Epilogue: Theory, Momentarily

• Published in: Theory & event Vol. 24; no. 1; pp. 399 - 410
• Main Authors: Weizman, Eyal, Gandorfer, Daniela
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 2021
• Subjects: Criminal investigations; Journalism; Learning; Police; Politics; Tense; Time
• ISSN: 2572-6633; 1092-311X; 1092-311X
• DOI: 10.1353/tae.2021.0014

I want to start with a question about "Lethal Theory," an essay you published in 2006 and which has remained an important piece in thinking about the often-assumed separation between theory and practice. Coming from your own field, architecture, which might be dispositionally closer to practice(s) and the physical (and built) world, you challenge the assumption of pure theory, meaning something residing only in academic texts, having an impact, if at all, in university contexts. In fact, it is precisely the often even lethal impact (literally, pushing or striking against) that your essay attends to, most concretely the IDF's tactic of "walking through walls" and other forms of urban warfare developed by Israeli military strategists engaging with critical theories.1 You argue that while you are not comparing the use of critical theory in architecture with its application by the Israeli military, "a close examination of the latter certainly reflects on the former, insofar as it illustrates a more general problem of the relationship between theory and practice."3 The essay demonstrates the importance of thinking theory and practice together and foreshadows the mode of investigative theory that you, and eventually Forensic Architecture, are doing today. Can you speak about the notion of "theory" in the essay's title, and, in regard to writing theory, also the challenges and complicities the essay exposed?