Note: This was typed up as a written form of the oral presentation, not as a formal thesis-driven essay.
Speaking order:
1. Emily (architecture and structure)
2. Blythe (bodies, structure and Foucault)
3. Kendall (bodies and Foucault)
4. Gianna (Foucaultian power and discourses)
A slide show
Blythe
Form Versus Function – Beauty Parlor Presentation, October 19, 2007
This exoskeleton on the hill is vast. I mean, vast. When ascending the steps to the monolith before entering one has a choice to enter into one of three possible doors (if they can even be called doors – they are closer to gates). Once inside, a marble entryway greets you. A beautiful statue in the corner, a desk on the right, two absolutely gorgeous hanging light fixtures on the ceiling, the plaque of a prayer at eye level, and, on the floor, another plaque describing the time capsule placed under the floor there in 1976 by the people of Washington, addressed to the state’s inhabitants in the year 2076. A few steps beyond this was a hallway stretching far to both the left and the right, and beyond this is a set of steps leading to a platform on which one can stand and view the great, pink-painted ‘dome’. There are stairs leading away from the platform – stairs on the right and left, slanting upwards, and stairs straight ahead and straight behind, slanting downwards. Everything is clean, swept, and silent. The platform itself is a box [draw box], and the stairs stretching away form, from a bird’s-eye-view, a grid. Ascending the stairs, one encounters another long hallway [draw hallway], mirrored by a parallel hallway on the other side [draw parallel hallway]. Continuing straight ahead is the House of Representatives – a large, ornately decorated room [draw room] with a gallery upstairs – a gallery, in this sense, meaning rows of benches where bodies can place themselves to watch the proceedings.
Turning the corner, one happens upon the State Reception Room – another elaborately decorated rectangular space with a large, brightly colored carpet, a piano in the corner, a circular table in the center, and sumptuously upholstered chairs and couches. There are also two gorgeous marble fireplaces at either end of the room.
As Emily said just now, on the tour of this space, our tour guide raves about the Bresche Italian marble of the fireplaces, that this marble is often called “picture marble” because there are pictures in it – she points out the abstractions of two butterflies and a seal, to show us an example. She also tells us that a fire has never been lit in these beautiful fireplaces, because the soot from the flames would ruin the marble.
I’d like to take the image of the unlit fireplaces a little further, and say that the Capitol building is something of a giant unlit fireplace itself. It is an enormous, beautifully crafted shell that defines and funnels the bodies inside it in order to promote maximum efficiency and production.
The structure doesn’t seem to have many human handprints on it – I mean that there is a sense in this building that humans, throughout time, can never really transform or affect the space by existing in it. The architecture, the building materials themselves are meant to remain timeless and untouched regardless of what human events transpire within its walls. The importance of form outweighs the importance of function – the form of the fireplaces would be ruined by the function of actually lighting a fire. The building is meant to be impervious even to natural forces – it has withstood three major earthquakes (1949, 1965 and 2001) with no irreparable damage. The grid form of the space is meant to funnel bodies in specific directions – up, down, forward – always to a productive destination (the Senate, the House, the bathroom, the cafeteria, the conference room), and always in the appropriate manner (standing, walking, or sitting). It’s hard to imagine someone ever lying down, breakdancing, crab-walking, jumping or running anywhere in this structure at any point in history. The rooms are intended for bodies in large groups, so the arrangement of furniture in those spaces is focused on box-like organizational efficiency – A seat and desk for every body, the House divided down the middle into the Democratic majority and the Republican minority, every desk equipped with different colored buttons –one green and one red, depending on if one’s vote falls into the category of “yes” or “no”. (There are no buttons for “I’m not really sure” or “I just can’t think this morning” or “I’m kind of leaning towards no, but maybe I’ll feel differently after lunch”).
Besides the grid within the confines of the Capitol building, the most striking and most familiar feature of this structure is the great Dome – the combination of the Lantern (the top cupola on the building), the Dome (the curved portion) and the Colonnade (the area just below the Dome) – All of these elements together comprise what is generally known as just The Dome – it towers above the city of Olympia on a hill, overlooking Capitol Lake and surrounded by trees. The Dome is the only curved part of the Legislative Building.
On pages 88 and 89 of A History of Sexuality, Monsieur Foucault says the following: [write on board at beginning?]
“At bottom, despite the differences in epochs and objectives, the representation of power has remained under the spell of monarchy. In political thought and analysis, we still have not cut off the head of the king. Hence the importance that the theory of power gives to the problem of right and violence, law and illegality, freedom and will, and especially the state and sovereignty (even if the latter is questioned insofar as it is personified in a collective being and no longer a sovereign individual). To conceive of power on the basis of these problems is to conceive of it in terms of a historical form that is characteristic of our societies: the juridical monarchy.”
If any structure in our society today is illustrative of the ‘representation of power remaining under the spell of monarchy’, the Capitol Building is a strong example. “We still have not cut off the head of the king” – From our perspective, the Dome of the Capitol is that literal monarchical ‘head’ – representative of the hierarchical power within, yet contradictory because of the absence of a literal king. Structures within the building hint at this ‘juridical monarchy’ – there is even a giant sculpture of the head of George Washington on the second floor, yet the nature of our legislative system is a hierarchical democracy, not a monarchy. It is difficult to walk within the building without being acutely aware of the hierarchical power systems at work, especially with the Dome towering above at all times. It is possible that the design of this building is symbolic of the head of the King; a subtle reminder of the importance and power of the seat of government. Also, the word ‘Capitol’ means ‘Head’.
