The political unconscious of architecture : re-opening Jameson's narrative

Author(s)

    • Lahiji, Nadir

Bibliographic Information

The political unconscious of architecture : re-opening Jameson's narrative

edited by Nadir Lahiji

(Ashgate studies in architecture series)

Ashgate, c2011

  • hbk.

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Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Thirty years have passed since eminent cultural and literary critic Fredric Jameson wrote his classic work, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act, in which he insisted that 'there is nothing that is not social and historical - indeed, that everything is "in the last analysis" political'. Bringing together a team of leading scholars including Slavoj Zizek, Joan Ockman, Jane Rendell, and Kojin Karatani, this book critically examines the important contribution made by Jameson to the radical critique of architecture over this period, highlighting its continued importance to contemporary architecture discourse. Jameson's notion of the 'political unconscious' represents one of the most powerful notions in the link between aesthetics and politics in contemporary discourse. Taking this, along with other key concepts from Jameson, as the basis for its chapters, this anthology asks questions such as: Is architecture a place to stage 'class struggle'?, How can architecture act against the conditions that 'affirmatively' produce it? What does 'the critical', and 'the negative', mean in the discourse of architecture? and, How do we prevent architecture from participating in the reproduction of the cultural logic of late capitalism? This book breaks new ground in architectural criticism and offers insights into the interrelationships between politics, culture, space, and architecture and, in doing so, it acts as a counter-balast to the current trend in architectural research where a general aestheticization dominates the discourse.

Table of Contents

  • Contents: Introduction
  • Ban-lieues, Bechir Kenzari
  • The architecture of money: Jameson, abstraction and form, David Cunningham
  • The master's house, Donald Kunze
  • The stolen hope: reading Jameson's critique of Tafuri, Gevork Hartoonian
  • Designing a second modernity?, Hal Foster
  • May mo(u)rn: a site-writing, Jane Rendell
  • Allegories of late capitalism: Main Street and Wall Street on the map of Global Village, Joan Ockman
  • Rethinking city planning and utopianism, Kojin Karatani
  • Frederic Jameson and critical architecture, Louis Martin
  • Reloading ideology critique of architecture, Nadir Lahiji
  • A photography not 'quite right': Frederic Jameson's discussion of architectural photography in 'spatial equivalents in the world system', Robin Wilson
  • The architectural parallax, Slavoj Zizek
  • Botanizing at the Bonaventura: base and superstructure in Jamesonian architectural theory, Terry Smith
  • Jameson, Tafuri, Lefebvre, Xavier Costa
  • Index.

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