Nonetheless, says Dal Co, modern architecture has failed to grasp this fact; in-
deed, it specifically adopts a stance of refusing to acknowledge this distance, this
poverty. At the basis of this opposition is a utopian longing that desperately tries to
bridge this distance, conquer the poverty, and restore the lost harmony.
In short, the experience of dwelling as exposure to unconcealment leads to
the recognition of the condition of homelessness that is typical of the metropolis:
Thus there is no harmony in dwelling, since no “fourfold” in modernity
can recompose the wandering of which the home is product. Vanished
for the modern project is the prospect of grasping, through its own
forms, the full presence of a place... the point at which the divine
traverses man’s abode and manifests itself. If dwelling is nothing but
the unresolved manifestation of the lacerations of living and hence an
experience given to regret, then it is up to modern man to know
this condition to its fullest extent, to the essence of metropolitan
homelessness.^176Dal Co concurs with Cacciari, therefore, in interpreting Heidegger’s text as an analy-
sis of that which requires to be questioned (Fragwürdiges) at the heart of modernity.
He too emphasizes the experience of homelessness as a basic condition of life in the
Metropolis. Under these circumstances “dwelling” can only be defined as loss, as
an exposure to the irrevocable consequences of the disappearance of the harmony
and oneness that were typical of the Gemeinschaft. Modernity has severed the or-
ganic bonds between inner and outer realms, between dwellers and place, between
individuals and the group, and there is no new wholeness that has taken its place.
This is the reality that modern architecture has failed to see. It is the historian’s task
to clear up this misunderstanding and to show precisely how the illusory and utopian
character of modern architecture attempts to justify itself. By adopting this stance,
Dal Co is declaring his support for the aim—stated explicitly by Tafuri—of treating
the writing of history as a critique of ideology.
History as Critique of Ideology
Manfredo Tafuri follows the Marxist tradition in treating history writing as a form of
critique of ideology. In Theories and History of Architecturehe opens a frontal assault
on the approach known as “operative criticism,” exposing its ideological character.
He defines operative criticism as “an analysis of architecture (or of the arts in gen-
eral) that, instead of an abstract survey, has as its objective the planning of a precise
poetical tendency, anticipated in its structures and derived from historical analyses
programmatically distorted and finalized.”^177
Operative criticism draws on history in order to give a certain direction to the
future. In Tafuri’s view, this is anything but an innocent activity. A renowned instance
3
Reflections in a Mirror