History and theory 127any more than had the theory moment marked an end to
philology or to a narrative, canonical approach to architec-
tural historiography. Indeed, in 2007 Hays defended the
ongoing relevance of critical theory for the architectural his-
torian, writing: ‘The more theory, the more access to history.
Theory is the practice that produces concepts and categories
to map the Real of History.’^23
The lessons of theory
Speaking in the broadest of terms, we can think of develop-
ments in the architectural humanities of recent decades,
and especially as they were manifested in North America
and Britain, as a shift to greater relativity, enabling a deeper
level of auto-critique and self-refl ection. Speaking just as
broadly, we might think of the present moment as one wit-
nessing a diminishing relativity among historians, critics and
theoreticians, whereby the chain of theory-as-critique-of-
teleological-history gave way to theory-for-theory’s-sake,
which has in turn allowed the more recent iteration of his-
tory-to-overcome-theory. Architectural historians have seen
the reinstatement of the building and its documentary trail
as the ground-plane of their work, although the relative
innocence of pre-theory-moment historiography has been
lost. No one can speak of the canon without qualifi cation;
no one can write of the Western tradition of architecture
without condition. The possibilities of a critical philology –
the close study of documents, the increased importance of
fi ne details – have come into clearer focus.
This is not merely as a return to earlier forms of historical
analysis, but also as an extension of the ambitions of critical
architectural historiography beyond the specifi c form lent it
by the theory moment. These general shifts in attitudes and
intentions, such as can be traced at the conferences of SAH,
SAHANZ or Britain’s Architectural Humanities Research
Association, or in the pages of the Journal of Architecture
and the JSAH, might seem odd to those who ushered in the
freedoms of the 1980s and 1990s. They might also seem a
long time coming to those who ignored those freedoms and
their attendant relativization. For those harbouring the most