147ilar assumption would seem to underlie the book Architecture and Utopia, which
postulates a relatively unambiguous and monolithic interpretation of modernity. Al-
though counterpastoral in its stressing of the unavoidable contradictions that are in-
herent to capitalism, the concept of modernity that is implicit in this book doesn’t
leave much space for an active intervention by intellectuals or artists that would re-
ally be capable of altering the course of things. Modernity is seen as a blind histori-
cal force that, though clearly programmed, is not programmatic in that it doesn’t not
come forth from any conscious project of emancipation and liberation.
In Modern Architecture, however, the emphasis is placed right from the out-
set upon the multifarious character of recent architectural history: “Obviously the in-
tersection of all those manifold histories will never end up in unity.”^187 The influence
of poststructuralism, which takes as its point of departure the notion that reality
cannot be grasped except through socially defined—and therefore distorted—
categories, is more pronouncedly present here. Given a basis such as this, truth ap-
pears as diversified and impossible to define exhaustively. This stance, however,
cannot easily be reconciled with the Marxist appeal to an “authentic theory.” This
contradiction is and remains a central epistemological problem for contemporary the-
ory.^188 Benjamin, who was also familiar with this problem (though of course not in the
same poststructuralist terms), solved it by postulating an alternative to the “history
of the victors” in the form of a history that does not treat the historical facts as a se-
ries of causally connected moments, but rather as a constellation of monads in which
the entire reality of history, with all its virtual revolutionary possibilities and hidden
connections, crystallizes constantly, in a different form on each occasion. By defin-
ing history in this fashion the historian is also in a position to take the side of the
losers, thereby increasing the chance that the fragile messianic power that is present
in every historical moment can gain the upper hand.^189 Without adopting Benja-
min’s discourse in so many words, Tafuri develops a similar chain of argument in a
text of 1980, “The Historical Project.”^190 He points to the necessary plurality of lan-
guages that architecture and criticism have to deal with—the languages of design,
of technologies, of the institutions, and of history—cannot be related by means of
a universal hermeneutics. They remain fundamentally estranged, are in essence un-
translatable, and their plurality is irreducible. This means that it is impossible for ar-
chitectural criticism to link up directly with architectural practice. The two disciplines
operate within different linguistic systems and their aims are not parallel. This radical
counterpastoral stance prevents a truly programmatic attitude because its logic fore-
closes the possibility that the future could be consciously fabricated.
Tafuri thinks that a similar plurality is at stake in architectural history, which also
cannot be described as a linear series of events that are linked in an unambiguous
fashion. Writing history, therefore, is like working on a jigsaw puzzle in which the
pieces can be combined in different ways. The form that emerges is in each case a
provisional one. An intensive study of historical fragments leads one to a merely pro-
visional conclusion. Tafuri describes the historian’s work as a labor of Sisyphus that146