Tactical Histories: Diller + Scofidio's "Back to the Front: Tourisms of War"

Author(s): Sarah Whiting, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio

Source: Assemblage , Dec., 1995, No. 28 (Dec., 1995), pp. 70-85
Published by: The MIT Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3171450

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Assemblage

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1. U.S. troops march across Omaha
Beach dressed in World War II gear,
June 1994
Sarah Whiting is a Ph.D. candidate in
the History, Theory, and Criticism of Art, there
Architecture, and Urban Form at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Assemblage 28: 70-85 @ 1996 by the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Sarah Whiting
Tactical Histories: Diller
+ Scofidio's Back to the
Front: Tourisms of War
To the past perfect(ed) landscape their prey; in shooting unseen ob-
responds the echo of a rein- jects, they irretrievably lose sight of
vented history. There is absolutely them. Something of this kind may
also happen to historians.... The
no question here of any falsifica-
tion of the past, but rather of the job of sightseeing requires a mobile
re-management of history, as a self.
consequence of territorial planning Siegfried Kracauer, History:
and the (re)creation of places of The Last Things Before The Last
memory. Today, the beaches, bun-
kers, cemeteries, and museums are Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo
all monuments invested with an un-
Scofidio's recent publication Back to
deniable aura of patriotic and his- the Front: Tourisms of War raises
torical significance. questions about the inscription of
Sylvie Zavatta, Preface to Back to the site and event, as well as about the
Front
siting of history and memory. Back
to the Front contains two Diller +
Historians are much in the same po- Scofidio projects: "suitCase Studies:
sition as ordinary tourists: they too The Production of a National Past"
wish to perceive the sights they and "Hostility into Hospitality,"
have come to see. This is by no which bookend five texts from other
means an easy job. Actually, many authors: Jean-Louis Deotte, Thomas
people go abroad without seeing Keenan, Frederic Migayrou, Lynne
anything. Once they have convinced Tillman, and Georges Van den
themselves that, say, the Parthenon Abbeele. Each author addresses
is at the place assigned to it by the different forms of war and tourism,
guidebook, they immediately take but all reveal unsettling similarities
pictures of their beloved ones be- between these two seemingly dis-
fore an ancient column. The column tinct occupations of the landscape.
serves them as an alibi back home. Assembled together, the essays that
For the rest, these picture hunters constitute Back to the Front's pack-
are less fortunate than animal hunt- age tour provide a theory-filled,
ers because they cannot even 'eat' whirlwind journey through a
71
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 assemblage 28

remilitarized zone where authori- Back to the Front brings the story of the global 'monoculture' - the ho-
tarian border patrols have been this relationship up to the very mogenized consumerism that has
replaced by avid border extermina- present, ultimately revealing a pro- accelerated since the end of the
tors: in addition to dissolving the vocative scenario in which architec- cold war."2 This contemporary
conventional boundaries circum- ture and history perpetually oscillate, globalization of culture demands a
scribing site and history, each piece rather than balance their powers. redefinition of the terms and as-
questions the traditional lines delin- sumptions underlying the architec-
eating categorical histories that Alan Colquhoun has outlined the tural historians' given narratives. In
two most common narrative strate-
separate project from text, primary reflecting on the current relationship
material from secondary material, gies used by architectural historiansbetween architecture and history,
original from translation, and indi- to explain the disciplinary warfare Diller + Scofidio's analysis thankfully
vidual from nation. between architecture and history; does not prescribe a realignment,
in the introduction to his Essays in but instead suggests uneasy alliances
Architectural Criticism he writes,
Looking across the dense, multifac- that are perpetually transfigured:
eted terrain of Back to the Front, On the one hand, it has been held spatially configured tactical histories.
history itself appears engaged in a that history is the repository of per-
struggle. "Architecture" and "his- manent values transmitted from one Perhaps because the approaching
tory" move strategically across these generation to the next in the form millennium prejudices us to look for-
pages, sometimes confrontationally of myths and apodictic truths. We ward rather than backward, the
and sometimes conspiratorially - "monoculturalization" of which
might call this the 'normative' view.
often hardly discernible from one ... On the other hand, it has been Muschamp writes has generally been
another. In the end, they join to- held that history is a process of evo- accompanied by a marked decline of
gether in an uneasy alliance. Circum- lution in which systems of cultural interest in history: history's status has
scribing the issue of history as it value only possess a relative truth. been usurped by visions of an elec-
appears in the book's various com- tronically determined future. To
ponents will help chart a course Whether normative or relative, present, or represent, historical mate-
through this collection. The book's both of these narratives posit an rial, Diller + Scofidio first had to face
appearance suggests a potential ideal architecture - the normative the challenge of working within our
realignment within the turbulent as an ideal past and the relativist as contemporary dehistoricized context
relationship that exists between an ideal future - and both regard - a challenge sardonically articulated
architecture and history, although it history as a path that leads to this by Benjamin Buchloh in his recent
is not clear here where their balance ideal. Such narratives are unilater- review of the Guggenheim museum's
of power lies. Traditionally, history ally oriented: neither allows for "Italian Metamorphosis" exhibition:
has held the upper hand, leaving deviations along the path, for the "The Guggenheim's administration
architecture to play the officer, formation of a multidirectional seems to have grasped the idea that
though not necessarily the gentle- path, or for the individuals involved the only attractive way of presenting
man. From modernism's attempted in the narrative to commandeer the history to a profoundly dehistoricized
erasure of history, through historian's role as narrator. Such public is to spectacularize historical
postmodernism's reinvocation of less-determined possibilities are objects."3 For Diller + Scofidio, how-
historical language, to post- precisely those that Back to the ever, the issue of spectacularization
structuralism's deep questioning of Front tries to engage. In his New itself forms part of their subject. As a
historical authority, the relationship York Times review of Back to the consequence of World War II's golden
between architecture and history has Front, Herbert Muschamp notes jubilee, the issues of war and tourism
not been without its own battles. that "architecture, as an art of have been thoroughly, if not exces-
Without either waxing nostalgically place making, plays a major role in sively, spectacularized over recent
or waning cynically about its past, the tourist economy. It is a force in years. Rather than bemoan this

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spectacularization, Diller + Scofidio
make it a theme of their book. Inter-
spersed throughout the book are a
thousand points of spectacular-
ization: quotes and snapshots from
speeches, articles, novels, and movies.
These typographic fireworks pepper
the margins of the book until the
essay "Live From ...," where they
are brought into the central arena.
This text, by Thomas Keenan, re-
counts the extremes to which the
process of spectacularization has
plummeted in very recent history.
"The mission in Somalia," Keenan
writes, "is an imaging operation: the
front page of the Washington Post
called the landing 'A Well-Publicized
Military Operation,' and the adjec-
tives could not be differentiated from
each other, nor from their noun."4
Rather than setting the stage for a
crisis of historical authenticity, this
excess of spectacularization of war
becomes the foundation of Back to
the Front. As Diller + Scofidio explain, joystick and brainstorm.6 Only eco-
It is not by accident that this book-
event has been generated by an
institution situated in Basse
Normandie - 12 kilometers from
the D-Day beaches and that its pub-
lic exposure corresponds with the
fiftieth anniversary of the momen-
tous Landings. This staged coinci-
dence has not only helped to ignite
the project, but it will serve to put
the arguments advanced by it into
sharper relief.s
Ignition came in the form of televi-
sion specials, magazine spreads,
books, movies, advertisements -
even merchandise. The economic
motives underwriting the spectacu- political and economic complexities
larization of World War II appearedsurrounding war memories and
everywhere. France Telecom, for
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Whiting
2. Tleicarte marking
the fiftieth
anniversary of D-Day
.........
AO01te05
example, commemorated the Land- spectacularization of the D-Day
ings on a telephone card that states anniversary forms a significant com-
"En juin 44, on leur a dit 'thank ponent of what Stanley Hoffmann
you.' En juin 94, dites-leur 'wel- identifies in The New York Review of
come.' ("In June 44, we said 'thank Books as the French mythologization
you' to them. In June 94, tell them of les trentes glorieuses, the thirty
they are 'welcome.'") At the top of years of prosperity that directly fol-
the card is a black-and-white photo- lowed the war and that stand in
graph of soldiers landing on D-Day; sharp contrast to the twenty years of
below is a color photograph of a economic and political difficulties
French child of the nineties, dressed that followed.7 The telephone card
a la Gap in sweatshirt, bandanna, reflects the impact of these twenty
and baseball cap. Its inviting bilin- years; the Gap garqon waving the
gual message runs astonishingly four Allied flags - three of which
counter to French legislation passed represent English-speaking countries
just months before the D-Day anni- - marks the extent to which France
versary, imposing significant fines has been absorbed by the American-
for the use of foreign words - dominated Allied bloc. Is this card
particularly American - such as France Telecom's wake-up call to a
slumbering French nationalism? Or is
nomic benefit could prevail over it a request for a more liberal, mar-
such extreme nationalism; linguistic ket-oriented, international attitude
battles within the French legislature - an economic response to the
go unnoticed by most tourists visit- legislature's conservative political
ing the D-Day site, but the telecards maneuvers to preserve French na-
don't. Comforted by images of the tionalism? All of the essays in Diller
Allied influence on French culture, + Scofidio's volume play on such
and unaware of the growing cli- ambiguities within the complex
mate of xenophobia, foreign tour- relationships that evolve from the
ists would not only spend their history and memory of war. Without
money on telephone calls, but on "taking sides" or passing judgment
other items as well, bolstering the as to whether the economic thrusts
currently ailing French economy. of tourism are casting a sacrilegious
net over the historical aura of the
Even the telephone card, then, war, and without differentiating
indicates the scope of Diller + between a French or an American
Scofidio's topic by revealing the history of the war, Diller + Scofidio
successfully turn the discussion from
an intellectual critique of historical
tourism. The commercial spectacularization to a strategic
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investigation of the relationships
among war, history, architecture,
politics, tourism, and economy.
The complexities of these relation-
ships are hardly limited to advertis-
ing. The tie between D-Day's history
and the tourist economy was rein-
forced all during 1994 by the press,
both popular and intellectual. An
ominous refrain resounded through-
out this coverage: photographs
depicting eighty-year-old men reen-
acting parachute jumps illustrated
articles reminding one that "this
June marks the last living link to the
dead of Normandy. By the next big
anniversary, the 75th, only a few
men in their 90s will be alive to pass
along the epic."8 The press chorus'
macabre sense of finality further
fueled veterans to pack up their
bags and make the voyage back to
Normandy - this time in the com-
fortable garb, vehicles, and accom-
modations of the tourist. Along with
the veterans came other tourists,
convinced that the presence of these
former fighters would bestow
greater value on their own visits.
The press' emphasis on this living
aura augmented tourist interest in
this "once in a lifetime" opportunity.
Keenan links the success of these
sightseeing campaigns to the touris-
tic desire to coincide with history:
the closer one comes to fulfilling this
impossible desire, the more valuable
the experience. This penchant for
proximity suggests that the
spectacularization process occurs in
the making, or defining, of history,
not just in history's backward
glances: as Keenan writes, "D-Day
would have been unthinkable, in-
deed, it would not have been, with-
out the newspaper headlines and
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assemblage 28
newsreels that continually threat-
ened to contaminate its tactical and
strategic purity, to reduce its elabo-
rate logistics to the status of some
kind of prop for a vast photo oppor-
tunity."9 Eventually, newsreels were
replaced by television, as evidenced
by the Vietnam War that "brought
the war into America's living room."
The drive for ever-greater realism
culminates today with travel pack-
ages to "edge zones of combat," as
described in Keenan's article. For
$25,000 apiece, clients interested in
an Italian entrepreneur's vacation
package were invited to "spend two
weeks in a war zone, accompanied
by doctors and security forces, but
without weapons of their own -
only cameras."10 As Keenan notes,
the spectacularization of war has
begun to blend into war itself:
If television has not succeeded in
doing away with television, but
rather has become a new sort of
provocation for it, a stranger and
stranger test of the reality that al-
ways calls for a visit, what happens
when the reality of the war that
might be visited is itself structured
like a tourist visit? And to the extent
that television somehow induces the
war, the structure folds in on itself
vertiginously: television conducted
as tourism, in war, or war conducted
as tourism, on television."1
The steady progression from the
newspaper to the newsreel to tele-
vision and, finally, to individual
experience continuously reduces
the distance between the observer
and the action, transforming his-
tory from something read to some- Just as des Esseintes goes to extraor-
thing experienced. The suggestion dinary measures to perfect the de-
that the individual voyeur must tails of his interior world, Back to the
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become an engaged participant com-
pletely reverses J. K. Huysmans' fin-
de-siecle account of the armchair
voyeur/voyageur. Duc Jean des
Esseintes, the protagonist of
Huysmans' 1884 novel A Rebours
(Against the grain), cocoons himself
in his Parisian apartment, surrounded
by his collection of exotic art, furni-
ture, liqueurs, and perfumes:
By these means he could procure him-
self, without ever stirring from home
... almost instantaneously, all the
sensations of a long voyage; the plea-
sure of moving from place to place....
In fact it appeared to him a futile
waste of energy to travel when, so he
believed, imagination was perfectly
competent to fill the place of the
vulgar reality of actual prosaic facts.12
Des Esseintes thus travels around the
world at his leisure, never encounter-
ing interference in the form of either
material or human inconvenience. As
a new fin-de-siecle fast approaches,
however, Diller + Scofidio replace
Huysmans' manual of vicarious living
with one that is much more engaged.
As Keenan's article demonstrates,
individual experience forms the inter-
section between tourism and war.
Despite this difference, Back to the
Front's authors generally echo both
Huysmans' attention to the details of
bodily sensations and his confidence
in commercialism's ability to create a
new reality by imitating reality. But
in Back to the Front, the siting of
experience is expanded; it is pulled
from des Esseintes' private domestic
interior into the public realm of
shared experiences.

Front reveals that the shared histori-
cal site must also be carefully con-
figured to best incite the
appropriate sensations. The desire
to "live" history makes its specific
siting particularly susceptible to
spectacularization. The consequent
importance of the historical site
recalls Karl Marx's definition of
history emphasizing its manipula-
tion of landscape; history is tied at
its origin to the natural site:
The first premise of all human his-
tory is, of course, the existence of
living human individuals. Thus the
first fact to be established is the
physical organization of these indi-
viduals and their consequent rela-
tion to the rest of nature .... All
historical writing must always set
out from these natural bases and
their modification in the course of
history through the action of men.13 But where Heidegger celebrates
The marketing of history has ex-
tended this process of site manipu-
lation, for not only is the site
originally marked by the event, but
it is now re-marked to render that
event visible or legible for the visi-
tor who comes to see it. Conse-
quently, historically significant sites
undergo manipulation in the hopes An essay by Stephen Greenblatt in
that their stories will replay, rather a different anthology, H. Aram
than merely represent.
In Back to the Front, Diller + Scofidio
turn this site-specific spectaculariza- tween Heidegger's and Diller +
tion back onto itself. As they note,
A sign in a grassy field reads, 'Custer has constructed a bridge for view-
fell here.' The notion of 'here' is a
compelling issue in a site where
here is no different from there. But
an empty site need only be desig-
nated by a marker to become
auratic for the tourist. When na-
Whiting
tional narratives are written directly
onto material soil, that surface
carries the image of validity. It is a
surface where, unlike the nego-
tiable surface of paper, meaning
appears absolute. Yet, the soil
alone is mute without the paper
that is needed to name it, explain
it, and validate it for the tourist -
the elaborate system of texts and
artifacts which help to authenticate
the 'authentic.'14
Their description of a man-made
sign drawing attention to a natural
site evokes Martin Heidegger's
discussion of a bridge in "Building,
Dwelling, Thinking": the bridge
defines a specific site in an other-
wise nondescript landscape by
"gathering" the two banks of a
stream together in a single line
that sits as a point on each bank."5
architecture's ability to "gather" a
site, Diller + Scofidio articulate a
landscape of control. Bridges, signs
reading "Custer fell here," and
carefully planted artifacts are all
imprints onto the landscape that
clearly designate human dominance
over it and bring meaning to it.
Veeser's The New Historicism, fur-
ther elucidates the distinction be-
Scofidio's conceptions of site. In
Yosemite, the National Park Service
ing Nevada Falls. The gathering of
the site by this bridge's careful posi-
tioning is further reinforced by an
image of the falls, etched into an
aluminum plaque and attached to
the bridge's railing. As Greenblatt
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explains, "The wilderness is at once
secured and obliterated by the
official gestures that establish its
boundaries; the natural is set over
against the artificial through means
that render such an opposition
meaningless."16 The Nevada Falls site
has not only been gathered by the
bridge; its entire identification is
reducible to this construction. The
visitor looks at the falls, then looks
at the image, then looks once again
at the falls, but only sees the image.
It is from this spot that the falls are
invariably photographed. The pho-
tograph is, in the end, a double
exposure, a superimposition of etch-
ing and view whereby the view is
permanently framed by the etching.
Whereas Heidegger romantically
believes the bridge plays the role of
a mute interloper, silently drawing
one's attention to the landscape,
both Greenblatt and Diller + Scofidio
reveal that the man-made construc-
tion entirely subsumes the natural
site. Without the sign, a site is irrel-
evant, "no different from there";
with the sign, the site becomes a
site, but remains secondary to the
sign that engenders it.
While the Park Service attempts to
gather Nevada Falls or Custer's Last
Stand into a single plaque, Freddric
Migayrou affirms in his provocative
Back to the Front text, "The Ex-
tended Body: Chronicle of a Day
with No History," that the precise
site or moment of the D-Day Land-
ings has never been fixed by a single
image; instead, it is always repre-
sented by blurry images, such as
those captured in Robert Capa's
Omaha Beach series. Even recorded
testimonials have never clearly ar-
ticulated the Landings. In a burst of
 assemblage 28

3. Robert Capa,
"Omaha Beach, near
Colleville-sur-Mer,
Normandy coast,
June 6, 1944,
American troops
landing on D-Day"

Everywhere, then - the television

program, the magazine rack, the
academic anthology - the stage has
been set. The spectacularization of
history, bemoaned by Buchloh, seems
Lieux de memoire differs from impossible to avoid. What, then, do
archival obsessiveness, Migayrou
other, more traditional histories in Diller + Scofidio make of this stage?
read through thousands of pages
Michel de Certeau's question, "What
documenting D-Day and found that that it does not propose a single, does the historian make when he
it was "impossible to extract more linear, grand narrative, but rather
makes history?" - inspired by the
than a handful of lines dealing with offers snapshots of various subjects,
the actual moment of the Landings. various "places of memory," it does French phrase faire de I'histoire -
assume the existence of a collective can here be expanded to What does
In these lines, the language seems
the architect do when he or she
booby-trapped and stifled, caught national memory. In an interview in
"makes" history? or What does it
up in a chaos which suspends the the Magazine Littdraire, Mona
mean for architects to "design" his-
temporal continuum, and does Ozouf, a key participant in this
tory?20 De Certeau employs the term
away with any objectivizing dis- project across its ten years, recalls
history as meaning a practice, a dis-
tance."17 Unlike Nevada Falls, this that the Times Literary Supplement
course, and the relation between the
sight could not be gathered, repro- reviewer of the book admitted that
two.21 The aforementioned efforts to
duced, fixed, and etched in plate. the British would have to turn to
One is a location, the other is an
stage this relation imply stability,
completely different examples were
fixity, but, as de Certeau points out,
event that happened in a location. they to attempt to collect such a
this relation actually oscillates in a
history: sports, gardening, and lit-
The difference between the Park erature would be substituted for
state of permanent ambivalence:
Service's framing of the falls and the symbolic politics of Les Lieux de The place that history shapes for the
these histories of the Landings is not memoire. Ozouf concludes that past is equally a way of making place
merely an issue of site versus sight: "this is another way of making evi- for the future. Just as it vacillates
historical events are forever being dent the originality of our own between exoticism and criticism,
fixed as sites. Like the Park Service, places of memory, and encompass- under the label of a mise-en-scene,
historians also try to form, or config- ing once again the French excep- or staging, of the other, it oscillates
ure, a site's identity. Pierre Nora's tion."19The chauvinistic tone of this
between conservation and utopian-
seven-volume anthology of essays comment suggests that while Les ism due to its function as signifier of
on the history of France, Les Lieux Lieux de memoire differs from more
a lack. Under its most extreme forms,
de memoire (Places of memory), canonical histories, it nevertheless it becomes, in the first case, legend-
emphasizes the role that specific reinforces the mythology of France's ary or polemic; in the second, reac-
sites play in history: "the fundamen- "glorious" past to which Hoffmann tionary or revolutionary.22
tal justification of fixing a place of referred in the New York Review of
memory" is "to stop time, arrest the Books. The anthology extends In emphasizing its practice over its
work of oblivion, and fix a state of Hoffmann's mythologization model product, de Certeau demonstrates
affairs."18 Such fixing of sites under- from the thirty years of les trentes that history is more of a fluid enter-
lies the varied historical narratives glorieuses through all French his- prise rather than a fixed discipline.
collected in Nora's book. The topics tory; it promises a "tangible his- Even as an enterprise, he notes, it is
covered by Les Lieux de memoire's tory," as if these multiple volumes difficult to ascertain whether the
authors differ, but the possibility - of "stopped time" could "fix the project of history is celebratory or
indeed, the necessity - of articulat- state of affairs" of contemporary, critical, conservative or utopian. In
ing "places of memory" remains and less glorieuse, France. Back to the Front, Migayrou demon-
constant throughout. Although Les strates that the same ambivalence

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exists in the written and photo-
graphed D-Day histories, which he
categorizes into two types:
Here, more than elsewhere, the
economy of historical restitution is
distributed into two orders. The first
is archaeological: an endless exhu-
mation of remains, rusty bits and
pieces, fragments clumsily put to-
gether in make-shift museum dis-
plays. The second is historicist: a
short fiction, accessible to the tour-
ist, is reconstructed about what
should be grasped as a universal
moment. There is apparently no
choice other than that of conserva-
tion or that of the memorial.23
Neither the archaeologists nor the
historians have successfully recap-
tured the precise moment of the
Landings. Consequently, without
deliberately trying, these historians
have engaged in de Certeau's prac-
tice of history by vacillating around a
moment. In lieu of the archaeologi-
cal or historicist effort, Migayrou
proposes a third type of history, one
that focuses on the very moment of
ambivalence. Instead of disguising
the impossibility of the moment of
the Landings by ordering all that
surrounds them in the hopes of cap-
turing the elusive moment within an
elaborately constructed framework,
Migayrou suggests drawing out the
moment, magnifying H-Hour, M-
Minute, "continually extend[ing] and
elaborat[ing] it, to turn it into a
longer day: the longest day.... The
Landings should be the subject of a
chronicle, a permanent survey of all
the times deposited in the situation
- the stimulation of a capacity for
up-dating."24 Like Greenblatt,
Migayrou exposes the inadequacies
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Whiting
of existing historical models; but he
furthers his critique by proposing an
alternative strategy.
While such constructive cultural
criticism - in that it proposes, in
addition to critiquing - is a wel-
come addition to contemporary
writing, one might hesitate to an-
chor the proposal in the erasure of
the existing; to abandon so quickly
the qualities of blurriness or fluidity
that Migayrou found in the existing
histories, in exchange for volume or
quantity. His model of elongated
history professes to make up for the
inadequacies of the "economy of
historical restitution." But one merit
of the existing historiographical
models is that they do reveal the
continuous oscillation underlying
the historical. Like waves lapping the
shores of the landing beaches, this
oscillation forms a continuous or
"tactical" history of perpetual ma-
neuvering. As in war, this historical
movement is not linear, but erratic, neously present and absent and yet
unpredictable, and global. Although must be adumbrated if any war
Migayrou proposes a rejection of the memorial is to retain some fidelity
historical orders of the archaeologi- to what it both remembers and
cal and the historicist, tactical history warns about, as memorial and
would require that they be retained
and revealed - albeit not reified -
in order to maintain this oscillation.
And Diller + Scofidio's book lays
bare this existing oscillation: Hegel's
idealist vision of linear, historical
progress is quickly gunned down on
Back to the Front's battlefield. The
oscillating histories exposed within
the pages of the book combine to
present a mobile practice of history,
a tactical history within and across
its texts.
Back to the Front offers a shifting
horizon line of French and English
77
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texts as a backdrop for its tactical
histories. With the exception of
Diller + Scofidio's "suitCase Studies"
project, in which each line of text
alternates between French and En-
glish (causing bilingual readers to
see double), the two languages face
off across the space of the book. A
two-dimensional national border lies
between the English and French
texts. Its edges, dependent on words
and their translations, subtly shifts
from text to text, even from page to
page. This white space that sepa-
rates top from bottom recalls
Georges van den Abbeele's descrip-
tion of the Landings site in his text,
"Armored Sights/Sites blindes":
It is to discern in this place some-
thing like the old soldier's truism
about the empty center of a battle,
and to suggest something about the
ungraspable quality of this place
where the palpable trace of loss,
death, and destruction are simulta-
monument (from monere, to warn +
mens, mind).25
Similarly, the empty center of the
Back to the Front page separates
original from translated, without
giving precedence to one or the
other. Reading only French or only
English does not mean reading only
the top or bottom halves of Back to
the Front's pages, because different
articles have one or the other lan-
guage on top, depending on the
original language of the text. Be-
tween articles, then, the reader must
constantly readjust to the lines of
 assemblage 28

DILLER + SCOFIDIO

along the D-Day coast makes at least some claim over this spatio-temporal punc-
tuation in history, a moment which would prove to be pivotal. The ongoing obses-
sion to mark the point of D-Day, H-Hour, coincides with the desire to market it.
access to the occupied territory, the 85 kilometer stretch of coast was surveyed
through "oblique' reconnaissance aerials supplemented by the only existing
photographs of the site-tourist postcards and holiday snapshots-which were

On a sunny day, fifty years after the beach was littered with bloody,
covertly solicited from British vacationers over the BBC. These benign images of

mangled bodies, the battlefield is littered with carefree, sun-tanning bodies. holiday revelers held pertinent information about the site's topography which

These leisure bodies don't seem out of place, however. For, before this stretch of would be factored into the planning of the assault. A woman's footwear or the

Normandy coast was selected as the site for the Allied invasion, it was the target height of her skirts while wading in the water, for example, could indicate the
gradient of a beach.

&end it t . ", *. Ir.M.4 of the "thermal invasion." Droves of vacationers seeking the
k amcecsWAflrlIer.twMisr. e6iirsls "cure" came to immerse their bodies in the chilly therapeutic For the strategists of the German war machine, the sea was, simply,
-nee a nusl's r -* a seed fs rm-- waters of the Channel. However, unlike the scenic, recre- the termination of the land. It represented the physical limit of the German con-

aw:te or seievwie. e-*M.ehim y,* aotional medium it is for today's pleasure seekers, the water quest. As such, the coast was deemed to be a vulnerable border that had to be

was of little aesthetic interest to the bothers who regarded the sea as medicinal. fortified. This led to the erection of a complex defense system which would
stretch across the coast of northern France.
The perception of the sea continued to shift with the changing players
of the site. For the Allies wanting to reclaim Occupied France, the sea was the In the opening sequence of the 1964 Hollywood war epic, The Longest

opportune medium by which to weaken the German stronghold-a medium Day, Field Marshall Rommel looks out to sea, then turns to the camera and
whose possibilities and limitations had to be studied in exhaustive detail in the speaks with o an air of confidence which can only portend impending doom.

planning of the highly technical amphibious assault. Tourism was to play a key, Rommel's sense of invincibility appears magnified by the slow zoom in on his

though indirect, role during those years of preparation. With no physical ardent Face before the backdrop of the sea. Unlike the leisure gaze to the sea

ou d'une autre, cctte ponctuatins spatis temporelle da, I'histoirer, i ce moment qui clef, quolque Indirect, au cosur d e annacsc de priparation. Nullement accessible

pourrait se riv6lcr cn tre un pivot. L'olnession cointair. de maurcar e I lieu du jour-., tic physiquement, les quatre-vingt cinq kilomstres de rtc durent Stre btudits t I'aide
l'lcurrAll, coiincide avec cl dbir de le nvarchandr.r dWantennes de rcroa,nnceisnce"obliques," et I'information obtcnue fun complitie par IeS

Par beau temnp., cinquantc ans aprCs que la plage ait kt? joncle de corps, sculcs photographics du site disponibleh , les cartee postaLes touristiques ct les clichlis dr

manglants et ecnslls, le ciamp tie bataille e.sl jonct6 de curpv isaouciantrs et bronyants. IFt vaacesmcs, que la RRC recherchaicnt avidement aupr-s des vacanctrs britasmiques. Cct

pourtant, ces corps oisifs n: semhlent pas dsplacks. Car avant que cEtte pattic tic la c6te inages benines de joyeux convives en vacances rccelaient des informations pertinentes sur

la topographic du site qui pouvaient Stre utilisces pour organiser t'assaut. I s chaussures
Seln eI guide ellkSo 199, kles osp1 do novmandc nc soit choisic !csnmmr lieu dc l'invacion Alli?.r, rle e ait
Is die enk ts e e oasdio. c'ael. , aIr e. Ia cibl,i: de "'invasion balncaire." Des hordes de vacancicrs cher que portait une femme ou la hauteur de sez rolsn lorsqu'elle pataugesit dans ]a mer, par

ws ellits, q9t8 c1neit ,,sidleiss urns tchant la "curc" venaient. imsnerger lear corps da,s is e fraiches cau excmple, pouvaicnt inliquer I'angle d'inclinaison de m plage.

'ati a 0le'-ese' sa kkas iss 'id I thirapeutiqucs de la Manchc. Toutesisi , sntraircmen,t au nmiediums Puur les stratiges de la machine de guerre allemande, la mer stait, tout simple-

ipeoe"ssel recreatif et cc6niquc qu'elle aet sdevcnuc pour cc qui nt.ierrhcnt ment, la fin de la terrc. .Ile reprsosntait la limite physique de la conqutte allcmande. Et,

aujourd'hui le plaisir, Ieau ctait die peu d'int?rA.t estltique pour les Isigneurs qui consi-
lberaient la mcr cone,,rn mdticinac.
La perception de la smer a c ontinu6 de changer au fur et e mesure quc Ic,
jiuJars du site changaeicnt. Pour les .Ali6s qui voulaient rrconqu6rir la France Occup'e,,
comme tells, la ctce semblait une frontiire vulnirable qui devait ktre fortisife. Ce qui
amena la constructikn d'un systime de dcfense. cimplxe qui allait s 'tendrc tout le long
de lan care du Nord dc la France.
Dai la scne d'ouverture de la fresque hollywxAsicniw, dc 1964, I.jour le plus

la mer 6tait k: mvndium adbquat pour allaiblir la fortrrcssa e lcmande, uso mcitdilm dont les long, lc marchat RRommmel tontenrpc Is metr, puis se tourne vcr Ila cam4tr et parle, aI'ir

plnsibilitos Ct lcs limite dcvient Stre ttudi6cs juque dans le moindre dStail avant de sOr de lui , dune manirec qui ne peut Isier pr6sager que le pire. I se.ntiment d'invinci-

planificr I'assaut asnphihien extr?.ncmemet technique. Le touriune devait joucr un rller hilisi de Rommel semble grossi par Ic lent noom avant sur son visage ardent avec la mer cn

Iio ll

English and French for a return of meaning,

that, like precisely tween cloud, sky, water, and wave.
lines
drawn in sand, where it was most lacking.26
repeatedly remobi- The endleaves display what at first
lize, reoccupying variable zonesappears
Rather than reinstate the horizon
of to be a color photograph of
the page. This ever-changing hori- the horizon, but is really a digitized
line, Back to the Front's graphic
zon line mimics the instability of image the
of the photograph. A box
designers, Brendan Cotter and
horizon line off of Normandy, frames which, one part of the image like a
Heather Champ, accentuate its blur. camera lens, with the semicircles of a
despite the wishes of D-Day histori-
In addition to exemplifying Nor- focus mechanism at its center. These
ans and visitors, can never be fixed.
As Jean-Louis Deotte notes in his
mandy's horizon through a shifting start to focus on an offshore sailboat,
linguistic horizon, Cotter and
article "A World with No Horizon," but they don't quite line up - an
Champ play off of the blurry mo- unfocused sailboat is thus bound into
Our modern war tourists are ment of the Landings in their cover
every copy of Back to the Front.
nostalgics for the horizon line.... design. The cover itself depicts the
[They] try to reconstruct a certain horizon; the green tint of the pho- The malleable horizon line forms the
normalcy, which is nurtured by the tograph washes out all clear distinc- main focus of "Hostility into Hospital-
dialectics of the two antagonistic tions, drawing attention instead to ity," a project produced by Diller +
horizons, because they are hoping the slowly changing textures be- Scofidio with Paul Lewis for this publi-

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4. Pages from Back to the
Front, showing positioning of
English and French texts
cation. Here, too, the possibility of
"focus" is called into question.
Rather than stabilizing the site by
constructing lines - Heideggerian
bridges - Diller + Scofidio reveal the
cultural constructions underlying the
perceptual, unstable, inaccessible line
of the horizon. They reproduce a
series of film stills from the cinematic
D-Day, The Longest Day, in which
Field Marshall Rommel declares with
confidence, "beyond that peaceful
horizon ... a monster waits!"27 Con-
sistent with Migayrou's model, their a segment of the horizon line drawn
project extends the moment that
Rommel predicts: the moment when beachfront, the "Atlantic Wall."
the Allied forces broke the line of the
horizon and became visible to the
Germans. As Diller + Scofidio explain, of photographs, each photograph
The horizon ... is not solely a picto-
rial notion, but also a strategic one.
The concept of horizon can be uti-
lized militarily, precisely because it
describes a finite, calculable distance
from an observation point to a point
of tangency with the earth's curva-
ture. Putting aside Hollywood's de-
piction of German zealotry, the
defensive military gaze understands
the horizon, not as limitless, but as
the limit of the observable - beyond
which lies an optical blind zone. The
horizon defines a scopically defen-
sible border. When the enemy breaks
the horizon, he enters the perceptual
field, and in this battle, which was
largely based on the observable, the
perceptual field was, in fact, the
battlefield.28
In "Hostility into Hospitality" the
horizon is represented and reformed
in a series of ten foldout pages. In
addition to manipulating the mo-
ment of the Landings, Diller + Sco-
fidio manipulate the economy of
Whiting
historical restitution as defined
by Migayrou. In an archaeological
manner, "Hostility into Hospitality"
collects information, but Diller +
Scofidio deliberately blur categories
to keep the series, or even the infor-
mation within a single part of the
series, from being easily classified.
Are they diptychs? triptychs? pan-
els? maps? scrapbooks? Faced with
this new language, the reader is
forced to think before labeling.
Each piece in the series is devoted to
in plan along the Normandy
Each horizon segment is repre-
sented three-dimensionally by a line
slightly overlapping to form a pan-
oramic view. This view, combined
with the "objective" mapping of the
coastline, blurs the distinction be-
tween the personal and impersonal
that is normally strictly - albeit
artificially - maintained in the
historical project. Like the semicircu-
lar lenses of Back to the Front's
endleaves, the photographs of this
panoramic view do not line up: their
borders form a jagged edge that, in
other publications, would have been
cleanly cropped. Superimposed on
this line of color snapshots is a pre-
cise, dotted, inkline representing
the coastline in plan. The segment
of the coastline within the circle
from which the panorama has been
shot is drawn with a solid line, sug-
gesting a fixity, one that is subse-
quently denied by the jiggled line of
the photographs.
Each project within "Hostility into
Hospitality" has multiple series of
narrative forms of information
collected within it. Surrounded by
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photographs, maps, film stills, a line
of postcards with Caen cancellations,
each filled with a tourist formula,
forms a vertical narrative on alter-
nating spreads, overlapping the
archaeological plan and panoramic
order. The perfectly penned, almost
mechanical script of the postcards
infuses each message with irony:
The Salutation, Empathetic
imaginings. The description of site.
The domestic inquiry. Meal com-
ments. The closing. The Signature.29
Reading these postcards is like com-
ing across a cynical edition of "Miss
Manners" etiquette lessons. But
these formulaic cards not only play
into the tourist economy as pur-
chases and advertisements, they
also form part of a more complex,
intangible system of exchange -
Migayrou's economy of historic resti-
tution - whereby the value of the
vacation, for example, is measured
by the envy of those left at home.
Additionally, each project that
makes up "Hostility into Hospitality"
contains quotations from Hollywood
movies and war novels. These fic-
tional texts are interspersed with
deployment statistics, timetables,
geographical degrees, and tourist
symbols. The whole combines the
archaeological and the historicist:
different narratives - ranging from
the fictional to the pictorial - are
collected into an all-encompassing
archaeology, a tactical history, oscil-
lating between the horizon line and
its multiple cultural markers. As
Diller + Scofidio remark, "If the dis-
ruption of the horizon for the Allied
and German forces signaled the
advent of the battle, the disruption
of the horizon for the tourist sets
 assemblage 28

Co-duDba"uementM n. S.u ~ mentSign at e -

L3 ad r e m P a eeri. I U - . . ->

General e Gauile Landing Memorial at Courseu es

General De Gauele Landing Memorra at Gnu1seu98es /" /D // ,'

North Shore Regimen". Mmonumaen/t Sa Aub R .
No 48 Com nema Rdoue

2:00 wl-
NG 48eroladoGoullr aonatnLaneruneo/" ,.C....u,,,f 1,88 t..,rel ,, Ghu: i 'n

1:00

into motion the multiple narratives thing in a sense quite other than Back to the Front - "Hostility into
of that battle."30 projective, a vanishing line Hospitality" reinvokes subjectivity
(Deleuze), or better still, an area without demanding a return to the
The disruption of the horizon line,
line (Deligny).31 singular, humanist, centered subject.
or, rather, the recognition of an Here, the subject, released from the
existing disrupted horizon line,
Back to the Front's emphasis and one-point perspective of the horizon
opens up the possibility of multiple, line's construct, is mobile, no longer
reconfiguration of visual perception
simultaneous perspectives rather is consistent with Diller + Scofidio's pinned to the center like Leonardo's
than a singular, one-point percep- universal man. In Diller + Scofidio's
previous work, which has always
tion. As Deotte notes,
focused on issues of the subject and work, the mobile subject joins the
When the unknown hero is relieved its intersection with representation front lines, each constructing its own
of his age-old destination, he be- and technology. Like their other narrative or tactical history. It is the
comes a historical figure of mobili- projects - including the 1991 in- disruption of the horizon line that
zation for the masses.... He no stallation "suitCase Studies," which engenders this series of multiple
longer has any horizon, but some- is reproduced at the beginning of horizons or multiple narratives: hori-

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 Whiting

5. Foldout from "Hostility into

Hospitality"

\ ..

..

, ? . ..

j-,

",, 1- .

,\ , j'
.t - . .

.__ 1`,B1
? ? ?. '" . "
3Io:is
r ~ ~ ~ ? ol L!Cusuis19

zons of economy, mortality, nation-
alism - all of which inform the
tourist's perception.
The other texts in Back to the Front
further expand this collection of
multiple narratives. Lynne Tillman's
novella "Lust for Lost," for example,
narrates the story of Madame
Realism, who takes a trip to the
Normandy shores in order "to be
alive in a place haunted by death
and great decision."32 Tillman's story
shifts the focus of Back to the Front
from tourism's commercialization of
war to a given individual's reaction
to the site. Thomas Keenan notes
that an "allegory of ruin and sur-
vival" drives the individual tourist:
"The traveller goes in search of his-
tory, but of history as ruin and its
aftermath. The risk and the desire
thus coincide: one seeks the inexis-
tence of what remains, of what is no
longer there but not altogether
lost.""33The frankness and constant
self-analysis that pepper the narra-
tion of Tillman's Madame Realism
mitigate the horrors of her proximitypaid in to the system and those who
to the Landings:
She reached Omaha Beach and the
enormous U.S. cemetery. The rows
and rows of gravestones were re-
bukes to the living. That's precisely
what entered her mind - rebukes
to the living. She shook her head to
dislodge the idea. Now, instead of
rebuke, a substitute image, sense or
sensation - all the graves were
reassurances, and the cemetery was
a gigantic savings bank with thou-
sands of tombstonelike savings
cards. Everyone who had died had
visited were assured they'd receive

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their money's worth. That's really
crazy, she chastised herself.34
Like the returning parachuters, Ma-
dame Realism tries to relive the his-
torical impact of the site, but instead
of consulting guidebooks, veterans'
stories, or official tours, she walks
and walks, and "with each barefoot
step on the sand ... [she] concoct[s]
a battle story: Here a man had
fallen."35 Like the fluctuating horizon
line in Diller + Scofidio's project,
these constructed histories constantly
change: the tide rises, fills, and ulti-
mately washes away each footprint.
Each story is as valid and as fleeting
as any other history. As Keenan con-
cludes, "there will always be more
than one allegory."''36
Although Back to the Front provides
a provocative collection of history
reconsidered, it does not constitute
- and does not profess to constitute
- a sudden, spectacular shift in his-
torical research. Rather than charting
new territory, it allies itself with a
general movement of rewriting.
Anyone familiar with Michel
Foucault's Archeology of Knowledge
or The Order of Things would imme-
diately agree that the practice of
reconsidering the archaeological
order of history is hardly "new" in
1994. Besides Foucault, the greatest
thread of archaeological influence
that runs through Back to the Front
is that of Paul Virilio, whose con-
spicuous absence from the collection
begs an explanation. Virilio, a French
architect and theorist, was the first
to theorize the space and history of
the Atlantic Wall. Already in 1975,
his Bunker Archeology initiated the
discussion of the architecture of
war.37 His comprehensive analysis of
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assemblage 28
the fifteen hundred bunkers along both for his work on the particular
the Normandy shore redeploys the site of the Atlantic Wall and for his
tools of architectural analysis, con- observations that reveal war's
sidering these monuments of civil unclassifiability, there are significant
engineering in terms previously differences between their projects.
reserved for classical ruins: in addi- Whereas Virilio focuses his interest
tion to written descriptions, Bunker on the blur between real and artifi-
Archeology contains endless photo- cial, Diller + Scofidio concentrate
graphs, ink drawings, and chronolo- instead on the blurred point of view,
gies of the bunkers, all charting focusing their work more on the
their typologies as well as the his- tactics of tourism than on the tactics
torical roles they once played. In his of war. Furthermore, they disagree
description of the Normandy coast- with Virilio's afterword to Bunker
line, Virilio already draws attention Archeology, written in 1991, in which
to the lack of precision that occu- he concludes that World War II was
pies the center of history, the theme the swan song of geographical war-
that is so present throughout Back fare: "The war of real time has
to the Front. Virilio writes, clearly supplanted the war in real
The Atlantic Wall is in fact a 'mili- space of geographical territories that
long ago conditioned the history of
tary conservatory' installed on the
nations and people."'9 Diller +
European coast; all resources, from
Scofidio do not make this distinction
the ancient port fortifications and
between temporal and geographical
archaic arms, find a place there,
territories, but consider both to be
but the genres are mixed and the
tactical histories. And while Virilio
points of view blurred. The dummy
work is countless in this continental relies solely on the archaeological
order, Diller + Scofidio employ both
citadel: false batteries, wooden
the archaeological and the historicist
weapons, various camouflages.
in drawing out the longest day.
Myth conflates with propaganda.38
Virilio's work contributes an addi- Back to the Front invokes other influ-
tional dimension to Back to the ences as well. Consciously or not, the
Front's presentation of the fluidityhistoricist edge to Diller + Scofidio's
of the moment of the Landings, work parallels that of the New Histori-
the horizon line, and the historian's
cists, a historical practice in the man-
interpretation of war. Virilio is ner of de Certeau, as opposed to a
cited twice - once in Sylvie doctrine, inadvertently baptized by
Zavatta's preface and again in Stephen Greenblatt.40 According to
Migayrou's text; to have included Greenblatt, "new historicism" is distin-
him in the collection would have guished by "methodological self-
been to recognize this history, but consciousness," in contrast to former
moreover, to have included him historicist currents "based on faith in
would have better demonstrated the transparency of signs and inter-
how Diller + Scofidio have ex- pretive procedures."41 An example of
panded his model. For, although this last would be Wilhelm von
they are clearly indebted to Virilio, Humboldt, whose paper "On the
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 Whiting

Historian's Task" of 1821 portrays the
historian as a benevolent and omni-
scient narrator: "The historian's
task," he asserts, "is to present what
actually happened."42 Like the New
Historicists today, Humboldt ac-
knowledges that history is not imme-
diately accessible, but rather,
channeled through an interpretive
process: "An event ... is only par-
tially visible in the world of the
senses; the rest has to be added by
intuition, inference, and guess-
work."43 To avoid falling into the
trap of "anything goes," or "anyone
can," Humboldt suggests that the
historian is endowed with a particu-
lar talent for sifting through this
guesswork to locate the underlying
truth of the event at hand. It is this
faith in truth or the real that runs
through the history of "old" histori-
cism. In architectural history, Sigfried
Giedeon provides perhaps one of the
best illustrations of this old historicist
model. His Space, Time and Architec-
ture of 1941 divides historical facts
into two categories: the constituent,
or recurring, facts and the transitory,
or fleeting, facts. Although one
hundred twenty years separate
Humboldt and Giedeon, an almost
deist thread runs through and be-
tween their work. Humboldt writes
that "an historical presentation, like
an artistic presentation, is an imita-
tion of nature. The basis of both is
the recognition of the true form, the
discovery of the necessary, the elimi-
nation of the accidental"; Giedeon singular elements, catching glimpses
writes that the historian "can tell of one another, or rather catching
more or less short-lived novelties sight of one another in a space
from genuinely new trends ... [he] is which does not exist prior to them,
not only free to use his judgment but but is defined with their help, with-
obliged to. To make the not always out any horizon because it is articu-
obvious distinction between transi- lated in a thousand ways. "45
tory and constituent facts is his own It is precisely the unrecognizable
personal responsibility.""" quality of this community that
makes it tactical rather than norma-
Just as the New Historicists no longer
tive: it is a body of people whose
maintain this faith in the transpar- voices form a framework from
ency of signs and the existence of within rather than conform to a
some underlying truth in cultural
framework imposed from without. It
studies, Back to the Front calls such
is only curious and unfortunate that
transparencies into question within
the community of voices within Back
architecture. By collecting historical to the Front excludes voices from
material in an archaeological manner the "other side" of the horizon: for
from a variety of sources and by
would not it have been appropriate
clearly revealing the narrative quality
to include German voices in a publi-
of all of these materials, Diller +
cation so concerned with disrupting
Scofidio neither buy into a singular,
the horizon? Nevertheless, despite
locatable truth underlying the history this omission that sustains a certain
of war nor do they profess to ap- one-sidedness to the horizon domi-
proximate more closely a truth
nating World War II, Back to the
through their interpretation of this Front demonstrates that the histori-
material. By expanding the issue of
cal can buy into the authority of the
historical interpretation to include
multiple rather than the authority of
historical perception, they bring
the historian. A third narrative,
history into a realm not only of mul-
then, is added to Alan Colquhoun's
tiple horizons, but of multiple dimen-
exposition of the traditional norma-
sions as well. No longer the excavatortive and relativist histories of archi-
of an essence, the historian becomes
tecture - here, replacing the linear
the executor of projects, whose
narrative with a disrupted, multi-
range extends from the very personal
branched one that reflects the logic
(as in Madame Realism's formulation
of narratives intended to fill her own
of the disrupted horizon.
footsteps in the sand) to the very
In eliminating the oracular authority
public (as in Keenan's examination of
of the historian, however, Diller +
television and tourism in Somalia).
Scofidio open themselves up to the
The multiple histories contained
within Back to the Front
attack of "anything goes" - an
attack frequently and irresponsibly
[give] rise to an unrecognizable levied against much contemporary
community.., defined by Nancy as critical work in cultural studies. This
the difference or division of voices. A attack contends that the lack of a
community... which is made up of prescriptive or normative mission
makes this project irrelevant. But a
framework of responsibility does
remain intact throughout Back to
the Front, preventing "anything
goes." Each of these texts and
projects is a history of a particular
event; together, they form a history

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 assemblage 28

Notes (New York: Dover Publications,

of war and a community of voices,
albeit an unrecognizable commu- I would like to thank Ron Witte 1969; facsimile of the original
1931 translation), 20.
and Juliet Koss for their patient
nity. In so doing through the vehicle
of architectural and spatial con- and constructive readings and 13. Karl Marx and Frederick
structs, Back to the Front articulates discussions of previous versionsEngels, Collected Works, vol. 5,
of this text.
a politics of architecture and his- 1845-47 (Moscow: Progress
tory, both at the personal and pub- 1. Alan Colquhoun, "Introduc- Publishers, 1976), 31.
lic scales. Put in other terms, tion: Modern Architecture and 14. Diller + Scofidio, introduc-
architecture here joins the historical Historicity," in Essays in Archi-
tion, 28.
tectural Criticism (Cambridge,
and the spatial to reveal the politi-
Mass.: The MIT Press, 1981), 11.15. Martin Heidegger, "Build-
cal that underlies our everyday life. ing, Dwelling, Thinking," in
While such politics is most evident 2. Herbert Muschamp, "Vaca-Poetry, Language, Thought
in examples of war, Back to the tion Checklist: Socks, Passport,
(New York: Harper and Row,
Architecture," The New York 1971), 152-53.
Front demonstrates that it is equally
Times, 10 July 1994, 30.
present in examples of tourism. 16. Stephen Greenblatt, "To-
3. Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, wards a Poetics of Culture," in
All of the texts in Back to the Front, "The Italian Metamorphosis,"The New Historicism, ed. H.
then, are reinscriptions or restitu- Artforum (January 1995): 109.
Aram Veeser (New York and
tions of history, albeit in enigmatic, 4. Thomas Keenan, "Live From London: Routledge, 1989), 9.
atypical, tactical terms. In refusing a " in Back to the Front:
17. Frederic Migayrou, "The
direct link between sight and site, Tourisms of War, ed. Elizabeth Extended Body: Chronicle of a
the history at the heart of each text Diller and Ricardo Scofidio
Day with No History," in Back
never settles into one context or (France: F.R.A.C. Basse- to the Front, 190-91. N.B.,
framework. The oscillating, per- Normandie, 1994; distributed inMigayrou must be taken at his
petual movement inherent to history the U.S. by Princeton Architec-word when he professes thor-
disturbs those historians who try to tural Press, 1994), 143-46. oughness, for none of the mate-
conceal its motion by pinning it rial is footnoted. In a frustrating
5. Diller + Scofidio, introduction
down underneath an archaeological to Back to the Front, 28-29. general trend, the European
or historicist web. Back to the Front authors tend to present some of
6. Alice Dembner, "A Language
demonstrates that these webs are the most provocative material in
in Eclipse? 'Mais non!' Some
Back to the Front, but all do so
equally fragile - they too are mo- Say," The Boston Globe, 11 July
without providing notes to flag
bile. Where architecture once served 1994, 1.
the way for future readers'
as the historian's alibi in Siegfried 7. Stanley Hoffmann, "France:further forays.
Kracauer's comparison of the tourist Keeping the Demons at Bay,"
and the historian with which this The New York Review of Books,
18. Pierre Nora; quoted in
3 March 1994, 10-16.
Steven Englund's book review,
review began, it now serves to ex- "The Ghost of Nation Past," The
pose the political dimension inher- 8. Jonathan Alter, "War and Journal of Modern History 64,
ent in the nontextual, spatial, Remembrance," Newsweek (13 no. 2 (June 1992): 304. Les Lieux
tactical histories that can only be June 1994): 17. de memoire, which Nora ed-
elusively or blurrily captured within ited, consists of seven volumes
9. Keenan, "Live From ...,"
the pages of a provocative book. 133. collected as three tomes: La
Republique, La Nation, and Les
10. Ibid., 136.
Frances (Paris: Gallimard, 1984,
11. Ibid., 142-43. 1986, 1993).

12. J. K. Huysmans, A Rebours, 19. "Le Passe recompose,"

trans. as Against the Grain interview between Jean-

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Francois Chanet and Mona
Ozouf, Magazine Litteraire 307
(February 1993): 25 (my trans-
lation).
20. Michel de Certeau,
"L'Operation historique," in
Faire de I'histoire, ed. Jacques
le Goff and Pierre Nora (Paris:
Gallimard, 1974), pt. 1, 3 (my
translation).
21. Ibid., 34 n. 2.
22. Ibid., 34.
23. Migayrou, "The Extended
Body," 166.
24. Ibid., 166, 202.
25. Georges van den Abbeele,
"Armored Sights/Sites blindes,"
in Back to the Front, 223.
26. Jean-Louis Deotte, "A
World with No Horizon," in
Back to the Front, 119-20.
27. Diller + Scofidio, "Hostility references to it in dissertations:
into Hospitality," in Back to
the Front, 285.
28. Ibid., 292.
29. Ibid., selection from
foldouts.
30. Ibid., 294.
31. Deotte, "A World with No
Horizon," 119.
32. Lynne Tillman, "Lust for
Loss," in Back to the Front, 208.
33. Keenan, "Live From ... "
159-60.
Harvard University Press, 1982),
34. Tillman, "Lust for Loss," 18-19.
214-15.
35. Ibid., 211.
36. Keenan, "Live From ...,"
160.
37. Originally written in 1975,
Bunker Archeology has finally
been translated into English
and printed in a stunning
Whiting
duotone. See Paul Virilio, Bun-
Figure Credits
ker Archeology, trans. George
Collins (New York: Princeton 1. Photograph by Peter
Architectural Press, 1994). Turnley. From Jonathan Alter,
"War and Remembrance,"
38. Ibid., 47.
Newsweek (13 June 1994).
39. Ibid., 206. 2. France Telecom.
40. "A few years ago I was 3. Robert Capa Photographs,
asked by Genre to edit a selec-
ed. Cornell Capa and Richard
tion of Renaissance essays and
Whelan (New York: Knopf,
then, out of a kind of despera- 1985).
tion to get the introduction
done, I wrote that the essays 4, 5. Elizabeth Diller and
represented something I called Ricardo Scofidio, eds., Back to
the Front: Tourisms of War
a 'new historicism.' . . . For
reasons that I would be quite (France: F.R.A.C. Basse-
interested in exploring at someNormandie, 1994; distributed
point, the name stuck much in the U.S. by Princeton Archi-
more than other names I'd tectural Press, 1994).
very
carefully tried to invent over
the years. In fact I have heard
... quite a lot of talk about the
'new historicism'... ; there are
articles about it, attacks on it,
the whole thing makes me
quite giddy with amazement"
(Greenblatt, "Towards a Poet-
ics of Culture," 1).
41. Ibid., 12.
42. Wilhelm von Humboldt,
"On the Historian's Task,"
History and Theory 6 (1967): 57.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid., 61; Sigfried Giedeon,
Space, Time and Architecture
(1941; Cambridge, Mass.:
45. Deotte, "A World with No
Horizon," 119.
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