Your blog comments will
be due on Thursday, June 6th by 10:00 am. Blog comments should be roughly
250-500 words in length and contain at least one quote from the text. You
may use the questions below for inspiration or develop your own response if you
wish.
1) In “Problems in the Form of a Conclusion,”
Tafuri outlines what he perceives as a “crisis” in modern architecture. What, according to Tafuri, is that
crisis? Do you agree or disagree with
Tafuri’s assessment? In what ways might
we apply his critique of modern architecture to the utopias presented in Wright
and Le Corbusier’s essays? Tafuri states
at the end of his essay, “The principal task of ideological criticism is to do
away with impotent and ineffectual myths, which so often serve as illusions
that permit the survival of anachronistic ‘hopes in design’” (367). Do you agree with Tafuri? Why or why not? If not, how might we reimagine the idea of “hope”
in design in our own age? How might
Jameson answer this question? How might
you in your own work? Make sure you provide examples from these texts to
support your answers.
2) Jameson
writes in “Architecture and the Critique of Ideology” that Tafuri is oblivious to
“the dawning of some new postmodernist movement or even ‘age’” (56). How
does Jameson characterize postmodernism?
How would you characterize
postmodernism? How does this “age”
inform your architectural work, or do you see your work as a departure from
what Jameson articulates in his essay? Make sure you provide examples from these
texts to support your answers.
3) Jameson
offers Antonio Gramsci’s ideas of “enclave theory” as an alternative to Tafuri’s
pessimism. What does “enclave theory” entail,
according to Jameson? Conduct a little internet research on Gramsci. What other Gramscian philosophies (such as
hegemony, counterhegemony, and the subaltern) might be useful to architecture? Make
sure you provide examples from these texts to support your answers.
