It would suffice to remember Roland Barthes in order to understand thepleasure of the best of words, even of the whisperings provoked by silence. And it is not because we have now come to say or do the opposite of what we want; it is just that no will, or subject, dominates the effects of how certain statements perform, or the chance of their proliferation.

It won’t be enough to describe, decipher, or even interpret if that entails a going-back to some sense that has already been previously given. It isn’t that there is impotence in what has been said or even that this defines and fixes what to say; it is just that only the unspeakable has this capac- ity. Michel Foucault’s text is entitled “Le mots et les choses” because it is exactly in this relation between words and things where we detect that precisely words, as Plato’s Cratylus reminds us, are relationship. But it is no more between subject and words because it is not possible to attribute to any subject, to any intention, to any meaning, what the word must do. Mantzou shows us that we do not become post-alphabetic simply because new technologies have installed different forms or formats of language and communication; it is because the bond between word and concept is no longer essential in order for the word itself to be a conception and to produce an induction. We can hardly discern what this could mean as we face the loss of the unique, permanent or absolute version.

Not even the attempts to safeguard the course of events in a narration can offer us comfort. The end of the dynasty of representation obstructs the preservation of sense through the proliferation of images and texts. It is not only the end of mediation; it is that ultimately there isn’t really immediacy. It is an other time, it is another time and maybe, if Hegel was right, a certain eternity.

It is not clear if the instant can be conceived as a fragment that could be inhabited. Nor could we speak about wandering or inclemency, as there would be no one to rave. Not even experience could be properly understood as shelter. The only theory, the true theory, would be, in this case, the con- templation in a seeing without object-ive; the one of a surrendered thought. Perhaps, we should then try to incorporate some kind of biological terminol- ogy, as a pre-announcement of its encounter with the new, emerging tech- nologies; an encounter, which is already being engendered. We can barely glimpse what this might entail and only some forms of memory that survive beyond remembrance could offer us a light that, nevertheless, would no longer be for us.

This situation does not prevent us from speaking, dreaming or speculating, but everything will be now more about position, posture, distance, per- spective, more about supervision than vision. Attributing facts to causes becomes arduous. No shelter could be found in the abstract; the post- alphabetic would no longer be an order in a chronological division but rather a transformation that is so radical that it might be considered a disorder. Even so, it could be fruitful.

It is not just that “concept erases time” as Hegel points out, it is that it is impossible to find the traces of what was inscription, scratch, mark and writing. Space would be the only form of duration, but with an instantane- ity without land in which to find refuge. Polyxeni Mantzou reminds us that Hestia limited her presence at the hearth, by the fire, apparently awaiting the arrival of Hermes, the tireless traveler. However, we no longer have the possibility of something intermediate that interweaves the divine and the human, as does Eros at Plato’s banquet; or that links the vertical with the horizontal in an assured distribution. Not only sense has been lost, but also direction.

However, affections without object seem to wander like spores in the air, like feelings without residence, like emotions without effects. And it is no longer possible to refer to any origin, any previous state, any accommodation in a subject. Nor is the ending anymore an end. But strangely enough, possibilities, which no one could at first arrogate, now open. They would seem to be about an other geography, not merely a new archive; but rather of a cartography, destined not just to produce maps, but to provide letters, cards, tablecloths and mats as well, on which to wager what remains, and even the rest; the true subject is the game itself. Just remember Gadamer or Fink.

In any case the mystery of the post-alphabetic continues to allow the pas- sage between what changes and what persists; there is still the possibil- ity of mutation, of transformation, and as a consequence, something could happen, something may occur. Architecture can fit. New routes open and, if words let us say so, a new temporality as well.

Perhaps it can also be said that another education is needed; one that transgresses the dominant fields of knowledge and one that requires a certain asceticism, a sort of retreat, a distancing, an estrangement and an untimeliness. Maybe it should be an architecture of events, of series, of occasions instead of works. And maybe there would be no appropriation; just inhabiting and being inhabited by it. In this sense, we can say that Polyxeni Mantzou’s book is disconcerting; it is more spectacular than spectacle; more disconcerting than concerting; more necessary than useful. And it opens a rereading of the public that is no longer opposed antithetically to the private, as if an oneiric and erotic demon has been tying together what resists to be identified.

No longer will it be possible to look either equally or in the same way. And the public will not be a site, nor a process, but rather another dimension of the physical. It wouldn’t even be considered a place, or an ambit in which drifting is possible but it would still provoke incisions to all willing to be emplaced in it. That is why Mantzou speaks about the hybrid, which is not just a merging, but rather the engendering of an other reality.

The post-alphabetic dislocates us in such a radical way and summons us in such an attractive way that it would be difficult to choose what we pre- fer. But still, it is necessary to choose, and doing so is not exempt from important risks. Capitulating is not attractive; neither ceding to what many times seems inevitable.
This beautiful and enigmatic book makes Mantzou’s consideration a text that is not merely reflective. Something is happening, it is happening to us. And not just us, or preferably us. Perhaps architecture is also, as its name reveals, an originating principle of doing, but not one of remittance to an origin from which it should break free.

Angel Gabilondo
Professor of Metaphysics Universidad Autónoma de Madrid