Oana Antonia Filip
PhD student, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning of Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
Oana-Antonia FILIP is an architect and teaching associate at the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning of Cluj-Napoca, where she has graduated as a valedictorian, in July 2023. She was also an Erasmus+ student at École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris, Val de Seine. Currently, she is a Ph.D. student at the Doctoral School of Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, teaching in the Architectural Design Studio, for the second year students. Oana is interested in all aspects of architectural theory. In this regard, her doctoral studies discuss a history of the concept of urban enclave, in architectural discourses. She is also co-author in a team with which she participates in a series of international competitions, with good results.
The Methodology Generates Truth: A Study of Architectural Discourses from a Post-Structuralist Perspective
Keywords: post-structuralist discourse analysis, urban enclave, intertextuality, Foucauldian discourse, methodology
Abstract: This article is part of a larger research project, that of a doctoral thesis, which compiles a history of contemporary enclave theory, talking about a series of discourses from the latter half of the 20th century to the present. We are thus talking about an immediate reality, with a recent history discussed more in the form of articles1, which have not been sufficiently articulated in a broader and more comprehensive vision. Being an early-stage research, the present article aims to outline a potential methodology that can be used in the study of architectural discourses. Thus, it carries a dual purpose: on the one hand, to answer questions raised within the current article regarding the validity of discourses on the concept of an enclave, and on the other hand, to shape a methodology for studying them. The article maintains its autonomy from the broader research, proposing several subthemes in the form of term pairs, such as structuralist discourse and post-structuralist discourse, absolute truth and the plurality of truth, grand narratives and small narratives. These notions will be discussed in relation to the concept of the enclave, exemplified through a selection of discourses from the late 1960s to the present, following the principles of post-structuralist discourse analysis. The enclave becomes both the subject and the working method.This leads to a series of questions: what makes a text become a relevant discourse? What selection method is suitable for working with such texts and discourses? How can the relevance and validity of texts, still less-discussed and very recent, be determined? When do they deserve to be quoted and discussed? Thus, both Foucault’s proposed methods for selecting discourses and the principles of post-structuralist discourse analysis will be employed in offering potential answers to these questions. At the end, in the post-structuralist view, the texts we will refer to as “small discourses” (those that lack the recurrence, citation, and scope of grand architectural discourses) become relevant within the fabric of discourses on the enclave, where these small pieces gain strength when brought together, forming a whole. We will see that the methodology can generate truth, if it aligns with the subject and the type of research. In conclusion, the article offers a common perspective on the two main sub-themes addressed: a methodology that works with discourses and their validity within a weaving of texts.
1 Martin J. Murray, The Urbanism of Exception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), xii.