Date: Wed, 19 Mar 1997 23:47:21 +1100 (EST)
Subject: M-TH: Architecture and Politics


Tim Limin wrote:

And the question is what do Marxists do about skyscrapers? Are skyscrapers a
celebration of capitalist achievement? Would celebrating beautiful
architecture mean consuming capitalist ideology?

What do Marxists do about skyscrapers. They dream of occupying them.

Wouldn't it depend on what you mean by "Skyscrapers". Is living in a twenty
storey apartment building in downtown urban wasteland a "celebration" of
capitalism? If we could agree on "beautiful architecture" then we might
feel more ambivalent about its relation to the structure of power.
Benjamin's famous line that every act of culture is also an act of
barbarism is to the point. There is this really good section in Raymond
Williams's "Politics and Letters" where he talks about the uncertain
feelings he has when looking at a gothic cathedral, to be at once in awe of
the engineering and architectural achievement and the sense it gives of
what humans can do, and yet to feel the real weight of that achievement as
itself a symbol of power and authority, exclusion and control.

Thanks for the title of Tafuri's book








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