Anthropo-scenic strangeness: Extrapolation from the new great temple of Abu Simbel

Jungers, Jean-Jacques [UCL]

The appearance of the term “Anthropocene” attests to the birth of a new era in which the human being stands out as the main geological force of the planet. A large number of indicators shows from 1950 a sudden increase of both urban and world population, pollution, area of domesticated land, etc. This visible superstructural evolution has its downside. Behind the scene, it is accompanied by the production of numerous invisible infrastructures dedicated to transport, human and urban metabolism, telecommunications, etc. The prevailing dream of a global dematerialization obscures the real part of our artefacts to such an extent that it is surprising to hear Stiegler, a French philosopher, describing our era as hypermaterial. Is this hidden hypermateriality generating a new kind of environment, an anthropo-scene? Does it alter the relation between humans and their built environment and inaugurate a new phenomenal era? To answer those questions, the article briefly introduces the role assigned to architecture considering the original division of the speaking being (Lacan). To him, architecture has the task to mediate the difference, the one between his ideal I and his real condition. The article proceeds, afterwards, to analyze the New Great Temple of Abu Simbel considered as being symptomatic of our time because it concentrates its distinctive symbolic and technical forces. This architectural piece of art built for the gods in the 13th century BC has been relocated for the humans in 1964 to be kept from the waters of Lake Nasser. The analysis highlights that the temple has not only been relocated but substantially modified (rock cut into pieces, new concrete structure, artificial site, etc.). Even if most of the differences between the original temple and the new are hidden, some indications make the experience of the visitors very strange. To better understand this experience, the article spells out the Freudian approach of the Unheimlich (Uncanny) later pursued by Mori (Uncanny Valley). It proposes that two different objects, a robot and a human for example, can cause anxiety from a certain degree of resemblance. This is because it questions the ontico-ontological difference of the speaking being. By analogy between the specificities of the New Great Temple of Abu Simbel and those of the anthropo-scene, the article postulates finally the generalization of this particular feeling to the whole of our built environment because it tries to imitate what it was but no longer is. This underlines the necessity for architects to propose another form of environment considering the new infrastructural context of the Anthropocene.