imagination and Dreams 57 Arabesque, Ecstasy, Montage 66 The Overcoat 75 2. The Underground City: Kay, Engels and Gaskell 80 James Kay and Friedrich Engels’s Manchester 84 Cellar-dwelling 93 Mary Barton’s Cellars 100 3. The Unstable City: Dombey and Son 113 The Two Houses of Dombey 117 The Trading House 120 The Domestic House 132 The Railway 141 4. The Uncanny City: Our Mutual Friend 154 3 In Search of a Clue 158 The River and the Gaze 166 Uncanny Houses 171 Hidden Secrets and Hauntings 174 Uncanny Return 180 The Hollow down by the Flare 184 5. Zola’s Transparent City 192 The Spectacle as Relation between Part and Whole 192 Zola and Montage 199 La Curée and Haussmann’s Paris 204 Au Bonheur des Dames and the Commodified World 215 Conclusion: Thoughts on Whiteness 226 The Whiteness of the Whale 227 Two Theories of Whiteness 232 Whiteness in the City I: Concealment and Revelation 234 Whiteness in the City II: Ornament and Fashion 239 Whiteness in the City III: Targeted by Whiteness 244 Carker’s Whiteness 246 Bibliography 249 List of Illustrations 1. The Skyscraper (1916), Glyn Philpot. 50 2. The Last Day of Pompeii (1830-33), Karl Bryullov. 60 3. Sketch of Tatlin’s tower (The Monument to the Third International). 65 4. Carcere oscura [Dark Dungeon] (1743), Piranesi. 73 5. Carceri [Dungeon] (1743), Piranesi. 74 6. Cover design for monthly parts of Dombey and Son, Hablot Browne. 121 7. Coming Home from Church, Hablot Browne. 123 8. The New Zealander (1872), Gustave Doré. 145 4 9. Over London by Rail (1872), Gustave Doré. 151 10. The Bird of Prey, Marcus Stone. 161 11. Watching the Furnace Fire, George Cattermole, from The Old Curiosity Shop. 187 12. Waiting for Father, Marcus Stone. 189 13. Mr. Boffin does the Honours of the Nursery Door, Marcus Stone. 189 Word count: 85,543 5 Abstract This thesis proposes and explores the concept of ‘invisible architecture’ as a means of interpreting the city in the nineteenth century. Invisible architecture is understood as the unseen structure which holds together the modern city, allowing it to exist as a concept despite the impossibility of gaining full knowledge of it. It has two sides, the first repressive and stabilising, the second fluctuating and utopian. In this way, the thesis is interested in the material and spatial basis of ideology, as well as the ways ideology can be disrupted or distorted. It is also interested in developing a link between invisible architecture and two forms of the unconscious: the psychoanalytic unconscious, which is read through Freud and Lacan, and Walter Benjamin’s ‘optical unconscious’. More broadly, the thesis explores the ongoing significance of Benjamin’s Arcades Project (1927-40) for nineteenth-century city literature. Invisible architecture is explored by analysing how it operates as an object of interest and concern for a selection of writers whose work engages with the modern city between approximately 1830 and 1885. Chapter One focuses on Nikolai Gogol, whose essay ‘On Present-Day Architecture’ (1835) is read in relation to Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948). This text expresses the desire to bring into visibility the submerged history of architecture and to produce a modern urban architecture that is monolithic and controlling. At the same time, it imagines a city built from suspended structures made of iron, a form of architecture that is speculative and destabilising. Gogol’s use of the term ‘arabesque’ (as in his 1835 volume, Arabesques) is also investigated, with reference to ‘The Overcoat’ (1842), as a means of thinking about how the city both disrupts and evokes totality. Chapter Two looks at James Kay, Friedrich Engels and Elizabeth Gaskell’s writing on industrial Manchester, especially Mary Barton (1848). It argues that the trope of the underground, which is associated particularly with the working class, operates as a form of invisible architecture, and considers the ways Kay’s 1832 pamphlet on Manchester cotton-workers seeks to bring the city into greater visibility. Chapters Three and Four focus on Dickens’s London in Dombey and Son (1848) and Our Mutual Friend (1865) respectively. Chapter Three looks at the hidden, but unstable, connections between the domestic and financial ‘houses’ of Dombey, and reads the railway as a force which both breaks apart and connects the city of London. Chapter Four focuses on the river as indicating the presence of that which cannot be integrated into the city because it is fundamentally unknowable, drawing on Lacan’s work on vision and the unconscious. This chapter also suggests that city space in Our Mutual Friend is frequently uncanny, referring to Freud’s essay on the topic. Chapter 5 examines Zola’s Paris in The Kill (1872) and The Ladies’ Paradise (1883) in relation to Debord’s Society of the Spectacle (1967), arguing that Haussmann’s boulevards and the new department stores of Second Empire Paris seem to open up the city with new vistas of space and glass, offering absolute visibility, but at the same time suppressing and destroying parts of the city. The conclusion looks at whiteness within city space, basing its discussion on texts covered in the preceding chapters. It proposes the contradictory combination of visibility and invisibility which whiteness signifies as a final example of invisible architecture, and argues for a dialectical connection between nineteenth-century whiteness and the whiteness of modernism. 6 Declaration No portion of the work referred to in this thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or institute of learning. Copyright Statement i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trade marks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. iv. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/DocuInfo.aspx?DocID=487), in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.manchester.ac.uk/library/aboutus/regulations) and in the University’s policy on Presentation of Theses. 7 Acknowledgements In the nearly four years since I began work on this thesis there have been many people whose input and support have been invaluable, and without whom it would have been a far worse thing than it is. First of all, I want to thank Jeremy Tambling for his inspiration and encouragement, and his unflagging belief that I should always push my ideas further. The three-year Arcades Project reading group I took part in with Jeremy (along with Alfie Bown, and later Tristan Burke, Jack Sullivan and others) has also been a major source of ideas about Benjamin and the city, many of which have found their way into this thesis. I want also to thank Daniela Caselli for her incredibly helpful (and rigorous) advice during the writing-up period, especially in relation to the vexed question of the optical unconscious. Many thanks also to my other supervision panel members, Howard Booth and Galin Tihanov. Others at The University of Manchester to whom I owe a debt of gratitude include James Smith, Dan Bristow, Gemma Moss, Izzy Dann and Rena Jackson, as well as Alfie, Tristan and Jack, along with many others. I want to thank, too, the people I have stayed or lived with in Manchester at various times, and who have also provided me with vital non-academic social outlets such as football and companionship in drinking: Han and Dan Addison, Rachel Plant and Luke McDermott, and Big Steve W. In Bristol and the South, I’d like to thank everyone who has expressed an interest in my work, usually in the form of asking whether I’ve finished yet: Richard Pearce, James Cooper, Pete Moore, Alex Stewart, Nadia Islam, Alex Charlton and Pete Steer spring immediately to mind.