• Journal of architectural history
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.15-26
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• 2013

This research takes as its object a body of historical researches by a new generation of French architects in the 1970s, who tried to confront the deep crisis in architecture since the years 1960. The research begins by noting that the ideology of the architect as an autonomous and transcendental subject, an ideology held by the architects of the previous generation, was a main target that young architects wanted to criticize and overcome. From this observation, the research focuses on a antihumanistic project which gave basis for a significant number of historical researches on modern architecture and was the result of a reappropriation of the French structuralism intensively developed in the human and social sciences of that time in France. After a series of textual analyzes, we argue that a new perspective on the city and the relationship of the latter with the architecture on the one hand, and the proposal for an "modest" architect as an alternative figure after rejection of the autonomous and transcendental one on the other hand, have been derived as the outcome of anti-humanist historiographic works. Finally, we assume that these historical adventure gave conceptual basis for postmodern architecture in France, freed from the modern myth of unity of author and that of work of art, but tinted by a moralism requesting modesty to architects.

• Journal of Korean Theatre Studies Association
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• no.40
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• pp.307-344
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• 2010

Cultural Studies built on the critical mind of New Left exposes the relationship between culture and power, and investigates how this relationship develops the cultural convention. It has achieved the new perspective that could make us to think culture and art in terms of political correctness. However, the critical voices against the theoretical premises of Cultural Studies have been increased as its heyday in 1980s was nearly over. For instance, Terry Eagleton, a former Marxist literary critic, declared in 2003 that the golden age of cultural theory is long past. This essay, therefore, intends to show the weak foundations on which the approaches of cultural studies to theatre rest and to clarify the general problem of their introduction to theatre studies. The approach of cultural studies to theatre takes the form of 'top-down inquiry' as it applies a theory to a particular play or historical period. In other word, from the theory the writer moves to the particular case. The result is not an inquiry but rather a demonstration. This circularity can destroy the point of serious intellectual investigation as the theory dictates answers. The goal-oriented narrow viewpoint as a logical consequence of 'top-down inquiry' makes the researcher to favor the plays or the parts of a play that are proper to test a theory. As a result it loses the fair judgment on the artistic value of a play, and brings about the misinterpretation. The interpreter-oriented reading is the other defect of cultural studies as it disregards the inherent meaning of the text, distorting a play. The approach of cultural studies also consists of a conventionality as it arrives at a stereotyped interpretation by using certain conventions of reasoning and rhetoric. The cultural theories are fundamentally the 'outside theories' that seek to explain not theatre but the very broad features of society and politics. Consequently their application to theatre risks the destructive criticism, disregarding the inherent experience of theatre. Most of, if not all, cultural theories, furthermore, are proven to be lack of empirical basis. The alternative method to them is a 'cognitive science' that proves scientifically our mind being influenced by bodily experience. The application of cultural materialism to Shakespeare's is one of the cases that reveal the limits of cultural studies. Jonathan Dollimore and Water Cohen provide a kind of 'canonical study' in this application that is imitated by the succeeding researchers. As a result the interpretation of has been flooded with repetitive critical remarks, revealing the problem of 'top-down inquiry' and conventional reasoning. Cultural Studies is antipodal to theatre in some respect. It is interested chiefly in the social and political reality while theatre aims to create the fiction world. The theatre studies, therefore, may have to risk the danger of destroying its own base when it adopts cultural studies uncritically. The different stance between theatre and cultural theories also occurs from the opposition of humanism vs. antihumanism. We have to introduce cultural theories selectively and properly not to destroy the inherent experience and domain of theatre.