Writing the Materialities of the Past: Cities and the Architectural Topography of Historical Imagination

Description

Writing the Materialities of the Past offers a close analysis of how the materiality of the built environment has been repressed in historical thinking since the 1950s. Author Sam Griffiths argues that the social theory of cities in this period was characterised by the dominance of socio-economic and linguistic-cultural models, which served to impede our understanding of time-space relationality towards historical events and their narration. The book engages with studies of historical writing to discuss materiality in the built environment as a form of literary practice to express marginalised dimensions of social experience in a range of historical contexts. It then moves on to reflect on England’s nineteenth-century industrialization from an architectural topographical perspective, challenging theories of space and architecture to examine the complex role of industrial cities in mediating social changes in the practice of everyday life. By demonstrating how the authenticity of historical accounts rests on materially emplaced narratives, Griffiths makes the case for the emancipatory possibilities of historical writing. He calls for a re-evaluation of historical epistemology as a primarily socio-scientific or literary enquiry and instead proposes a specifically architectural time-space figuration of historical events to rethink and refresh the relationship of the urban past to its present and future. Written for postgraduate students, researchers and academics in architectural theory and urban studies, Griffiths draws on the space syntax tradition of research to explore how contingencies of movement and encounter construct the historical imagination. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Lists of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: the architectural topography of historical imagination I Definitions II Crossing the Rubicon III Architectural topographic descriptions IV Figurational contingencies Notes Part I: Contingency in the historiographies of the English Reformation, French Revolution and period of the Industrial Revolution in England 1. Contingency and artifice I Definitions II Events of the English Reformation III Events of the French Revolution IV Events from the period of the Industrial Revolution in England Notes 2. Encounter and utterance I Definitions II Events of the English Reformation III Events of the French Revolution IV Events from the period of the Industrial Revolution in England Notes 3. Milieu and movement I Definitions II The city as 'environment' III The repression of the encounter field in the historiographies of the English Reformation, French Revolution and the period of the Industrial Revolution in England i Environments of the English Reformation ii Environments of the French Revolution iii Environments of the Industrial Revolution IV The abbreviation, abridgement and metaphorical sublimation of the encounter field Notes 4. Figure and event I Definitions II Spatial stories III Maps and mapping IV The figures of events Notes Part II: Writing history as a city 5. Proximity and distance: Identifying narrative figures in the architectural topographic sequences of archetypal stories I Definitions II Social stories III Architectural topographic sequences and toponemes IV Narrative figures as architectural topographic sequences Notes 6. The revolutionary encounter field: Paris c.1789-94 and other stories: How Thomas Carlyle, Simon Schama and Hilary Mantel re-people the past I Definitions II Imagining the urban encounter field III Contrasting strategies of architectural topographic description in three narratives of the French Revolution i Prefiguring the Parisian encounter field in Carlyle, Schama and Mantel ii Mass and momentum in Carlyle's French Revolution iii Paris as a cultural 'melting pot' in Schama's Citizens iv Contingent dialogues in Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety IV Embodying the past in Carlyle, Schama and Mantel Notes 7. Recollection and re-enactment: Embodying nineteenth-century Sheffield in Leader's Reminiscences (1875) I Definitions II A history of 'small details' III Embodying Sheffield in the text IV Narrative figures of 'memory lane' i Going back ii Coming forward iii Looking closer iv Lasting impressions v Reveries Notes 8. Morphologies of feeling: Contingency and the experience of social change I Definitions II 'The passing of Merrie England' III Toponemic disturbances IV 'Feeling the change': reflections on contingency Notes Appendix A: A notation for the architectural topographic sequencing of texts A. Departure and return B. Seeing and going C. Coming and seeing D. Here and now E. Here and then, there and now Appendix B: Synopsis of Cinderella Appendix C: Additional architectural topographic sequences from Cinderella Appendix D: Search terms and subcategories used in toponemic analysis References Index