Mirrors at the Threshold: From Mirror Stage to Macrocosm

Mirrors were crucial elements in defining the modern concept of the architectural interior in Europe during the seventeenth century. In the first section of this article we show how mirrors supported the development of Enlightenment theory of the psycho-social subject. This theme eventually reached its apex with Jacques Lacan’s essay ‘The Mirror Stage’ and came to define the prevailing critical approach. The mirror in premodern Islam, however, is less concerned with the psycho-social subject and its interior architecture. In the second section, we consider how mirrors such as those employed in ayeneh-kari tiling are understood to situate cosmically and act poetically. Dissolving, fragmenting, and scattering effects tend to have greater importance than questions of self-image. Having established these contrasting critical positions, we then consider two more current permutations of the mirror: the advent of the mirror-glass façade in the twentieth century, and the use of mirrors in contemporary installation art. In the third and fourth sections, we explore the way mirrors can decentre the individual as a source of meaning and suggest or evoke new macrocosmic identities. Critical emphasis on the psychological subject’s interior architecture falls short of recognising the many ways the physical design and construction of spaces might contribute to a wider range of spatial experiences and practices. In our concluding reflections, we suggest (without foreclosing other meanings or uses of the mirror as threshold) that practical and critical uses of the mirror have implications for spatial politics.