Faust is still here

“Money as an extension of man, as his power over men and circumstances”.

Marshall Berman has quoted Lukacs in the book “Faust” to show evidence that capitalism is one of the essential forces in Faust’s development.

In fact, Marshall Berman has compared the Goethe’s Faust to explain the tragedy of phenomenon the desire for development, which is an impulse generated by a dynamism that is the vital force of Goethe’s Faust.  Nevertheless, this emotion was the real drama of the main character represented by the evil presence of Mephisto.

Nowadays, we have the same feeling in Architecture, where the desire for development is the only reason to explore new technology and new scenarios for building.  On the other hand, this phenomenon becomes a proper drama for everybody will live and use that Architecture, because all these buildings do not have a soul and a meaning.  The article of J. Meades on Zaha Hadid proves exactly the same drama when Mrs. Hadid cannot explain any of her project.  It is obvious that money is the only meaning of her project and the only reason those buildings exist.  As Faust’s evil Mephisto, money is also the drama and the tragedy of development.

In conclusion, we could say that contemporary Architecture is often without a soul and without a meaning, because the idea of development to create new architectural incons brings these buildings to be only objects of design and products but not Architecture.  Unfortunately, Goethe’s Faust is still a contemporary and negative character.

Pop-Culture

“In the old days, rock music was a distraction from your studies; now it may well be what you are studyng”.

“Students once wrote uncritical, reverential essays on Flaubert, but all that has been transformed.  Nowadays they write uncritical, reverential essays on Friends”

These quotes from Terry Eagleton’s book “After Theory”, are very representive for the author’s  opinion on contemporary cultural theory: it is poor.

Nowadays, studying pop culture is very common in every University, it is not difficult find a PhD on contemporary music or TV shows.  Terry Eagleton seems shocked about this phenomenon and he tries to remind us that many years ago you could study a philosopher only if he was dead.  Moreover, Terry Eagleton is quite sarcastic about the contemporary studies, in particular about the middle class student:

“Quietly-spoken middle-class students huddle diligently in libraries, at work on sensationalist subjects like vampirism and eye gouging, cyborg and porno movies”.

First of all, I found this comment very poor, because he reduces all pop culture to few puerile subjects.  In fact popular  culture is also what is around us and luckily we can now study it.  This is principally a good example of freedom and it is also a demonstration of the researchers that are now living in a contemporary world rather their predecessors.

Finally, I can consider the possibility of studying contemporary subjects is a great opportunity to have much more awareness about our life and culture.  However, all this freedom could push students to study other puerile topics, as Terry Eagleton has said.  Every time we have the possibility to do what we want to do, we should be responsible in judging what is useful and what is not.  Otherwise Terry Eagleton is right.