Generational Shifts, Criticality, and the Relevance of Architectural Theory Today
by Gabriel Fuentes
“I believe I drank too much wine last night at Hurstbourne; I know not how else to account for the shaking of my hand today. You will kindly make allowance therefore for any indistinctness of writing, by attributing it to this venial error.”–Jane Austen
“Thanx for ur txt last night. ended up gettin totaly maggotd n my hands r still shakin dis mornin so if any typos thats y.”–Jane Austen via text message1
When considering the state of architectural theory and its pedagogies, we must ask: who is theory for? Who, in other words, are we teaching? What shapes their world? And how is architectural theory relevant for them? Today’s architecture students are part of the first generation born into a hyper-integrated world—digital natives of a neoliberal eco-informational society. Coming of age in the aftermath of 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis, their worldviews are influenced largely by the socio-economic inequalities of neoliberalism, ubiquitous technology, and the flattening effects of network culture layered onto the institutional (infra)structures set in place by their Silent and Boomer elders. As a result, they have been subject to extreme (mis)characterizations, ranging from Mark Bauerlein’s characterization as the “dumbest generation” to what Neil Howe and William Struss call the “next great generation,” a generation of heroes poised to bring about massive global change.2
In what follows, I trace collective and meta-critical shifts in architecture along the Howe-Strauss generational theory model— situating architecture’s theoretical turns and historiographical pressure points (1968 being one of many) as symptoms of these broader generational shifts. Seen this way, the so-called “problem” or “death” of theory should not be misconstrued as an outright lack of criticality. To the contrary, the “post-critical” tendency to be critical toward theory reflects the same “post-modern” tendency to theorize modernity against modernism.3 Both are symptomatic of larger generational cycles through which different generations negotiate their places in history.
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1. Mark McCrindle and Emily Wolfinger, “Influences on 21st Century Language,” in Word Up: A Lexicon and Guide to Communication in the 21st Century (Braddon, AU: Halstead Press, 2011).
2. For more on Bauerlein’s position, see: Mark Bauerlein, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes our Culture: Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30 (New York: Penguin Group, 2008).
3. Postmodern discourses were (indeed are) symptomatic of Modernity’s internal contradictions as it negotiated the antifoundational, and hence hegemonic, forces of late capitalism. In this sense, Modernism—as a set of early 20th century aesthetic practices—lost its political and social agency as it fell one generation behind Modernity—the socio-psychological and philosophical conditions of “being modern,” or “contemporary.”