The Architecture and Geometry of Books
Dissertation, State University of New York at Binghamton (
2002)
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Abstract
The project is of a double nature, corresponding to the double genitive in the title. On the one hand it considers the relation between the spatial and material facts of textual documents and the meaning these texts contain, the goal being a demonstration that the first have an effect on the second. On the other, the project is an examination of the uses of the figures of architecture and geometry to construct and convey philosophical meaning. ;Three texts are of particular concern here: Deleuze and Guattari's Thousand Plateaus describes a tension between royal sciences and architectures and their nomadic counterparts; Plato's Phaedrus contains Socrates' paradoxically written argument against writing; and Descartes' Discourse on Method presents itself throughout as an instance of architecture, built against he backdrop of his geometrico-algebraic work.