'Molar Kafes' : Le Corbusier ve Modulor

The 'Molar Cage': Le Corbusier and the Modulor

In this essay, Modulor is redefined as ‘molar’. ‘Molar’ is the name of the categories of sameness baptised by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in Anti-Oedipus (Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1972). The molecular is the machines of deire. Molar elements stabilize the molecular components and make them fixed (Lorraine, 1999, 115). Molar thoughts as stable and singular codes of society are the sterile formations of thought. Because of this, one can preserve his/her creative powers only by leaving behind the molar identites which cover and surround the self (Lorraine, 1999, 139, 163). To write is to map. To map is the courage to walk away from the known (traditional / conventional), from the coded. On the other hand, to write, no doubt, comprizes wandering beneath the strata. These sedimentary layers or strata are constitutive for the molar structures. Molar structures or sterile becomings are very complicated –just like the concept of family. In contrast with Le Corbusier’s ‘moduloric’ universalism, the bird cage metaphor turns to an interrogation of masculinity and an illustration of the microphysics of power. By the aid of Marilyn Frye’s metaphor, the second part of the debate begins. To get rid of the ‘molar’ and to release the ‘molecular’, the ‘one’ of the identity has to be problematized. Power relations bound to gender and race by oppression and biopolitics become apparent this way. The concept of ‘body without organs’ is one of the important elements of the discussion. Transcendental codifications of the ordering structures can be perceived by asking “What is the Modulor of it?” Becoming aware of transcendentalizing, universalizing, sexist codings is important. Always the outside of the Modulor, the immature, or the ‘body without organs’, the lines of flight have to be found out. Once the cage is defined, it is possible to fold the molar structures and to fulfill the Modulor’s mission metonymically. One of the indicators of the cage’s masculinity is that the Modulor often applies to dichotomies. It can be said that, through Bacon’s concept of secular materiality, the concept of ‘plastic material’ is being reached. This can be observed in some applications of Le Corbusier’s architectural design tools. The production of masculinity as a value against reproduction biology is a model of the Modulor, envisioning the world with masculine criterions, for the masculine by men. The exclusion of womanhood, the registration of homosexuality and hermaphroditism as abnormality enhances the institutionalization of masculinity. In this way the gender of the cage becomes evident. It can be said that gender, the heteronormative regime, helps to impose power on other sexes. In reproduction, a sexually dualist thought that assumes the masculine principle to be and shape-giving, while supposing the feminine to be protective, nursing and nourishing, shows the transcendentalization of the masculine. Fatherhood is giving form, while motherhood means to be dependent to this a priori formation (Lloyd, 1994, 24). Western ‘standards’ have thrown women out of the politics of architecture, assuming them to be invisible. When the second wave of feminism in the 1970’s gained momentum, women became more and more visible. The Modulor has stayed out of this tendency and has insisted to follow a prohibitory white civilization myth. The Modulor continues to legitimate gender politics which make human beings measurable according to their potentials of reproductive power. In the process of institutionalization of masculinity, the control of desire as a practice of power has a certain role. It should not be ignored that masculine and homogenous practices are being operated by and through the male body. By the end of the nineteenth century, homosexuality was sharply defined as a perversion and became a subject of pathology. In this way, womanhood or manhood was not a choice but an emplacement, even a fatherland. Ovotesticle biopsy is a biopolitical annihilation tool against hermaphroditism. It is not meaningless to ask if the Modulor, as a body-framing tool, is the equivalent of this medical technique in architecture or not. The cultural universalism of the Modulor is in relation with concepts like sexual differentiation, oppression and biopolitics. The ideal of universal harmony represents an anachronical position, considering the revival of searches of freedom of the era. The bird cage metaphor of Frye helps to define Moduloric space as a cage.

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