Jean-François Lyotard

Domus and megalopolis

pp. 271-279
Neil Leach (ed), (1997) Rethinking architecture : a reader in cultural theory, London: Routledge

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Course of Study: SCA11123 - Critical Film Study

Title: Rethinking architecture : a reader in cultural theory
Name of Author: Neil Leach (ed)

Name of Publisher: Routledge

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DOMUS AND THE MEGALOPOLIS C(!...,-·v·;., �HJ'\ :-n10\E:§, 27

DOMUS AND THE MEGALOPOLIS Lyotard

The representation of a facade. Fairly wide, not necessarily high. Lots of

windows and doors, yet blind. As it does not look at the visitor, so it does not
expect the visitor's look. What is it turned towards? Not much activity. Let's
suppose that it's pretty hot outside. The courty ard is surrounded by walls and
farm buildings. A large tree of some kind, willow, horse chestnut, lime, a dump
of pines. Dovecots, swallows. The child raises its eyes. Say it's seven o'clock in
the evening. Onto the kitchen table amve in their place the milk, the basket of
eggs, the skinned rabbit. Then each of the fmges goes to its destination, the
dairy, the cool scullery, the cooking pot, the shelf. The men come home. Glasses
of fresh wine. A cross is made in the middle of the large loaf. Supper. Who will
get up to serve out? Common time, common sense, common place. That of the
domus, that of its representation, mine, here.
ffhere are varieties of the common place, cottage, manor. The ostentation of
the facades. The commoners move around at a distance from the masters'
residences. In place of pastures and ploughed fields, parks and pleasant gardens
offer themselves to the facade. Pleasure and work divide space-time and are
ey shared out among the bodies. It's a serious question, a historian's or
';111 sociologist's question, this division. But basically, extended or not, divided or
he not in its exploitation, the basis remains domestic. It is the sphere of reference
pf of the estate, a monad. A mode of space, time and body under the regime (of)
of
:ie nature. A state of mind, of perception, of memory confined to its limits, but
where the universe is representec!Jlt is the secret of the fa�ades. Similarly with
ioal
action. The fruges are obtained by nature and from nature. They produce,
•f
,- destroy and reproduce themselves stubbornly and according to the order of
things. According to nature's care for itself, which is called frugality. Alla
domenica, domr,s gives thanks for what has taken place and had its moment
tt and prays f or what will take place and have its moment. The temporal regime
of the domtts is rhythm or rhyme.
Domestic language is rhythmic. There are stories: the generations, the
n locality, the seasons, wisdom and madness. The story makes beginning and end
rhyme, scars over the interruptions. Everyone in the house finds their place and
their name here, and the episodes annexed. Their births and deaths are also
inscribed, will be inscribed in the circle of things and souls with them. You are
dependent on God, on nature. All you do is serve the will, unknown and well
known, of physis, place yourself in the service of its urge, of the phyein which
urges living matter to grow, decrease and grow again. This service is called
labour. (With the dubious wish sometimes, to profit also, that the estate should
profit, from growth? One wonders. Rhythmed wisdom protects itself against
pleonexia, the delirium of a growth with no return, a story with no pause for
breath.)
Ancilla, the female servant. From amb, and co/ere, ambicilla, she who turns
all the way round, the old sense of co/ere, to cultivate, to surround with care.
Culture has two meanings: cult of the gods, but the gods also colunt domllm,
cultivate the dwelling, they surround it with their care, cultivate it with their
circumspection. The female servant protects the mistress, for to serve is to keep.
When she gets up to serve at table, it is the nature-god who cultivates the house,