A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
This essay examines “revolutionary vandalism” in France in the years, 1789–1794, situating it as both a complex site of negotiation and legitimation and a productive inscription of material with meaning and significance. Drawing on Walter Benjamin's formulation of the legalistic dimensions of violence, it argues for a new interpretation of vandalism as a site of legitimation and mythologisation at the very heart of Revolutionary culture. Alongside an exploration of the various modes and functions of violence against objects and buildings in this period, this essay takes up the emphasis on material signs in the construction of French Revolutionary culture to show how “positive” elements of this culture were dependent in significant ways on material acts of erasure, while, at the same time, the rhetoric of “vandalism” served to de-legitimate certain actors—and certain forms of spatial violence—from the narrative of the Revolution.
This essay examines “revolutionary vandalism” in France in the years, 1789–1794, situating it as both a complex site of negotiation and legitimation and a productive inscription of material with meaning and significance. Drawing on Walter Benjamin's formulation of the legalistic dimensions of violence, it argues for a new interpretation of vandalism as a site of legitimation and mythologisation at the very heart of Revolutionary culture. Alongside an exploration of the various modes and functions of violence against objects and buildings in this period, this essay takes up the emphasis on material signs in the construction of French Revolutionary culture to show how “positive” elements of this culture were dependent in significant ways on material acts of erasure, while, at the same time, the rhetoric of “vandalism” served to de-legitimate certain actors—and certain forms of spatial violence—from the narrative of the Revolution.
On “Revolutionary Vandalism”
Bresnahan, Keith (author)
Architectural Theory Review ; 19 ; 278-298
2014-09-02
21 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
| TIBKAT | 1973