Iconotexts and architecture: toward literary analysis.

Abstract

Borrowing from the theoretical writings of Peter Wagner, the author makes use of the concept of "iconotext" in order to present a pedagogical model that more easily transitions students from basic composition courses to courses that require students to write about literature. A consideration of architectural landscapes forms the basis of this approach.

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A little over a decade ago, in a compelling issue of College English, Janet Carey Eldred and Peter Mortensen wrote that "our profession [was] witnessing ongoing efforts to link literary and textual scholarship, composition scholarship, and critical theory" (512). Nevertheless, after many years of well-intentioned efforts in the field of literacy studies, the realigning of curriculum at community colleges and comprehensive colleges and universities, and the synthesis of literary theory and composition, students still struggle, sometimes valiantly, with their writing as they transition from basic composition courses to literature courses. That transition is anything but seamless. If anything, students suffer from a radical disconnect between basic composition courses and literature courses, principally because they can see little relevance in literature (or many other high order disciplines requiring intricate analysis), which often appears dissociated and abstracted from their workaday lives. Literature professors frequently become, as George Steiner suggests In Bluebeard's Castle, rather like convivial docents in a dusty museum trying to convince tourists of the eternal beauty and lasting value of the art on display, but ultimately sounding puerile and out-of date the longer we lead the tour (105). Instead, we should demonstrate, at least to students in this moment of compositional liminality, how the production of meaning through textual analysis just is the examination of the contours of everyday life. We often fail to make the point that students' lives (and what literally encompasses them) can be as endlessly interesting (and subject to scrutiny) as the texts we champion, that, in fact, students must apply the principles of literary analysis to the architecture, landscapes, and environmental geographies that shape not only students' ideology but their behavior as well. Before they may fondly regard literature, students must confront and do battle with literariness. In the end, I hope to convince students of the necessity of literary analysis, even if I cannot always convince them of the necessity of literature.

In delivering courses that transition students from the rudiments of basic composition to textual complexities of literature courses, I draw upon Peter Wagner's notion of the iconotext. In his book Reading Iconotexts: From Swift to the French Revolution, Wagner analyzes eighteenth-century literature with and through eighteenth-century prints, which he labels "iconotexts" (12). He prefers this term "because of the interpenetration of texts and images they exhibit" (12). Moreover, he further argues that "iconotexts" are "intermedial" since they "encode discourse and represent events" (12). For Wagner, this is a key insight since the iconic is as rhetorical as it is visual and, as such, "iconotexts" are just as interpretable as the 'regular' literary texts we wish students to read and to analyze. Extending Wagner's views, I am particularly interested in the process of "intermediation" that "iconotexts" provide. Their "rhetoric" means that the iconic--its visual geographies and architectural landscapes--may be interpreted as rigorously as any other 'written' text, as if visual images were the words of texts, and with the same paradoxes, ambiguities, and symbolic complexities that attend the conventions we use for analyzing canonical literary texts. Indeed, readers can ultimately discover the iconotextual within literary texts, what classical rhetoricians call ekphrasis. Once students practice interpreting the iconotextual complexity of both familiar and alien environments, their encounters with Jonson's Penshurst or Homer's Shield of Achilles or Shelley's ruined monument of Ozymandias do not seem as daunting or formidable. Students will perceive a direct line between words and images, precisely Wagner's point in his book.

Perhaps just as significantly, iconotexts are not neutral; indeed, as W.J.T. Mitchell might suggest, they are frequently bearers of ideological intent. They function both as the simple identification "with the structure of values and interests that informs any representations of reality" and as a political unconscious that inculcates "a salutary skepticism about explicit motives, rationalizations, and claims or various sorts of naturalness, purity, or necessity" (Mitchell 4). In short, the iconic is not simply a matter of functionalist ornament or design. As the bombings of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon indicate, people invest their "values and interests" in the buildings and environments they construct, which is precisely why terrorists found the World Trade Center towers and the military citadel of the Pentagon such tempting targets. That students understand ideology, particularly that of their own political unconscious, becomes crucial in the instructional use of iconotexts. Students eventually recognize that the landscapes they inhabit, populated by a slew of iconotexts, socialize and manipulate them. What appears as a function of "naturalness, purity, or necessity" may actually be the tool of commercial, cultural, or political propaganda. Students will be both surprised and intrigued by the realization that they have been "recruited" or interpellated (to use Althusser's term) by a powerful if invisible "structure of values," which they have taken for granted, but which has always and everywhere been present as an active part of the 'architecture' of their everyday lives. Uncovering their own previously unquestioned ideology releases students from the subjugation of interpellation, and the space that results from such a demolition becomes a window of opportunity for the instructor, not to replace one ideology with another, which would be only another form of interpellation, but to expand the interpretive creativity of students. Soja refers to this process as "spatializing" the imagination (12). It is at once, in his words, both "a deconstruction and reconstitution" (12), a process that liberates students from the unexamined presence of iconotexts in their everyday lives.

Unsurprisingly, familiar buildings are the most productive iconotexts. Shopping malls, university campuses, supermarkets, prisons, public libraries, sports arenas and stadiums, art galleries, performance halls, gas stations, and fast-food restaurants are all examples of iconotexts that can be "read," interpreted, and "reconstituted" within the students' own experiences, habits, and practices. Instructors should force students to confront problematic iconotextual questions: Why are we attracted to specific buildings or monuments? What does the location of a building have to do with those who use it? Does the building's architecture match its utility? Do the ornaments of a building enhance or detract from the building's architectural coherence? How does the building's civic function, if any, play a role in its architecture? What does the building suggest about the surrounding environment and its related history? To assist them with these difficult questions, I give them pre-writing exercises and short essays on architectural iconotexts with which they are very familiar (though not with iconotexts that are too personal, such as their own houses or rooms). Such assignments focus on the specifics of architecture--stairwells, elevators, spatial measurements, doors, windows, aisles, closets, and floor plans. I also ask that students be aware of how a building is "finished out," namely the decorative patterns or stylistic motifs that complement the architecture itself, such as in lighting fixtures, color schemes, displays, furniture, and artwork. Students seem especially keen on deconstructing architecture tied to commercial interests since such ties raise questions about the social, political, and cultural ideologies that permit the construction of the buildings in the first place.

Because I teach at Texas A&M International University, in which Mexican Americans comprise over 90% of the student population, I was very curious if students could detect varying architectural iconotexts of 'Mexico' within popular Mexican-themed food environments. The following are two student responses to this interpretive problem:

   Taco Bell fell under the category of an Americanized Mexican
   restaurant by its decorations. Several panchos, Mexican overcoats
   that are very colorful, were also displayed on walls; and finally,
   the display of both sun and moon faces were hung in [sic] the
   walls. The feeling of Mexico could be seen somewhat for the faces
   could have represented the idea that Aztecs believed in many gods,
   an identity to the history of Mexico ... People perceive Taco Bell
   to be a Mexican restaurant because of the food they serve, such as
   tacos and chalupas. They also serve Mexican pizza and a dessert
   called choco taco ... The restaurant's color was beige or an adobe
   color, and had few decorations to reassure the customer of its
   Mexican theme ...

In the previous passages, both students have clearly responded to the environmental and architectural arrangements of the Taco Bell they visited, discovering that 'Mexico' within this famous fast-food restaurant has been constructed for corporate, commercial purposes. When properly contextualized, such constructions lose their authenticity for students who live on the border precisely because such restaurants depict Mexico only with the broadest of cultural signs. They are sufficiently functional to brand Taco Bell's food as Mexican, but these students easily saw through Taco Bell's iconotextual (and ideological) strategies. Moreover, when they compared and contrasted Corporate America's version of Mexico with that of other Laredo establishments specializing in 'Mexican' food, these students understood quite well that the buildings that housed these restaurants were not disembodied, independent, and neutral entities. They were not value free. Happily, many students discovered that even 'authenticity' itself, as a concept, had to come under intense scrutiny. They realized that none of the Mexican-themed restaurants were, despite their claims to the contrary, truly 'authentic.'

After an assignment such as the previous one, I prefer that students then proceed to an interpretation of less familiar (but not completely unfamiliar) architectural iconotexts. In general, I favor places where technology and entertainment intersect, theme parks such as those in Las Vegas or Orlando, because students sometimes find it difficult to believe that "ideological intent" can be ascribed to locations that they associate with carefree, harmless play. That play and games can he seriously interpreted within an iconotextual framework is alien to most students, and, at first, some resist such a connection. The works of Robert Venturi and Michael Sorkin, as well as the postmodern writings of Lyotard and Baudrillard, provide a theoretical (and pragmatic) basis for analyzing architectural monuments within shifting technological environments. Theme parks such as the Luxor Las Vegas or Disney World illustrate how monumental architecture and its accompanying landscapes not only commodify technology but simulate cultural experiences as well.

In fact, with a writing assignment on themed environments, students begin to see the ideological repercussions of Americans' increasing reliance on simulated experience for entertainment and for education. Assigned the task of analyzing the iconotexts of themed environments, specifically those constructed by the Mandalay Bay Group (Luxor) and Disney Corporation (Disney World), students actually began to think and write ethnographically. They told stories from their own experience (and from their readings) about the production of racial and cultural stereotypes; they critically viewed the consumers' interpellation within a marketplace of simulations; and they ultimately perceived how architects, planners, designers, builders, and property owners conceived and constructed buildings and their landscapes and visual geographies at the service of the marketplace. Even poor writing students made interesting connections. One student in the class previously cited wrote that Disney attempted to create consumer "zombies," people buying into an experience that they know is false but that they crave regardless. The ability to incorporate theoretical ideas with a cultural analysis of Disney's iconotexts indicates the solid beginnings of literariness, a difficult task given the usual lack of curricular transition between standard composition and literature topics. Just as interesting, and in the same vein, was an in-class essay in which a student recognized that Disney essentially homogenized all Latin American culture with the selling of Latino products: "To me, it seems that all of Latin America is the same, there is no difference in culture in Asia, but more close to home, that the United States has no diversity. The products are merely markers of a visual experience, not a 'hands-on' experience ... [and] in the "hands-on attractions the pleasure of using new devices is offset by the fact that "uses" consists mainly of momentary contact with machines...." All the iconotextual "markers" that produce Disney's corporate enterprises point to the homogenization of Latino consumers. Just as Taco Bell displays its Mexican icons, when Disney uses the signs of Latino culture, they use them metonymically; the signs stand for a corporate culture that substitutes a highly developed ethnic identity for a broader, more commodified one. In the end, students recognized that their assumed ethnic identity had been reduced to their ability to purchase homogenized Latino simulacra, cheapened (though not necessarily cheap) versions of the Latino Other.

Because many of architectural iconotexts occur in Orientalist themed environments, I also introduce students to the work of Edward Said. Because Said's principal work lies in the problematic nature of representation, particularly of the representation of the Arabic Other, his ideas are crucial in determining the significance of iconotexts that purport to be authentically Asian. Moreover, with his ideas, students can also detect the ideology that justifies and underwrites the Orientalism of those architectural landscapes. Consider the following hypotheticals:

   On the Discovery Channel, you discover that India was the
   birthplace of the Buddha. On a themed ride in an amusement
   park, you see Babylonian cuneiform writing on the cars--without
   translation--and a sign in English that declaims, "Experience
   the real wonders of the ancient world ... a world of Egyptian
   princes and Indian gods."

Most students were able to see that the first hypothetical was not an example of Orientalism because the show on the Discovery Channel was not an attempt to represent Buddha. The show merely reported information, verifiable facts about his life. By contrast, students frequently perceived the Orientalism in the second hypothetical because this experience of the Orient was not an attempt to describe something about Asia accurately; rather, the "ride" attempts to profit from recognizable Orientalist signatures within that environment, to appeal to the consumers' prior knowledge of the Orient. Consider some student responses to the second hypothetical:

   This is a situation that could be described as Orientalism. The
   Babylonian cuneiform writing is the icon to puzzle the riders
   since they rather [sic] believe the English translation. The
   translation states the word 'Egyptian and 'Indian' to refer to
   the Orient. It is Orientalist because we accept the oriental
   writing as authentic because of our exposure to the movies and
   media. We don't know if it actually says anything meaningful or
   if the letters are even authentic Egyptian writing. Since it
   fits our preconceived image, we assume it is authentic and
   meaningful ...

This sample of student responses indicates that they adequately internalized Said's theories on Orientalism and were able to apply them to hypothetical situations. Armed with this knowledge, as well as having considerable exposure to the deciphering of other kinds of architectural iconotexts, students might now be safely transitioned to more mediated versions of the same because they have successfully displayed their literariness--their ability to "read" and respond to the "texts" that surround them.

In my pilot course on iconotexts, I concluded with literary architectural iconotexts, assigning the work of Jhumpa Lahiri, whose collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize. Her short story, "This Blessed House" perfectly captures the literary iconotext because the principal antagonist in the story is, strangely enough, a house bought by an affluent Hindu couple, Twinkle and Sanjeev, who represent the struggle between the conventionality of order (Sanjeev) and the delight of chaos (Twinkle). For Sanjeev, the house is just a house. He only wishes to clean it up and remake it to his own image. In contrast, Twinkle desires to make contact with the spirit of the house, and, as her nickname suggests, she is far more unpredictable, prone to impulses, than her conservative husband. They discover in the process of moving in that the previous tenants had left numerous "Christian paraphernalia" (137). Sanjeev wants to throw away the Christian icons Twinkle finds; she wants to enshrine them, arguing that their presence makes the house "blessed." These were mostly campy religious icons that included a white porcelain effigy of Christ, a 3-D postcard of Saint Francis, a framed "paint-by-number" of the three wise men, a tile trivet of a blonde "unbearded" Jesus delivering a sermon, electric switch plates decorated with biblical scenes, and a lawn statue of the Virgin Mary. Her desire to keep these religious icons, especially because Twinkle and Sanjeev are not "Christian" (as Sanjeev is quick to remind Twinkle), strains their relationship. Nevertheless, they continue with their plans for a housewarming party, an event Sanjeev both dreads (because he knows so few people) and wants (because he wishes to make a favorable impression on his upscale, bourgeois acquaintances). The climax of their party is a treasure hunt, which Twinkle instigates, resulting in the biggest find of all--a silver bust of Christ hidden in the attic--which Twinkle proudly displays on their mantel, a sign to Sanjeev that the norms of marriage will not alter his wife's character or behavior.

If I had assigned the story to a regular Introduction to Literature course, and not to one that emphasized iconotexts, the relationship between the house and the couple would not have been as clear, the story less interpretable. Students would certainly recognize the conflict between Sanjeev and Twinkle's opposite personalities, but students also might not have recognized as quickly how the architecture of the "blessed" house and the tacky Christian ornaments that the house hides fashion the 'architecture' of the couple's marital relationship. Students would have been less likely to identify the process of interpellation that can take place even in spaces owners inhabit and recreate. The lesson Sanjeev learns is that his house is not truly his own to occupy, dwell, and transform. Twinkle's belief that their house is "blessed" is a tacit recognition that such blessing depends on accepting the constraints and boundary conditions of our environments. The lesson students draw, consciously and unconsciously, is that the iconotextual spaces mediated by various literary forms--in particular the ekphrases so many writers employ--recapitulate those architectural iconotexts and landscapes in which students literally live and work. Like Sanjeev, the students slowly come to the conclusion that our lives may be far less free than they had thought, far more structured and layered than they had imagined. Students discern that intellectual freedom depends upon unmasking, literally and figuratively, both iconotexts and the ideological logics that construct and bind them to us.

Works Cited

Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses." Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971: 127-86.

Baudrillard. Jean. America. Trans. Chris Turner. London: Verso, 1989.

Eldred, Janet Carey and Peter Mortensen, "Reading Literacy Narratives." College English 34 (5) 1992: 512-538.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. "This Blessed House." Interpreter of Maladies. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999: 136-157.

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Mitchell, W.J.T. Iconology.Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1978.

Soja, Edward W. Postmodern Geographies. The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso, 1989.

Sorkin, Michael. "See You in Disneyland." Variations on a Theme Park. The New American City and the End of Public Space. Ed. Michael Sorkin. New York: Hill and Wang, 1992: 204-232.

Steiner, George. In Bluebeard's Castle. Some Notes Towards The Redefinition of Culture. New Haven: Yale UP, 1971.

Venturi, Robert, Brown, Denise Scot, and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994 (1972).

Wagner, Peter. Reading Iconotexts. From Swill to the French Revolution. London: Reaktion Books, 1995.

Jeffrey Cass, Texas A&M International University

Cass is Associate Provost and Associate Professor of English. He has principally published essays on the writings of 19th-century British women writers and in the area of popular culture.