"On the Aporia of the Center"

Excerpted from the 2007 Annual Lisbon Labyrinth Conference.
Recorded and transcribed by Thomas Stalle, 6/17/2007.

Four preeminent labyrinthians assess in brief the phenomenon of le culte du centre ("the cult of the center"), a subject on which much ink has been spilled in contemporary/postmodern labyrinth theory.


Bernhard Smallencroft PhD (author of Lostness as Such: Towards an Ethics of the Labyrinth)
"As you all know, much consideration has recently been given to a notion which argues that the center of the labyrinth must be the focal point of labyrinth studies as a whole. I watch with consternation as many of my colleagues, many, in fact, who are seated in this room alongside me, focus doggedly upon the problematic of the center. In fact, in our present epoch, we labyrinthians have become increasingly dogmatic. We no longer allow ourselves to experience the labyrinth in primordial ways. It ceases to be an experience which discloses itself to us in manifold. Rather, we view it only as filtered through the lenses of history, politics, philosophy or, most problematic, by way of the cult of the center.”


Charles Dedal (author of The Minotaur’s Ghost: An Anthology of Labyrinth Scholarship after H.M. Gollesten)
"Thank you, Bernhard. You raise good points. You’ll forgive me if I once again evoke Gollesten, but as is often the case, he has articulated and foreseen the aporia with which you now grapple. As many of you may know, Gollesten was very definitely a perimeterist. For him, the labyrinth is something that is not only extra-mental, but extra-corporeal to the nth degree. Gollesten maintained that we are always already outside of the labyrinth, even as we find ourselves navigating its convoluted passageways. To prioritize the center is perhaps unavoidable. The center is the other, the center is telos. To take this argument one step further, I argue that our insistence on privileging the center over the perimeter is natural, and to deny its preeminence is to assume an artificial and, in the Heideggerian sense of the word, inauthentic mode of being."


Stephon Crete (author of Magnetism and Flux)
“My views on the cult of the center are consistent with my opinions about the bulk of much contemporary labyrinth scholarship: it doesn’t hold water. What’s important now, in the wake of Gollesten, is to understand the salvific and procodic magnetic ramifications of labyrinths as such.”


Jacques Oligreff (founder of the Populist Labyrinth Syndicate)
"I will say precious little about le culte du centre. Much to my surprise, I actually agree in part with M. Crete. Our focus has shifted too far into the celestial realms of pure theory and abstraction. We need to reclaim the labyrinth for the everyman as a manifestation of and monument to the Sisyphean nature of the human condition. The labyrinth will once again rise to prominence."