Monarchitectural appropriations

Abstract

Raising our eyes to that which looks down on us : such is the power of places of power. Theoretical reflection on the medievallocus enriches this anthropology of authority, which encourages those who live in the shadow of this sovereign gaze to claim to approach the inaccessible. But it is inevitably the Versailles paradigm of Louis-Quatorzian representation that still imposes itself on our contemporaries today, since power is usually exercised in the former palaces of the monarchy. Following Louis Marin's analysis, we recall that in classical rhetoric, these palaces should morally edify those who built them : they architect the monarch who desired them, who inhabits them, walks through them and speaks them. Now, however, we're at a tipping point where the discourse of force no longer embarrasses itself with rhetoric or ceremonial : by taking recent examples of monarchitectural appropriations of space, which involve the symbolic desecration of places of power or the predation of the space of domination, we seek to define the way in which tyrannical power seeks to escape the grip of place.

Contents

• In loco qui dicitur : space, body, language, event
• A look back at the expectations of a topology of power and the characteristics of medieval spatiality
• Can we inhabit places without allowing ourselves to be inhabited by them ? (Étienne Helmer, Ici et là. Une philosophie des lieux, Verdier, 2019)
• Approaching the inaccessible : proximity to the divine and the ranking of people (Didier Méhu, " L'église comme "lieu", l'église comme "espace". Réflexions à partir de travaux récents en langue française ", Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes, 49, 2025)
• À Urbino, façade d'autorité et yeux du prince (Patrick Boucheron, De l'éloquence architecture. Milan, Mantua, Urbino (1450-1520), B2, 2014)
• A place of power is that which makes you look up at what's staring back at you
• " This is life as it is lived in the village at the foot of the castle " (Walter Benjamin)
• Keeping an eye on : the empire of details (Le Regard souverain : Les plans-reliefs dans les collections du palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, 2019)
• What is a tipping point ?
• Finding the right distance : a look back at the intentions and precedents of this lecture
• From plague to love and from love to places : The exercise of the state, or how not to be devoured by a place of power ?
• In Washington, January 6 2021 and February 28 2025, two symbolic desecrations
• The White House and the Oval Office : place of memory and visual device
• The " monarchitectural " appropriation of the space (Louis Marin, " L'architecture du prince. Le lieu du pouvoir : Versailles ", JTLA, University of Tokyo, 1989)
• Place of power and body politic at " the dark background of power " (Gilles Deleuze)
• " We must stop at the top of the steps to consider the situation of the parterres " : when King Louis XIV gave tours of his gardens
• The masters of narrative and the " subjection of the visitor-spectator in a kind of obligation to imitate the eye of the Master and his gaze " (Louis Marin)
• L'art de prendre le pouvoir sur le temps des autres (Pierre Bourdieu, Méditations pascaliennes, Seuil, 1997)
• Destroying the White House : architectural predation and the consumption of space
• From the Walk of fame of American presidents to the portraits of the Doges in Venice : continuity of the state and eclipse of power
• Hic est locus Ser Marini Falieri decapitati pro criminibus : a representational effect
• Escaping the power of places : Mar-al-Lago, a dreamlike horizon of absolute power
• "   " and exploiting the symbolic economy of fame
• Power roaming and golf diplomacy in a Trumpized world
• In Turnberry, July 27 2025 : spectacle of submission and " happy vassalization "
• " We're not going to Canossa " : in the XI^thcentury, humiliation, penitence, Davidic royalty
• When places of power bear the memory of a history of penitential royalty (Gilbert Dagron, Empereur et prêtre. Essai sur le "césaropapisme" byzantin , Gallimard, 1996)
• " Ceremonial provides the framework, but history embroiders it. It sets the precedent, and always has the last word ". What will the last word be ?
• Last consolation : the ugliness of power.