ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the critical architectural research method, part-architecture, which develops a framework for analysing and recovering the hidden or repressed past to a piece of architecture. In The Optical Unconscious, Rosalind Krauss employs an interdisciplinary approach to rethink art history. In particular, she adopts Jacques Lacan's diagram, the L schema and the associated concept of the part-object, to explore the way certain art objects stimulate, through their optical unconscious, a corporeal response in the spectator. Lacan's key is the objet petita, the part-object. Krauss's analysis suggests that the work of the unconscious is a spatial experience. Lacan frequently invoked language as underpinning consciousness. The unconscious is structured like a language, he stated, it is the world of words that creates the world of things. Glass is a material example of Lacan's visual. Splitting object and gaze, clear glass stands in for sight, and translucent glass becomes a sensual substance intervening.
