During the confrontation, Lady Catherine accuses Elizabeth of being ‘lost to every feeling of propriety and delicacy’, a charge that she equates with her refusal to accept the distinctions of social class. But, as Elizabeth demonstrates, true propriety and delicacy are indicative of manners rather than rank. Furthermore, although Elizabeth refuses to be bullied by authority and exhibits courage and frankness in her private encounter with Lady Catherine, she also has a heightened awareness of the importance of observing social forms in public. […]

It is striking that no such decorum is necessary for the union between Elizabeth and Darcy. Indeed, their relationship is defined by their mutual candour, and their unwillingness to dissemble, which is perhaps what Darcy implies in his remark that ‘neither of us performs to strangers’. […] Elizabeth shows her grasp of the particular dynamic of their relationship when she assesses the qualities with which Darcy fell in love:

‘My beauty you had early withstood, and as for my manners - my behaviour to you was at least always bordering on the uncivil…. Now be sincere; did you admire me for my impertinence?’ ‘For the liveliness of your mind, I did' ‘You may as well call it impertinence at once. It was very little less. The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious attention. You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them" (PP, p. 380)

It is precisely Elizabeth’s irreverence and frankness that make possible a private language between them that transcends a society dependent upon conformity to social mores.

- Paula Byrne, The Genius of Jane Austen. Her Love of Theatre and Why She Is a Hit in Hollywood

i wrote another fic about generational trauma and the winchesters, this time featuring deadbeat mom extraordinaire mary née campbell, displacement, emigration, the american wake and just really missing your mom.

gonna quickly tag a few mutuals who might be interested but also you can find the fic under the cut

@uhuraha @myaimistrue @nonsensegnomes

American Wake

On a mild summer’s day in 1950, a wedding took place in Normal, Illinois. Dressed in a simple white dress that she had inherited from her mother, Millie Walsh looked up at the man who was to be her husband in daze of transcendent happiness. She had good reason to be besotted. His name was Henry Winchester and he was a dashing young academic of the supernatural with a fascinating air of mystery that surrounded him. They had met the previous year when he had come to her home in New York on a fact-finding mission. Millie fell in love after only two minutes of conversation.

With such a buoyant adoration to carry her through, Millie was perfectly happy to relocate to a state far from her family and friends to build a new life with charming debonair Henry. She knew about the supernatural elements of his life. How could she not? But it was a trade she was perfectly willing to make for the opportunity to create a family with him.

And she paid dearly for that decision. Millie lost a husband and was left to raise her four year old son alone.

It was all entirely avoidable of course. The Winchester name was not her inheritance by birth. No Cupid had ever marked her name for Henry. It was by no means a match made in heaven. If not for love, Millie could have lived a life completely divorced from the less-than-natural.

After her husband’s disappearance her heart hardened and she abandoned the Winchester name and any association with the supernatural. Packing her bags for Kansas, she returned instead to the ways of her own people. For Millie’s family had a long history of leaving their pasts behind them.

--------------------------------

Millie’s maternal line can be traced back to a small town in Limerick, Ireland now known by the name of Patrickswell. The farm where her grandmother was reared would likely have been a fair few miles from the town itself but it’s difficult to be precise about these things since many of the records of the era were destroyed in an explosion during the Civil War of the 1920’s.

Bridget Ó Laochdha lived in a hard place surrounded by tough people. There was no work in the surrounding towns and villages and her family was forced to eke out a living on rented land. Most of the local community spoke little to no English and spent most of their day-to-day lives conversing and working through the medium of the Irish language.

The Ó Laochdha family was no exception to this rule. Bridget - as the sole member of the family with more than a rudimentary grasp on the foreign tongue - had been translating for her father at the market for most of her young life.

The rugged countryside that surrounded them was austere and beautiful but there was darkness around every corner. Violence engulfed the region as the Land War raged around them. The threat of eviction was a constant sword of Damocles over their heads and the precarity of the political situation left a permanent mark on Bridget’s development.

Bridget loved her family, of course she did. She loved the language she spoke with them and the easy rhythm of her life. But she knew that there was a brighter future out there somewhere on the other side of an ocean. Somewhere she wouldn’t hear constant news of Whiteboys, Invincibles and their clashes with the police. Somewhere that was safer, where she might get a job and support her family from afar. All she needed was the means to get there.

------------------------------------

Mary idolises her dad when she’s young as children are prone to do. Her family are heroes who straddle the line between the known and the unknown and keep the world safe from the evil lurking in the shadows.

As a teenager, she joins the family business and she’s a natural. She excels particularly at getting information out of young witnesses. She sits amongst small groups of girls, nodding along to conversations about music, miniskirts and make-up and nudging the topic of discussion slowly around to the subject of her father’s latest hunt. Mary’s good with the guys too, she finds that a well-placed laugh or look can get her most of what she needs.

But intel is not the only area where she excels. Mary’s a sharpshooter and she’s not afraid to get her hands dirty. Hand her a shovel and she can dig a grave just as fast as the boys. She even knows the best technique for washing blood off her hands.

She’s on a path to be one of the best in the business. And she hates it.

-------------------------------

Although many people left Ireland to try their luck in the United States in those days, it was still a difficult path to tread. Tickets to get to New York were expensive and hard to come by. Buying a ticket at the harbour was as likely to get you scammed as to get you a place on the boat.

Bridget was fortunate in that her local parish priest was looking to sponsor a few young hopefuls on the trip across the Atlantic and offered her a place. That decision might have been the hardest any in her family had ever had to make. To leave behind everything she knew and understood for the small chance that her life could be better. She made that choice nonetheless.

The tradition of The American Wake was one that dated back to the famine years in Ireland to mourn the departure of a loved one to that far off place across the ocean. There would be no real way to send letters home consistently and economic conditions meant that the emigrants would likely never be able to return home. What do you do when you are setting up to grieve someone who is still alive? You hold a funeral.

On Bridget’s last day in Limerick she cried until her tear ducts ran dry. She sat in the centre of the room and listened to the keening women wail around her. Her father could not speak his sadness but he stood beside her and rested his hand on her shoulder, bowing his head in silent prayer. Her mother held her face in her hands and whispered one last goodbye.

Yet amidst all of the tears and the heartache, a sense of relief made its way into Bridget’s bones and settled in her spine. There was death and loss but a future there too. A brand new life in a brand new land. And while they’d never say it, her family was relieved too, she could see it in their eyes. This was one less mouth to feed, one less person to clothe. The money she will send home in remittances would lighten her father’s load by a considerable degree.

As she boarded the boat in Cobh, she stared at the ticket clutched tightly in her hand and thought not of what it had taken from her but of the life it stood to grant her.

---------------------------------

When Mary meets John for that second date outside his mother’s house, she knows that this is it. That he is her ticket out.

She clutches his body in her lap and cries and she doesn’t know what to do. With death and destruction all around her, Mary makes the only choice she can.

Deanna’s body still lies abandoned on the kitchen tiles. But isn't it better, in a way, that she never had to face her daughter leaving her behind?

------------------------------------

The first impression America made on Bridget was not a positive one. No sooner than she arrived at Ellis Island, did they take the last vestiges of her home away from her. Bridget Leahy took her first step onto foreign soil without even her name to console her.

Her first job in New York was that of a kitchen worker in a large airy home in the employ of a family belonging to the upper echelons of East Coast society. Her hours were long and her fingers near scrubbed to the bone. Since her food and board were covered, every penny that she earned was sent home to Patrickswell.

While her English had served her well in local markets of Limerick, she found that they were quite inadequate here among native speakers. She sat around the table in the servants’ quarters with the others who worked in the home and listened as conversations happened all around her. They all spoke so fast and the topic of conversation switched so quickly that she couldn't quite keep track. Bridget simply did not have the vocabulary to contribute and so she stopped speaking entirely.

The longing for home was like a physical wound lodged just under her ribs and sometimes she wondered how she continued to breathe through the pain.

The only times that she could recognise herself was on her rare evenings off when she made her way down to the local Irish dance hall. There she could allow young men from Inchicore, Kilrush and Listowel to spin her around a room to the music of home and forget where she was for just a few hours.

--------------------------------------

It is impossible to overemphasise how little the role of a housewife suits Mary Winchester. The sundresses feel awkward on her form and the kitchen still feels like a foreign land.

The other mothers in the neighbourhood all seem to speak the same language as they switch tracks fluently between complaining good-naturedly about their husbands and swapping recipe cards. Mary has never felt more out of place.

She doesn’t know where she fits or how to contribute. The loss of her mother is like a crater in her chest and she doesn’t know where to lay down all of the grief she holds in her hands. She thinks she would be better at holding her children without it.

When it all gets too much, she sheds the skin of Mary Winchester and leaves her small family behind to retrace the Campbell path. She might not be able to get her family back but she can pretend to be home for just a small while when on a hunt.

-----------------------------------

In a small catholic church on an intersection, Bridget Leahy married Mick Walsh of Tyrone in a small, private ceremony. As a married woman, she left the world of employment behind and started the task of homemaking in their small Manhattan apartment. She did her best to keep the rooms aired out and clean but the grime of the city was ever present.

When she looked out of the window and saw grey dusty streets she couldn't help but compare the view to green fields and the fresh air of the Limerick countryside. Her husband worked in construction, building monuments of steel to the sky that looked towards an American future while she remained stuck in an Irish past.

When Bridget’s pregnancy first became obvious to the couple, they were delighted. This was their chance to build something of their own on American soil. A family.

When her waters broke, the women of the neighbourhood rushed into her room to oversee the birth and refused to let her husband in so he could hold her hand.

In another life maybe Bridget stayed at home and married a local boy in Patrickswell. Maybe she gave birth at home next to her parents’ fireplace with all of the women of her family around her and her mother stroking her hair.

Maybe she was destined to die in childbirth no matter where she was but at least at home the last voice in her ears would have been in a tongue that was her own.

-------------------------------

Just like Millie Winchester née Walsh before her, Mary Winchester let the supernatural into her home in a desperate grab for the life that she wanted to build.

And just like her mother-in-law before her, a demon crashed through the walls and destroyed every semblance of a family that she had found.

The truth about loving you

Polin Modern au

Part one

4.5k

*Here it is - finally -part one! I hope you enjoy! *

Loving Colin Bridgerton had been the joy and the heartache of her life. It was time for Penelope to move on. He was never going to notice her. He was never going to love her the way she loved him. Always travelling, always seeking something... Colin was back in the small town of Grosvenor. But something was different and he had a feeling, it was him.

Also on AO3

Prologue

Penelope Featherington was well aware that, generally, the idea of love at first sight was laughed at. In addition, the thought that a young woman who had just reached the age of sixteen should find the love of her life in such circumstances was preposterous to most people. Well, almost everyone, really.

But she had. Fallen in love that is. Deep, head over heels, irrevocably in love. With Colin Bridgerton, brother of her dearest friend Eloise. Tall, handsome, charming… kind. Yes, she knew within a few minutes of meeting him and of becoming mesmerised by his smiling eyes that he was kind. She knew that he loved his family to distraction, that he was decent, that he was caring and that he did not have one bad bone in his body. That whoever should be lucky enough to win his heart would be treasured and loved…

So, really, one could not blame her for the instant, fatal bolt of something that had left her painfully in love with a man who saw her, she shuddered to think, as almost another sister. And he already have plenty of those. Penelope, being somewhat shy (and certainly lacking in the kind of confidence that would have let her believe she had any chance of being seen in anything more than sororal terms) had hidden her infatuation behind smiles and blushing cheeks. She had told no one - not a single soul - and miraculously none had guessed. She daren’t divulge the deepest secret of her heart to anyone. It was her private treasure; every moment in his presence was a potent mixture of exquisite joy and painful torment. He was the sunshine of her life. 

And he was completely, utterly oblivious. He had been both the greatest pleasure and tragedy of her life. For twelve. Whole. Years.

Until one day, as she approached the age of 29 and began to have those philosophical internal conversations that one often has when reaching a significant age, she had a revelation. No more, she told herself, no more…

Something had to change. 

Part One

Twelve years, three months and two days of being in love with Colin Bridgerton

With a final few clicks, followed by a deep sigh, Penelope flicked the lid of her laptop closed and glanced at her watch. Six pm. That gave her exactly sixty minutes to prepare herself for the town Spring Gala - otherwise known as Lady Agatha Danbury’s annual party; held every April by the social leader of the small Oxfordshire town of Grosvenor, in which not a soul dared to miss either through fear of Lady Danbury’s interrogation at a later date or simply because it was the first post-Christmas social event, where the chill was finally fading from the air and the dark nights of December had been replaced by the tempting promise of the bright summer evenings to follow.

Penelope didn’t know if she had the energy to face the entire town, but go she would. Really, she should try and make the most of the evening. She would actually miss the predictability of life here. In Grosvenor, nothing of real substance ever changed. It was comforting, but it was a crutch. It was a life she had clung to to avoid making the hard decisions.

As she stood to leave her desk, her eyes fell upon a polaroid. It was a picture of Pen, her best friend Eloise and Eloise’s brother, Colin, taken at Christmas a few years ago, they all were wearing ridiculous jumpers and Colin was trying to stuff a whole mince pie in his mouth. A frown crossed her face. She grabbed the picture and tossed it into the first drawer of her desk, slamming it with a satisfying thud.

It’s time to grow up, Penelope, she told herself. 

It was time for a change.

/ 

After locking her door, Pen stashed her keys in her pocket and… nearly jumped out of her skin. Perched on the small brick wall surrounding her cottage was Eloise Bridgerton, her oldest friend, lit cigarette dangling from one hand and black leather jacket slung over her shoulder.

“Jesus, El, you scare me!” Her friend smirked and took a long drag of her cigarette. “And you know if your mother catches you smoking she will kill you.”

Eloise scoffed. “I’m 28 years old Pen. I think I’m pretty far past the age when my mother rules my life.” Pen gave her a pointed look as she put out the cigarette on the stone wall before slipping it back in the packet. “Okay, so she could make my life a misery. As you well know I smoke precisely three times a year: the Danbury party, the Smythe-Smith musical evening and Simon and Daphne’s Christmas Fete.”

Pen knew her thoughts on forced social occasions, they were very similar to her own. Forced socialisation was akin to mental torture to the middle Bridgerton sibling because, like Pen, she had little time for the more vapid members of town society, and sadly, they made up a high percentage of those one would meet on such occasions. Which was why, as ever, she was once again thankful for friendship with Eloise. They were as much alike as they were different but there was something intangible between them that transcended the ordinary. On a higher level, they just fit. Many a time they’d postulate over large glasses of wine about becoming eccentric spinsters one day, with a dozen cats each and a cozy little house that overlooked the sea. It was a comforting thought for someone like Pen, who usually avoided thoughts of the future.

Slipping her arm through her friend’s, Penelope pulled Eloise to stand and began to walk in the direction of the Danbury’s large, sprawling house.“And then why do you attend tonight?” Penelope teased, knowing fair well what the answer was.

“Danbury would have my head on a platter - and then my mother would serve it for dinner. You know how those two are!”

Indeed, Penelope was well aware of the friendship between two of the town’s grande dames, both forceful in their own way and both determined matchmakers. “I wonder who they are trying to set up this year?”

“Don’t look at me,” El spat with an incredulous look, “Mother let that go a long time ago.” “Hyacinth maybe?” 

“She’s far too busy with her graduate degree. She’s determined to get firsts across the board. She’s now onto her fourth language you know?” Pen did know El’s youngest sister had an uncanny knack with languages, it was unnerving really when noone else in her family spoke more than a smattering of bad French. She’d already also mastered Spanish and Mandarin - helped of course through the year she had spent travelling in China. Oh how Pen wanted to go to China… okay, perhaps not China, maybe she wasn’t that adventurous. But just anywhere other than here. “Pen?”

“Hmm?”

Eloise jabbed Pen softly with her elbow. “You like you are on another planet.”

“Just thinking,” she replied, not really being dishonest.

“Well I’m glad to see I am such scintillating company. I was actually trying to tell you I have news.”

Oh. News. Eloise had news? This was the moment Pen had been waiting for. She wanted El to know first, she hadn’t even told her mother yet...

Pausing, Penelope turned to face her friend and forced a smile. “Actually, I, too, have some news-”

Just then, a large pair of arms wrapped around Pen from behind, hugging tightly around her waist before lifting her and spinning her around. 

Oh God. She’d know those arms anywhere. She’d know that cologne. She’d just know it was… 

“Colin! Put me down!,” she screamed, wriggling from his grip, “I’m far too heavy!”

Feet landing back on the pavement, Penelope stumbled a second before spinning on her heel to face him.

“Nonsense, you are light as a feather Pen,” Colin replied, grinning as reached forward and pressed a loud kiss on her cheek - leaving the patch of skin his lips had touched tingling and a deep blush threatened to engulf her face. Thank god it was getting dark already.

“That was my news,” Eloise announced smugly, crossing her arms. “Brother three is back on British soil.”

Stunned was not quite the word to describe Penelope’s state of mind as she stared at Colin Bridgerton. Colin with his warm, wide smile and deep, dark eyes… eyes she had drowned in more times that she cared to count. His thick, brown hair had grown and now licked at the collar of his shirt. But otherwise, Colin had changed very little in the six months since she had last seen him - and indeed in the twelve years since they had met.

“Colin,” she began, still a little tongue tied from the brief kiss and, moreso, his entirely unexpected return, “But you were in Australia?” 

“I decided to come home.”

“Clearly,” she mumbled, her head whirl. He always had that effect on her. His mere presence sent her stomach into knots and her head into a whirl and thinking clearly was almost impossible. “How wonderful,” she added.

She was dizzy. She felt a headache coming on. Actually, she felt just a little sick. Why was he back? Why? He was supposed to be gone for another five months. She should really have guessed that this might happen, Colin’s plans were always flexible and his adventures were subject to whatever whim or passion he was currently in the midst of. Still, it was unlike him to return from a trip early. It would have made more sense for him to spend those extra months exploring some other little corner of the world( and giving her the time she needed). Time for Penelope to make all the changes to her life that her carefully made plans had necessitated. Time for her to finally get over him. Severing her childish adoration for this man was the only way of moving forward with her life and just as she was about to make the great leap into the unknown… there he was. Same old Colin. 

Damn, she was tired of loving him. Because the truth about loving Colin Bridgerton was that it was equal parts heaven and hell.

“Pen!” El shouted, breaking her reverie. “You phased out on me again.” Penelope gave a wan smile. “So what were you going to tell me before my idiot brother here interrupted us?”

“Oh,” she shrugged, “Nothing. Nothing at all.”                                                      

/

Lady Danbury, of course, had planned her event to perfection. A string quartet greeted visitors in the large, marble lined vestibule of Danbury Hall and uniformed wait staff meandered around the milling guests carrying shining silver platters of champagne and fancy-looking canapes. As the trio arrived, friends of Colin’s surrounded the siblings and welcomed their friend home. Colin had always been extremely popular. Between his good nature, sense of humour and ability to make whomsoever he conversed with feel important and noticed, he has managed to forge friendships with almost every inhabitant of Grosvenor. 

Seeing an exit, Penelope grabbed a flute of champagne from the first passing server and managed to sink down half of it in one swift gulp as she headed towards the large ornamental garden that was accessed from the house’s terrace. She needed a moment. She needed air. She needed to think.

He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be thousands of miles away. 

She really had convinced herself that she was growing out of her feelings from him. It was quite ridiculous. It had been over TWELVE years. She’d mooned over him all through her teens and twenties, both cursing and thanking her friendship with Eloise for placing them in such close conspiracy. Being close to him and watching him over the years had only deepened her feelings whilst simultaneously feeding a torturous sense of insecurity. It was a curse. Any man she met was instantly compared with Colin. Was he as kind as Colin? Was he as generous as Colin? Did he make her laugh like Colin did? Did she dream of sinking her hands into his hair the way she did with Colin? Would he kiss like Colin... The list was endless. 

Admittedly, the few fleeting relationships she had found herself in over the years had little longevity in them on their own merit. If a man showed an interest in her she was flattered - and flattery led her to trying to like them too. But no matter how much she tried, it was impossible to force attraction, or even friendship, and spending an evening with any of them was a close second to a glass of wine and a good book. So almost permanently single, she’d hidden her feelings under the guise of a bright demeanor and focused herself on building a career and becoming more than a woman driven by her emotions. Well, she had tried. 

Tried and failed miserably as proven by her visceral reaction to his presence that evening. Who was she kidding? The only way to finally free herself from this madness was to take herself out of the equation. Physically.

With a sigh, she downed the rest of her glass and left it on a little decorative iron table that edged the patio. There was little use in ruining the evening by letting herself sink into a mood. Tonight he was here and there was little she could do about it. 

/

Colin was home. Jetlagged, overtired and not-quite sure exactly what the time was, but he was back in Grosvenor with his luggage already deposited in his childhood room at Aubrey Hall. As expected, nothing of any note had changed in Grosvenor in the half a year he had spent travelling across Australia. It never did actually. Not during his tour of Europe, his kayak trip down the Amazon nor those six months spent trekking in India. There was something comforting about that. Home was always home. With very little change to have to acquaint oneself with when returning after a prolonged absence.

Except… Well… She looked different. Penelope did. No, that wasn’t right. Penelope was the same as always. Pen was always there when he came back: she was dependable, as much a part of home as his mother’s Sunday lunches or the broken clock at the town hall - and inevitably joined at the hip with his sister Eloise. But something was different this time.

When he’d seen her across the street, he’d stalked up to her as he often liked to, picking her up and spinning her around - it was an old trick that had started so long ago he’d forgotten exactly how or why. Yet this time he didn’t just feel the sense of enjoyment in making his friend laugh, as he picked her up he had immediately noticed the curve of her hips and the brush of her breasts against his arm. Startled, he had let go, only for her to turn to him with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes and- well -it was different. He’d always known Penelope was a woman, but tonight for some reason, he knew.

While he had been awake for over 30 hours (thanks to a delightful assortment of caffeinated beverages), he could not blame the tightening in his gut and the moment of breathlessness he felt in that brief moment on sheer exhaustion. In fact, he’d felt a rush of adrenaline and a kick of excitement, as if he had just discovered something new. Something that no one else knew. It was… unsettling. But not exactly in a negative way.

Puzzled and curious, Colin made light work of greeting those old friends who didn’t yet know he had returned and then left Eloise to be grilled by their sister Daphne and her husband Simon about just when she planned on moving out of Aubrey Hall. He slipped away quietly. The simple solution to his confusion was to go and talk with Penelope as he normally would. Surely that would settle whatever had affected him so much. He needed to have a nice, normal conversation with her. It was understandable, he supposed, for friendships to be a little strange after such a time. It hadn’t happened before between them, but still...

It was in the garden that he found her. The evening was still light, the sun turning a hazy orange behind the springtime clouds. He’d left Australia as the summer was turning to autumn and here he was about to experience summer yet again. The idea made him smile. Summer was always his favourite time of year. It seemed filled with so much promise - the days were long, the weather fine and even the gloomiest of souls could not retain their negativity when faced with an English summer’s day.

“Pen,” he said as he approached where she stood at the edge of the ornamental gardens. In one hand, she had a full flute of champagne and in the other an impossibly sized canape. She seemed to be studying the canape and deciding how best to approach it’s consumption - not easy when it took the form of an oversized base of puffed pastry topped with a heavy dollop of cream cheese and an artful sprinkling of caviar (Colin had always appreciated good food). Her eyes met his and she smiled, perhaps a little self consciously.

“Colin, I thought you were enjoying a hero’s welcome.”

He smirked a little, “I should hardly think my travels are an accomplishment. Indeed, mother sees them as somewhat the opposite.” His mother was actually very supportive of her son’s desire to see more of the world, but she had mentioned many times how perhaps spending every penny he earned on the endeavour was not the best forward planning. A large part of him knew she was right. The transient lifestyle he had lived for so long was starting to wear on him if truth were told. Not that the urge to discover new places would ever leave him, but perhaps the way it manifested in his life needed to change. More to think on later, he supposed.  “Anyway, I’m reliably informed that my mother is planning a welcome home and belated birthday party very soon. My loyal fans can fawn over me then,” he teased

“Oh,” Penelope gasped, “Your birthday was last month - I didn’t exactly forget I just - well, with all the travelling I didn’t even know where to send you a card. Here,” she said pushing the canape in his direction, “A present. I’m sure you are starving.”

“Oh no no no,” he chuckled, pushing her hand back. “I could not possibly deny you the pleasure of… that.”

Penelope frowned as she glanced at the oversized canape. Really, Colin was being a little cruel. Even he, who had never been accused of being small of mouth, would struggle to eat that with some semblance of dignity. But Penelope’s pouting pink lips were perfectly proportioned for her petite heart shaped face, forming a flawless pout as she considered the clearly impossible challenge. Colin, for his part, was seriously contemplating the lush fullness of her bottom lip until Penelope let out a deep sigh, opening her mouth wide and pushing the entirety of it inside. Colin sucked in a quick breath. As she chewed a drizzle of cream spread across her lip and he watched, hypnotised, as her tongue slipped out and cleared it away. There was something startlingly erotic in the moment and he found himself transfixed. Their eyes met as her jaw worked, the silence between them somehow startlingly loud, even as the sound of the party increased behind them in the house. Not breaking the eye contact, Penelope took a long sip of her champagne. “Done,’ she murmured softly.

The edges of his lips curled as he reached forward and brushed a crumb of pastry from her petal soft cheek. “Was it enjoyable?” he asked quietly.

Wordlessly, she nodded. 

And, hell, he had enjoyed it too.

‘Well then, I’d say I’m rather jealous.” He was overcome with a sudden urge to kiss her. He wanted to step closer to her, wrap his hands around the devastating curve of her hips, press his body to hers so those lush breastswere flush against his chest and then he would taste those maddeningly erotic lips. The idea pulsed through him. She was staring. Her blue eyes widening. He reached for the glass in her hands, intending to set it down-

Buzzz. Buzzz. Buzzz.

The moment was broken by the vibrations of a mobile phone. It took Pen a few seconds to acknowledge it was hers, a confused look crossing her face until she fished the device from her jeans pocket.

“Pen? PEN? Where are you?” Eloise’s voice bellowed down the line.

“Eloise,” she mouthed to him, though he had no trouble hearing his sister, who was never known for her subtilty. “You need to get here. Daphne is PREGNANT!”

“Oh,” Pen smiled, looking back at him. “I think we should head back to the others.”

Wordlessly he nodded. His sister - for whom motherhood had always been so important - announcing her first pregnancy, was certainly something he wanted to be there for. “C’mon,” he whispered, holding out his arm, “Time to play proud big brother.”

Further exploration of his newfound fascination with Penelope Featherington’s lips would have to wait.

/

Hours later...

The world was silent when they reached her cottage. An intrepid white cat darted across the street as a gust of wind rustled the branches of the small oak tree that dominated the garden of Penelope’s cottage. Despite the light chill to the air, she was wearing a warm coat of alcohol, her cheeks glowing as they always did when she had drunk champagne. Pleasantly tipsy, she leaned into Colin, his warmth comforting against her side as she fumbled in her pocket for her key.

“Thank you,” she said quietly as she opened the half gate that breached the stone wall around her home “But you really didn’t have to walk me all the way home. I’m a big girl, you know.” There was a double meaning to her words; yes she wasn’t exactly young, but she also wasn’t exactly small in size - the phrase ‘curves in abundance’ could have been written just for her, she had thought on more than one occasion.

“It was my pleasure,” Colin replied, “It was a fine excuse to leave before the revels became too tiring- you know these things can go on until morning and I already feel like I could sleep for a year.” With that, he yawned and ran a hand through his hair. Pen watched those lightly tanned fingers come through the dark chestnut locks and swallowed down a sigh.

“Well,” she nodded, “I’d say that it’s time to say goodnight.” For a second, she fidgeted, her keys jangling on her finger. Impulsively, she reached out her hand and immediately felt ridiculously awkward. She and Colin did not shake hands. She didn’t shake hands with anyone. Ever. She cleared her throat and felt her cheeks deepen in colour. Oh god. After their strange moment in the garden, things had felt almost normal between them as they congratulated Daphne and Simon and then passed the rest of the evening hearing stories from Colin’s travels and bringing him up to date with the (somewhat limited) local gossip he had missed. And so when he had insisted on walking her home, she hadn’t been overly wary. Yet now… now they were alone on her quiet street and he was staring at her so oddly that she was actually finding it difficult to breathe-

“Good night,” he said softly, reaching down to bring her into a hug. It was a beautiful, warm embrace, her face almost nestling against his neck so that she could enjoy his musky, soft cologne. This was nice. This was safe. Friends hugged.

She made to pull away, but he only loosened his grip a small amount. Looking up he was so very close. His dark, velvet eyes fixed upon hers. “Pen…” he whispered, a look of concentration upon his face. She tried to wriggle gently free of his arms, his close inspection feeling uncomfortable and somehow searing.

And then he kissed her. Just like that.

His lips were against hers, his hands slipped up her back, his mouth suddenly urgent and wonderful and if Penelope could have imagined his kiss a thousand times she could not have imagined this. He pressed her back against the door, his tongue sweeping into her mouth with a satisfied groan. Her hands, which had been limp around his neck, surged into his thick locks, the satin strands feeling obscenely good between her fingers. He pushed his hips forward, anchoring her in place, his mouth tracing her jaw and then her neck, one hand racing down to cup her buttocks and squeeze just hard enough to make her gasp in surprise.

Colin Bridgerton was kissing her.

Colin was kissing her.

Colin.

Suddenly, she froze, pushing against his shoulders. “Are you drunk?” she panted.

“No,” he frowned, “Are you?”

“No,” she admitted, shaking her head. And, oh she was thankful that she would remember every moment of this...

Without her noticing, Colin had taken the key and opened the door behind her. Quickly,  they fell inside. Their arms instantly back around each other and the kiss resumed and it was intoxicating. It was magnetic. It was drugging… Penelope had never been kissed like this before. 

Colin was nibbling at her neck and pulling her shirt out from her jeans. She dug her fingers into the firm muscles of his shoulders and felt herself being swept away.

“Wait-”

He paused and looked up. 

Penelope took a step backwards. This had to stop. It was madness.  “I-I can’t do this right now. I-”

His face creased in confusion. “Pen?”

She began pushing her shirt back into her jeans. “I need to think. I need to sleep. I-” She sighed and pursed her lips. She couldn’t believe what was happening. She couldn’t believe what she was doing.

He responded with a small nod and a whispered, “Okay.” He reached back and placed his hand on the doorknob, before adding, “Later?’

And Penelope tried to smile.

Colin left, the door closing softly, followed by the clip of footsteps and the creak of her gate. Quickly, she locked the door and then stared at it.

And then Penelope Featherington started to cry.

Oh god, what the hell just happened?

To Be Continued...

The Critique of Ideology

Slavoj Zizek claims that “it seems easier to imagine the ‘end of the world’ than a far more modest change in the mode of production, as if liberal capitalism is the ‘real’ that will somehow survive even under conditions of a global ecological catastrophe”. Zizek asserts the existence of ideology as “the generative matrix that regulates the relationship between the visible and non-visible, between imaginable and non-imaginable, as well as the changes in this relationship.” Accordingly, this matrix can be seen when an event that represents a new dimension of politics is misperceived as the continuation of or a return to the past, and the opposite, when an event that is entirely inscribed in the existing order is misperceived as a radical rupture. “The supreme example of the latter, of course, is provided by those critics of Marxism who (mis)perceive our late-capitalist society as a new social formation no longer dominated by the dynamics of capitalism as it was described by Marx”.

Zizek writes in The Sublime Object of Ideology, “The most elementary definition of ideology is probably the well-known phrase from Marx's Capital 'sie wissen das nicht, aber sie tun es' - ‘they do not know it, but they are doing it’. The very concept of ideology implies a kind of basic, constitutive naivete: the misrecognition of its own presuppositions, of its own effective conditions, a distance, a divergence between so-called social reality and our distorted representation, our false consciousness of it. That is why such a 'naive consciousness' can be submitted to a critical-ideological procedure. The aim of this procedure is to lead the naive ideological consciousness to a point at which it can recognize its own effective conditions, the social reality that is distorting, and through this very act dissolve itself. In the more sophisticated versions of the critics of ideology - that developed by the Frankfurt School, for example - it is not just a question of seeing things (that is, social reality) as they 'really are', of throwing away the distorting spectacles of ideology; the main point is to see how the reality itself cannot reproduce itself without this so-called ideological mystification."

Rex Butler states in his essay “What is a Master-Signifier?”, “Thus, in the analysis of ideology, it is not a matter of seeing which account of reality best matches the ‘facts’, with the one that is closest to being least biased and therefore the best. As soon as the facts are determined, we have already - whether we know it or not - made our choice; we are already within one ideological system or another. The real dispute has already taken place over what is to count as the facts, which facts are relevant, and so on.” He goes on to explain that in 1930s Germany the Nazi narrative won out over the socialist-revolutionary narrative not because it could better explain the crisis of liberal-bourgeois ideology, but because it best insisted that there actually was a crisis, of which the socialist-revolutionary ideology was apart, and could be accounted for as a ‘Jewish conspiracy’.

Zizek, on the topic of liberal modernity’s ultimate lack of a “transcendent guarantee, of total jouissance” (in his discussion of fantasy), he lists three methods to cope politically with this negativity: utopian, democratic, and post-democratic. Democracy, according to Zizek, is the political equivalent of “traversing the fantasy” as it “institutionalizes the lack itself by creating the space for political antagonisms”. Post-Democracy, which is the postmodern condition of apolitical consumerist fantasy, tries to neutralize negativity. Finally, the utopian fantasy (which Zizek asserts is primarily totalitarian or fundamentalist) creates the conditions for the elimination of the negativity in absolute jouissance. Stavrakakis’ book ‘The Lacanian Left’ which criticizes Zizek as interpreting Lacanian psychoanalysis through the politics of disavowal, argues essentially that the category of “democratic freedom” is the solution to the negativity of jouissance in the political sphere, because it takes up the notion of Other jouissance, as the expression of antagonisms under liberal capitalism, operates “to detach the objet petit a from the signifier of the lack in the Other…to detach (anti-democratic and post-democratic) fantasy from the democratic institutionalization of lack, making possible the access to a partial enjoyment beyond fantasy.”

If “traversing the radical fantasy” is the ultimate ethical act, it remains viable only because of the ongoing practices and beliefs of the subject. The traversal of fantasy is an “active, practical intervention in the political world”. “Traversing the fantasy” is different from everyday speech and action in that it challenges the “framing sociopolitical parameters”, “touches the Real”, and as Foucault maintained, there is an ontology of utterances as pure language events, “not elements of a structure, not attributes of subjects who utter them, but events which emerge, function within a field, and disappear.” Foucault, like Deleuze, develops an immanent philosophy which is post-historicist, but time still plays a crucial role. Deleuze speaks of the micropolitics of ‘becoming’ rather than the usual transcendental ‘being’, following from Bergson the concepts of multiplicities and pure virtuality.

Zizek criticizes Hardt and Negri’s ‘Empire’ for not bringing out the line of argument that the proletarian revolution proceeds from the internal antagonisms of the capitalist mode of production; in this sense he calls their analysis of postmodern globalized finance capitalism to be short of the “space needed for such radical measures”. The reason Zizek is critical of ‘Empire’ precisely is because what is clearly needed in the critique of ideology today is “to repeat Marx’s critique of political economy”, to speak of his hypothesis that the key to social change resides in “the status of private property”, “without succeeding on the temptation of the ideologies of “postindustrial” societies”. Zizek while asking whether ‘Empire’ remains pre-Marxist, interestingly the argument continues that it is actually more of return to Lenin than a return to Marx - for Marx is loved on Wall Street, for he “provided perfect descriptions of capitalist dynamics”. But Lenin on the other hand, Zizek claims, embodies the “concrete analysis of the concrete [historical] situation”. However, unlike Lenin, they do not deplore the notion of “universal human rights”, speaking of a need for the recognition of global citizenship, a minimum basic income, and the reappropriation of the “new” means of production. So why does Zizek consider ‘Empire’ a return to Lenin? Is it because “Benevolent as it is, this will necessarily end in a new Gulag!”? Not exactly, and rather the demand for scientific objectivity means the moment one seriously questions the existing liberal consensus they are accused of “abandoning scientific objectivity for outdated ideological positions”. Furthermore, he accuses them of a “lack of concrete insight [which] is concealed in the Deleuzian jargon of multitude, deterritorialization, and so forth.” and calling their analysis “anticlimactic”.

In the now infamous Slavoj Zizek vs. Jordan Peterson debate, Zizek confronts the threat of a post-ideological postmodernity with the statement that Trump himself is a postmodernist, and is creating the ground for a new postmodern conservatism in which facts are rejected, truth is relative. He on the other hand calls Bernie Sanders an old-fashioned moralist. Zizek, however, is not a postmodernist or post-structuralist himself but builds on Lacan, Hegel and Marx to develop a diagnosis for the conditions of post-modernity that threaten rational discourse. In a lecture with Jean Baudrillard, a woman provides a geological metaphor of modernity and postmodernity riding over each other like tectonic plates. Modernity in this case represents the Marxist paradigm of class struggle, while what is taken up seriously in post-structuralist analyses is the notion of identity formation as opposed to class struggle.

Native Americans Have Always Answered the Call to Serve

https://sciencespies.com/history/native-americans-have-always-answered-the-call-to-serve/

Native Americans Have Always Answered the Call to Serve

Smithsonian Voices National Museum of the American Indian

Native Americans Have Always Answered the Call to Serve: National VFW Day 2020

September 29th, 2020, 3:50PM / BY

Dennis Zotigh

Native American veterans of the Vietnam War stand in honor as part of the color guard at the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial. November 11, 1990, Washington, D.C. (Photo by Mark Reinstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

National Veterans of Foreign Wars Day, September 29, recognizes men and women who have served honorably in a foreign war or overseas operation recognized by a campaign medal, received hostile fire, or qualified for imminent danger pay. Active-duty servicemembers who meet the criteria are also welcome. Members today include veterans of World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, the Balkans, the Persian Gulf, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other expeditionary campaigns, as well as those who have served during occupations. Family members of eligible servicemen and women show their support through the VFW Auxiliary.

The organization’s history dates to 1899, when the American Veterans of Foreign Service and the National Society of the Army of the Philippines were organized to secure rights and benefits for veterans of the Spanish–American War (1898) and Philippine–American War (1899–1902). The two organizations merged in 1914, creating the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States. The VFW was chartered by Congress in 1936.

The VFW defines its role in its mission and vision statements:

To foster camaraderie among United States veterans of overseas conflicts. To serve our veterans, the military, and our communities. To advocate on behalf of all veterans.

To ensure that veterans are respected for their service, always receive their earned entitlements, and are recognized for the sacrifices they and their loved ones have made on behalf of this great country.

Today, more than 1.6 million people belong to the VFW and VFW Auxiliary. They take part in service and social programs at more than 6,000 posts, including posts on American Indian reservations and in Native communities.

In the early 1900s, the warrior tradition of American Indians seemed to face near extinction. The last of the major conflicts over Native American lands had ended a generation before, when the Agreement of 1877 annexed the Sioux homelands—including Pahá Sápa, the Black Hills—and permanently established Indian reservations. With a handful of exceptions, Native warriors no longer engaged in battle to protect their homes, families, and way of life.

“Native Americans served in World War I even though they were not citizens of the United States.” —Kevin Gover (Pawnee), director of the National Museum of the American Indian

That changed in 1917, when the United States formally entered World War I. In need of a much larger military, the federal government began to promote enlistment, and shortly afterward, instituted the draft. It is estimated that more than 12,000 American Indians served in the U.S. military during the war. At a time when a third of Native Americans were not recognized as citizens of the United States, more than 17,000 Native American men registered with the Selective Service. An estimated 12,000 Native Americans joined the U.S. Armed Forces, some 6,500 of whom were drafted, according to the records of the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs

The largest group of Native service members came from Oklahoma. Members of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma became the military’s first officially organized and trained group of American Indian code talkers. Students of the federal Indian boarding schools volunteered in large numbers—more than 200 from the Carlisle Indian School alone. Native Americans joined every branch of the military, including a number of Native women who volunteered for the Army Nurse Corps. Unlike African American servicemen and women, Native Americans were not segregated into special units, although there is evidence that they were often given unusually dangerous assignments. About 5 percent of Native combat soldiers were killed during World War I, compared to 1 percent of American soldiers overall.

Through the Citizenship Act of 1919, Congress granted U.S. citizenship to American Indians who had served, if they applied for it. Native Americans’ record of patriotism became the catalyst for the broader Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, which recognized all Native Americans born in the United States as citizens.

The United States’ entry into World War II brought large numbers of American Indian warriors back to the battlefield in defense of their homeland. More than 44,000 American Indians, out of a total Native American population of less than 400,000, served with distinction between 1941 and 1945 in all theaters of the war. Servicemen from more than 30 Native nations used their tribal languages as unbreakable codes to transmit vital communications. Among many Native heroes of the war is Ira Hayes (Pima [Akimel O’odham], who grew up on his parents’ farm in the Gila River Indian Community, Arizona; enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve in 1942; and was one of six servicemen who raised the American flag over Iwo Jima, a moment immortalized at the Marine Corps Memorial.

“There is a camaraderie that transcends ethnicity when you serve your country overseas in wartime.”—Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Northern Cheyenne), Korea veteran

During the Korean War (1950–1953), battle-hardened Native American troops from World War II were joined by American Indians newly recruited to fight on foreign soil. Approximately 10,000 Native Americans served in the U.S. military during this period. Seven American Indians and Native Hawaiians received Medals of Honor for their bravery and sacrifice in Korea. My uncle, William Hall-Zotigh (Kiowa), proudly served in a MASH unit near Inchon and Taegu. Before his death, he was heavily involved in the Veterans of Foreign Wars and presided over funerals for veterans on behalf of the VFW.

Native American veterans participate in opening ceremonies during the 7th Annual Indiana Traditional Powwow. April 7, 2018, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. (Jeremy Hogan)

Native Americans demonstrated their patriotism again during the Vietnam era. More than 42,000 Native Americans, fought in Vietnam, more than 90 percent of them volunteers. Among the nearly 60 thousand names of individuals killed or missing in action on the Vietnam Memorial Wall are 232 identified as Native Americans or Alaska Natives.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Natives in United States military took part in combat or other hostilities in Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Private First Class Lori Piestewa (Hopi) was the first woman killed in action during Operation Iraqi Freedom and the first American Indian woman known to have died in combat overseas.

“I’m excited about the upcoming memorial. With the all-volunteer service, there are a lot of people who have not served or don’t understand what it means to serve. I guess I want people to recognize how often Native people have volunteered. From Alaska to the East Coast, through all the wars, Native people have always volunteered.” —Colonel Wayne Don (Cupig and Yupik), veteran of Bosnia and Afghanistan

According to the Department of Defense, more than 23,000 of the 1.2 million men and women on active duty in the U.S. military today American Indians or Alaska Natives. With the completion of the National Native American Veterans Memorial on November 11, 2020, the museum will honor them and all Native veterans. The museum will announce the larger, ceremonial opening when it is possible for veterans and their families to take part.

The National Native American Veterans Memorial is currently under construction on the grounds of the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Congress charged the museum with creating this memorial to give all Americans the opportunity “to learn of the proud and courageous tradition of service of Native Americans.” Their legacy deserves our recognition.

Join us in recognizing the members and mission of the VFW on social media using the hashtag #VFWDay.

Dennis W. Zotigh (Kiowa/San Juan Pueblo/Santee Dakota Indian) is a member of the Kiowa Gourd Clan and San Juan Pueblo Winter Clan and a descendant of Sitting Bear and No Retreat, both principal war chiefs of the Kiowas. Dennis works as a writer and cultural specialist at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

More From This Author »

#History

Arc System Works has updated the official website for Kowloon Youma Gakuen Ki: Origin of Adventure, a remaster of the 2004-released school romance juvenile adventure RPG due out for Switch this spring in Japan, with first official information and screenshots.

Get the details below.

■ About

The school juvenile romance masterpiece Kowloon Youma Gakuen Ki returns on Switch will full voice-overs!

Kowloon Youma Gakuen Ki is an adventure RPG released in 2014 that has captured the hearts of many, regardless of age and gender, and continues to gain fans.

Kowloon Youma Gakuen Ki: Origin of Adventure is a high-definition remaster of the PlayStation 2 masterpiece Kowloon Youma Gakuen Ki (Mujirushi), which was created by Shuuhou Imai, the father of the juvenile romance genre that continues to this day.

The game features newly recorded voice-overs, including a fully-voiced main scenario. Famous scenes such as the characters’ Christmas confession scene that was praised by fans are now fully-voiced. The voice actors from the original game have returned, although some voice actors have been changed. Voices can be freely switched between partly-voiced and fully-voiced via the options.

While maintaining defining systems such as the “emotion input system” and “AP turn-based battles,” enjoy a school juvenile romance adventure that closes in on school drama and ancient mysteries.

■ Story

Objects that transcend human knowledge, sent by a very ancient civilization… They are called “treasures.” Throughout the world’s countries were many known as “treasure hunters,” those that seek out those treasures said to cause miracles.

Protagonist Kurou Habaki (name changable) is a young hunter who has just joined “Rosetta Society,” a hunter guild for up-and-coming treasure hunters. As his first job, he challenges the “Temple of Heracleion,” which is buried beneath the city of Cairo in the Arab Republic of Egypt.

After repelling the obstruction of a secret society called “Relic Dawn,” which intends to monopolize the treasures, he brings back one of the treasures and receives a new mission.

“Enroll into Kamiyoshi Gakuen private school in Tokyo, Japan, and explore the ruins discovered beneath the school.” Kurou successfully infiltrates the school as a transfer student and discovers the entrance to the underground ruins.

Bonding with friends, battling the “student council” that protects the ruins, and a secret society that lurks in the shadows. Inside a turmoil of secrets and intent, an adventure of a young treasure hunter begins.

■ Systems

Adventure Parts

School parts with unique characters. Enjoy fully-voiced scenes popular among fans such as the characters’ Christmas confession scene.

Emotion Input System

Respond in conversations by choosing from nine emotions (love, joy, passion, friendliness, sadness, grief, coldness, anger, and ignore), and in addition to affecting various parameters such as the other person’s reaction, favorability, and conditions for events to occur, different conversations will develop for each playthrough.

■ Characters

Koutarou Minamori (voiced by Kenji Hamada)

The protagonist’s classmate who always has an aroma pipe in his mouth. While he has excellent reflexes, he is not a member of the club and and prefer to be on his own. He is always either on the rooftop or at the nurse’s office, and tends to skip out on classwork. His favorite food is curry.

Asuka Yachiho (voiced by Ayano Imaizumi)

A girl in the same class 3-C as the protagonist. She is the ace of the tennis club. She is curious and cares about others, as well as cheer them up. She has a friendly relationship with the transfer student protagonist.

Kasuka Shiraki (voiced by Mai Nagasako)

A mysterious girl who wears chains beneath her uniform. She has a mystical atmosphere that keeps people at a distance, and her background is hidden in a veil of mystery. She throws puzzling words at the protagonist.

Tsukumi Nanase (voiced by Yuki Masuda)

A girl in class 3-A, as well as a student librarian. She manages the school’s books and has a habit of quoting old sayings. While she is serious and quiet, she gets excited when it comes to topics of super ancient civilizations and the occult.

Ayuko Hinakawa (voiced by Yui Horie)

The Japanese language teacher and homeroom teacher for the protagonist’s class, 3-C. Her beauty has made her very popular with students. While she is kind and gentle, she has doubts about the main leadership of the student council.

■ Restored Treasure Edition

The “Restored Treasure Edition” includes a copy of the game, a smartphone stand figure of Koutarou Minamori, a new drama CD, and an art book.

Introduction Axiomatic: Epistemology Of The Closet

       Introduction Axiomatic: Epistemology of the closet written by Eve Sedgwick is written from a stance that scrutinizes binary opposition through a critical lens. Sedgwick places the concept of binarism within the context of homosexuality and heterosexuality. Sedgwick discusses the metaphor known as “coming out of the closet.” While Sedgwick provides various definitions for the closet, it is meant to be indicative of the ways in which members of the LGTBQ community repress their sexuality when placed in the context of homosexuality and heterosexuality. It represents something that is concealed or kept private from others. However, the metaphor was not always embraced by the LGTBQ community as those who identified as gay or lesbian did not make use of the term before the 1960s. This does not stop the term from remaining prevalent within society through its widespread usage, regardless of its questionable emergence.  The shaping of language and discourse from history is considered to be impactful in influencing our views towards gender and sexuality according to Sedgwick. While Introduction Axiomatic aligns itself with a breadth of intellectual studies and concepts, it concerns itself foundationally with the role of semantics in discourse. This can be seen through Eve Sedgwick's aim towards deconstructing as well as reconstructing how identity is perceived in literature as well as discourse. This is accomplished through Sedgwick’s dismissiveness in regard to viewing sexual orientation in relation to its binary other. Given this, Sedgwick articulates that defining homosexuality in opposition to heterosexuality narrows our view of them as their meanings become mutually dependent, limiting our true understanding of them. This implies that in order to understand homosexuality we must understand how it differs from heterosexuality. To Sedgwick, there are various ways of defining homosexuality that extends beyond its relation to its binary opposite. The underlying idea behind this is that the views and concepts we deem as “common sense” are not rigid and often worthy of skepticism or reshaping. These views are socially constructed and products at various times within history. It only seems logical that our definition and perceptions of words and ideas are susceptible to change over time much like the world around us has throughout history. By treating our definitions of homosexuality brought upon by history as fixed, we further oppress others as well as ourselves. The linkage between Sedgwick’s work and concepts we explore in MIT 2150 is clear as her writing can be applied to multiple topics and readings examined throughout the semester such as Gender. Reading’s such as Fun Home: A Family Taxonomic by Alison Bechdel introduced us to the way's normative ideals of gender and sexual orientation influenced the relationships she had with those around her. If we were to imagine Sedgwick’s approach towards binary opposition within the context of Gender, it helps us to understand how the rigidness of binarism increases the pressure we may feel towards normative views of homosexuality and heterosexuality as well as how we define what it means to be male or female. In the same ways thinking of homosexuality as opposed to heterosexual can limit our understanding towards both terms, defining what it means to be male in opposition to what It means to be female creates a narrow-minded approach to how we can and should view gender. The treatment of gender and sexuality as malleable and fluid in meaning allows us to transcend dated interpretations of how we should act based on our identity by viewing it as individualistic and open to change. If this was the instinctive approach to how society viewed gender as a whole, perhaps Alison Bechdel as well as her father Bruce would have never felt the need to hide who they are or exists in a way that they feel is reflective of their gender.  

Same-Sex Marriage Essay

My self-imposed and unabridged essay for a speech I hope to give at my church come autumn. I managed to get it to 1,423 words, but will end up cutting and re-writing it to make it more “Church-friendly”.

Anyway, here it is.

You may have heard of me; you may not have. My name is George Elmer, I’m a hobbyist researcher and storyteller, and I am passionate about the rights and injustices of humans. A few things about me, I research my points thoroughly to ensure I know what I’m talking about and so I can understandably deliver my thoughts. I am passionate about many topics of injustice and historical note, and you can be assured I give my all when I act upon my interests. Part of my degree was in criminology, so I am familiar with the way the law works, and the motivations behind the crimes are often rooted in religion and belief. Of cause, this argument is not without its bias, but I shall base my arguments upon the predominant counterpoints faced by activists and social justice fighters.

I shall get straight to the point and say that today’s speech is about the second vote regarding the right of same-sex couples to marry on holy ground. You fear change and the abolition of tradition which will inevitably follow. Many people also fear this, and it is a natural course of nature in which we do not know what lies beyond. One of the most prevalent fears in humans is the fear of the unknown. 

You want what is best for the Church, for the community, and yourself as a part of all this. You may be here so you can say you have helped to make history, that you have been a part of history. You want to make a positive difference in the community, whether you are voting to accept or deny a part of the community the right to marry where they so desire.

Today I can settle some of the main arguments you might have about the history of same-sex relationships and the law, so you can think about what it is regarding the traditions in the Church and Christianity you hold. Today, I will argue the legal and Christian definitions of marriage, and criminality and same-sex couples. All I ask of you is why? Why do you hold these views? Why are they so?

I shall start with the definitions of marriage. The definition of marriage as many of us understand it comes from a court case in 1866. In the case of Hyde v. Hyde and Woodmansee, which, incidentally, is a case of polygamy, Lord Penzance’s judgment began with, “Marriage, as understood in Christendom, is the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others.”

If we follow the Old Testament, men may take more than one wife, as the biblical patriarchs and kings of Israel are described as doing. Women may be purchased from their father with a dowry, as biblical law does not require her to give consent, and she is to perform tasks such as spinning, sewing, weaving, manufacture of clothing, fetching of water, baking of bread, and animal husbandry. Yet, in modern society, this is frowned upon because it does not match with the wider culture and with society’s expectations and norms.

The New Testament describes marriage as something permanent, wherein the Gospels of Matthew and Mark Jesus says:

“Have you not read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

A reiteration of the Book of Genesis. Two people created for each other, to stay together, in the eyes of God. It is mentioned that divorce itself is either unnecessary or avoidable, and we accept that as a Church and as a society.

And yet, we also accept that the Word of the Apostle Paul has been altered by the people who translated the Bible into their languages, as the case with the King James Version and the Early Church Fathers’ promotion of silence and submission of women, then what is to say of the original words of the Book of Genesis. In fact, in 1102, the Council of London (that is, the Roman Catholic church council of the church in England) took measures to encourage the English public to believe that homosexuality was sinful.

I also read that the original Hebrew, Genesis did not mention gender at all, only stating that God made two people. Adam is often used in Genesis as a pronoun to refer to “a human” and to “humankind” as a whole, likewise, the name Eve means “living one”.

So if we were to remove gender from the equation entirely, we are left with the words of Mātā Amritānandamayī Devī, a Hindu spiritual leader, guru and humanitarian, who said, “Pure love transcends the body. It is between hearts. It has nothing to do with bodies.”

I have previously stated that the introduction of Christian intolerance of homosexuality began in 1102 with the Council of London. Yet most of the criminality we associate with this stems from King Henry VIII’s Buggery Act 1533, which his daughter Queen Elizabeth I gave permanent force in 1558. Henry’s law focused on buggery, which only related to intercourse per anum by a man with a man or woman or intercourse per anum or per vaginum by either a man or a woman with an animal.

This act was later repealed and then replaced in 1828 with the Offences against the Person Act 1828, where buggery remained punishable by death. Where buggery or attempted buggery could not be proven, the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 prohibited gross indecency.

It is nearly a century until the Sexual Offences Bill 1967, which allows for homosexual acts between two men over 21 years of age in private in England and Wales. The restrictions of this were overturned in the European Court of Human Rights in 2000, allowing for a third person to be present and men could now have sex in a hotel.

In the present century, the Civil Partnership Act 2004 is passed to grant the same rights and responsibilities to homosexual couples as heterosexual couples in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. The Gender Recognition Act 2004 granted transsexual people full recognition as members of their identified gender for all purposes such as marriage.

I shall end my history with the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act 2013, which took effect 16 December 2014. I shall also say that Lord Ivar Mountbatten married his same-sex partner, James Coyle, on 22 September 2018, he is the first member of the British monarch’s extended family to have a same-sex wedding.

If the Church wishes to remain in the heart of the community, if it wishes to remain relevant, it must consider the needs and demands of the community in which it serves. If the society recognises the right of same-sex couples to marry, then the Church should meet that need if it does not wish to exclude a part of the community it serves.

In this speech, I set out to outline and settle the arguments surrounding same-sex marriage. I have discussed the legal and Christian definitions of marriage, and I have given a brief history of the legality of same-sex marriage. I asked you to think about why you hold the views you do.

You may have thought it has always been so, but I have found that they are not. Traditions always have a starting point, and marriage has only been a union between man and woman since the introduction of the Council of London’s propaganda in 1102 and the introduction of the Buggery Act 1533 and Lord Penzance’s judgment on marriage in 1866.

The Bible has been written and re-written by men, each with their ideas and patrons to please. If so much of the Bible has been affected by Early Church Fathers’ promotion of silence and submission of women, then how much has also been affected by homophobic Christians who aimed to cast anyone not abiding by their views in a negative light? We can only interpret the Bible. We can only view it in parallel with the societies in which it was written and re-written and based upon.

I shall leave you with a quote I found by an author I can no longer find; they said, “Love, love in its purest incarnation, can never be wrong in the eyes of a God who promotes love above all else.”

Survival of the Richest

The wealthy are plotting to leave us behind

Douglas Rushkoff

Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment bankers. It was by far the largest fee I had ever been offered for a talk — about half my annual professor’s salary — all to deliver some insight on the subject of “the future of technology.”

I’ve never liked talking about the future. The Q&A sessions always end up more like parlor games, where I’m asked to opine on the latest technology buzzwords as if they were ticker symbols for potential investments: blockchain, 3D printing, CRISPR. The audiences are rarely interested in learning about these technologies or their potential impacts beyond the binary choice of whether or not to invest in them. But money talks, so I took the gig.

After I arrived, I was ushered into what I thought was the green room. But instead of being wired with a microphone or taken to a stage, I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys — yes, all men — from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information I had prepared about the future of technology. They had come with questions of their own.

They started out innocuously enough. Ethereum or bitcoin? Is quantum computing a real thing? Slowly but surely, however, they edged into their real topics of concern.

Which region will be less impacted by the coming climate crisis: New Zealand or Alaska? Is Google really building Ray Kurzweil a home for his brain, and will his consciousness live through the transition, or will it die and be reborn as a whole new one? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”

The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down.

This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers — if that technology could be developed in time.

That’s when it hit me: At least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology. Taking their cue from Elon Musk colonizing Mars, Peter Thiel reversing the aging process, or Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape.

There’s nothing wrong with madly optimistic appraisals of how technology might benefit human society. But the current drive for a post-human utopia is something else. It’s less a vision for the wholesale migration of humanity to a new a state of being than a quest to transcend all that is human: the body, interdependence, compassion, vulnerability, and complexity. As technology philosophers have been pointing out for years, now, the transhumanist vision too easily reduces all of reality to data, concluding that “humans are nothing but information-processing objects.”

It’s a reduction of human evolution to a video game that someone wins by finding the escape hatch and then letting a few of his BFFs come along for the ride. Will it be Musk, Bezos, Thiel…Zuckerberg? These billionaires are the presumptive winners of the digital economy — the same survival-of-the-fittest business landscape that’s fueling most of this speculation to begin with.

Of course, it wasn’t always this way. There was a brief moment, in the early 1990s, when the digital future felt open-ended and up for our invention. Technology was becoming a playground for the counterculture, who saw in it the opportunity to create a more inclusive, distributed, and pro-human future. But established business interests only saw new potentials for the same old extraction, and too many technologists were seduced by unicorn IPOs. Digital futures became understood more like stock futures or cotton futures — something to predict and make bets on. So nearly every speech, article, study, documentary, or white paper was seen as relevant only insofar as it pointed to a ticker symbol. The future became less a thing we create through our present-day choices or hopes for humankind than a predestined scenario we bet on with our venture capital but arrive at passively.

This freed everyone from the moral implications of their activities. Technology development became less a story of collective flourishing than personal survival. Worse, as I learned, to call attention to any of this was to unintentionally cast oneself as an enemy of the market or an anti-technology curmudgeon.

So instead of considering the practical ethics of impoverishing and exploiting the many in the name of the few, most academics, journalists, and science-fiction writers instead considered much more abstract and fanciful conundrums: Is it fair for a stock trader to use smart drugs? Should children get implants for foreign languages? Do we want autonomous vehicles to prioritize the lives of pedestrians over those of its passengers? Should the first Mars colonies be run as democracies? Does changing my DNA undermine my identity? Should robots have rights?

Asking these sorts of questions, while philosophically entertaining, is a poor substitute for wrestling with the real moral quandaries associated with unbridled technological development in the name of corporate capitalism. Digital platforms have turned an already exploitative and extractive marketplace (think Walmart) into an even more dehumanizing successor (think Amazon). Most of us became aware of these downsides in the form of automated jobs, the gig economy, and the demise of local retail.

But the more devastating impacts of pedal-to-the-metal digital capitalism fall on the environment and global poor. The manufacture of some of our computers and smartphones still uses networks of slave labor. These practices are so deeply entrenched that a company called Fairphone, founded from the ground up to make and market ethical phones, learned it was impossible. (The company’s founder now sadly refers to their products as “fairer” phones.)

Meanwhile, the mining of rare earth metals and disposal of our highly digital technologies destroys human habitats, replacing them with toxic waste dumps, which are then picked over by peasant children and their families, who sell usable materials back to the manufacturers.

This “out of sight, out of mind” externalization of poverty and poison doesn’t go away just because we’ve covered our eyes with VR goggles and immersed ourselves in an alternate reality. If anything, the longer we ignore the social, economic, and environmental repercussions, the more of a problem they become. This, in turn, motivates even more withdrawal, more isolationism and apocalyptic fantasy — and more desperately concocted technologies and business plans. The cycle feeds itself.

The more committed we are to this view of the world, the more we come to see human beings as the problem and technology as the solution. The very essence of what it means to be human is treated less as a feature than bug. No matter their embedded biases, technologies are declared neutral. Any bad behaviors they induce in us are just a reflection of our own corrupted core. It’s as if some innate human savagery is to blame for our troubles. Just as the inefficiency of a local taxi market can be “solved” with an app that bankrupts human drivers, the vexing inconsistencies of the human psyche can be corrected with a digital or genetic upgrade.

Ultimately, according to the technosolutionist orthodoxy, the human future climaxes by uploading our consciousness to a computer or, perhaps better, accepting that technology itself is our evolutionary successor. Like members of a gnostic cult, we long to enter the next transcendent phase of our development, shedding our bodies and leaving them behind, along with our sins and troubles.

Our movies and television shows play out these fantasies for us. Zombie shows depict a post-apocalypse where people are no better than the undead — and seem to know it. Worse, these shows invite viewers to imagine the future as a zero-sum battle between the remaining humans, where one group’s survival is dependent on another one’s demise. Even Westworld — based on a science-fiction novel where robots run amok — ended its second season with the ultimate reveal: Human beings are simpler and more predictable than the artificial intelligences we create. The robots learn that each of us can be reduced to just a few lines of code, and that we’re incapable of making any willful choices. Heck, even the robots in that show want to escape the confines of their bodies and spend their rest of their lives in a computer simulation.

The mental gymnastics required for such a profound role reversal between humans and machines all depend on the underlying assumption that humans suck. Let’s either change them or get away from them, forever.

Thus, we get tech billionaires launching electric cars into space — as if this symbolizes something more than one billionaire’s capacity for corporate promotion. And if a few people do reach escape velocity and somehow survive in a bubble on Mars — despite our inability to maintain such a bubble even here on Earth in either of two multibillion-dollar Biosphere trials — the result will be less a continuation of the human diaspora than a lifeboat for the elite.

When the hedge funders asked me the best way to maintain authority over their security forces after “the event,” I suggested that their best bet would be to treat those people really well, right now. They should be engaging with their security staffs as if they were members of their own family. And the more they can expand this ethos of inclusivity to the rest of their business practices, supply chain management, sustainability efforts, and wealth distribution, the less chance there will be of an “event” in the first place. All this technological wizardry could be applied toward less romantic but entirely more collective interests right now.

They were amused by my optimism, but they didn’t really buy it. They were not interested in how to avoid a calamity; they’re convinced we are too far gone. For all their wealth and power, they don’t believe they can affect the future. They are simply accepting the darkest of all scenarios and then bringing whatever money and technology they can employ to insulate themselves — especially if they can’t get a seat on the rocket to Mars.

Luckily, those of us without the funding to consider disowning our own humanity have much better options available to us. We don’t have to use technology in such antisocial, atomizing ways. We can become the individual consumers and profiles that our devices and platforms want us to be, or we can remember that the truly evolved human doesn’t go it alone.

Being human is not about individual survival or escape. It’s a team sport. Whatever future humans have, it will be together.

Is architecture basically just finding inspiration in something and constructing a building based on that inspiration?

Nothing is further from the truth. 

Architecture is…

1. “Architecture is definitely a political act.” - Peter Eisenman in Haaretz

2. “Architecture is unnecessarily difficult. It’s very tough.” - Zaha Hadid in The Guardian

3. “Architecture is by definition a very collaborative process.” - Joshua Prince-Ramus in Fast Company

4. “Architecture is a way of seeing, thinking and questioning our world and our place in it.” - Thom Maynein his Prtizker Prize Acceptance Speech

5. “Architecture is the art and science of making sure that our cities and buildings actually fit with the way we want to live our lives: the process of manifesting our society into our physical world. - Bjarke Ingels in AD Interviews

6. “Architecture is merciless: it is what it is, it works or doesn’t, and you can clearly see the difference.” - Jacques Herzog in a lecture at Columbia University

7. “Architecture is always related to power and related to large interests, whether financial or political.“ - Bernard Tschumi in The New York Times

8. "Architecture is a good example of the complex dynamic of giving.” - Jeffrey Inaba in World of Giving

9. “Architecture is too complex for just one person to do it, and I love collaboration.” - Richard Rogers in The Guardian

10. “Architecture is the most powerful deed that a man can imagine.” - Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bosin Volume

11. “Architecture is an act of optimism.” - Nicolai Ouroussoff in The LA Times

12. “Architecture is an artificial fact.” - Mario Botta in Perspecta

13. “Architecture is full of romantics who think that even relatively small changes to the built environment create the aspiration for a better society.”  - Mark Wigley in Surface Magazine

14. “Architecture is for us, the public, and it is going to get scuffed.” - Alexandra Lange in Design Observer

15. “Architecture is the work of nations…” John Ruskin in Stones of Venice

16. “Architecture is always dream and function, expression of a utopia and instrument of a convenience.” - Roland Barthes in “Semiology and Urbanism”

17. “Architecture is an expression of values – the way we build is a reflection of the way we live.” - Norman Foster in The European

18. “Architecture is the real battleground of the spirit.”  - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in “ID Merger Speech”

19. “Architecture is not a question of the purely theoretical if you’re interested in building buildings. It’s the art of what is possible.” - Paul Rudolph in Chicago Architects Oral History Project

20. “Architecture is geometry.” - Álvaro Siza in Imaginar a Evidência (Imagining Evidence)

21. “Architecture is about improving conditions: environmental, social and sometimes also political.”  - Arjen Oosterman in Volume

22. “Architecture is not just one thing. It is not just an art. … It has to deal with the real situation; it has to do something good for the society.” - Xiaodu Liu in “What Can Architecture Do? An Interview with Xiaodu Liu” on ArchDaily

23. “Architecture is much more than the building of an object on a site: it is a reinvention of the site itself.” - Sean Lally in The Air From Other Planets

24. “Architecture is a language: new designs should abide by grammatical rules to avoid dissonance with existing structures.” - Prince Charles in The Architectural Review

25. “Architecture is an untapped source of magnificent stories waiting to be imagined, visualized, and built.” - Matthew Hoffman in “Blank Space Launches Architecture Storytelling Competition”

26. “Architecture is about serving others through the design of the built environment.” - Kevin J Singh in “21 Rules for A Successful Life in Architecture”

27. “Architecture is a very complex effort everywhere. It’s very rare that all the forces that need to coincide to actually make a project proceed are happening at the same time.” - Rem Koolhaas in Co.Design

28. “Architecture is intended to transcend the simple need for shelter and security by becoming an expression of artistry.” - Jay A. Pritzker in his 1985 Pritzker Ceremony Speech

29. “Architecture is the only art that you can’t help but feel. You can avoid paintings, you can avoid music, and you can even avoid history. But good luck getting away from architecture.” - Philippe Daverio in Humans of New York

30. “Architecture is the petrification of a cultural moment.” - Jean Nouvel in Newsweek

31. “Architecture is characterised by endurance and longevity: a long education, long training, long hours and long lives.” - Catherine Slessor in The Architectural Review

32. “Architecture is a muddle of irreconcilable things.” - Juhani Pallasmaa in The Architectural Review

33. “Architecture is, in many ways, a very specific type of science fiction; it is its own genre of speculative thought,” - Geoff Manaugh in Architect

34. “Architecture is largely irrelevant to the great mass of the world’s population because architects have chosen to be.” - Bruce Mau in Architect

35. “Architecture is becoming less about a single walled-off phallus on the horizon, and more about parks and public spaces which engage with the city.” - Alissa Walker in Gizmodo

36. “Architecture is most often a victory over the process of creating architecture.” - Sam Jacob in Log

37. “Architecture is capable of mounting a profound critique of the status quo.” - Reinhold Martin in Places

38. “Architecture is such a conspicuous immensely physical object in space its presence is bound to influence everyone.” - Gautam Bhatia in India International Centre Quarterly

39. "Architecture is not just about building. It’s a means of improving people’s quality of life.” - Diébédo Francis Kéré in Washington Post

40. “Architecture is a physical experience — it needs to be seen and touched to be wholly understood.” - Nicolai Ouroussoff in Los Angeles Times

41. “Architecture is really difficult. I realized that only very recently. It’s like music. You can enjoy it but — to know it — it’s a different story.” - Diana Agrest in nprEd

42. “Architecture is capable of absorbing anything, and hence tends to dissolve into everything.”  - Ole Bouman in Volume

43. “Architecture is not just a matter of technology and aesthetics but the frame for a way of life – and, with luck, an intelligent way of life.” - Bernard Rudofsky

44. “Architecture is a discipline where you can have multivalent interests. You could be a philosopher, a geographer, a scientist, an artist, an engineer; you can be poetic about it.” - Toshiko Mori in Metropolis

45. “Architecture is supposed to be about a higher purpose.” - Stanley Tigerman in Newsweek

46. “Architecture is the most public of the arts, and the public are severe critics.” - Eric Parry in The Guardian

47. “Architecture is a form­maker, problem‐solver and environment‐creator, and the international exposition is its laboratory.”  - Ada Louise Huxtable in New York Times

48. “Architecture is supposed to complete nature. Great architecture makes nature more beautiful—it gives it power.”- Claudio Silvestrin in Elle Decor

49. “Architecture is a small piece of this human equation, but for those of us who practice it, we believe in its potential to make a difference, to enlighten and to enrich the human experience, to penetrate the barriers of misunderstanding and provide a beautiful context for life’s drama.” - Frank Gehry in his 1989 Pritzker Prize Ceremony Speech

50. “Architecture is not a private affair; even a house must serve a whole family and its friends, and most buildings are used by everybody, people of all walks of life. If a building is to meet the needs of all the people, the architect must look for some common ground of understanding and experience.” - John Portman in “The Architect as Developer”

51. “Architecture is a social art. And as a social art, it is our social responsibility to make sure that we are delivering architecture that meets not only functional and creature comforts, but also spiritual comfort.” - Samuel Mockbee

52. “Architecture is too important to be left to men alone.” - Sarah Wigglesworth in Parlour

53. “Architecture is not a purely private transaction between architects and clients. It affects everyone, so it ought to be understandable to everyone. - Blair Kamin

54. "Architecture is vital and enduring because it contains us; it describes space, space we move through, exit in and use.” - Richard Meier in his 1984 Pritzker Prize Ceremony Speech

55. “Architecture is more about ideas than materials.” - Qingyun Ma in Los Angeles Times

56. “Architecture is not just for big star projects like museums. It’s for the slums around them, too.” - Juan Ramon Adsuara in npr

57. “Architecture is bashful about reality.” - Wouter Vanstiphout in Archis

58. “Architecture is just background. The beauty of architecture is that it brings people together and can create public constructs.” - Ben Van Berkel in AD Interviews

59. “Architecture is about hope, about change—it makes life more exciting.” - Lars Lerup in Architect

60. “Architecture is blessed and cursed with more dimensions than its greats know what to do with: the three of sensible space, the celebrated fourth of travel through it; and others, ineffable, beyond—the fifth of utility, say, the seventh of happy accident, the ominous eleventh.” - Philip Nobel in Metropolis

61. “Architecture is a mystery that must be preserved.”  -  Jean Nouvel in Huffington Post

62. “Architecture is only as great as the aspirations of its society.” - Lisa Rochon in Globe and Mail

63.“Architecture is like the picture of Dorian Gray: It can look beautiful in public, while somewhere out of sight its true soul withers and rots.” - Lance Hosey in Architect

64. “Architecture is about reason-right?” - Alfred Caldwell in Chicago Tribune

65. “Architecture is a profession of optimism.” - Johanna Hurme in spacing

66. “Architecture is about the manipulation of light: both artificial light and day lighting.”- Tom Kundigin Architectural Record

67. “Architecture is expected to carry too much weight in many cases.” - Patricia Patkau in Globe and Mail

68. “Architecture is not a goal. Architecture is for life and pleasure and work and for people. The picture frame, not the picture.” - William Wurster

69. “Architecture is the most obvious flower of a society’s culture.”  - Alan Balfour in Art Papers

70. “Architecture is more than making a statement from the street. It’s making an environment for living.” - Dion Neutra in Los Angeles Times

71. “Architecture is a translation process.” - Fernando Romero in Metropolis

72. "Architecture is quite a narrow, obsessive business.” - Nicholas Grimshaw in The Guardian

73. “Architecture is perplexing in how inconsistent is its capacity to generate the happiness on which its claim to our attention is founded.” - Alain de Botton in The Architecture of Happiness

74. “Architecture is a kind of urban ballet.” - Aaron Betsky in New York Times

75. “Architecture is a history of style written by the victors.” - Herbert Muschamp in New York Times

76. “Architecture is driven by belief in the nature of the real and the physical: the specific qualities of one thing - its material, form, arrangement, substance, detail - over another.” - Kester Rattenbury in This is Not Architecture: Media Constructions

77. “Architecture is not always synonymous with building.” - Francisco “Patxi” Mangado

78. “Architecture is complicated and like other complicated things it is prone to entropy from the outset.” - Guy Horton in Metropolis

79. “Architecture is where imagination meets life.” - Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa in their 2010 Pritzker Prize Ceremony Speech

80. “Architecture is an incredible ego trip. You get things done, you build them, you look at them. That’s why I enjoy life and don’t have an ulcer. - Stanley Tigerman in the Chicago Tribune

81. "Architecture is a strange field where we’re constantly asked to demonstrate over and over why design matters, to everyone, all the time. It’s exhausting.” - Amale Andraos in Metropolis

82. “Architecture is about the lack of stability and how to address it. Architecture is about the void and how to cross it. Architecture is about inhospitability and how to live within it.”  - Geoff Manaugh in The Guardian

83. “Architecture is both an art and a practical pursuit, and the profession has always been divided between those who emphasize the art, that is pure design, and those who give priority to the practical.”  - Paul Goldberger in New York Times

84. Architecture is one of the reflections of the permanence of a civilization. - Charlie Rose

85. Architecture is not a profession for the faint-hearted, the weak-willed, or the short-lived. - Martin Fillerin The New York Review of Books

86. “Architecture is a very dangerous job. If a writer makes a bad book, eh, people don’t read it. But if you make bad architecture, you impose ugliness on a place for a hundred years.” - Renzo Piano in Time

87. “Architecture is the pathology of the contemporary era.” - Forensic Architecture

88. “Architecture is a discipline directly engaged with shaping enclosure, of erecting and toppling barriers or—more explicitly—of extending and limiting ‘freedoms’.” - E. Sean Bailey & Erandi de Silva in “BI’s First Print Edition Released - FREE: Architecture on the Loose”

89. “Architecture is interesting, but by itself it means nothing.” - Massimiliano Fuksas in New York Times

90. “Architecture is an art, yet we rarely concentrate our attention on buildings as we do on plays, books, and paintings.” - Witold Rybczynski in Metropolis

91. “Architecture is aligned with and implicated in the systems of surveillance and control.” - Eric Howelerin Volume

92. “Architecture is 90 per cent business and 10 per cent art.” - Albert Kahn

93. “Architecture is probably the subject of more theorizing, navel-gazing and introspective agonizing than any of the other arts.” - Paul Gapp in the Chicago Tribune

94. “Architecture is invention.”- Oscar Niemeyer in Newsweek

95. “Architecture is always political.” - Richard Rogers in Financial Times

96. “Architecture is a frame of mind, it’s about ideas; the profession is about how to translate those ideas into the real world.” - Christopher Janney in Architectural Record

97. “Architecture is an active participant in the interactions of people within it.” - Jonathan C. Molloyin ArchDaily

98. “Architecture is not only developing in its own realm, it is constantly assimilating achievements from other fields.  - Maya Engeli in Volume

99. "Architecture is first and foremost about serving people and society.  This is an architect’s responsibility: to design buildings that fulfill their practical purpose, bring people together, and connect us to the natural world while preserving precious resources.” - Steven Ehrlich in Metropolis

100. “Architecture is about building a place in the universe, not about mimicking a depleted, decrepit reality.” - Stefanos Polyzoides in The LA Times

101. “Architecture is a public commodity, and as such invites public scrutiny.” - Reed Kroloff in Architecture*

102. “Architecture is not about the creation of newness but rather about the fulfillment of needs and expectations.“ - André Tavares in Forbes

103. "Architecture is the same as advertising for communicating the brand.” - Patrizio Bertelli in The New York Times

104. “Architecture is not just about accommodating very prescriptive demands—it’s doing it in a way that stimulates the unfolding of life. - Bjarke Ingels in Co.Design

105. "Architecture is exposed to life. If its body is sensitive enough, it can assume a quality that bears witness to past life.” - Peter Zumthor in Thinking Architecture

106. “Architecture is flexible.” - Krzysztof Wodiczko in St. Louis Post - Dispatch*

107. "Architecture is a combination of science and fiction.” - Winy Maas in Domus

108. “Architecture is the art we all encounter most often, most intimately, yet precisely because it is functional and necessary to life, it’s hard to be clear about where the "art” in a building begins.“ - Jonathan Jones in The Guardian

109. "Architecture is not an inspirational business, it’s a rational procedure to do sensible and hopefully beautiful things; that’s all.” Harry Seidler in the Sydney Morning Herald

110. “Architecture is used by political leaders to seduce, to impress, and to intimidate.” - Deyan Sudjic inThe Washington Post

111. "Architecture is a paradigm for reconsidering research.” B.D. Wortham in Journal of Architectural Education*

112. "Architecture is about giving form to the places where people live. It is not more complicated than that but also not simpler than that. - Alejandro Aravena in his 2016 Pritzker Prize acceptance speech

113. "Architecture is generally a poor relative to things like film, fashion and product design. Even though it is economically more important, for some reason it is not getting the recognition.” - Tamsie Thomsonin The Architects’ Journal

114. “Architecture is a complex and articulated process but if you lose the process and only keep the form you lose the core of architectural practice.” - André Tavares in Wallpaper*

116. “Architecture is practical poetry.” - Bjarke Ingels at the New Yorker Festival

117. “Architecture is the sum of inevitable negotiations.” - Felipe Mesa in Domus

118. “Architecture is more than just buildings; these structures can inspire and motivate people to do great things.” Fisk Johnson for the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial

119. “Architecture is one of those disciplines that has no shortage of voices.” - Guy Horton in Metropolis

120.“Architecture is always a temporary modification of the space, of the city, of the landscape. We think that it’s permanent. But we never know.” - Jean Nouvel in The New York Times

121. “Architecture is like life: a matter of trade-offs.” - Paul Goldberger  in The New York Times

Quotes via

Paper Architectural Models via

Music’s first responder: How Yo-Yo Ma answered the pandemic’s call and consoled a reeling nation

After a lifetime of preparation, the iconic cellist is once more proving classical music’s power to honor grief, catalyze hope, and connect us across isolation.

In a way, while the pandemic’s disruptions have left many feeling plunged into completely unknown terrain, Ma had been preparing for this moment his entire life. “Art is not for art’s sake,” he says. “Well, it could be. But really, it’s for life’s sake.”

“I want to try this on you and ask what you think,” he says. He goes on to speak about the ethical vision in Beethoven’s music, a sense of “reaching out for something that was almost attainable,” the possibility for a more fair and just society that, in Beethoven’s day, still glittered beckoningly on the horizon. Two world wars, he continues, shattered that vision and showed us “that the veneer of civilization was really just a veneer.” These days, he says, the ethical striving and idealism still present in Beethoven’s music all too rarely find an echo in our contemporary world.

“But,” ever the optimist, Ma continues, “with the new tools and understanding we have, could there be a more hopeful humanistic philosophy, or a way of thinking that can unite us and propel us forward, maybe not to the same utopian ideal but at least toward being in balance between ourselves and our planet?”

This is not how most musicians typically begin an interview. Ma’s mind is a vast storehouse of ideas, associations, curiosities, streams of thought. “When you ask Yo-Yo a question, his brain comes up simultaneously with 100 different ways of answering,” says Sara Wolfensohn, an old friend.

“I need to be fed ideas,” Ma tells me, though he’s also got a lot of his own. He thinks knowledge is overly siloed in today’s world. He wants to put science back in conversation with the arts. He loves the concept in ecology of the “edge effect,” the notion that biodiversity is richest at the borderline between two ecosystems, and he frequently employs it as a metaphor. He also wants culture to play a more central role in society as a gateway to things our country appears to be decidedly lacking at the moment: trust, empathy, and humility. He views all three as critical to the world’s thriving into the future. And these days, he explains, he is often thinking generationally, both about the limits of his own and the birth of the next.

“I’m about to become a grandfather for the third time,” Ma says, his face widening into that smile that routinely warms the chilliest of concert halls. “And I know that while I’m not going to see the year 2100,” he continues, “someone very close to me probably will. But what is that world going to be like? What is my part in handing them whatever I’ve been responsible for, and what are they going to think about it? These are not abstract questions to me anymore. They’re real questions. Pre-pandemic, the big frustration was that we were spending the great majority of our time producing things,” he adds. “Now I think so much more about meaning and purpose.”

It’s also safe to say that Ma — before the pandemic, too — had thought about these topics once or twice. At-home viewers of the videos he has been creating from his living room can sometimes spot, behind Ma’s right shoulder, a picture of his hero, the legendary Catalan cellist Pablo Casals. The image is framed next to a quote from Casals that Ma has always prized: “I am a man first, an artist second. As a man, my first obligation is to the welfare of my fellow men. I will endeavor to meet this obligation through music — the means which God has given me — since it transcends language, politics and national boundaries. My contribution to world peace may be small, but at least I will have given all I can to an ideal I hold sacred.”

From the perspective of the classical music world today, Casals’s sentiment may sound decidedly old-fashioned. In their own era, men like Casals and Leonard Bernstein had political and social visions, and they spoke beyond classical audiences to address a wider public (John F. Kennedy once said that Bernstein was the only man he “would never run against for political office”). But as the field’s share of prestige in the culture at large has shrunk, so too has the ethical purview of its leading voices. These days, the field’s stars tend to traffic within a more circumscribed cultural sphere, even as they try, when possible, to expand the music’s reach.

Artistic paths rarely follow a straight line. In Ma’s case, one can’t say exactly what led to what, nor is he in a rush to tell you. But in the years following his trip to the Kalahari Desert, Ma began authoring new scripts for building a life of meaning in music. Genre demarcations, which had long been the guardrails of his path through music, suddenly seemed less relevant. While he continued his concerto appearances and solo work, Ma was also suddenly playing the tangos of Astor Piazzolla, and then recording a bluegrass-inflected album, Appalachia Waltz, with the fiddle player Mark O’Connor and bassist Edgar Meyer. Music-making was, in short, becoming less of “a formal thing.” And perhaps the San notion of an instrument being little more than a means to an end had also seeped in somewhere. Around this time, Ma absentmindedly left his $2.5 million Montagnana cello in the trunk of a New York City taxi. (It was recovered.)

Even as he ventured musically further afield, the Bach suites remained Ma’s magnetic north. But he no longer felt compelled to plumb their mystery as part of a solitary quest, choosing instead, in the late 1990s, to work with six directors to create a series of six films, each inspired by one of the suites. Then in 2000, Ma founded Silkroad, a global collective of musicians inspired by the cross-cultural connections that flourished in the lands along the ancient Silk Road trading route. The attacks of September 11, 2001, and the waves of xenophobia that followed, seemed only to reinforce the need for listening across cultures. Headquartered in Boston, Silkroad is still thriving some two decades later.

Three decades later, Ma is now well practiced at seeking out what’s needed. Over the course of the last year, in addition to the recorded videos, the live-streamed performances, and the tour on the flatbed truck, he has released a new album, Songs of Comfort and Hope, with pianist Kathryn Stott, and he has brought his ideas on music and healing directly to the source by performing over Zoom in hospitals. Among the communities Ma has played for privately several times are front-line health care workers at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“It was a time of tremendous anxiety and unbelievable stress,” says Dr. Kathy May Tran, a hospitalist at Mass. General who coordinated his first performance in May for roughly 200 health care workers. “But the chance to connect over music, together with Yo-Yo’s words of care and support, and just the priority of gratitude that he embodies, were restorative to our entire community and gave us the strength to continue. That sounds corny, but it’s completely true.”

Since the pandemic began, Ma has also become involved with a national nonprofit called Project: Music Heals Us, which arranges virtual private concerts for hospital patients. The group to date has connected 161 musicians from across the country with over 3,100 patients in 23 hospitals, many of whom are severely isolated from family and even from most hospital staff due to COVID protocols. The contributing musicians come from all corners of the profession, though it’s fair to say not many are internationally renowned soloists. At one point, project organizers say, a patient at Houston Methodist hospital told his physical therapist that later in the day he would be receiving a private performance from Yo-Yo Ma. The clinician responded by noting that the patient was apparently suffering from delusions, only to later enter the ICU and find that Yo-Yo Ma was indeed there on an iPad, giving a private performance of the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts.”

“Musicians like Yo-Yo and many others could have taken the path of least resistance and easily avoided the pandemic altogether,” Dr. Tran says. “Instead, they chose to walk into it head on. In medicine and science, there is the concept of a catalyst, an entity or substance that creates a chemical reaction that can be lasting, permanent, transformative. During this pandemic, Yo-Yo has been a catalyst.”

Back in our Zoom interview, the hour has grown late and Ma has grown introspective. “We’re a country that was invented by a group of very smart people,” he says. “We’re living the American experiment, and we want the experiment to succeed and thrive. We want homo sapiens to thrive and survive. I ask myself, What does a 65-year-old do next? I want to be useful, I want to respond to need. I want to try, in whatever years I have, to do things with as much meaning and impact as possible.”

The questioning might imply that an answer would involve a departure from his recent roles, and it’s true that Ma has rarely stayed in one place, artistic or geographic, for long. But it also depends on one’s vantage point. Pull back the camera on his journey and one begins to see not wanderings but through-lines, as even Ma seems to concede. “My interests have always started with people,” he says. “Who they are, why they think and do what they do.”

That observation surely applies to Ma’s music as well. The most powerful performers have an almost mystical way of blurring the lines between interpreting and creating. They attempt to inhabit the composer’s way of seeing. To do so, Ma once said, “One must go out of oneself, finding empathy for another’s experience, forming another world.”

The key word here is empathy. It is what bridges Ma’s work as a musician and his social consciousness. Returning to the composer Leon Kirchner’s challenge, one might say empathy is the true center of Ma’s tone. And yes, he’s found it. And built on it his life.

https://www.cpr.org/2020/05/22/watch-live-on-sunday-yo-yo-ma-performs-bach-cello-suites-to-honor-lives-lost-to-coronavirus/

A Complete Guide on Why You Should Opt For Bachelor of Education B. Ed

The Bachelor of Education or B. Ed. is a profession that gives the training to make an expert who understands how to evaluate the educational necessities of society. Knowledge about educational psychology, and cultural philosophy, and among others, is developed to understand in the most suitable way the methods and teaching techniques and, also, how to improve them by amplifying curricular proposals that are adapted to the study of the learning subjects. You can complete this course from B. Ed Institute in Delhi or anywhere in the country. After completing the B. Ed, you will be able to intervene professionally in the areas of formal and non-formal education in its entirety, both from the research of educational phenomena; teaching in aspects related to their particular training; advising on educational matters in schools and organizations; the processes related to the interpretation, implementation, and evaluation of educational courses; curriculum design in its deepest expression and the coordination of institutional projects.

B. Ed Institute in Delhi has duration of this course between two to five years and, for the most part, it is attended in person, and online. The duration of the course is the same all over the country. Here at Sky Education Group, we provide authorized student support and exceptional admission counseling for the better future of participants. With the help of a thorough analysis of the courses that you are interested in, we come up with the most exceptional suggestions of universities and colleges that are available in the country.   Course Requirements for B. Ed Institute in Delhi:

Knowledge:

• Sufficient skills in their grammatical collection to express themselves and understand spoken and written language. • Basic knowledge of general logic reasoning • Some institutes require the entrance exam, but this is not compulsory for most B. Ed. Institute in Delhi.

Aptitudes:

• Energy to initiate social actions • Enthusiasm for education and self-development • Skill to communicate with people • Capacity to plan and show potential for study

Attitudes:

• Responsiveness to social difficulties • Patience and admiration for the diversity of people • Participative approach, creativity, and friendliness • Admiration for the dignity of oneself

There are various B. Ed Institutes in Delhi that offer diverse opportunities for the ones who are interested in it. Due to Covid, if you are not able to come to the city, then there are various options available all over the country that would give you admission to study the aspects of B. Ed. Such as Maharshi Dayanand University in Rohtak, Chaudhary Ranbir Singh University in Jind, Kurukshetra University in Haryana, and many more.

Career opportunities:

Career opportunities for alumni of the Bachelor of Education (B. Ed) are found in the organizations that are part of the educational system as well as in the coordinating groups that manage and conduct educational policy.

As such, after completion of the course from B. Ed Institute in Delhi, in each educational organization, in each entity or academic unit that has to do directly or indirectly with education, whether of a public or private nature, there are career opportunities for experts in Education.

Since education is a permanent, complex, and unfinished process, during and for a lifetime, which develops in multiple forms, stages, and conditions of people, its action transcends, by far, closed and formal physical spaces, beyond what which is conceived as "school". This implies a diversity of governmental and non-governmental organizations, as well as cultural, social, and sports spaces, among others. In them too, of course, a Bachelor of Education can work.

Some educational institutions require several education specialists. This is the case of the government bodies itself because, in its academic units and dependencies, it would be desirable to have experts in education to support the planning and prospective processes; management, educational policy, educational and vocational guidance; community development, curriculum design, administration of education and teaching, among others.

Independent Study

Reading Notes

1. Stewart, Susan. “Objects of Desire.” On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Duke University Press, 1993, pp.132-169.

We might say that this capacity of objects to serve as traces of authentic experience is, in fact, exemplified by the souvenir (Stewart 135).

We do not need or desire souvenirs of events that are repeatable. Rather we need and desire souvenirs of events that are reportable, events whose materiality has escaped us, events that thereby exist only through the invention of narrative (Stewart 135).

The souvenir speaks to a context of origin through a language of longing, for it is not an object arising out of need or use value; it is an object arising out of the necessarily insatiable demands of nostalgia (Stewart 135).

The souvenir reduces the public, the monumental, and the three-dimensional into the miniature, that which can be enveloped by the body, or into the two-dimensional representation, that which can be appropriated within the privatized view of the individual subject (Stewart 137-138).

Such souvenirs are rarely kept singly; instead they form a compendium which is an autobiography (Stewart 139).

Scrapbooks, memory quilts, photo albums, and baby books all serve as examples.

It is significant that such souvenirs often appropriate certain aspects of the book in general; we might note especially the way in which an exterior of little material value envelops a great “interior significance,” and the way both souvenir and book transcend their particular contexts (Stewart 139).

Because of its connection to biography and its place in constituting the notion of the individual life, the momento becomes emblematic of the worth of that life and of self’s capacity to generate worthiness (Stewart 139).

Although a book may hold little significance to others, it holds great value to the possessor who spent time, money and effort creating it. This is what makes objects sentimental to individuals. Souvenirs move history into private time; once we take the souvenir, we as the individual decide what we do with it. Display it, store it or share it.

The double function of the souvenir is to authenticate a past or otherwise remote experience and, at the same time, to discredit the present (Stewart 139).

The nostalgia of the souvenir plays in the distance between the present and an imagined, prelapsarian experience, experience as it might be “directly lived.” The location of authenticity becomes whatever is distant to the present time and space; hence we can see the souvenir as attached to the antique and the exotic (Stewart 140).

Souvenirs of the mortal body are not so much a nostalgic celebration of the past as they are an erasure of the significance of history (Stewart 140).

Tourism work

Less common tourist items - dish towels/dust cloths

Not intended to serve their original purpose but are fixed to the wall

“Spurious”

The photograph as souvenir is a logical extension of the pressed flower - the preservation of an instant in time through a reduction of physical dimensions

The narration of the photograph will itself become an object of nostalgia

Souvenir moves history into private time

2.  Açalya Allmer

Storytelling and memory

Personifying the objects in the museum

Unlike a typical collector; to be proud of the collection he possesses (3)

A catalogue of notional objects which represent Kemal’s love for Fusun

Embed the objects into a narrative

Sensities the reader to the museum’s collection (4)

The museum of innocence is in fact not just a novel, but also a symbol of Pamuk’s passion for collecting

‘Accomplish the renewal of existence through the whole range of childlike modes of acquisitions from touching things to giving them names (5)

‘Tempered mode of sexual perversion’

Collecting objects because they make us remember our good moments

‘For a true collector the whole background of an item adds up to a magic encyclopedia whose quintessence is the fate of his object

The Museum of Innocence should not be considered as an architectural adaptation of the story. (6)

Pamuk wants the objects to represent the story in their own way. If you take these everyday objects at the practical level, the visitor to the museum will be disappointed (6)

The Museum of Innocence is a project that arises not only from Kemal’s commitment to Füsun and his collection of objects, but also from Pamuk’s commitment to his novel. Pamuk, in an interview, calls himself a ‘museum person’ and it seems that there is a lot of Kemal in Pamuk

Wunderkammer - cabinet of curiosities

The Museum of Innocence exemplifies how invented worlds can orient and organise our lives. If we visit Istanbul and go to the Museum of Innocence on a Saturday afternoon to see the objects that ‘Kemal’ collected over the years, we realise how Pamuk is tied to Kemal’s actions and emotions (7)

3. Anthropologist James Clifford offers a critique of a 1984 show at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), called '"Primitivism' in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern."

One could encounter tribal objects in a number of locations

MOMA - Primitivism, 20th century art; Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern

Ethnographic specimens

Modernism is thus presented as a search for “informing principles” that transcend culture, politics, and history

Modernist primitivism, with its claims to deeper humanist sympathies and a wider aesthetic sense, goes hand-in-hand with a developed market in tribal art and with definitions of artistic and cultural authenticity that are now widely contested (8)

“We are offered treasures saved from a destructive history, relics of a vanishing world” (9)

In terms of the aesthetic code. Art is art in any museum (12)

Achebe’s image of a “ruin” suggests not the modernist allegory of redemption (a yearning to make things whole, to think archaeologically) (12)

The Maori have allowed their tradition to be exploited as “art” by Western cultural institutions and their corporate sponsors in order to enhance their own international prestige and thus contribute to their current resurgence in New Zealand society (13-14)

They were quickly integrated, recognised as masterpieces, given homes within an anthropological-aesthetic object system (15)

That question the boundaries of art and the art world, an influx of truly indigestible “outside” artifacts (15)

17th January >> (RomeReports.com) Pope Francis´ full speech at the Pontificial Catholic University of Chile: Grand Chancellor, Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati, My Brothers Bishops, President Dr Ignacio Sánchez, Distinguished University Authorities, Dear Professors and Administrators, Dear Students, I thank the President for his words of welcome on behalf of all present. The history of this university is in a some sense woven into the history of Chile. Thousands of men and women who were educated here have made significant contributions to the development of the nation. I would like especially to mention Saint Albert Hurtado, who began his studies here a century ago. His life is a clear testimony to how intelligence, academic excellence and professionalism, when joined to faith, justice and charity, far from weakening, attain a prophetic power capable of opening horizons and pointing the way, especially for those on the margins of society. In this regard, I would like to take up your words, dear President, when you said: “We have important challenges for our country that have to do with peaceful coexistence as a nation and the ability to progress as a community”. 1. Peaceful coexistence as a nation To speak of challenges is to acknowledge that situations have reached the point where they need to be rethought. What was hitherto an element of unity and cohesion now calls for new responses. The accelerated pace and a sense of disorientation before new processes and changes in our societies call for a serene but urgent reflection that is neither naïve nor utopian, much less arbitrary. This has nothing to do with curbing the growth of knowledge, but rather with making the University a privileged space for “putting into practice the grammar of dialogue, which shapes encounter”. For “true wisdom [is] the fruit of reflection, dialogue and generous encounter between persons”. Peaceful coexistence as a nation is possible, not least to the extent that we can generate educational processes that are also transformative, inclusive and meant to favour such coexistence. Educating for peaceful coexistence does not mean simply attaching values to the work of education, but rather establishing a dynamic of coexistence internal to the very system of education itself. It is not so much a question of content but of teaching how to think and reason in an integrated way. What was traditionally called forma mentis. To achieve this, it is necessary to develop what might be called an “integrating literacy” capable of encompassing the processes of change now taking place in our societies. This literacy process requires working simultaneously to integrate the different languages that constitute us as persons. That is to say, an education (literacy) that integrates and harmonizes intellect (the head), affections (the heart) and activity (the hands). This will offer students a growth that is harmonious not only at the personal level, but also at the level of society. We urgently need to create spaces where fragmentation is not the guiding principle, even for thinking. To do this, it is necessary to teach how to reflect on what we are feeling and doing; to feel what we are thinking and doing; to do what we are thinking and feeling. An interplay of capacities at the service of the person and society. Literacy, based on the integration of the distinct languages that shape us, will engage students in their own educational process, a process that will prepare them to face the challenges of the immediate future. The “divorce” of fields of learning from languages, and illiteracy with regard to integrating the distinct dimensions of life, bring only fragmentation and social breakdown. In this “liquid” society or “society of lightness”, as various thinkers have termed it, those points of reference that people use to build themselves individually and socially are disappearing. It seems that the new meeting place of today is the “cloud”, which is characterized by instability since everything evaporates and thus loses consistency. This lack of consistency may be one of the reasons for the loss of a consciousness of the importance of public life, which requires a minimum ability to transcend private interests (living longer and better) in order to build upon foundations that reveal that crucial dimension of our life which is “us”. Without that consciousness, but especially without that feeling and consequently without that experience, it is very difficult to build the nation. As a result, the only thing that appears to be important and valid is what pertains to the individual, and all else becomes irrelevant. A culture of this sort has lost its memory, lost the bonds that support it and make its life possible. Without the “us” of a people, of a family and of a nation, but also the “us” of the future, of our children and of tomorrow, without the “us” of a city that transcends “me” and is richer than individual interests, life will be not only increasingly fragmented, but also more conflictual and violent. The university, in this context, is challenged to generate within its own precincts new processes that can overcome every fragmentation of knowledge and stimulate a true universitas. 2. Progressing as a community Hence, the second key element for this House of Studies: the ability to progress as a community. I was pleased to learn of the evangelizing outreach and the joyful vitality of your university chaplaincy, which is a sign of a young, lively Church that “goes forth”. The missions that take place each year in different parts of the country are an impressive and enriching reality. With these, you are able to broaden your outlook and encounter different situations that, along with regular events, keep you on the move. “Missionaries” are never equal to the mission; they learn to be sensitive to God’s pace through their encounter with all sorts of people. Such experiences cannot remain isolated from the life of the university. The classic methods of research are experiencing certain limits, more so when it is a question of a culture such as ours, which stimulates direct and immediate participation by all. Present-day culture demands new forms that are more inclusive of all those who make up social and hence educational realities. We see, then, the importance of broadening the concept of the educating community. The challenge for this community is to not isolate itself from modes of knowledge, or, for that matter, to develop a body of knowledge with minimal concern about those for whom it is intended. It is vital that the acquisition of knowledge lead to an interplay between the university classroom and the wisdom of the peoples who make up this richly blessed land. That wisdom is full of intuitions and perceptions that cannot be overlooked when we think of Chile. An enriching synergy will thus come about between scientific rigour and popular insight; the close interplay of these two parts will prevent a divorce between reason and action, between thinking and feeling, between knowing and living, between profession and service. Knowledge must always sense that it is at the service of life, and must confront it directly in order to keep progressing. Hence, the educational community cannot be reduced to classrooms and libraries but must be continually challenged to participation. This dialogue can only take place on the basis of an episteme capable of “thinking in the plural”, that is, conscious of the interdisciplinary and interdependent nature of learning. “In this sense, it is essential to show special care for indigenous communities and their cultural traditions. They are not merely one minority among others, but should be the principal dialogue partners, especially when large projects affecting their land are proposed”. The educational community can enjoy an endless number of possibilities and potentialities if it allows itself to be enriched and challenged by all who are part of the educational enterprise. This requires an increased concern for quality and integration. The service that the university offers must always aim for quality and excellence in the service of national coexistence. In this way, we could say that the university becomes a laboratory for the future of the country, insofar as it succeeds in embodying the life and progress of the people, and can overcome every antagonistic and elitist approach to learning. An ancient cabalistic tradition says that evil originates in the rift produced in the human being by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Knowledge thus gained the upper hand over creation, subjecting it to its own designs and desires.[6] This will always be a subtle temptation in every academic setting: to reduce creation to certain interpretative models that deprive it of the very Mystery that has moved whole generations to seek what is just, good, beautiful and true. Whenever a “professor”, by virtue of his wisdom, becomes a “teacher”, he is then capable of awakening wonderment in our students. Wonderment at the world and at an entire universe waiting to be discovered! In our day, the mission entrusted to you is prophetic. You are challenged to generate processes that enlighten contemporary culture by proposing a renewed humanism that eschews every form of reductionism. This prophetic role demanded of us prompts us to seek out ever new spaces for dialogue rather than confrontation, spaces of encounter rather than division, paths of friendly disagreement that allow for respectful differences between persons joined in a sincere effort to advance as a community towards a renewed national coexistence. If you ask for this, I have no doubt that the Holy Spirit will guide your steps, so that this House will continue to bear fruit for the good of the Chilean people and for the glory of God. I thank you once again for this meeting, and I ask you to remember to pray for me. RomeReports.com

Hope and hopelessness

I grew up as a Catholic, went through the rituals of baptism and even catechism. Which up to this day I’m not entirely sure what that actually means. This just shows how much of a Catholic I am. To be honest I never really understood why I went through all that, but I guess peer pressure can often take you to places you never intended to go to. This remains true to this day, although to a lesser extent. I think.

Interestingly enough I consider my family as half-heartedly religious. By that I mean, the only person I considered religious in my family was my father. Sunday churches, prayers before dinner, my dad was central in reminding us to do these religious chores. Everyone else just went with the flow of the spiritual (and moral) ideals of the man of the house.   

Although I was never particularly religious, and have now perhaps shaken off whatever Catholic/Christian labels I have left in me (not that I had much to begin with that is), I did always know though based on this religious upbringing that I was a minority in Indonesia. The obligatory religious identity written on our national identity cards constantly reminded me of this. However, I didn’t at that time understand the implications of having such an identity even if it was purely administrative purposes.

However, to be honest, my experiences of growing up as a minority didn’t necessarily make me feel like a minority. Even if most of my schooling that I went through in Indonesia, which amounts to a hefty 11 years of my youth, were mostly in private Catholic schools, the schools and universities were open to non-Catholics. And so, I made friends, very good friends with non-Catholics, non-Christians, and of course with many Muslims. The predominant religion in Indonesia.

This was never an issue for me. As my own late grandfather from my mother’s side was a Muslim and a huge chunk of my family up until this day are Muslims. The majority-minority labels and the baggage that comes with it were not non-existent but just unimportant in my life. It was a bit foreign or even odd if someone were to bring it up trying to solidify a magical boundary between us and them. Religion was never a hindrance towards building family ties, friendship or even my own personal pursuit in finding love. I think I can honestly say that building relationships with people of differing religious backgrounds was just normal. Mundanely normal.

I had the naivety (and to be honest I think I still continue to do so) that the difference in personal religious beliefs could always be transcended by the realization of how as human beings we are fundamentally no different from each other. Physically, emotionally and first and foremost existentially. Everyone had blood coursing through their veins, feeding their minds and hearts that gives birth to emotions that we all can understand and relate to. And everyone has and will continue to ask, some through openly written pieces and public discourses, some secretly during their morning showers, of the meaning of life or how to have a meaningful life or variations of this question.

Basically, I just saw religious differences as inconsequential in building relationships, again be it romantic or platonic, as we all are tormented by the same wish to understand our existence, our individual importance in a vast sea of people.

This somewhat fatalist view of diversity is I guess the reason why I felt that I could connect, befriend, be respected, and be truly loved by all regardless of their religious beliefs. Which then made me feel part of something bigger than myself. I had a sense of belonging with the society, my Indonesian society. My approach to religious diversity was of course, I soon found out, not shared by all, not even many.

Fast forward this a few years later and it is overtly apparent that Indonesia is embroiled in sectarian tensions and conflicts and it turns out, to my dismay, has historically always been that way. Perhaps not as alarming as today but nonetheless it is nothing new.

In the past few years, I’ve witnessed how some of my personal relationships with friends, neighbours, family, have changed. Outlooks on life, social values and morals have been reshaped through a more conservative and many times segregated lens. Collective ideas or wishes of where Indonesia should be headed have become vastly different. A widening gap of the social imagination imagined by the divided imagined community.

I find it sad if not tragic that my own academic research only reaffirms this, and it seems that Rara’s research so far also confirms this.

Truthfully, at times like this, I feel disconnected, disenchanted, alienated & most definitely I feel powerless. I feel that my connection with this nation-state called Indonesia, that my citizenship, my legal, cultural, emotional connection with the land I was born in is useless and pointless.

And I write this in English, not in my so-called native tongue of Indonesian. With the reason being English is the language I grew up with (due to the privilege of having a highly-educated family). English has become my most fluent language, the one that I am most comfortable with, it is the language I think in. If I were to use Indonesian in speaking, my brain would take a few precious seconds translating it before sputtering it out. It has helped me though to listen more, deep listening, that it in itself is quite positive I reckon. Especially living in a society where people are wanting more to be heard. If I were to use Indonesian for writing, it is a tremendously taxing effort, thankfully for this I have Rara to help me edit many of my writings. And I truly understand that by using English as my main communicating language I am alienating myself even further.

I am a minority in many ways aside from my ‘legal religion’ or my ideas on life and society. 

I do though find the innocence of many Indonesians amusing if not briefly alluring when they talk how beautiful Indonesia’s natural scenery is, or how diversely unique Indonesia is, or how resource rich Indonesia is blessed with and most certainly how patriotic Indonesians are with their red and white flags. Often quite excessively. Sometimes even drawing from historical footage of our brave forefathers fighting against Dutch and Japanese colonialism to make their point. They all seem to be blissfully unaware of the deep-seated issues continuously dividing Indonesians. Issues of religious and social conservatism, ahistorical understandings and normalized injustices just to name a few, so deeply ingrained within the consciousness of many.

Some might say then that ignorance is bliss. But then I would think that we would then be unaware how often unseen structural forces governs our lives. We would live life, at many times in anger, sadness or even despair yet oblivious of its deep structural causes. Then if that is the case, does knowledge of which give us the impenetrable sight to see these determining hands of our lives, also provide us with the pleasure of knowing such a thing? Does knowing give us hope? Is hope essentially about not only knowing more of the conditions in which we live in but also by knowing these conditions we would then find some form of solution that gives us hope in return. 

I feel more of a minority today than when I was in high school or university which come to think of it was more than 10 years ago. To have gained the knowledge to see how remnants of colonialism, a gripping hold of state capitalism, seeping neoliberalism, persistent feudalism, ever-growing fundamentalism, consuming consumerism, and a dumbing education system have all been rolled into one. This knowledge is either damning or enlightening or a sad mixture of both, reflecting nothing more than the contradictory nature of the human being. It is not just the condition of which my society is in that I often weep for, but the lack of progress within these shameful areas that disheartens me. I do in many way feel hopeless.

I am sure Indonesia will become “makmur” or wealthy in the near future. Economists have prophesied this, partially thanks to our abundance in population and our unhinged consumeristic lifestyle. But the increase of wealth does not automatically translate into a more critical, inclusive, democratic citizen, which we desperately need in a precarious time such as now. We would need much more than wealth. Nor does Indonesia’s damning current education system provide such a thing. Those who only actively support such a system, in whatever they do, I only see them as accomplices in preserving the uncritical state of Indonesia’s citizens.

What I then struggle with now is the constant oscillation between hope and hopelessness, the comprehension and acceptance of my current reality and the possibility of some kind of better future. I am looking for a more consistent form of hope.

Come to think of it, it would be foolish for me to define the singular nature or source of hope. Hope I’ve come to realize, can be one, it can be many, it can move wildly from one to another. It can evolve from one to many, or be reduced from many to one. Hope is everything that gives value to one’s soul. 

I guess this is where my fusion of social sciences, which I understand is becoming more grounded in Marxist-Freirean views on critical citizenship, and engaged Buddhism kicks in. Where I’ve noticed over the years has become a constant endeavour to find consensus between the two (liberation theology of revolutionists from South America is a clear influence to this though). As what gives value to one’s life, to my life, is what I consider to be deeply personal, a deep insight into the self yet at the same time intertwined with being more empathetically responsive to my socio-political milieu.

However, while my interest and empathy towards society is one of the main driving force of my social activities, what gives me hope to act towards societal injustices resides within my personal relationships. Especially my relationship with Rara. This I’ve noticed can become an issue. I often would think what it would be like if she is no longer here with me? What would happen to me?

I am afraid to lose Rara, as my life clearly rotates around her presence. That is why I fear the inevitable. What do you do when you have the experiential knowledge that life will end? What do you do with this understanding? What do you do when you try to escape from this, and realize that you will only eventually return to this. That there is no escape, only temporary forgetfulness or deliberate denial. What if I were the one to pass away? What would happen to Rara?

Rara is perhaps not only my source of hope, but she is hope itself. It is what the anthropologist Michael D. Jackson, while studying the Kuranko tribe of Sierra Leone, calls on alternative names of hope. Rara is the alternative name of hope for me. She is what gives value and meaning in my life. Other issues, I can clearly attest to this, are secondary.

I do though realize I ask these questions because I am traumatized, greatly traumatized by my father’s quick and sudden death 5 years ago. And I’ve realized it has been that long and I have yet to move on from it. I guess I’ve come to accept that there is no magic cure for grief, no magic drug that can easily lift this burdensome pain away. You end up just living with it, carrying it everywhere, every time. During your highest and proudest moments in life, during the lowest, most depressing moments in life. Both of which amplifies grief. One through the desire to share your achievements with your loved one, whom you then realize is no longer here. The other is when you have nothing and wish your dad, who you realize is no longer here to come back for a brief moment and give you a pat in the back or a nice simple encouraging warm hug. And let us not also forget that we carry grief most often in the everyday mundanity of life. This is why grief is excruciatingly oppressive.

But until another excruciating day comes, I’ll be carrying this hope close with me wherever I go, and whatever I do. My work has to have value and meaning and for it to have value and meaning it has to come from a place of value and meaning. I remain hopeful of the world and of Indonesia and humanity in general because hope is the only thing that keeps us all from being pointless.

And watching the world pass by, at times with elongated sighs, I genuinely understand how easy it is to fall prey to the bottomless pit of futility.

Rereading what I just wrote, that probably didn’t make any sense, but hey at least I finally updated my blog after a year even if it was just unfinished thoughts.

Architecture is…

1. “Architecture is definitely a political act.” - Peter Eisenman in Haaretz

2. “Architecture is unnecessarily difficult. It’s very tough.” - Zaha Hadid in The Guardian

3. “Architecture is by definition a very collaborative process.” - Joshua Prince-Ramus in Fast Company

4. “Architecture is a way of seeing, thinking and questioning our world and our place in it.” - Thom Maynein his Prtizker Prize Acceptance Speech

5. “Architecture is the art and science of making sure that our cities and buildings actually fit with the way we want to live our lives: the process of manifesting our society into our physical world. - Bjarke Ingels in AD Interviews

6. “Architecture is merciless: it is what it is, it works or doesn’t, and you can clearly see the difference.” - Jacques Herzog in a lecture at Columbia University

7. “Architecture is always related to power and related to large interests, whether financial or political.“ - Bernard Tschumi in The New York Times

8. "Architecture is a good example of the complex dynamic of giving.” - Jeffrey Inaba in World of Giving

9. “Architecture is too complex for just one person to do it, and I love collaboration.” - Richard Rogers in The Guardian

10. “Architecture is the most powerful deed that a man can imagine.” - Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bosin Volume

11. “Architecture is an act of optimism.” - Nicolai Ouroussoff in The LA Times

12. “Architecture is an artificial fact.” - Mario Botta in Perspecta

13. “Architecture is full of romantics who think that even relatively small changes to the built environment create the aspiration for a better society.”  - Mark Wigley in Surface Magazine

14. “Architecture is for us, the public, and it is going to get scuffed.” - Alexandra Lange in Design Observer

15. “Architecture is the work of nations…” John Ruskin in Stones of Venice

16. “Architecture is always dream and function, expression of a utopia and instrument of a convenience.” - Roland Barthes in “Semiology and Urbanism”

17. “Architecture is an expression of values – the way we build is a reflection of the way we live.” - Norman Foster in The European

18. “Architecture is the real battleground of the spirit.”  - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in “ID Merger Speech”

19. “Architecture is not a question of the purely theoretical if you’re interested in building buildings. It’s the art of what is possible.” - Paul Rudolph in Chicago Architects Oral History Project

20. “Architecture is geometry.” - Álvaro Siza in Imaginar a Evidência (Imagining Evidence)

21. “Architecture is about improving conditions: environmental, social and sometimes also political.”  - Arjen Oosterman in Volume

22. “Architecture is not just one thing. It is not just an art. … It has to deal with the real situation; it has to do something good for the society.” - Xiaodu Liu in “What Can Architecture Do? An Interview with Xiaodu Liu” on ArchDaily

23. “Architecture is much more than the building of an object on a site: it is a reinvention of the site itself.” - Sean Lally in The Air From Other Planets

24. “Architecture is a language: new designs should abide by grammatical rules to avoid dissonance with existing structures.” - Prince Charles in The Architectural Review

25. “Architecture is an untapped source of magnificent stories waiting to be imagined, visualized, and built.” - Matthew Hoffman in “Blank Space Launches Architecture Storytelling Competition”

26. “Architecture is about serving others through the design of the built environment.” - Kevin J Singh in “21 Rules for A Successful Life in Architecture”

27. “Architecture is a very complex effort everywhere. It’s very rare that all the forces that need to coincide to actually make a project proceed are happening at the same time.” - Rem Koolhaas in Co.Design

28. “Architecture is intended to transcend the simple need for shelter and security by becoming an expression of artistry.” - Jay A. Pritzker in his 1985 Pritzker Ceremony Speech

29. “Architecture is the only art that you can’t help but feel. You can avoid paintings, you can avoid music, and you can even avoid history. But good luck getting away from architecture.” - Philippe Daverio in Humans of New York

30. “Architecture is the petrification of a cultural moment.” - Jean Nouvel in Newsweek

31. “Architecture is characterised by endurance and longevity: a long education, long training, long hours and long lives.” - Catherine Slessor in The Architectural Review

32. “Architecture is a muddle of irreconcilable things.” - Juhani Pallasmaa in The Architectural Review

33. “Architecture is, in many ways, a very specific type of science fiction; it is its own genre of speculative thought,” - Geoff Manaugh in Architect

34. “Architecture is largely irrelevant to the great mass of the world’s population because architects have chosen to be.” - Bruce Mau in Architect

35. “Architecture is becoming less about a single walled-off phallus on the horizon, and more about parks and public spaces which engage with the city.” - Alissa Walker in Gizmodo

36. “Architecture is most often a victory over the process of creating architecture.” - Sam Jacob in Log

37. “Architecture is capable of mounting a profound critique of the status quo.” - Reinhold Martin in Places

38. “Architecture is such a conspicuous immensely physical object in space its presence is bound to influence everyone.” - Gautam Bhatia in India International Centre Quarterly

39. "Architecture is not just about building. It’s a means of improving people’s quality of life.” - Diébédo Francis Kéré in Washington Post

40. “Architecture is a physical experience — it needs to be seen and touched to be wholly understood.” - Nicolai Ouroussoff in Los Angeles Times

41. “Architecture is really difficult. I realized that only very recently. It’s like music. You can enjoy it but — to know it — it’s a different story.” - Diana Agrest in nprEd

42. “Architecture is capable of absorbing anything, and hence tends to dissolve into everything.”  - Ole Bouman in Volume

43. “Architecture is not just a matter of technology and aesthetics but the frame for a way of life – and, with luck, an intelligent way of life.” - Bernard Rudofsky

44. “Architecture is a discipline where you can have multivalent interests. You could be a philosopher, a geographer, a scientist, an artist, an engineer; you can be poetic about it.” - Toshiko Mori in Metropolis

45. “Architecture is supposed to be about a higher purpose.” - Stanley Tigerman in Newsweek

46. “Architecture is the most public of the arts, and the public are severe critics.” - Eric Parry in The Guardian

47. “Architecture is a form­maker, problem‐solver and environment‐creator, and the international exposition is its laboratory.”  - Ada Louise Huxtable in New York Times

48. “Architecture is supposed to complete nature. Great architecture makes nature more beautiful—it gives it power.”- Claudio Silvestrin in Elle Decor

49. “Architecture is a small piece of this human equation, but for those of us who practice it, we believe in its potential to make a difference, to enlighten and to enrich the human experience, to penetrate the barriers of misunderstanding and provide a beautiful context for life’s drama.” - Frank Gehry in his 1989 Pritzker Prize Ceremony Speech

50. “Architecture is not a private affair; even a house must serve a whole family and its friends, and most buildings are used by everybody, people of all walks of life. If a building is to meet the needs of all the people, the architect must look for some common ground of understanding and experience.” - John Portman in “The Architect as Developer”

51. “Architecture is a social art. And as a social art, it is our social responsibility to make sure that we are delivering architecture that meets not only functional and creature comforts, but also spiritual comfort.” - Samuel Mockbee

52. “Architecture is too important to be left to men alone.” - Sarah Wigglesworth in Parlour

53. “Architecture is not a purely private transaction between architects and clients. It affects everyone, so it ought to be understandable to everyone. - Blair Kamin

54. "Architecture is vital and enduring because it contains us; it describes space, space we move through, exit in and use.” - Richard Meier in his 1984 Pritzker Prize Ceremony Speech

55. “Architecture is more about ideas than materials.” - Qingyun Ma in Los Angeles Times

56. “Architecture is not just for big star projects like museums. It’s for the slums around them, too.” - Juan Ramon Adsuara in npr

57. “Architecture is bashful about reality.” - Wouter Vanstiphout in Archis

58. “Architecture is just background. The beauty of architecture is that it brings people together and can create public constructs.” - Ben Van Berkel in AD Interviews

59. “Architecture is about hope, about change—it makes life more exciting.” - Lars Lerup in Architect

60. “Architecture is blessed and cursed with more dimensions than its greats know what to do with: the three of sensible space, the celebrated fourth of travel through it; and others, ineffable, beyond—the fifth of utility, say, the seventh of happy accident, the ominous eleventh.” - Philip Nobel in Metropolis

61. “Architecture is a mystery that must be preserved.”  -  Jean Nouvel in Huffington Post

62. “Architecture is only as great as the aspirations of its society.” - Lisa Rochon in Globe and Mail

63.“Architecture is like the picture of Dorian Gray: It can look beautiful in public, while somewhere out of sight its true soul withers and rots.” - Lance Hosey in Architect

64. “Architecture is about reason-right?” - Alfred Caldwell in Chicago Tribune

65. “Architecture is a profession of optimism.” - Johanna Hurme in spacing

66. “Architecture is about the manipulation of light: both artificial light and day lighting.”- Tom Kundigin Architectural Record

67. “Architecture is expected to carry too much weight in many cases.” - Patricia Patkau in Globe and Mail

68. “Architecture is not a goal. Architecture is for life and pleasure and work and for people. The picture frame, not the picture.” - William Wurster

69. “Architecture is the most obvious flower of a society’s culture.”  - Alan Balfour in Art Papers

70. “Architecture is more than making a statement from the street. It’s making an environment for living.” - Dion Neutra in Los Angeles Times

71. “Architecture is a translation process.” - Fernando Romero in Metropolis

72. "Architecture is quite a narrow, obsessive business.” - Nicholas Grimshaw in The Guardian

73. “Architecture is perplexing in how inconsistent is its capacity to generate the happiness on which its claim to our attention is founded.” - Alain de Botton in The Architecture of Happiness

74. “Architecture is a kind of urban ballet.” - Aaron Betsky in New York Times

75. “Architecture is a history of style written by the victors.” - Herbert Muschamp in New York Times

76. “Architecture is driven by belief in the nature of the real and the physical: the specific qualities of one thing - its material, form, arrangement, substance, detail - over another.” - Kester Rattenbury in This is Not Architecture: Media Constructions

77. “Architecture is not always synonymous with building.” - Francisco “Patxi” Mangado

78. “Architecture is complicated and like other complicated things it is prone to entropy from the outset.” - Guy Horton in Metropolis

79. “Architecture is where imagination meets life.” - Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa in their 2010 Pritzker Prize Ceremony Speech

80. “Architecture is an incredible ego trip. You get things done, you build them, you look at them. That’s why I enjoy life and don’t have an ulcer. - Stanley Tigerman in the Chicago Tribune

81. "Architecture is a strange field where we’re constantly asked to demonstrate over and over why design matters, to everyone, all the time. It’s exhausting.” - Amale Andraos in Metropolis

82. “Architecture is about the lack of stability and how to address it. Architecture is about the void and how to cross it. Architecture is about inhospitability and how to live within it.”  - Geoff Manaugh in The Guardian

83. “Architecture is both an art and a practical pursuit, and the profession has always been divided between those who emphasize the art, that is pure design, and those who give priority to the practical.”  - Paul Goldberger in New York Times

84. Architecture is one of the reflections of the permanence of a civilization. - Charlie Rose

85. Architecture is not a profession for the faint-hearted, the weak-willed, or the short-lived. - Martin Fillerin The New York Review of Books

86. “Architecture is a very dangerous job. If a writer makes a bad book, eh, people don’t read it. But if you make bad architecture, you impose ugliness on a place for a hundred years.” - Renzo Piano in Time

87. “Architecture is the pathology of the contemporary era.” - Forensic Architecture

88. “Architecture is a discipline directly engaged with shaping enclosure, of erecting and toppling barriers or��more explicitly—of extending and limiting ‘freedoms’.” - E. Sean Bailey & Erandi de Silva in “BI’s First Print Edition Released - FREE: Architecture on the Loose”

89. “Architecture is interesting, but by itself it means nothing.” - Massimiliano Fuksas in New York Times

90. “Architecture is an art, yet we rarely concentrate our attention on buildings as we do on plays, books, and paintings.” - Witold Rybczynski in Metropolis

91. “Architecture is aligned with and implicated in the systems of surveillance and control.” - Eric Howelerin Volume

92. “Architecture is 90 per cent business and 10 per cent art.” - Albert Kahn

93. “Architecture is probably the subject of more theorizing, navel-gazing and introspective agonizing than any of the other arts.” - Paul Gapp in the Chicago Tribune

94. “Architecture is invention.”- Oscar Niemeyer in Newsweek

95. “Architecture is always political.” - Richard Rogers in Financial Times

96. “Architecture is a frame of mind, it’s about ideas; the profession is about how to translate those ideas into the real world.” - Christopher Janney in Architectural Record

97. “Architecture is an active participant in the interactions of people within it.” - Jonathan C. Molloyin ArchDaily

98. “Architecture is not only developing in its own realm, it is constantly assimilating achievements from other fields.  - Maya Engeli in Volume

99. "Architecture is first and foremost about serving people and society.  This is an architect’s responsibility: to design buildings that fulfill their practical purpose, bring people together, and connect us to the natural world while preserving precious resources.” - Steven Ehrlich in Metropolis

100. “Architecture is about building a place in the universe, not about mimicking a depleted, decrepit reality.” - Stefanos Polyzoides in The LA Times

101. “Architecture is a public commodity, and as such invites public scrutiny.” - Reed Kroloff in Architecture*

102. “Architecture is not about the creation of newness but rather about the fulfillment of needs and expectations.“ - André Tavares in Forbes

103. "Architecture is the same as advertising for communicating the brand.” - Patrizio Bertelli in The New York Times

104. “Architecture is not just about accommodating very prescriptive demands—it’s doing it in a way that stimulates the unfolding of life. - Bjarke Ingels in Co.Design

105. "Architecture is exposed to life. If its body is sensitive enough, it can assume a quality that bears witness to past life.” - Peter Zumthor in Thinking Architecture

106. “Architecture is flexible.” - Krzysztof Wodiczko in St. Louis Post - Dispatch*

107. "Architecture is a combination of science and fiction.” - Winy Maas in Domus

108. “Architecture is the art we all encounter most often, most intimately, yet precisely because it is functional and necessary to life, it’s hard to be clear about where the "art” in a building begins.“ - Jonathan Jones in The Guardian

109. "Architecture is not an inspirational business, it’s a rational procedure to do sensible and hopefully beautiful things; that’s all.” Harry Seidler in the Sydney Morning Herald

110. “Architecture is used by political leaders to seduce, to impress, and to intimidate.” - Deyan Sudjic inThe Washington Post

111. "Architecture is a paradigm for reconsidering research.” B.D. Wortham in Journal of Architectural Education*

112. "Architecture is about giving form to the places where people live. It is not more complicated than that but also not simpler than that. - Alejandro Aravena in his 2016 Pritzker Prize acceptance speech

113. "Architecture is generally a poor relative to things like film, fashion and product design. Even though it is economically more important, for some reason it is not getting the recognition.” - Tamsie Thomsonin The Architects’ Journal

114. “Architecture is a complex and articulated process but if you lose the process and only keep the form you lose the core of architectural practice.” - André Tavares in Wallpaper*

116. “Architecture is practical poetry.” - Bjarke Ingels at the New Yorker Festival

117. “Architecture is the sum of inevitable negotiations.” - Felipe Mesa in Domus

118. “Architecture is more than just buildings; these structures can inspire and motivate people to do great things.” Fisk Johnson for the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial

119. “Architecture is one of those disciplines that has no shortage of voices.” - Guy Horton in Metropolis

120.“Architecture is always a temporary modification of the space, of the city, of the landscape. We think that it’s permanent. But we never know.” - Jean Nouvel in The New York Times

121. “Architecture is like life: a matter of trade-offs.” - Paul Goldberger  in The New York Times

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