Images of entanglement : Wittgensteinian spatial practices between architecture and philosophy

Abstract

This thesis explores the deep spatio-linguistic relationship between the Austrian born philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's practices of philosophy and of architecture. Wittgenstein's philosophy of language is notable for its sharply distinguished early and late work: with the early work most strongly associated with his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) and the later frequently designated by his posthumously published Philosophical Investigations (1953). Following the completion of the early work Wittgenstein abandoned philosophy for a period of ten years, spending the years from 1926 to 1929 engaged in the design and construction of a house in Vienna for his sister Margarethe Stonborough. The thesis considers the ways in which the intervening practice of architecture infiltrated, altered, influenced and manifested itself in the later philosophy by focusing on the spatial. temporal. conceptual and cognitive gaps in the philosophy. The importance and the prevalence of the practice of architecture for Wittgenstein's later philosophy are exhibited in a variety of ways that together broaden, reconceive and resituate the functioning of language and philosophy. The thesis considers these developments in the philosophy as they are revealed in the visual and spatial language, thinking and construction of the philosophical texts. This analysis reveals a shift from the removed, idealized and flattened picture theory of the Tractatus to the production of the spatially complex and ambiguous images of entanglement in the Investigations. The Stonborough house, itself, is analyzed through its production of cognitive and spatial practices and problematics. Wittgenstein's practice of architecture is shown to utilize. develop, challenge and reveal related spatial concepts found in the philosophy. These include the ideas of limits, boundaries, inner/outer dichotomies, the relationship between showing and saying, the idea of correspondence and the practices of representation, assembly. resemblance, construction, building and rearrangement.