Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the politics and aesthetics of modernism in Amsterdam New West. Modernism has been successfully framed as cultural heritage. I ask how its appeal can be explained by rethinking the relationship between bodily and intellectual persuasion and by focusing on architecture as a ‘defense against the terror of time’ in a fragmenting world.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the politics and aesthetics of modernist architecture and planning in Amsterdam New West. New West is a post-war extension of Amsterdam build according to the modernist principles of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) and the garden-city movement. In recent years, and in response to large-scale spatial restructuring, residents, media, professional and intellectuals have 'assembled' around modernism as a 'matter of concern'. In this assemblage, modernist architecture and planning have successfully been framed and styled as 'cultural heritage'. A small section of the oldest part of New West has been been designated an 'open air museum', as as such as an area to be 'conserved' and protected against the postmodern assault on the 'original' and 'unique' modernist plan. In my paper I analyze, taking an ethnographic approach, why modernism as a 'cultural canon' has acquired a certain persuasiveness, even when modernist architecture is, at first sight, rather unremarkable. What aesthetics of persuasion are at work here? A possible answer, I suggest, can be found in a rethinking of the relationship between bodily, emotional and intellectual appeal. Proponents of modernist heritage in New West emphasize the need to 'teach' people how to experience and perceive, to feel and see. They thus stress that emotional investment and bodily persuasion depend on a learning process, on a distribution of the sensible. Another possible explanation may lie in the persuasiveness of architecture as 'a defense against the terror of time' in a fragmenting world and a multicultural society.