Abstract of my History Paper.
Pure Evil.


"The Theatre of Besancon, designed by Claude-Nicholas Ledoux, is the manifestation of the ideologies propagated during French Enlightenment. With the exploration of the duality of private/public, one is able to understand the connotations and implications of the split between the private and the public; such as the motivations behind the cleavage between the individual and social selves is constructed and how this is reflected architecturally.

The French Enlightenment is seen as a reaction to and against prevailing philosophies of the previous epoch. Where the monarchy and the church once dictated the architecture and lives of people, the French Enlightenment saw a shift in power to the society; where power was thrust into the hands of man; and freedom was bestowed in the form of democracy. The collapse of the monarchy heralded idealistic notions of the republic which espoused greater civil society participation, yet resulted in an increasing surveillance of private lives to ensure that no divisive transgression occur.

Changing the societal relations in such a manner would inevitably have an impact on architecture as well; the democratisation of society would translate into the consequent democratisation of space. This conflict is evident in Ledoux’s Theatre of Besancon- a public monument used as a place of performance in the form of the provincial middle-class entertainment, which was patronised by the royal administration and open to the well-behaved working population. The seeming dissolution of the social stratification as an ideology to illustrate democracy, has instead brought about another form of control- the surveillance of the public, where the audiences are to see everything and in turn be seen by everyone.

Together with the use of the contemporary notions of Jeremy Bentham about the Panopticon and Foucault’s subsequent appropriation of the idea in Discipline and Punishment, the paradox of the French Enlightenment theatre’s conceptual values and the actual built Theatre of Besancon will be discussed."


'nuff said.