plays a kind of materialism based on the primacy of the economic infrastructure—
capitalism—which is viewed as the decisive factor in every area of social and cultural
life. The relation between infrastructure and superstructure in their opinion is not un-
ambiguous or mechanistic, but multifarious and layered. Even so, there is little scope
in their theoretical position for practices that might have an effective critical influence
in the direction of liberation and emancipation.^185
Cacciari’s discourse defines reality on the basis of the conviction that every
form of “synthesis,” every attempt to reconcile the contradictions, is illusory and has
been superseded. Any theory that might promise a future emancipated society has
therefore become impossible. And any critical mode of coexistence with the reality
of capitalist civilization is unmasked in his discourse as a phenomenon of crisis that
in fact ends up confirming the system. The only justifiable attitude, given this as-
sumption, would seem to be that of a resistance originating in a completely disillu-
sioned understanding of the reality of its own existence. A resistance like this cannot
be ascribed any positive definition, because that would inadvertently take on the
form of nostalgic or utopian desires, and thus be doomed to inefficacy. The only thing
that is possible within this logic is to create the suggestion of a difference by demon-
strating the existence of a plurality of languages—something that Cacciari perceives
in the work of Loos and Kafka.
The notion of the existence of a “plurality of languages” that cannot be re-
duced to a single all-embracing synthesizing discourse is typical of the Venice School
in another sense too. Patrizia Lombardo gives a lively description of the way that Cac-
ciari and people like him link their intellectual research with their concrete political
practice in the trade union movement and in—or in alliance with—the Communist
Party. This is not a case of an unbroken, self-evident link: the language of professors
is after all different from that of party militants. Lombardo sketches the movement
between these different languages as a choreography in which synchronic and di-
achronic elements from contrasting registers coincide without forming any smoothly
unified whole. There is a plurality of levels that corresponds to the actual precondi-
tions of modern life. The realization of the ineluctable character of this fragmentation
is what produces negative thought. According to Lombardo, this plurality explains
why Walter Benjamin plays such a central role in Cacciari’s intellectual universe: Ben-
jamin also oscillated between different levels; with him, too, one can talk of a fasci-
nation with incompatible modes of thought, such as Marxism and mysticism.
Benjamin fills a similar role in Tafuri’s work. It is by relying upon Benjamin’s in-
spiration that Tafuri is able to give plausibility to an apparent contradiction in his
work.^186 This contradiction has to do with the incompatibility between the Marxist
concept of truth and that of poststructuralism, both of which form an active presence
in Tafuri’s work. Marxism in the strict sense of the word claims that there is such a
thing as an “objective” reality which allows one to draw a distinction between ideol-
ogy and genuine theory: it is only the authentic theory that offers an accurate account
of objective reality, while ideology gives us a distorted and mystified picture. A sim-
3
Reflections in a Mirror