Review: Democratic Shapes and Spaces Author(s): Thomas Molnar Reviewed work(s): The Social Meaning of Civic Space:

Studying Political Authority Through Architecture by Charles T. Goodsell Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Builder by Jack McLaughlin Source: The Review of Politics, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Spring, 1989), pp. 315-318 Published by: Cambridge University Press for the University of Notre Dame du lac on behalf of Review of Politics Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1407416 Accessed: 02/12/2008 14:08
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Aside from this, Moles's interpretation of Austin's account of the role of the judiciary provides only part of the story. The key to the rest of it is his perception of the numerous and graveevils of judge-made law. His detailed indictment of it underlies his great enthusiasm for codification, or a systematic and complete body of statutory law. Although the growth of judicial legislation cannot be altogether prevented, he felt that it can be very substantially reduced by a good code. Austin thus presumed that the application of at least many of its rules would be more or less routine. This presumption is even more explicit in his defense of utilitarianism and the necessity to base conduct upon antecedent rules. In short, he believed that the application of legal and ethical rules is not necessarily a creaof rules to control tive process. In fact, his account of the potential decisions is closer to Hart's position than Moles acknowledges. These arguments signify that Moles's interpretation and defense of Austin are questionable in a number of respects. To the extent that his critique of Hart reflects a misunderstanding of Austin, it is also subject to criticism. Moreover, the positivist tradition seems to me to be much broaderthan the largely British forms of it that Moles discusses. Even so, these limitations of his book should not obscure the magnitude of his contribution. First, his interpretationof Austin is usually enlightening, if not original. In particular,it has the great value of demonstrating the continuing relevanceof his philosophyof law for legal theoryand practice.Second, many of Moles's criticisms of contemporaryjurists are trenchant. Finally, his unconventionalargumentsare almost alwaysthought-provoking. Close his book therefore be a beneficial even of should experience highly reading for those who disagree with much more of it than I do.
-WILFRID E. RUMBLE

DEMOCRATIC SHAPES AND SPACES Political Charles T. Goodsell: The Social Authority ofCivic Space: Studying Meaning

Architecture. through (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988. Pp. xviii, 229.

$25.00.)

TheBiography andMonticello: of a Builder. Jack McLaughlin:Jefferson (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1988. Pp. viii, 481. $29.95.)

Decades ago, my firstimpressionof American architectureand its relationship with politics and the sacred were prompted by two panoramas: the first, on arrival by boat in New Yorkharbor in a bright winter sunshine, the skyline of lower Manhattan. Spontaneously, I said to myself: The Acropolis of the New World! The impression has remained strong ever since. The second panorama: St. Patrick'sCathedral squeezed between, and dwarfed by, the huge office buildings and department stores of Rockefeller Center. I understood that business is America's religion. I recalledthese indeliblesightsas I was readingMcLaughlin's and Goodsell'sbooks, particularlythe second. Goodsell writes about the manifestations of political authority in the United States. In order to grasp the po-

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litical processin action, so to speak, he studied seventy-fivecity halls across the country. It was a wise choice, the topic and the method illustrating it, because by focusing on municipal and state authority, Goodsell implicitly suggests that, unlike most other nations, this country is not organized around a nationalcenter but around smaller,semi-autonomousunits of politicalpower.From this perspective,Washingtonis not a "native" town, its planner was French and its monuments are pseudo-Roman. The nation's capital is thus superimposed on the country which lives rather on the levels of township, city council, and municipal council chambers. Goodsell'sstudy of civic space begins with a play on contrasts. He calls attention to the vast differenceswhich exist between the political meaning of architecturein Europe and America. He could haveled us to intriguing juxtapositions and contrasts, pointing out, for example, that in France even the architecture of popular sovereignty is more authority-centered than in the United States. But we should be content with Goodsell'sjudicious hints at this subject which is, after all, marginal to his undertaking. He first describes the hall where the Estates-Generalmet in Versailles in 1788 as an arrangement stamped by the traditional and severely kept distance between the Orders, the firsttwo Estatesplaced closer to the king. He then takes us to the semi-circle of the National Assembly in Paris(still referredto as Palais Bourbon); to Hitler'sReich Chancellery with the dictator'shuge office in lofty isolation;and to the British House of Commons, cozy and practical,with emphasison the two-partysystemand the equality of the parties. In other words, there are here four conceptions of political and symbolization.Goodauthority,each with the appropriatearchitecture sell does not discuss building shapes only, but also the objects which fill the space, for example the shape of the negotiating table around which Washington's,Hanoi's and Saigon'srepresentativesconcluded the war in Vietnam. Whether the Pantheon or the city of Epidaurus, temple, theatre, or the Roman Curia, place, shape and the participants' respectivepositionsalways reflectpower relationshipsand influence the political process, itself a kind of invisible architecturalorder. Goodsell's theoretical considerations and concreteillustrations(there are many photographs,drawings,and groundplans in this well-presentedvolume) servethe discussion of American civic space, the point of intersectionof popularparticipationand civil authority. Examined are "citycouncils, city commissions, and boardsof supervisors" one might say the American versions, and in a way, the American fusion, of the three immemorial elements of power:palace, temple, and popular assembly. Goodsell divides the building styles in roughly three periods during the last hundred years:the chamber which reflects the spirit of "imposed and the contemporary authority, the one shapedby "confronted authority" chamber in which he sees the latest embodiment of "joinedauthority"The spatial structure, for example the isolation of the deliberating and decision making body from the public, is indicative of how political authority perceives itself, and is shaped by, the current ideas and political forces, and how public opinion as well as the architectural design respond, in their own way, to the prevailing notions. Goodsell remarks correctly that

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in opposition to traditional structuresof hierarchicaldelimitation and articulation of space, finally the isolation of the source of power, political architecturetoday tends "toview space as undifferentiated, ideally formless, continuous, open, and flowing-a piece of limitless continuum"(p. 35). This is, of course, a heritage of the Bauhaus style, and it carries a message: the ideal to strive for is the elimination of authority, or at least its neutralization. Space, shapes, and barriersno longer support the traditional consciousness and attitudes; the architecturalcontinuum stylistically dismantles whatever residual sacredness of authority would linger in city council chambers. The only criticism of Goodsell'swell-conceived and vigorously argued work is its perhaps deliberate dryness. The book would have possessed a more general significance if in addition to the initial excursus to royal, popular, dictatorial, etc. styles, he would have enlivened the topic with occasional sidetrips into the parallelevolution (degradation?)of religious architecture (for example before and after the Vatican Council) and the recent penetration of television cameras in municipal and parliamentary debate, law courts, and the negotiating table. As it stands, the book has an almost exclusively sociological interest, although in that discipline too it may open a new branch and new controversies. Through some of its aspects, McLaughlin'sbook onJeffersonand Monticello relateswell to the study of politicalauthorityby Goodsell.Jefferson's great admiration for Palladio'sneo-classicism suggests that the architect of Monticello, Jefferson himself, was a child of his century, a rather austere soul for whom authority,while benevolent,was also a stern taskmaster. McLaughlin speaks ofJefferson's"Palladianmask: abstractideas of order rendered in ancient post and lintel forms. It was a counterpartto the face he himself showed to the world. Yet Monticello's inner space was to be something quite personal- maternal even"(p. 51). We have here the mask and the domestic man with something like warmth. This may have been America's contribution to the century's Voltairean visage. However,the building of Monticello, a work begun early in Jefferson's life and pursued beyond his death, has relativelylittle to do with the topic of McLaughlin's book except as an accompanying theme, a background music. The book is, rather,a straightforward biographyof the third president, and it is also a tableau of an age, a judicious collection of much interesting information about colonial and post-Independence America: on race relations, on Jefferson'spersonal library, and of course on architecture which reflects a personal taste, not the early republic'sown Roman preferences. Thus while "Monticello"in the title is not much more than the loose frameworkof a life, a way of signalling its phases, it is a suitable focus for an outstanding man'sirritating little foibles. At any rate, the interest in building relievedthe tedious aspects of a country gentleman'slife, albeit Monticello, periodically rebuilt, in no way serves as a symbol of the beginning of a great political enterprise. It was the home of a landowner; McLaughlin calls it a "maternalwomb"to which Jefferson needed to return. One wonders if Freudian language is appropriate in this case. I do not know whom we ought to blame, Jefferson or McLaughlin, but the Founding Father and thus political architect is presented as through

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a veil. We hardly encounter him as a person alive, almost alwaysas a cold man: in love, in ambassadorship (what a difference from Benjamin Franklin!), in his distantly benevolent attitude to old and trusted slaves. His courtship in Paris of the woman desired or his relationship with his wife shows embarrassment, attempts at new starts. The building, refashioning,demolition, then reconstructionof Monticello (the true love?) convey the dominant theme. We are left with the impression of an eighman whose innerlife was concealedunderwig and powder teenth-century just as that cold century crushed poetry under prose, passions by their Cartesian calculus, and love by an elaborate ceremonial game. If mentioned apropos of marriage, love was apt to cause raised eyebrows. If an epilogue is appropriatefor a book review, it should mention that in spite of the titles which invite the discussion and praise of beauty, the beautifulhardlyappearson these books'many pages. Rather the utilitarian is front and center. In this sense both have an air of puritanism about them like Jefferson himself, like the townhalls and chambers on the photographs. Yet, political architecture never undervalued beauty, if for no other reason than that it is an ingredient of splendor and majesty, therefore of power.
-THOMAS MOLNAR

TWO DIMENSIONS OF MODERN CHINA

Benedict Stavis: China's Political An Interim Reforms: Report. (New York:Praeger Publishers, 1988. Pp. vii, 158. $35.95.) John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai: ChinaBuildstheBomb.(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988. Pp. vii, 329. $29.50.)

The two volumes under review coverimportanttopics, yet they are very differentin scope, focus, and style. China's Political is a well written Reforms account of the reasons, policies, and obstaclesto politicalreformof China's political system with particular reference to related student activism in 1986-1987.Lewis and Litai'sChina BuildstheBomb is a fascinatingchronicle of China'snuclear program spanning from its inception in 1955 to the design and testing of nuclearand hydrogenweaponsin 1964and 1967. Stavis, a political scientist, draws on his many insights gained during a teaching engagement at Fudan University in Shanghai. His descriptive account offers interesting interpretative analysis; it is largely based on personal observations, interviews and supplemented by a host of primary and secondary sources. Lewis and Litai'shistorical case study of China'snuclear weapons program,is exceedinglywell documented;largelybased on newly declassifiedChinese materials, it is also a remarkableproduct of ChineseAmerican academic cooperation. Both volumes are valuable additions to the ever growing literature on Chinese politics. In the late 1970'smany analysts described China in glowing terms, frequently citing China's modernization drive and related reforms as an indication that things were getting better politicallyand economically.Those