Vol. 28 No. 10 · 25 May 2006
pages 21-23 | 2896 words
Looking back at the rubble
David Simpson
- The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War by Robert Bevan
Reaktion, 240 pp, £19.95, January 2006, ISBN 1 86189 205 5
Thucydides claimed that posterity should not judge the power and dignity of states by their architectural remains. The power of Sparta over much of the Peloponnese and beyond could not have been inferred from an inspection of its built culture – a collection of villages with no grandiose temples or monuments. Conversely, the importance of Athens would be overestimated by anyone in later times who based their opinion on the spectacle of its architectural remains. Does it then follow that the physical destruction of ancient Sparta would have been a less decisive blow to Spartan self-identity than the same destruction would have been to the Athenians? Do all cultures, or the same cultures at different times, invest the same beliefs in a strong correlation between what they build and who they are?
You are not Logged In
- If you have already registered login here
- If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
- If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
- If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
- If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions
This article is also available for purchase from the London Review Bookshop. Contact us for rights and issues enquiries.
- print this article
Letters
Vol. 28 No. 13 · 6 July 2006
From Stan Smith
David Simpson writes that the value of the Twin Towers ‘as symbols of the national life has been multiplied by their destruction’, and alludes to Walter Benjamin’s claim that ‘a state of distraction in which we function ordinarily without noticing the buildings around us’ is also ‘a state of happiness, of not needing to pay attention to what we have made as something other than natural and routine’ (LRB, 25 May). I have been struck, watching American films made before 11 September 2001, by how regularly the camera pauses on the Twin Towers, making a point about American power and wealth. I hadn’t noticed this before, and that I have noticed it now says something about the way our responses to US potency were constructed by such iconography before as well as after 9/11. I have noticed too that the view of the Twin Towers from the Jersey shore has been dropped from the opening sequence of The Sopranos. Is this a gesture of respect or the result of a desire not to offend? Are we likely to see pre-9/11 movies doctored in order to remove the reminder, a disconcerting one for American audiences, that their nation’s global hegemony, literal and symbolic, is no longer perceived as either absolute or uncontested?
Stan Smith
Nottingham
Vol. 28 No. 14 · 20 July 2006
From Eleanor Allen
David Simpson asks: ‘Can we imagine a world in which we do not invest our built environment with the function of representing ourselves to ourselves as culturally alive?’ (LRB, 25 May). Imagine it? I grew up there (in Don Mills, Canada’s first planned community).
Eleanor Allen
Montreal
