Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/35542
- Title
- Resuscitating the author: implications of Danto's philosophy for historians of trend-defying architecture
- Author/Creator
-
Fleming, Steven
- Institution
- The University of Newcastle. Faculty of Engineering & Built Environment, School of Architecture and Built Environment
- Description
- The paper revisits the often-contested terrain of historiography that is reliant on meta-narratives with specific reference to the writings of philosopher Arthur C. Danto. Architectural historians of-ten position their subjects according overarching views of history (commonly known as meta-narratives), an approach that seems incongruous to the study of architects who defy historical trends in the pursuit of shocking or iconic works. The paper argues that historians of trend-defying architecture can simply index the facts (telling small, unconnected and potentially banal stories), or else follow the lead of an historian like Danto (who is also a philosopher of historiography), who has abandoned the poststructuralist catch-cry 'the author is dead' to pursue a sophisticated kind of indexing that seeks to penetrate the thoughts and words of artists and architects. His approach is a fitting response to an art world that, he argues, exhausted its meta-narratives. The paper discusses Danto's texts in this light, while referring to a recent interview between Danto and the present author, about the implications, for architectural historians, of this seminal work on the analytical philosophy of history.
- Relation
- Contested Terrains : The 23rd Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand. Proceedings: Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand XXIII Annual Conference 2006 (Fremantle, Western Australia 29 Sep - 2 Oct, 2006) p. 147-152
- Relation
- http://www.sahanz.net/conferences/index.html
- Date
- 2006
- Publisher
- Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand
- Keyword(s)
-
Arthur C. Danto;
architecture;
historiography
- Resource Type
- conference paper
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/35542
- Identifier
- ISBN:0646465945
- Reviewed
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