Re-visiting the Political Context of Manfredo Tafuri’s
“Toward a Critique of Architectural Ideology”:

‘Having Corpses in our Mouths’

A thesis submitted in fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Architecture

Emre Özyetiş

B.Arch.

School of Architecture and Design

Design and Social Context Portfolio

RMIT University

March 2013

 https://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/eserv/rmit:160487/Ozyetis.pdf

In this thesis I revisit Manfredo Tafuri’s 1969 article “Per una critica dell’ideologia architettonica” (Toward a Critique of Architectural Ideology) within the political context ofItaly in the 1960s. I address the research question: what is the contemporary relevance of the essay read in this context?

I suggest that testing the arguments in Tafuri’s 1969 essay against his complete oeuvre and his subsequent career as a critic or a historian obfuscates and misconstrues the context

and the essay.

I argue that the essay was published in a moment when operaisti protagonists were processing the implications of the operaisti discourse they constructed in relation to the intensification of

the social conflict in Italy in the late 1960s and the 1970s.

This provides a convincing context for Tafuri’s application of this discourse as a total rejection of the possibility of the existence of an architectural profession outside participation in capitalist

development.

 I conclude that, located with precision within the context of the journal Contropiano, where his essay was first published,“Toward a Critique of Architectural Ideology” is more likely to agitate intellectuals and architects than it has previously.

It is important for the generation who has not yet acquired professional autonomy, such as architectural students or interns, to be reminded of Tafuri’s critique within its context as they assume their social vocation.

 Thus this is my target readership for this thesis. It is particularly important to revisit Tafuri and his 1969 essay at a time when there is a growing discussion around a social vocation or discourse on sustainability, participatory design, radical architecture and such.

The social agenda still makes the art and the profession of architecture resilient to transforming political, economic and social structures. In this light, it is not only necessary but also relevant to revisit the nature of the social vocation of architects as it had been criticized in Tafuri’s 1969 essay within the intellectual debates Italian operaisti project initiated.

Intellectuals and architects writing following Tafuri’s death point to the past misinterpretation of the radical threads they attribute to Tafuri in Progetto e utopia. Since then, and predominantly in the twenty-first century, a group of writers such as Asor Rosa, Ghirardo, Day, Aureli and Leach identify this admission of past misappropriation of Tafuri’s project. Among these architectural historians and theoreticians, Asor Rosa, Day and Ghirardo have shown that Tafuri’s arguments have frequently been too hastily dismissed for being too apocalyptic and/or too nihilistic: an interpretation that they do not accept.

 I argue that to counter this interpretation they have also obfuscated the arguments in Tafuri’s essay by making reference to his other works in order to prove that he was not really attacking architectural practice and theory. Similar to works that overlook the political context of Tafuri’s essay, the recent attempts to include it also fail to confront the arguments raised in the essay.

In twenty-first century architectural discourse, Aureli and Day are arguably the authors who pay most attention to the political framework for Tafuri’s essay. They look for the relevance of the political projects initiated by operaismo and autonomia to contemporary architectural discourse. They return to the context for one of two objectives. Aureli returns to the historical political context in order to dismiss the relevance of the autonomist arguments to today. Day returns to the context to neutralize both the context and the arguments by writing a defense from the perspective of the intellectual and the architect who is criticized in Tafuri’s article.

 These contemporary attempts that do re-visit Tafuri within the economic, political and social context of 1960s and 1970s Italy fail to move beyond certain post-1960s rhetoric that justifies the apathy of intellectuals and an impasse in relation to social conflicts. This is encapsulated in the mood: “If you can’t beat them, join them.” The arguments present in the 1969 essay were expanded and elaborated by Tafuri in 1973.The affinity between the 1969 essay and the 1973 volume in which the impact of the 1968 political agenda was less extreme, eases architects, intellectuals and Tafuri scholars into a position where they do not need to confront the implications of the essay and its political framework.

In response to the research question I address, I conclude that if we can approach “Toward a Critique of Architectural Ideology” in the precise moment it occupies within the context of Italy in the 1960s and the ongoing debates amongst operaisti – affiliated intellectuals, we can embrace

the essay as a critique of the limits of intellectuals and professionals in  social conflicts, that is indeed nihilistic and apocalyptic for those who insist on their role as architects or academics. I find this a relevant and important gesture as it may make us more open to be agitated, for us to question our own participation in capitalist development in order to confront the post 1960s as well as contemporary architectural discourse and practice.