Session Ten: Outcomes

It is customary to establish what has been learnt at the end of a course. In this case that is not so easy to pin down, since acquiring critical acumen is a long term process. However here is some kind of checklist:

1. You have been exposed to a variety of critical modes; journalistic (Meades, Self), satirical (Waugh), formal (Rowe), idiosyncratic (Rowe), poetic (Ginsberg), materialist/Marxist (Lefebvre, Eagleton, Davis), Neoliberal (Hickey), Libertarian (Rand), interpretive (Berman), which should have widened your perspective on how to think and write critically. All of these modes are potentially available at the same time, but we have picked exemplars of each type.

2. These examples are sourced both from so called 'high' and 'popular' culture, indicating that critical thinking does not presuppose a particular domain. We can be as critical of Gardeners World as we can the Villa Medici.

3. We have attempted, in sequentially going backwards chronologically, to retrace our critical steps, so providing a 'road map' or grand narrative (of sorts) as to where we have been and where we are now. Essentially we have learnt to use the past to help us with today.

4. Each week we have blogged our thoughts on each text, aware of what we have already done, and wary of what might be next. Hopefully some areas have become more fascinating than others, so preparing your for your Research Methods course next semester, and ultimately your dissertation.

5. By doing all of the above, we have hopefully become rather exhausted by our own opinion, and learnt to respect and enjoy the opinions of thinkers we hadn't encountered before, making us more open  to discerning argument.

FINAL BLOG: for your final and tenth blog, you are asked to sum up your critical thinking experience.

SUBMISSION: You are asked to print out and bind your ten blogs, sequentially 1 to 10 and not in reverse order, and submit them to the School Office on the third floor of the Tower Block on the first day you return from the Christmas holidays at the beginning of the Spring term.

Notes on Session Nine

Reviewing the world of Howard Roark is tricky. I certainly found it so when I wrote my Reputations piece on him for the AR (December 2013- just go to the AR website to download).
This film is undoubtedly melodramatic propaganda, but we also sense a few home truths. After all Goebbels understood that the best propaganda is that which you do not register as propaganda. Whilst the word 'integrity' is spat out at all too regular intervals throughout this film, integrity is still something we all respect and we feel guilty if we do not appreciate it.
It is certainly the case that Ayn Rand pushes herself to extremes; is it all hopelessly overblown? Most of us understand that co-operation and altruism are the route to an even partially successful private life, not obsessive selfhood. But of course I might be wrong; we should certainly not underestimate Rand and her importance in the mythology of the USA.
However the female lead, Domenique (modelled on Rand herself 'in a bad mood') behaves in most peculiar way and gives the most startling looks. Meanwhile her menage with Howard and Gail features one of the stranger 'bromances' (where only one of them can come out top dog and the other has to shoot himself- it's humanity like high stakes poker). Worst we get no clue as to why Roark's architecture is any good in the first place, other than for it's 'integrity' (based on Louis Sullivan aka Cameron). However this is not how it looks, it looks, instead, rather funky. But you can put that down to the rookie set designer.
As to blowing up such a servicable facility because it offends the so called author; that's a field day for all critics of 'the genius myth'.

Notes on Session Eight

It is rare for me to speak for an hour and a quarter on the subject of one book, but I proved it possible yesterday.
The reasons one might be able to do this include the fact that this novel was 'supposed to be funny' but in actual fact, with further contemplation of it's context, personal and otherwise, becomes immensely serious, even profound. It is essentially a satire on the British way of life, our class system and so on, where the hero, Paul Pennyfeather, is rather a dupe. Paul represents us. But it is also a novel whose core message is that you are trapped in your own skin, it will ever be thus, and thus also most depressing. The only way out, for Paul and well as Evelyn, is religion.
Prof Silenus the modern architect's role is hence particularly interesting, for whilst he enters the story as avant garde, full of machine age enthusiasms, he ends it with his tail between his legs, thinking Greece has lovely goats rather than temples. A soppiness for animals seems very far removed from his original concerns.
Making obvious comparison with Le Corbusier is one thing, but bringing consideration of the fate of modernism in general brings rather startling revelations as to how architecture sits within the famework of 'Britishness'.

Session Nine: Objectivism

In this session we shall watch The Fountainhead. In the final session (Session 10) I shall do a round up of all the texts we've studied, hopefully providing take home messages for each, so if you've missed out, please sure you attend in the last week of term.

It is fitting to end our readings with this film. Author and scriptwriter Ayn Rand has been hugely influential in American thinking to the point where Northern California seemed almost exclusively populated by Anns and Randys as Silicone Valley boomed. Her rejection of any form of altruism has been, to say the least, convenient within Late Capitalism, but it did make her an exceedingly bitter old lady. 

There was a spat during 'I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here' last night between ex-Playboy mansion playmate Kendra and Edwina Currie. Kendra was pleading the virtues of the self, that she came first, in a way that almost came straight out of the Randian world. It was clear she really believed all this stuff, to the point of sobbing and wailing. Meanwhile I was reminded she only ever seemed to provide one meal for the camp in her trials; conceptually enough for herself. It is perhaps the only time in my life that I could be found agreeing with Edwina Currie, who has clearly been scarred by such thinking, and personally I'm rather rooting for 'Foggy', because he not only wins all the stars, but resigned himself to rescuing trapped campmates from the slammer.

It was a happy accident that Rand chose an architect, Howard Roark, to represent her theories. I wrote a 'Reputations' on Roark for the December 2013 issue of AR if you care to dig it out for further reference.

Notes on Session Seven

The first thing to note about Howl is how influential this poem has been. The array of references across the desk included photographer (and maker of the Rolling Stones film Cocksucker Blues) Robert Frank,    William Burrough's inquisition of language; The Job, Archigram originals and museum pieces, even the first Glastonbury album with lots of hippie extras plus plenty more. All presume to question our assumptions on our notion of freedom, in a climate where we might appear to finally have it, but where the enemy is now a the military industrial complex as much as parental conformity. These are challenged by a new sense of sexual freedom and spiritual enlightenment. I pointed out that spiritual enlightenment has consistently filled a supposed vacuum since Nietzsche declared 'God is Dead' in 1882) In our field, in architecture, it meant questioning what architecture actually was, and who was getting in the way of our so called fresh opportunities (we can make steel any length etc; where did the idealism go?...Put 600,000 people in a field for three days.. etc).
Lefebvre's enquiry in to what language means is rather replaced by an emphasis on the restriction of language itself, since that is the vehicle of authority; or the Media is the Message, a concept espoused by Marshall McLuhan and very popular through the sixties. McLuhan saw us entering a newly tactile world (but he was also a devout catholic, so that would suit him). I wonder how this looks to us now given actual corporatization.

Session Eight: Modernism

Remember this book is supposed to be funny. The idea is to read all of it. It's not long.

Meanwhile, if you are stuck for time, then the moment when architect Professor Silenus arrives is Chapter 1 of Part 2 of the book.

Notes on Session Six

The byword here would seem to be subtlety rather than judgement. It is clear that when we read Berman's interpretation of Faust we gain many insights, one tumbling after another, as to our roles in a developing world. By that we mean an industrial world which has broken free of religion as it's only guiding light. We might find echoes of Faust in the defiant romantic artist; in Michelangelo, Velasquez, Goya, or Francis Bacon, as much as we can see it in our scientists. When it comes to architecture we can see the spirit of mobilisation, of organisation alive in L-C; and we can see echoes in our own lives. Berman was endebted to sixties counter-culture (sex and drugs) and we should read that in to his analysis. We will look at those dreams of escape next week.
Today we can see development gone wrong in China and Dubai, or as the Imperial War Museum becomes a shop, and we should recognize the emptiness this can bring.
But development as a personal thing as much as a physical thing, and a great, ongoing, challenge.
Goethe sees the challenge in the fact that development is unstoppable, that it means there will be victims, including those who develop themselves as well as those who are left behind, that speed is of the essence, and this, as a future for everybody, looks excessively exhausting, especially when enough is never enough. To change this notion of a life, even for yourselves, is going to be a hell of an effort.