Custom Essays and Free Coursework

This idea is captured in the title of Katznelson's third chapter titled 'Towards a Re-spatialization of Marxism'. Katznelson acknowledges here the gratitude he owes to Harvey, Castells and Lefebvre for 'showing Marxism the way back to the city' (Harvey, 2001). Nonetheless, he rejects most of the suggestions of these scholars as to how this re-spatialization of the city ought to be conducted. Katznelson suggests that Engels' original approach in Condition of the Working Classes in England in 1844 (Engels, 1892) espouses a more intelligent way to harmonize modern capitalism, working structures and spatiality. It is necessary and imperative to produce an 'urban geographical imagination into the analysis of working class formation' (Katznelson, 1992). Thus the fundamental task of the application of Marxist theory to the city is to promote a better understanding of space. Katznelson says on this that his aim is to 'reveal and expose the making, meaning and uses of urban space' (Katznelson, 1992). Katznelson's acknowledges in his critique the contributions of Mark Gottdiener and Hobsbawm and E.P. Thomson to this question of the re-spatialization of cities.
In conclusion, Katznelson not only supplies an elegant review of the existing literature on the place of Marxism in modern development; he also suggests a solution to the problem of 'showing Marxism a way back into the city' where Harvey, Castells and others have, he alleges, failed.
(4) David Harvey
' the experience of time and space has changed, the confidence in the association between scientific and moral judgments has collapsed, aesthetics has triumphed over ethics as a prime focus of social and intellectual concern, images dominate narratives, ephemerality and fragmentation take precedence over eternal truths and unified politics, and explanations have shifted from the realm of the material and political-economic groundings towards a consideration of autonomous cultural and political practices.'
(Harvey, 1989)
Professor David Harvey is one of the world's pre-eminent scholars and authors on the subject of postmodernity. The above quotation succinctly sums up his description of the aetiology of postmodernity and it manifestations. Importantly, many of the references that Harvey makes generally of postmodernity can be applied to postmodern architecture specifically. Harvey sighs 'Aesthetics has triumphed over ethics' and 'ephemerality and fragmentation take precedence over eternal truths': so too in architecture now aesthetics and outward superficiality are exalted above practical and social necessities, whilst the 'fragmentation' of modern architecture is a cogent symbol of the mental fragmentation of the postmodern global citizen.
David Harvey has been Professor of Geography at John Hopkins University for over a decade now; between 1987 and 1993 he sat on the Halford Mackinder Chair of Geography at Oxford University.