The Italian architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri (1935–94) developed a distinctive Marxist approach of critical analysis, which has prompted extensive responses. The reception of his work in the United States in the 1970s and 80s – the intervention of Fredric Jameson, especially – forms an important moment of historiographical mutation, in which the status of Tafuri’s politics holds an intriguing place: it was eviscerated in the very act of its affirmation. At stake is not simply the problems attending the transatlantic migration of a body of architectural theory, but also a question lying at the heart of Tafuri’s analysis: the problems of achieving social reforms, above all, in ‘working-class housing’. The difficulties encountered by projects to improve accommodation – from Weimar Germany and Red Vienna in the 1920s to the programmes of postwar Italy – provide the concrete material for Tafuri’s analysis while remaining a significant blind-spot within most of the commentary. Tafuri is here reappraised in the light of the political debates over the ‘neorealist architecture’ of the 1950s and the reform-policies of the Italian centre-Left in the early 1960s. Proceeding as if this formative moment never happened, Tafuri’s critics often engage in debates which confuse his critique of the building projects with political despair, and which appeal to enclave-building despite Tafuri’s explicit questioning of such strategies.
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Asor Rosa Alberto ‘Critique of Ideology and Historical Practice’ Casabella 1995 619 20 29 33
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Aureli Pier Vittorio The Project of Autonomy: Politics and Architecture Within and Against Capitalism 2008 New York The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University and Princeton Architectural Press
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Blau Eve The Architecture of Red Vienna 1919–1934 1999 Cambridge, MA. MIT Press
Cacciari Massimo Sartarelli Stephen Architecture and Nihilism: On the Philosophy of Modern Architecture 1993 New Haven Yale University Press
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Chinello Cesco ‘Il Sessantotto operaio e studentesco a Porto Marghera’ Sindacato e lotte dei lavoratori a Padova e nel Veneto (1945–1969) 1998 Padua Centro Studi Ettore Luchini
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Jameson Fredric ‘The Antinomies of Postmodernism’ The Seeds of Time 1994 New York Columbia University Press
Jameson Fredric Davidson Cynthia ‘The Brick and the Balloon: Architecture, Idealism and Land Speculation’ Anyhow 1998a Cambridge, MA. MIT Press
Jameson Fredric The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998 1998b London Verso
Jameson Fredric Davidson Cynthia ‘From Metaphor to Allegory’ Anything 2001 New York Anyone Corporation
Jameson Fredric A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present 2002 London Verso
Jameson Fredric Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions 2007 London Verso
Krauss Rosalind ‘The Fountainhead’ Oppositions 1974 2 61 70
Lahiji Nadir The Political Unconscious of Architecture: Re-opening Jameson’s Narrative 2011 Farnham Ashgate
Leach Andrew Manfredo Tafuri: Choosing History 2007 Ghent A&S Books
Lippert Kevin Hays ‘Publisher’s Preface’ 1998, 1998a
Llorens Thomas Porphyrios Demetri ‘Manfredo Tafuri: Neo-Avant-Garde and History’ On the Methodology of Architectural History 1981 London Architectural Design Profile
Lumley Robert States of Emergency: Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978 1990 London Verso
Mandarini Matteo ‘Not Fear but Hope in the Apocalypse’ Ephemera 2008 8 2 176 181 available at: <http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/8-2/8-2mandarini.pdf>.
Mandarini Matteo ‘Beyond Nihilism: Notes Towards a Critique of Left-Heideggerianism in Italian Philosophy of the 1970s’ Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 2009 5 1 37 56 available at: <http://qmul.academia.edu/MatteoMandarini/Papers/323605/Beyond_Nihilism_Notes_Towards_a_Critique_of_Left-Heideggerianism_in_Italian_Philosophy_of_the_1970s>.
McLeod Mary Ockman Berke & McLeod ‘Introduction’ 1985
Meyer Hannes Dal Có Francesco ‘Thesen über marxistische Architektur’ Architettura e rivoluzione 1969 Padua Marsilio
Negri Toni Saunders P. & Bostanjoglu E. ‘Keynes and the Capitalist Theory of the State post-1929’ Revolution Retrieved: Selected Writings on Marx, Keynes, Capitalist Crisis and New Social Subjects (1967–83) 1988 [1969] London Red Notes
Ockman Joan Colomina Beatriz ‘Resurrecting the Avant-Garde: The History and Program of Oppositions’, Architectureproduction 1988 New York Princeton Architectural Press
Ockman Joan ‘Venice and New York’ Casabella 1995 619 20 56 65
Ockman Joan , Berke Deborah & McLeod Mary Architecture, Criticism, Ideology 1985 Princeton Princeton Architectural Press
Quaroni Ludovico ‘Il paese dei barocchi’ Casabella continuità 1957 215 24 27
Reichlin Bruno Shugaar Anthony & Joseph Branden W. ‘Figures of Neorealism in Italian Architecture (Part 1)’ Grey Room 2001 5 78 101
Reichlin Bruno Shugaar Anthony & Joseph Branden W. ‘Figures of Neorealism in Italian Architecture (Part 2)’ Grey Room 2002 6 110 133
Ross Kristin May ’68 and Its Afterlives 2002 Chicago University of Chicago Press
Rossanda Rossana ‘The Comrade from Milan’ New Left Review 2008 II 49 76 100
Rossanda Rossana Giuliani Clark Romy The Comrade from Milan 2010 London Verso
Sassoon Donald One Hundred Years of Socialism: The Western European Left in the Twentieth Century 1996 New York The New Press
Tafuri Manfredo Ludovico Quaroni e lo sviluppo dell’architettura moderna in Italia 1964 Milan Comunità
Tafuri Manfredo Teoria e Storia dell’Architettura 1968 Bari Laterza
Tafuri Manfredo ‘Per una critica dell’ideologia architettonica’, Contropiano 1969 2 1 31 79
Tafuri Manfredo ‘Lavoro intellettuale e sviluppo capitalistico’ Contropiano 1970 3 2 241 248
Tafuri Manfredo ‘Socialdemocrazia e città nella Repubblica di Weimar’ Contropiano 1971a 4 1 257 311
Tafuri Manfredo ‘Austromarxismo e città: “Das rote Wien”’ Contropiano 1971b 4 2 259 311
Tafuri Manfredo ‘Review: Socialdemocrazia e città nella Repubblica di Weimar’ Contropiano 1971c 4 4 207 223
Tafuri Manfredo Progetto e Utopia. Architettura e sviluppo capitalistico 1973 Bari Laterza
Tafuri Manfredo Caliandro Victor ‘L’architecture dans le boudoir: The Language of Criticism and the Criticism of Language’ Oppositions 1974 3 37 67
Tafuri Manfredo Luigia La Penta Barbara Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development 1976a Cambridge, MA. MIT Press
Tafuri Manfredo ‘American Graffiti: Five x Five = Twenty-Five’ Oppositions 1976b 5 35 74
Tafuri Manfredo ‘Giuseppe Terragni: Subject and “Mask”’ Oppositions 1977a 11 1 25
Tafuri Manfredo ‘The Dialectics of the Avant-Garde: Piranesi and Eisenstein’ Oppositions 1977b 11 72 80
Tafuri Manfredo ‘The “Historical” Project’ Oppositions 1979 17 54 75
Tafuri Manfredo La sfera e il labirinto. Avanguardie e architettura da Piranesi agli anni ’70 1980a Turin Einaudi
Tafuri Manfredo Verrecchia Giorgio Theories and History of Architecture 1980b London Granada
Tafuri Manfredo Porphyrios Demetri ‘The Uncertainties of Formalism: Viktor Šklovskij and the Denuding of Art’ On the Methodology of Architectural History 1981 London Architectural Design Profile
Tafuri Manfredo ‘There Is No Criticism, Only History’ Design Book Review 1986a 9 8 11
Tafuri Manfredo Storia dell’architettura italiana, 1944–1985 1986b Turin Einaudi
Tafuri Manfredo d’Acierno Pellegrino & Connolly Robert The Sphere and the Labyrinth: Avant-Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s 1987 Cambridge, MA. MIT Press
Tafuri Manfredo ‘Interview with Giancinto Di Pietrantonio’ Flash Art International 1989a 145 67 71
Tafuri Manfredo Levine Jessica History of Italian Architecture, 1944–1985 1989b Cambridge, MA. MIT Press
Tafuri Manfredo Brandolini Sebastiano ‘For a Historical History: Pietro Corsi Interviews Manfredo Tafuri’ Casabella 1995a [1994] 619 20 145 151
Tafuri Manfredo Hylton Kenneth ‘The Culture Markets: Françoise Very Interviews Manfredo Tafuri’ Casabella 1995b [1976] 619 620 37 45
Tafuri Manfredo Levine Jessica Venice and the Renaissance 1995c Cambridge, MA. MIT Press
Tafuri Manfredo Sartarelli Stephen Hays ‘Toward the Critique of Architectural Ideology’ 1998
Tafuri Manfredo Passerini Luisa Bratton Denise L. ‘History as Project: An Interview with Manfredo Tafuri’ Architecture New York 1999 [1992] 25 26 10 70
Tafuri Manfredo Socialismo, città, architettura URSS 1917–1937: Il contributo degli architetti europei 1971 Rome Officina
Tafuri Manfredo Vienna rossa. La politica residenziale nella Vienna socialista, 1919–1933 1980 Milan Electa
Tafuri Manfredo Chatin Catherine Vienne la rouge: La politique immobilière de la Vienne socialiste 1919–1933 1981 Brussels Pierre Mardaga
Teyssot Georges & Henninger Paul ‘One Portrait of Tafuri’ Architecture New York 1999 25 26 10 16
Tronti Mario Operai e capitale 1966 Turin Einaudi
Vidler Anthony ‘Disenchanted Histories: The Legacies of Manfredo Tafuri’ Architecture New York 1999 25 26 29 36
Vidler Anthony ‘Renaissance Modernism: Manfredo Tafuri’ Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism 2008 Cambridge, MA. MIT Press
Weihsmann Helmut Zednicek ‘Red Vienna or “Red Glow on the Horizon” ’ 2009
Wenzl-Bachmayer Monika Wagner-Schule Rotes Wien: Architektur als soziale Utopie 2010 Vienna Wagner-Werk Museum Postsparkasse
Wildcat ‘History of the Porto Marghera Industrial Zone’ Porto Marghera: Die letzten Feuer: Arbeiterautonomie im Veneto 2007 DVD notes for Porto Marghera: Gli ultimo fuochi/Porto Marghera: The Last Firebrands [2004] and Portrait Augusto Finzi[2006] directed by Manuela Pellarin.
Wright Steve Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism 2002 London Pluto
Zednicek Walter Architektur des Roten Wien 2009 Vienna Verlag Walter Zednicek
Tafuri 1989b, p. 22.
Cornelius Castoriadis cited in Ross 2002, p. 192.
Ross 2002.
Rossanda 2008, p. 94 (this text was an extract from and translation of Rossanda’s 2005 memoir, now published in translation as The Comrade from Milan (Rossanda 2010)).
Chinello 1998.
See Lumley 1990, p. 64; and for an extended discussion see Leach 2007. It is symptomatic that even a book such as Vittorio Gregotti’s New Directions in Italian Architecture, which scarcely addresses this history, should nevertheless contain a chapter entitled ‘The Revolt in the Schools of Architecture’ (Gregotti 1968).
Chinello 1998.
Tafuri 1976a; Tafuri 1981; Tafuri 1987. For further discussion of the anti-tragic attitude (which itself related to a critical engagement with Lukács), and the connections between workerist theory and Tafuri’s arguments, see Day 2005, 2010a and 2010b.
Hays (ed.) 1998a, p. xiii.
Tafuri 1969 (translation in Hays (ed.) 1998b, pp. 2–35); Tafuri 1973; Tafuri 1976b.
Tafuri 1974, 1976b, 1977a and 1979. Five articles by Francesco Dal Có and essays by Giorgio Ciucci, Massimo Cacciari and Georges Teyssot were also translated for the pages of Oppositions.
Ockman 1995, footnote 4. It is notable that the important art-journal October – also New York-based and similarly orientated towards European theory, modelling itself on Tel Quel – was launched by Rosalind Krauss, Annette Michelson and Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe two-and-a-half years later in Spring 1976. The design of Oppositions, like that of October, adopted an unadorned and pared-down appearance deemed fitting to this Europhile-intellectual project. No imagery adorned its deep orange, square-format cover. The first ‘p’ of the title was, in contrast to the other letters, rendered only in outline by the designer, Massimo Vignelli, to emphasise an oscillation between ‘Oppositions’ and ‘Positions’. Tempting as it is to see this as poststructuralist or Heideggerian in influence, Ockman argues that awareness of Derrida was, at that point, negligible (Ockman 1995).
Lippert 1998, pp. vii–viii. See Lippert for descriptions of the strains: Eisenman’s interest in formalism, Gandelsonas in structuralism, Frampton in modernism as a critical project. Eisenman’s approach emphasises the rôle of ideal forms and was developed in terms of grammar and syntax, the combination of which would lend itself to both formal and structural analysis. See also Ockman 1988, pp. 180–99. Ockman’s contribution to the issue of Casabella devoted to the memory of Tafuri is especially useful and detailed in charting the mutual connections and fantasies between the figures at IUAV and IAUS. Ockman 1995; see also Ghirardo 2002.
Hays 1998, p. ix. Eisenman had undertaken doctoral studies at Cambridge with Leslie Martin in the early 1960s; Rowe was in the same school and was influential on Eisenman’s interest in Terragni and Gruppo Sette (Ockman 1995). Tafuri’s approach was certainly attentive – in a strong sense – to the determinations of historical and material processes, but the term ‘historical determinist’, especially when counterposed to ‘formalist’, can be misleading. Tafuri’s project involved a historical analysis of form, and of how form has functioned ideologically and economically. Tafuri was not interested in the semiosis of architectural form – although he was aware of the social meanings invested in certain architectural devices (as we shall see later, for example, with regards to ‘neo-realist’ motifs). Rather, his emphasis is on form per se as it is deployed within the economy of day-to-today planning and development. Tafuri takes formalism very seriously; when faced with modes of populist realism, he invariably raises the spectre of formal autonomy and makes a political analysis of, and even a case for, the autonomy of form (Tafuri 1981).
Ockman 1995, p. 59.
Ockman, Berke and McLeod (eds.) 1985.
Llorens 1981. While picking up some themes also addressed by Tafuri – such as the avant-garde and the empty sign – Llorens presented a paper that probably did not to live up to the hopes and expectations intimated by the invitation to participate in the symposium.
McLeod 1985, p. 8.
McLeod 1985, p. 7.
McLeod 1985, pp. 9 and 10. McLeod equates Colin Rowe with the rôle of the New Critics in literary theory. Even when the category of ‘history’ was deployed (as it was in popular criticism and in liberal ‘indiscriminate humanism’), she argues, ‘any attempt to understand history as a dialectical process linked to class structures, no less the role of ideology in maintaining power relations, is rejected outright’ (McLeod 1985, p. 9). Revisions focused on Tafuri’s Architecture and Utopia and Theories and Histories of Architecture, with the translation of ‘The Historical Project’ (which had appeared in Oppositions in the summer of 1979) providing the basis for the group’s grasp on ‘later’ and ‘post-Marxist’ Tafuri (see Tafuri 1979). In addition, their key points of reference were Benjamin, Adorno and Horkheimer, and Habermas – thus leaning firmly in the direction of one wing of the Oppositions project. Attention to Gramsci and Galvano della Volpe extended the range of Italian Marxism; Althusser and Lefebvre were read along with the literary theory of Raymond Williams.
McLeod 1985, p. 7.
McLeod 1985, p. 11.
Jameson 1981; McLeod 1985, p. 11.
McLeod 1985, pp. 8–9.
Lippert 1998, p. vii.
Jameson 2007, p. 228.
Jameson 1984b (republished in Jameson 1991, pp. 55–66, and in Jameson 1998b).
Jameson 1971.
Jameson 1985, p. 53. Asking how we might understand space as a political and ideological category, Jameson notes the stand-off between the approaches of phenomenology and structuralism, and then wonders what (‘dialectical’) ‘third term’ there might be ‘between’ these two theoretical legacies. The work of Pierre Bourdieu (specifically, Outline of a Theory of Practice) and Henri Lefebvre provide hints at what this third term could be, but, for Jameson, their approaches remained to be tested and developed. Tafuri is the third of Jameson’s ‘third terms’ and the one that he sets out to explore in some detail.
The defining statement is Jameson 1984a. Although this essay does not mention Tafuri, it too should be considered in Jameson’s ‘Tafurian’ context.
Jameson 1984b, p. 60.
Jameson 1984b, p. 61.
Jameson 1985, pp. 58, 87.
Jameson 1984b, pp. 62, 60.
Jameson 1985, p. 58.
Jameson 1984b, p. 61. Cf. Jameson’s description of Tafuri’s vision of history as ‘total system’ or as ‘increasingly total and closed system’ (Jameson 1985, p. 58).
Jameson 1988b; Jameson 2002.
Jameson 1985, p. 87.
Jameson 1984b, p. 61.
Tafuri 1989a, p. 68.
Tafuri 1989a, p. 67.
Asor Rosa 1995, p. 29.
See Wright 2002.
Asor Rosa 1995, p. 29.
Tafuri 1999, p. 42.
Tafuri (ed.) 1971. Di Leo’s argument and historical evidence caused friction with the PCI (Tafuri 1999, p. 46).
Tafuri 1995b, p. 43.
Tafuri 1989a, pp. 70–1. See also Tafuri 1974 and Ghirardo 2002.
Ghirardo 2002, pp. 43, 40. Focusing primarily on the category of ‘autonomy’, Ghirardo attributes the distorted reading primarily to Peter Eisenman and Oppositions; she is scathing about Eisenman’s ‘entirely self-interested’ adoption of Tafuri. Ghirardo’s argument is an important corrective and I think she is right to read Tafuri as calling for political decisions. The debate on Tafuri’s position on autonomy is likely to be controversial, even among Tafuri’s own students (see, for example, Teyssot and Henninger 1999). The emphasis in the current essay is neither on the discourse on autonomy nor on the treatment of Tafuri as a ‘theory-commodity’. Instead, I focus on the play of specificity and generality in these debates, especially among their more progressive participants, and try to situate the pressures on left- or liberal-leaning formations within the US academy.
Tafuri 1986a, p. 9.
Forster 1999, p. 63.
Tafuri 1995b, p. 43. See also Tafuri 1974.
Dal Có and Tafuri 1980b; Tafuri 1989b.
Tafuri 1995b, p. 43.
Teyssot and Henninger 1999, p. 13.
See Aureli 2008 and Day 2010b.
Tafuri 1964. Quaroni had worked earlier under the fascist administration (‘first from a position of opposition, and later from one of surrender’, Tafuri noted) but became socially engaged after the War, researching the question of poverty for a parliamentary commission.
Tafuri 1999, p. 29. For Tafuri, Quaroni represented ‘an architect who had participated in the whole trajectory of Italian history, the most profound of all of them’ (Tafuri 1999, p. 30).
See Gregotti 1968, pp. 47–63 (Gregotti calls the phase ‘the striving for reality’); Tafuri 1989b; Dal Có and Tafuri 1980a and 1980b; Reichlin 2001 and 2002.
Aymonino 1957, p. 20.
Tafuri 1989b, p. 42; Ginsborg 1990, pp. 246–7.
Tafuri 1989b, p. 42. In the 50s only 120,000 industrial jobs were created, but 400,000–500,000 emerged in the construction and transportation-sectors (Reichlin 2001, p. 99, n. 14).
Tafuri 1989b, pp. 23–5.
Tafuri 1989b, p. 17.
Tafuri 1989b, pp. 10, 11.
Gregotti 1968, p. 44.
Quaroni 1957, p. 24.
Aymonino 1957, p. 20 (translations follow Reichlin 2001). Self-criticism by architects – including Quaroni, Giancarlo De Carlo, Federico Gorio – questioning their involvement in the project at La Martella appeared from 1954 onwards.
Tafuri 1989b, p. 33.
Tafuri 1989b, p. 16.
Tafuri 1989b, p. 40.
Tafuri 1989b, p. 84. See also Ginsborg 1990, pp. 267ff.
Lelio Basso cited in Ginsborg 1990, p. 274.
Ciucci 1995, p. 25. The issues of memory and time are recurring themes in the literature on Tafuri since his death, starting with the double commemorative volume of Casabella in early 1995 (Numbers 619–20) and continuing, for example, in the journal Architecture New York in 1999 (Numbers 25–26). They are thematically addressed in Leach 2007 and Vidler 2008.
Foster 1984.
Foster 1983/Foster 1985b, p. xii. Foster used alternative designations, such as ‘poststructuralist postmodernism’ or ‘critical postmodernist’. See also Foster 1984.
Jameson 1984b, pp. 63, 62, 63. The task, Jameson elaborates, is ‘to assess the new cultural production within the working hypothesis of a general modification of culture itself with the social restructuring of late capitalism as a system’ (Jameson 1984b, p. 63).
Jameson 1985, p. 73. In the republished version in The Ideologies of Theory the word ‘utopia’ is capitalised.
Jameson 1985, p. 58. Tafuri thought Adorno’s dialectic ‘too simplistic’ (Tafuri 1995b, p. 37).
Jameson 1985, p. 58.
Tafuri 1995b, p. 43.
Tafuri 1989b, p. 17.
Förster 2010, p. 39.
Dal Có and Tafuri 1980a, p. 164.
Tafuri (ed.) 1981, p. 93; Dal Có and Tafuri 1980a, p. 164.
Tafuri (ed.) 1981, p. 86, 90.
Tafuri (ed.) 1981, p. 90.
Tafuri (ed.) 1981, p. 93.
Dal Có and Tafuri 1980a, p. 164; cf. Tafuri (ed.) 1981, pp. 93, 95.
Dal Có and Tafuri 1980a, p. 166.
Tafuri (ed.) 1981, p. 86.
Tafuri (ed.) 1981, p. 94.
Dal Có and Tafuri 1980a, p. 162.
Tafuri (ed.) 1981, p. 7.
Dal Có and Tafuri 1980a, p. 162.
Dal Có and Tafuri 1980a, p. 166.
Gruber 1991, p. 180.
Gruber 1991, p. 185. According to Sassoon, ‘Austro-Marxism resurfaced briefly in the 1970s when, once again, a “third way” between Soviet-style communism and reformist social democracy was being sought. . . . In retrospect, it appears to have been a passing fashion rather than a real revival’ (Sassoon 1996, p. 73).
Eley 2002, p. 215.
Jameson 1985, p. 72.
Jameson 1985, p. 57.
Jameson 1985, pp. 59ff.
Jameson 1985, p. 65.
Jameson 1985, p. 57.
Jameson 1985, pp. 64, 62 (Jameson’s emphasis). Readers of Jameson will note how ‘formal necessity’, while not identical with, nevertheless closely parallels his emphasis on ‘cultural logic’, which has itself been criticised for its deterministic sense of history.
Jameson 2001, p. 30. Allegory, he argues, forces the critic beyond the static nature of metaphor and symbol, allowing us to ‘construct a whole history’ and ‘reconstruct a fundamental contradiction’ – and thus to give meaning to architecture (Jameson 2001, p. 33).
Jameson 2001, p. 30.
Jameson 2001, p. 29. Jameson thinks the Siedlungen ‘failed’ precisely because they were successful, by which he seems to mean that they were subject to gentrification (Jameson 2001, p. 33). It is not at all clear which Siedlungen or Höfe he has in mind.
Jameson 2001, pp. 31, 30.
Jameson 2001, p. 33.
Jameson 2001, pp. 33–4. As he concludes: ‘Perhaps the utopian approach today is not the older modernist one of projecting a possible solution to an impossible contradiction but rather one of reconstructing the problem and the contradiction itself in the first place’ (Jameson 2001, p. 36).
Hardt and Negri 2000, pp. 210–14.
Tafuri in Ciucci 1988, p. 503.
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The Italian architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri (1935–94) developed a distinctive Marxist approach of critical analysis, which has prompted extensive responses. The reception of his work in the United States in the 1970s and 80s – the intervention of Fredric Jameson, especially – forms an important moment of historiographical mutation, in which the status of Tafuri’s politics holds an intriguing place: it was eviscerated in the very act of its affirmation. At stake is not simply the problems attending the transatlantic migration of a body of architectural theory, but also a question lying at the heart of Tafuri’s analysis: the problems of achieving social reforms, above all, in ‘working-class housing’. The difficulties encountered by projects to improve accommodation – from Weimar Germany and Red Vienna in the 1920s to the programmes of postwar Italy – provide the concrete material for Tafuri’s analysis while remaining a significant blind-spot within most of the commentary. Tafuri is here reappraised in the light of the political debates over the ‘neorealist architecture’ of the 1950s and the reform-policies of the Italian centre-Left in the early 1960s. Proceeding as if this formative moment never happened, Tafuri’s critics often engage in debates which confuse his critique of the building projects with political despair, and which appeal to enclave-building despite Tafuri’s explicit questioning of such strategies.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 1739 | 269 | 43 |
Full Text Views | 820 | 474 | 3 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 1334 | 1053 | 5 |