Comment by expathacker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by expathacker | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> (B) Brutalism is often associated with left-wing / communist large-scale social engineering, and the left reflexively celebrates anything done by the left. (Aside, the association of brutalism with the left is historically quite false, e.g. people like Le Corbusier didn't meet a dictator he didn't like.) So where brutalism is celebrated by somebody who's explicitly and self-consciously political, it's a Gramscian hegemonic strategy [1]. An example of such a writer is Owen Hatherley [2].

Huh, quite an interesting take. On the contrary, I associate an appreciation of brutalism with those who post staunch free-market capitalist comments.

I have many taken architectural tours in Bucaresti, Plovdiv, Sofia, Skopje, Moldova, Tbilisi, Beograd, Kiev, and Moscow. Unanimously, the tour-guides presented these buildings with disdain for their aesthetics and association with authoritarianism. All of the tour-guides were definitely left/liberal-leaning, some to the point of dreadlocks and Che Guevara hats. (Thanks for the links, by the way, I had never heard of Own Hatherly before!).

   presented these buildings with disdain

That could be explained a difference in background (growing up in the west vs in the Soviet zone of influence): It's much easier to have a rosy view of communism/socialism if you have no experience of living in a communism/socialism yourself (or your parents).

As far as I'm aware, Own Hatherley is a high-ranking cadre in UK communist parties, although I have lost track which, since they have a tendency to split and splinter. As far as I'm aware, publishers like Verso Books and Zero Books were outlets of the SWP (Socialist Workers Party), although that no longer exists. I don't know which of the SWP-descendants is now in control of those publishers.

> disdain for their aesthetics and association with authoritarianism [under Communism]

> Che Guevara hats

There's some real semiotic collapse going on here. What does it mean to wear a Che Guevara hat? In the west you might see it alongside people trying to unironically revive the hammer and sickle. But there are plenty of people who lived in eastern Europe under Communism who would regard that symbol as just as symbolic of authoritarianism as the swastika.

> On the contrary, I associate an appreciation of brutalism with those who post staunch free-market capitalist comments.

I find that surprising. I associate them with architectural symbols of neoliberalism, namely modernist architecture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_architecture). Libertarians, I associate with the weird branch of modernist architecture that builds everything out of glass and trees and matt white surfaces and everywhere looks like Dubai. Perhaps a subset of contemporary architecture? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_architecture)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com