week seven_article eleven_blog twenty three

Richard Rorty_Globalization, the Politics of Identity and Social Hope

In a just global society not only would all children have roughly equal chances, but the girls would have the same sort of chances as the boys. In that society, nobody will care about which sex you fall in love with, any more that about the lightness or darkness of your skin. In that society, people who want to think of themselves as Basque first, or black first, or women first, and citizens of their countries or of a global co-operative commonwealth second, will have little trouble doing so.
-Rorty

Upon digestion of this article, I find myself contemplating the role of both narrative and utopianism in relation to the current state of both architectural theory and the discipline of architecture, and wondering in this regard, why it is that we have seemingly abandoned both. With respect to the intellectual backgrounds for political deliberation and social philosophy, Rorty positions historical narrative, rather than philosophical of quasi-philosophical theory, as its appropriate basis; the “kind of historical narrative that is prolonged into a utopian scenario about how we can get from the present to a better future.” One could surely include architectural discourse within this framework as well.

Emerging out of this discussion, one wonders, is there anything inherently wrong with utopianism; with holding utopian aspirations and desires? Has architectural discourse discarded historical narrative and utopian idealism as base points in favor of various other considerations (philosophy, language, psychoanalysis, etc.)? If such a shift has occurred, then why? Have we “lost hope in our ability to construct a plausible narrative of progress”, perhaps because of the failings of our recent architectural past (the utopianistic/universalist ideals of Modernism) and the evolution of a general cultural mindset which has lost much faith in the promise of technological advancement and economic development? Within this contemporary context, what is the most socially useful thing that architecture can do; what is its social agenda? What are the central questions for architecture today? Do we have any such central unifying questions/objectives any longer? As perpetual and permanent students of architecture, is it time to again ask questions about architecture’s meta-narrative, about its social importance, about its ability to strive towards a set of ideals in order to better our existence on this planet? Is the relentless pursuit of a ‘critical utopianism’ a way for contemporary cultural production to gravitate away from hopeless nihilistic viewpoints that our existence on this earth is largely senseless and useless towards positions of hope for a positive social future? How can we utilize the possibilities of utopian dreams; how do we mobilize utopianism? What is architecture for if not for the purpose of helping to establish a society similar to the one described by Rorty above?