The Anxiety of Appraisal
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59490/footprint.19.2.7812Abstract
In the present paper I aim to depart from the hypothesis that the question regarding theory appraisal conceals an unbearable yet necessary anxiety for the architectural and the scientific enterprise in general and rather argue that appraisal’s significance is ontological, not merely epistemological. Referring to Slavoj Žižek’s reading of German Idealism and mainly to his reading of Hegel via psychoanalytic theory I suggest that appraisal and the perpetual formulation of theories does not occur because of some lack in our existing theories and architectures, but are grounded on a fundamental, structural lack in our rationality which is precisely why the project of science has universal appeal. A lack, a primordial ‘nothing’ which takes its architectural form and its creative power in Aldo Rossi’s theoretical work on the architecture of the city. The article concludes with the realization that the distinct attribute of scientific theory is that it is public and open for appraisal.
References
Anderson, Stanford. ‘Architectural Design as a System of Research Programmes’, Design Studies, ed. Patrich Purcell (1984): 146-50.
Anderson, Stanford. ‘Environment as Artifact: Methodological Implications’, Casabella 359-360 no. 35 (1971): 71–77.
Bryant, Levi. The Democracy of Objects. MPublishing, Open Humanities Press, 2011.
Copjec, Joan. Read My Desire: Lacan against the Historicists. The MIT Press, 1994.
Freud, Sigmund. ‘An Autobiographical Study: Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety,’ In The Question of Lay Analysis and Other Works, trans. James Strachey and Anna Freud. The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1959.
Greenberg, Clement. ‘Modernist Painting’, in Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology, ed. Francis Fascina and Charles Harrison. Harper & Row, 1982.
Hacking, Ian. Representing and Intervening. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Hegel, G.W.F. Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller. Oxford University Press, 1977.
Hegel, G.W.F. The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree. Batoche Books, 2001.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Cambridge University Press, I998.
Lacan, Jacques. Anxiety: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X, ed. Jacques-Allain Miller, trans. A.R. Price. Polity, 2014.
Lacan, Jacques. Formations of the unconscious: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book V, ed. Jacques-Allain Miller, trans. Russel Grigg. Polity, 2017.
Lacan, Jacques. Freud’s Papers on Technique, 1953–1954 (The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book 1), trans. John Forrester. W. W. Norton & Company, 1991.
Lacan, Jacques. Television, ed. Joan Copjec, trans. Denis Hollier, Rosalind Krauss and Annette Michelson. W.W. Norton, 1990.
Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI, ed. Jacques-Allain Miller, trans. Alan Sheridan. W.W. Norton & Company, 1977.
Lakatos, Imre. The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Philosophical Papers I. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary, ‘Theory’, accessed 26 June 2024, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theory.
Miller, Jacques-Alain. ‘The Symptom: Knowledge, Meaning and the Real’, trans. Dan Collins, The Symptom online journal for Lacan.com (2006 [1997]).https://www.lacan.com/symptom7_articles/miller.html
Preston, John. Paul K. Feyerabend: Knowledge, Science and Relativism; Philosophical papers Volume 3, ed. John Preston. Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton University Press, 1979.
Rossi, Aldo. The Architecture of the City. The MIT Press, 1984.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel Barnes. Methuen, 1957.
Simondon, Gilbert. On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, trans. Cecile Malaspina and John Rogove. University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
Tafuri, Manfredo. Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development, trans. Barbara Luigia La Penta. The MIT Press, 1976.
Tschumi, Bernard. Architecture and Disjunction. The MIT Press, 1996
Unesco, ‘The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier, an Outstanding Contribution to the Modern Movement’, Unesco (2016), https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1321/
von Schelling, F.W.J. Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. Jeff Love and Johannes Schmidt . State University of New York Press, 2006.
Žižek, Slavoj and von Schelling, F.W.J. The Abyss of Freedom / Ages of the World, trans. Judith Norman. University of Michigan Press 1997.
Žižek, Slavoj. Freedom: A Disease Without a Cure. Bloomsbury, 2023.
Žižek, Slavoj. Lacan. W.W. Norton & Company, 2007.
Žižek, Slavoj. Less Than Nothing. Verso, 2012.
Žižek, Slavoj. Tarrying with the Negative. Duke University Press, 1993.
Žižek, Slavoj. The Indivisible Remainder. Verso, 2007.
Žižek, Slavoj. The Parallax View. The MIT Press, 2006.
Žižek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. Verso, 2008.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Konstantinos Apostolidis
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
