never ends definitively.^191 And yet that does not mean that it is a neutral or arbitrary
form of work: the aim continues to be to produce an analysis that is “capable of call-
ing into question at every instant the historical legitimacy of the capitalistic division
of labor.”^192 For this reason, history should be seen as a project, a project of crisis.
The eventual goal is to subject the whole of reality to crisis: “The real problem is how
to project a criticism capable of constantly putting itself into crisis by putting into cri-
sis the real. The real, mind you, and not merely its individual sections.”^193
Cacciari might reply that subjecting reality to crisis is the driving force behind
capitalist development, and that all Tafuri’s history does is to find a language for the
most extreme implications of negative thought. One is indeed led to the conclusion
that the Venice School’s idea of itself is subject to this kind of interpretation: the
Venice authors assume that their analyses represent the only tenable position for a
critical intellectual, even though they might not be capable of directly influencing the
course of social development. Like Benjamin, they state that it is their deliberate aim
to exercise a certain influence on reality. Like Benjamin again, they have no illusions
about the actual impact their work may have. They still maintain, however, that it is
necessary to continue this labor of Sisyphus and to do everything within their power
to subject the standard narratives in the realm of history to a crisis. This stance orig-
inates in a combination of a “total disillusionment about the age and nevertheless an
unreserved profession of loyalty to it.” It materializes cautiously in the form of “proj-
ects.” Both Tafuri and Cacciari use this term to indicate a mode and method for con-
ceiving of a form of resistance. In the case of Cacciari, the term refers to the way that
Loos in his designs makes a criticism of the self-fulfilling prophesy of nihilism. Tafuri
calls history a project because it also has to do with a design: history is concerned
with a continual redesigning of the past; it is continually engaged in reconstructing
the theoretical framework within which historical events are to be understood. It is
the activity of designing, we may assume, that for both authors produces a degree
of freedom, which is absent from the calculating one-dimensional thought that is typ-
ical of the Metropolis. Neither for Tafuri nor for Cacciari does the term “project” have
the utopian and programmatic connotations of immediate emancipation that lead
Habermas to talk of “the project of modernity.” For it is all too clear to them that a
society that is governed by the regime of modernity does not easily respond to indi-
vidual actions or analyses.
3
Reflections in a Mirror