Call for Submissions for COTAA #2 - The Double

The Double

The concept of the double has long fascinated—and unsettled—philosophers, psychologists, and artists, emerging as a site of tension between self and other, reality and illusion, truth and distortion. The double operates as a bizarre paradox—identical yet different, a reaffirmation yet an erasure. At once a mirror and a rupture, it both confirms and undermines what it replicates, exposing the fragility of authenticity, permanence, perception, and authorship. At its core, the double reveals that nothing—whether an idea, creation, being, or system—is ever truly singular or self-contained.

For Plato, the double is a fundamental problem of representation. He argues that all representation is merely a copy of a copy—an imitation of the material world, which itself is an imperfect reflection of the realm of immutable Forms, the ideal and perfect versions of all things. Twice removed from truth, the double deceives, seducing the senses and distancing us from knowledge. Yet if something can be duplicated, doesn’t that imply its essence was never singular to begin with? Plato assumes an original, stable truth, yet the double challenges that very premise, revealing meaning as constructed, mediated, and unstable. The double does not merely distort truth—it unravels the illusion of truth itself.

Freud places the double at the heart of the uncanny, unsettling us because it is both familiar and strange. A reflection that appears to take on a life of its own fractures our belief in a stable self. Lacan extends this idea, arguing that the double is central to subject formation. In the mirror stage, an infant misrecognizes its reflection as a unified self—an illusion of wholeness that forms the ego, even as the real self remains fragmented. The double, thus, is both an idealised projection and a false image, creating an endless tension between ego and alter ego, self-perception and the divided subject.

Baudrillard pushes the concept further, arguing that the double is no longer just a reflection of reality but has become reality itself. If Plato saw imitation as a distortion of truth, Baudrillard contends that in postmodern culture, the copy has replaced the original. In a hyperreal world saturated with representation and reproduction, reality dissolves into simulation. The double no longer refers to an original—it becomes self-sustaining, endlessly circulating with no fixed connection to external truth.

For Derrida, the double is not a copy but a disruption that exposes the instability of meaning. His concept of différance suggests that meaning is never fully present but always deferred. The double does not confirm an original but deconstructs it, revealing that everything is already a repetition of something else. Rather than a faithful reproduction, it is a fracture of meaning, a mark of instability that reshapes what it replicates.

Deleuze, in contrast, sees the double not as a deconstruction of an original but as difference in itself. No copy is ever truly identical to its source; every repetition introduces variation, transformation, and instability. The double, then, is not a reflection but a mutation, a becoming-other—an act of creation rather than mere duplication. It never remains the same; it continuously escapes itself, multiplying meaning rather than fixing it.

Blanchot takes the double into the realm of absence and negation. For him, doubling is not just replication but erasure—a haunting presence that signals something missing. In literature and art, it often appears as a shadow, a ghost, or a doppelgänger, suggesting that the original was never fully there to begin with. To be doubled is also to be undone, forcing us to question whether an original ever truly existed or if it was always a construct upheld by belief in its singularity.

The double, then, is neither simple repetition nor pure opposition. It is a state of tension- between being and non-being, meaning and its unravelling. It reminds us that everything we see, create, or define is always subject to doubling. Whether through deception, simulation, deconstruction, difference, or negation, the double unsettles our claims to reality, compelling us to reconsider what is real, what is constructed, and what lingers in the liminal space between.

From Louis Kahn’s “unified whole” and Robert Venturi’s “difficult whole” to Kersten Geers’ “difficult double,” COTAA #2 explores the complexity and contradictions of the double in architecture. What follows is an open-ended pinboard of ideas and provocations—an invitation to question and rethink the possibilities of the double.

Read the full Call for Papers here.

The 2nd number of the peer-reviewed architectural magazine COTAA welcomes abstracts of papers, not exceeding 300 words, including references, bibliography, and image descriptions (black and white – in format .jpeg), composed with minimal formatting within a single editable Microsoft Word file or a Microsoft Word-compatible document. All materials which are submitted to COTAA must be in English – UK. 

All abstracts and reviews will be sent to [email protected] until the 7^th of April, 2025. Notifications of acceptance will be sent on the 14^th of April, 2025. 

The final form of the selected papers will have between 5000 – 6000 words and will undergo a double-blind peer review process. Review proposals shall be sent in the same form as the abstract submissions, respecting the same calendar. The final form of the reviews will have a maximum of 2000 words. 

Calendar for COTAA 2/2025: 

Submission of abstracts: 7^th  of April, 2025 
Notification of acceptance: 14^th  of April, 2025 
Full paper submission for double-blind peer review: 16^th  of June, 2025 
Peer review results sent to authors: 14^th  of July, 2025 
Final paper submission: 25^th  of August, 2025
Journal publication: 1^st of November, 2025

Daniel Tudor Munteanu, March 2024
(Guest Editor, COTAA - Collection of Texts About Architecture)

https://www.cotaa.ro/2-2025/