The Stolen Hope: Reading Jameson’s Critique of Tafuri

This chapter reviews the past history of the theory of ideology critique in architectural discourse. In contemporary radical thought there are contending theories of ideology. In contemporary radical thought, Slavoj iek is probably the only critic who has provided with an accurate diagnosis of contemporary society and its culture. Where the Frankfurt School attempted the so-called Freudo-Marxist theory of ideology and failed, iek has succeeded in linking Marxian theory and Lacanian psychoanalytical theory and has single-handedly renovated the theory of ideology for radical cultural, political, cinema, art and architectural analysis in time. The psychopathology of mediatized society shows the symptoms of a psychosis. This is a malady of the subject under the cultural logic of late capitalism. For Walter Benjamin, collective laughter is one such preemptive and healing outbreak of mass psychosis. The chapter focuses on Manfredo Tafuris conceptualization of the Marxian notion of ideology that he developed in the context of the Italian Left movement and its intellectual circumstances.