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Nostalgia for Ruins Author(s): Andreas Huyssen Reviewed work(s): Source: Grey Room, No. 23 (Spring, 2006), pp. 6-21 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20442718 . Accessed: 30/08/2012 11:00
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Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Carceri d'invenzione, Title page, 1745 (First Edition).

Nostalgia
ANDREAS HUYSSEN

for Ruins

The dictionary defines nostalgiaas "homesickness"or a "longingfor something far pain. Nostalgia's primary meaning has todowith the irreversibility of time:some accessible. Since the thingin thepast isno longer European seventeenth century, with theemergenceof a new sense of temporality increasingly characterizedby past has developed intothe modern disease per se.2 This predominantly negative coding ofnostalgiawithinmodernity is easily explained: nostalgia counteracts, evenundermineslinearnotionsofprogress, whether they are framed dialectically as philosophyofhistory or sociologically and economicallyasmodernization.But be a utopia in reverse. and spatiality arenecessarilylinkedinnostalgic Temporality desire. The architecturalruin is an example of the indissoluble combinationof is both present in its residues and yetno longeraccessible,making the ruin an for especiallypowerfultrigger nostalgia. The cult of ruinshas accompanied Westernmodernity in waves since theeigh has developed in thecountries of thenortherntransatlantic as part of a much broaderdiscourse about memory and trauma, genocide andwar. This contempo not speak itsname after century acknowledgingthecatastrophesof the twentieth
Yet this nostalgia and the lingering injuries of inner and outer colonization. persists, straining for something lostwith the ending of an earlier form ofmoder nity. The cipher for this nostalgia is the ruin. The Ruin Craze At a time when rary obsession with ruins hides a nostalgia for an earlier age that had not yet lost its power to imagine other futures. At stake is a nostalgia for modernity that dare teenth century. But over the past decade and a half, a strange obsession with ruins spatial and temporal desires that trigger nostalgia. In the body of the ruin the past nostalgic longing for a past is always also a longing for another place. Nostalgia can the radical asymmetries of past, present, and future, nostalgia as a longing for a lost away or long ago."1 The word ismade up of the Greek nostos = home and algos =

both literally andmetaphoricallyof the when we speakwith increasing frequency

ruins ofmodernity, a key question arises for cultural history: What shapes our

the promises

of themodern

age lie shattered

like so many

ruins,

re

om23, Spring2006, pp.6~21. c 2006 Andreas: iuvssen

imaginary of ruins in theearly twenty-first and how has itdeveloped his century, out cities of World War II (Rotterdamand Coventry,Hamburg and Dresden, Warsaw, Stalingrad,and Leningrad).Bombings, after all, are not aboutproducing ruins.They produce rubble. But thenthe markethas recently been saturated with stunning picturebooks and films(documentary and fictional; e.g.,The Downfall, 2004) of the ruins of World War II. In them,rubble is indeed transformed, even aestheticized,intoruin. Nostalgia is at stakein thenorthern transatlantic when one looksat thedecaying residues of the industrialage and itsshrinking cities in the industrial heartlands inEurope, theformer SovietUnion, the United States, and elsewhere:abandoned auto factories inDetroit; the monstrousblast furnaces of former steelworksin the Ruhr,now incorporated intopublic parks; thegiganticcoal-steelconglomeratesin EasternEurope surrounded byghosttowns,ciphersof theend of socialism; and so on. Such ruinsand theirrepresentation inpicturebooks, films, and exhibitsare a signof thenostalgia forthe monuments of an industrial architecture of a past age that was tied to a public cultureof industriallaborand itspolitical organization. We arenostalgicfortheruinsof because they stillseem tohold a promise modernity
that has vanished torically? How can we speak of a nostalgia for ruins as we remember the bombed

and refutes historianCharlesMaier's pithypronouncement thatnostalgia is to memory likekitsch is to art.3"Reflective nostalgia cherishes shatteredfragments of memoryand temporalizes space.... [It]revealsthatlonging and criticalthinking or criticalreflection."4 compassion, judgment The present fascination with industrialruins raises otherquestions. Towhat extent is thecontemporary love affair with ruins in thecountriesof thenorthern
transatlantic still energized by an earlier imagination that had fastened on to the ruins of classical antiquity? And what is the relation of this imaginary of ruins to are not opposed to one another, as affective memories do not absolve one from

from our own age: the promise of an alternative future. Such nos talgia for the ruins of themodern can be called reflective in Svetlana Boym's sense

theobsessionwith urban preservation,remakes,and retrofashions, all of which

seem to express a fear or denial of the ruination by time? Our imaginary of ruins can be read as a palimpsest ofmultiple historical events and representations, and the

intenseconcernwith ruins is a subset of thecurrent privilegingof memory and

the academy.

Given thisoverdetermination in the way we imagineand conceptualize ruins, can somethinglike an "authentic" ruinof modernitybe the subject of reflective
nostalgia? An answer can be found in the imaginary of ruins that developed in the

trauma both inside and outside

(rePtRomr23

century's querelle des anciens et desmodernes andwas carried forth eighteenth nationalorigins, searchfor nineteenth-century in romanticism and privilegedin the of thepresent.The work ofGiovanni Battista only toend up in theruin tourism most radical articulationsof the ruinproblematic Piranesi stands as one of the may My interestinPiranesi and his ruins within modernity ratherthanafterit. had a deep modernity that a secular nostalgic-nostalgic, thatis, for well be itself thedestruc of theravagesof timeand thepotentialof thefuture, understanding an understanding shortcomings of thepresent; and thetragic ofdomination tiveness Piranesi and theromanticstoBaudelaire, thehistorical of modernity that-from of critique,commitment, and beyond-resulted in emphatic forms avant-garde, in form ofnostalgia, it is difficult as any Here, artistic expression. and compelling thecriticalreclaiming lament over a loss and to walk thelinebetween sentimental may have futures. But Piranesi alternative of a past forthepurposes ofconstructing
lessons forus as we reflect upon the loss of an earlier modernity and its visions of

futures. alternative with theconcrete in coupling theabstractconcept of authenticity My interest are centraltopoiof modernityitself emphaticsense and thenotionof theauthentic was a Modernity as ruin century. rather thansimplyconcernsof thelate twentieth before andmost certainly postmodernism. century well beforethetwentieth topos but The authenticruin isnot tobe understoodas someontologicalessence of ruins moments constellationthat points to as a significant conceptual and architectural moder of decay, falling apart,and ruinationalreadypresent in thebeginningsof was created in early of ruins as the imaginary century. Just nity in theeighteenth modernity ratherthanbeingmodernity'send product, thenotion of authenticity bymodernity is a thoroughly historical concept produced, likenostalgia itself, essence or to somepremodern toan atemporaltranscendent rather thanreferring notions of author and art toeighteenth-century stateof grace.Tied in literature theidea ofauthen uniqueness, and subjectivity, selfhood, ship,genius,originality, was threatened the more it by alienation, ticity accumulateddesiresand intensities in As a term modernization. and reproducibility duringthecourseof inauthenticity,
semantic field, authenticity had its heyday in the second half of the twentieth century together with the boom in nostalgias of all kinds, and it has its currency today in retro-authenticity, authentic remakes, and theWeb's "authen that broader ness of ruins and their imaginary is based on the idea that both the ruin in its

claim tobe. At what they which implicitly all phenomena deny ticity consulting," on hard timesin intellectual discourse.From has fallen thesame time, authenticity or tiedto as ideology has been disparaged metaphysics, Derridaauthenticity Adorno to

Huy

Sn

Not NOSa

aor

RuinS

9.

a jargon ofEigentlichkeit, and delusions of self-presence. pseudo-individualization, Nevertheless,I amnot readytoabandon theconceptaltogether, and I takecomfort most radical criticsof a specificpost-1945 in thefactthatevenAdorno, one of the form ofEigentlichkeit,still spoke of theauthenticity of modernist art as radical will locate the"authenticruin"of and Iwill modernity in theeighteenth century, suggestthatthisearlierimaginary of ruinsstillhauntsourdiscourseabout theruins of At thesame time,I acknowledgethatthetwentieth century modernityingeneral. has produced a verydifferent of ruinsthat hasmade that earlierauthentic imaginary ruins ruinobsolete. Even genuine("echt"rather than have authentic) metamorphosed. The element of decay, erosion, and a returntonature so central to eighteenth century ruinsand their nostalgiclure iseliminated when Roman ruinsare sanitized Rome);when medieval castle ruinsor dilapidated estates fromlatercenturiesare toyield conference restored sites, hotels,orvacation rentals(the ParadoresofSpain, the LandmarkTrust in the United Kingdom);when industrial ruinsaremade over Thames.Authenticity seems decommissionedpowerplant on thesouthbank of the
to have become part ofmuseal preservation and restoration, a fact that can only into cultural centers; or when a museum like the Tate Modern installs itself in a and used as mise en scene foropen-air opera performances (Terme di Caracalla in negation. His is a notion of the authentic aware of its own historicity. Similarly, I

increasenostalgia. "Authenticruins,"as theystill existed in theeighteenthand nineteenthcen seemno longertohave a place in latecapitalism'scommodity andmemory turies, As commodities,thingsingeneraldon't agewell. They become obsolete, culture.
are torn down or restored. The chance for are thrown out or recycled. Buildings in the age of turbo capitalism, things to age and to become ruin has diminished ironically in step with the continuing rise in the average age of the populace. The ruin of the twenty-first century is either detritus or restored age. In the latter case, real age has been eliminated by a reverse face-lifting. The new ismade to look old rather than the old made

which isgenuinelyold in thiscultureofpreservation hard to recognizethat ingly

Kluge once spoke

to look young. Repro- and retrofashions make

it increas

and restoration. The German writer and filmmaker Alexander tellingly of "the attack of the present on the rest of time."5 Authenticity and Nostalgia

Ifin thelatetwentieth has claimed,architecture as Lyotard century, and philosophy

lay in ruins, leaving us with only the option of a "writing of the ruins" as a kind of

thenthe whetherthe whole tradition of modernistthought questionarises micrology,

10

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all the way intopostmodernismisn'tovershadowedby a catastrophicimagination has accompanied thetrajectory and an imaginary of ruins that of modernitysince Architectureindecay or a stateofdestruction theeighteenth century.6 seems tobe Real ruinsofdifferent an indispensable topos forthistradition. kinds function as ofasynchronoustemporalities projectivescreens for modernity'sarticulation and ofand obsessionwith thepassing of time.7 foritsfear If, as Benjamin said, allegory in therealmof thought corresponds to theruin in therealmof things,thenthis modern art,literature, impliesa productionprincipleof and architecture thatis a prioridirected towardthe ruinous.8 ForAdorno, in analogous fashion,the most are authentic works of modernity those thatare objectivelyand formally deter mined by theruinousstateof thepresent. ruinseems tohover in The architectural the that and aphorism, backgroundofan aestheticimagination privilegesfragment ornament of the collageandmontage,freedom from and reduction material.Perhaps thisis thesecretclassicism of modernism that, howeverdifferent from eighteenth classicism in itscoding of temporality and space, is stillpredicatedon an century of ruins.Classicism in Winckelmann and Goethe's timesconstituted imaginary theruinsofantiquity, but itaimed at thetotality itselfthrough of stylerather than asmodernismwould later privileging montage, dispersion,and fragmentariness and oscillating landscape of ruins left from a classicalmodernism as a fascinating failed attemptto create an alternativekind of totalitythatin architecture went under thename of theInternational Style. As a product of a deep premodern modernity ratherthana phenomenon from past, authenticityis analogous toBenjamin's aura.Originality and uniqueness, work ofart inBenjamin,weremade intoprivileged which characterizetheauratic was already floodedby reproductions, transla categoriesin theromantic age that tions,and copies of all kinds.Analogously, the ideologicalvalue of authenticity rose inproportiontoprintculture's inherent tendencyto reproduction and repe
tition. Even do. One doesn't have to accept a metaphysics of history in order to see the field of

thesemblanceofauthenticity and uniqueness we can detect theattemptto return

to commodities

in the transition from a Fordist to a post-Fordist mode by way of customization. Aura and authenticity

of production,

thanontologically. each other. Both have tobe framed rather Modernist historically
decisionism declared both of them dead and gone, but both have proven to be quite resistant to all manner of ideology critique. The desire for the auratic and the authentic has always reflected the fear of inauthenticity, the lack of existential meaning, and the absence of individual originality. The more we learn to understand themore, it seems, we all images, words, and sounds as always already mediated,

are analogous

to

Huyssen

j NcxAalgi

for Ruins

11

intotheobsolescence of theconcept and the insight opens up between intellectual media and is the authenticity The longingfor desire fortheauthentic. lifeworld's foritsother. RealityTV is itspatheticexpres longing culture'sromantic commodity sion.Authentic cuisine, authentic clothing,authentic identitiesof any and all kinds followsuit.The positingof stableoriginsand of a historicaltelos isnever far tune isbeing played. The same is trueforthediscourse of when theauthenticity ruins thathas played such a central role in legitimizingtheclaims topower by modern nation states. immedi ruinsguaranteedoriginsand promised authenticity, Indeed, romantic
acy, and authority. However, as an absence;

desire the authentic and the immediate. The mode

of that desire is nostalgia. A gap

is claimed ispresentonly whenever authenticity allegedlypresentand transparent modern ruin is not itsdecay.This makes theruin subject tonostalgia.Even ifthe which points topast glory exhaustedby thesemanticsofpastness, its temporality, from theclaims toplenitude and presentnessinvariably and greatness,is different Authenticityclaims, however,are often at stake in thediscourse of authenticity. mythmaking. have tobe compensatedby further by doubts thatthen contaminated was possible only inpast ages authenticauthenticity Thus some would claim that and not under theshadow of more transparent when the world was allegedly still We know what kind of ideological and distortion. mass-media representation and other have caused inanthropology phantasmssuchprojectionsofauthenticity of of thearchaic and primitive,theprivileging cultural sciences-the authenticity of modern societies.Especially theanomie and artificiality authenticcommunity, thepresent oforiginsand national identities, invention in thepost-Enlightenment
of modernity appeared (more often than not) as a ruin of authenticity and of a in the better and simpler past. Against this idea of a deep authenticity embodied ruins of a glorified past, I posit the idea of the authentic ruin as product ofmoder it is the imagined present of a past that can now only be grasped in

there is a paradox.

In the case of ruins thatwhich

is

thanas royalroad towardsomeuncontaminatedorigin. rather nity itself

Nostalgia when we is never far

corresponds The political critiqueof thenostalgia forruins simplyas regression stable iden as a grounding of phantasm to thephilosophical critique authenticity ofnostal of the ruin, misses the fundamental ambiguity But such a critique tities. nostalgia to criticize the it may be gia, and of theauthentic.However justified will not ofauthenticity claims, it marketsand theirideologicalinstrumentalization itas and to dismiss with nostalgia for authenticity thedesire do tosimplyidentify
a cultural disease, as Susan Stewart argues in her book On Longing.9 Neither will it

talk about authenticity or about romantic ruins.

Opposite, left:Francisco de Goya. El suefio de la raz6n produce monstruos, 1797-98. Opposite, right: Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Self-Portrait, n.d.

2 1

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expressingnothing but fantasies ofpower and domination,thoughthatis indeed Albert Speer's theory of ruinvalue. The dimension present in any thecase for imaginary of ruinsbutmissed by such reductivecritiques is thehardlynostalgic consciousness of the transitoriness of all greatness and power, the warning of imperial hubris,and theremembrance ofnature inall culture. At stake with the"authenticruinof modernity" isnot simply thegenuineness (Echtheit) of specificruins;nor is itsome suprahistorical memento mori.Genuine ness as naturalness inopposition toartificiality and thefake-a topos central to aesthetics andmiddle class culture-is an empirically verifiable eighteenth-century modernity. criterion of theruin, and the mementomori dimension isnot limitedto
We

do to understand

themodern

imagination of ruins and its linkwith

the sublime as

and politically as an architectonicchiffre forthe temporaland spatial thetically doubts that modernity has always harbored about itself. In the ruin, history appears spatialized and built space temporalized. An imaginary of ruins iscentral mism ofEnlightenment the modern imaginary of ruinsremains conscious thought,
of the dark side ofmodernity, thatwhich Diderot described as the inevitable "dev astations of time" visible in ruins. It articulates the nightmare of the Enlightenment forany theory ofmodernity thatwants to be more than the triumphalism of progress and democratization or longing for a past power of greatness. As against the opti

can speak of themodern

authenticity

of ruins only if we

look at the ruin aes

thatall history might ultimatelybe overwhelmed by nature, a fearsuccinctly inGoya's famousetching El sueino de la razonproducemonstruos. represented

Giovanni Battista Piranesi "El suefio de la razon" means both the The ambiguity ofGoya's title iswell-known. dream and the sleep of reason, thus pointing towhat later came to be known as the

A third dialectic of the Enlightenment. readingis possible, however. Imaginethat

the figure, dreaming or having fallen asleep at his table upon which we see the utensils of his writing, is the artist imagining the other of reason, imagining that which will become the etching-its swarm of owl Assume Goya's figure is Piranesi at themoment of the shape of ruins as theywill come alive

monsters crowdinghis imagination. like,nefarious

dreaming

Huyssen

INostalgia

forRuins

13

centralto modernity of ruinsthatrevealssomething atorofan authenticimaginary and itsrepresentations. point towarda the middle of theage ofEnlightenment Piranesi's etchingsfrom of modernity that always stood against the criticaland alternative understanding naive belief in progress and themoral improvementofmankind. Although on romanticliterature, image world had a stronginfluence Piranesi's nightmarish mostly tended towarddomes century romanticimagesof ruins in thenineteenth century, oftenin Piranesi'sworkwas emphaticallyrediscoveredin thetwentieth his Carceri anticipated theunivers realisticclaims that thecontextof reductively his etchingsarticu concentrationnaire of fascismorCommunism's gulag or that modern individual in the lated theexistentialexposure and cast-outstateof the
face of overwhelming ticating and beautifying ruins by way of the picturesque. It is no coincidence that

in his etchings. Putting the emphasis on sueno as fantasy and representation rather than simply sleep or utopian anticipation permits a reading of Piranesi as the cre

and was the innerconnectionbetween Piranesi's fantasiesof incarceration ings

systems as described

inKafka's novels. Ignored by such read

themajor part of his work: his archival documentation of the architectural ruins of theRoman Empire. Art historians tended to read theCarceri as the bizarre work of the artist as a young man, while focusing on Piranesi's role in the eighteenth-century quarrel over whether the architecture ofAthens or that of Rome should have pride of place. This question was surely central toPiranesi's archival work in and around Rome, but exclusive focus on this debate does not pay tribute to the fact that the

of the Carceri spannedmost ofPiranesi'sworking life.Italso various reworkings

fails tomake much of the fact that the later versions of the Carceri are visually close to the etchings of Roman ruins. With the help of an alternative body of Piranesi

of ruins work ofUlya Vogt-Goknil, Piranesi's imaginary especially the scholarship, can be adequatelyunderstoodonly if his archive-driven etchingsofRoman ruins are read together of incarceration. with thefantasy-driven spaces ofhis architecture
Only then can one speak of an authentic imaginary of ruins in a precise historical sense. Piranesi's ruins and his jails are artifice through and through. That iswhat

constitutes theirauthenticity dark vision of amodernity still within his rather

much in the shadows of a glorious Roman past. It is an authenticity that is captured by Adorno: "The proof of the tour de force, the realization of the unrealizable, could be adduced from themost authentic works."'0 What else are the Carceri if not

unrealizableas architecture

Right: Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Hadrian's Villa, Vedute di Roma, 1768. Opposite, top: Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Carceri d'invenzione, Plate 1760 (Second Edition).

II,

Opposite, bottom: Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Antichita romane, Frontispiece 11, 1756.__

14

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and tour de force as drawing? For Piranesi and for Adorno, who never wrote about this Italian artist, the refusal of wholeness and classical closure is the sign of

in authenticity. AuthenticruinsinPiranesiand authentic artworks Adorno point to an absence, theutopia that cannotbe named inAdorno, thenightmarish dystopia
that is inscribed into the utopia of neoclassicism in Piranesi. The tour de force in

Piranesi's craft points to that moment of coercion and violence implicit in all as carrier authenticity of authority. Authenticworks for Adorno are fragmentary workswhose achievement must be located in theirlackof completionandwhose Kleist, orBuchner "thatsuccumbed to theterror of idealism'sscorn."'2 At first pop
ular "failure [is] themeasure in France of their success,"" works such as those by Lenz, Holderlin, Piranesi's etchings, both of the Carceri and England,

antique ruins,eventuallysuffered a similar fateand fell intooblivion only tobe rediscovered after World War II. For thenineteenth-century ideologues of the classical traditionthey were not reconcilablewith a post-Winkelmannianidea of classicism, and they didn't allow for Matthew Arnold's vision of antiquityas sweetnessand light. The heightof authenticarchitecturefor Piranesi
Roman temples, palaces, themonumental tri and In tombs of the Via Appia. his umphal archs, many volumes of etchings, from the Prima Parte di was di Roma (1743) to the four volumes of Le Antichita Romane (1756) and Della Magnificenza ed Architettura residues with archival precision of these and in a decidedly

and of the

e Prospettive Architetture, VarieVedute (1743)and the de' Romani (1761), he captured theirovergrown

unique style. Even indecay, the monumentalityand

sublimity

impressivethan the miserable present thatdenied the trained Piranesi any real possibility to architect
in grand style. Piranesi mobilized all available to Prima Parte di

ruins of the past were

more

build

visual tricks toachieve the monumental mise en scene

of those ruins. In the dedication

of 1743 hewrites, "To Architetture vi dir6 solamente,

che di tali immagini mi hanno riempiuto lo spirito queste parlanti ruine, che di simili non arrivai a poter

Huyssen

jNostalgia

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15

che di queste stesse ha mene mai formare sopra i disegni, benche accuratissimi, would fatto l'immortale Palladio, e che io pur sempre mi teneva innanzi agli occhi." [I only say that these speaking ruins have filled my spirit with images of a kind which even precise drawings such as those by the immortal Palladio, which I always kept

before my eyes,can neverconjure up.]13

the pro At stake here is the subjective effect achieved by the representation, duction of phantasms that the ruins bring to life. Speaking ruins flood the senses with architectonic images that include not only the views of antique Rome but also

Carceri theCarceri. Especially in theirsecond, significantly darkerversion, the

industrialsocieties.Roman architecturalelements such as arcades of columns, and Latin inscriptions broad flights of stairs,large portrait busts, tombsculptures,
fill Piranesi's vast jails down to their distant corners. In their style of representa tion, however, the Carceri as well as the overgrown ruins of Rome itself belong with a present-day modernity, and not just that of the eighteenth century. all affinities, Piranesi's views of Roman ruins are ultimately distin Despite guished from the prison etchings and stand in productive tension with them. The ruins are located in an outside, in the urban landscape of Rome and its environs, the Campagna. Their erosion and natural decay point to that central aspect of the imaginary of ruins thatGeorg Simmel has emphasized best: the return of architec ture to nature. of spirit and nature in What appears all too romantically as a reconciliation Simmel, however, assumes features of the uncanny in Piranesi. Masonry and soil are organically coupled and made to look as if the ruins have grown out of the innards of the earth. In their erosion, some of the buildings appear like sublimely eroding and decaying monuments and remnants of gigantic buildings tower over

show close affinities with the etchings of antique ruins. In their spatial configura tion, the Carceri belong with Piranesi's imagined antiquity rather than with the concentration camps of the twentieth century or the panoptic jails of modern

and inhospitablerock formations. threatening Mysteriouslyand uncannily these

16 Gryoo

a dwarflike present. The voices of the dead appear

morta,which not morte,Piranesi createdan architettura images.Insteadofnature

to include a warning in decay, the Carceri

to speak through Piranesi's

ruin

only reminds the present of its own transitoriness but seems

While his etchingsofantique destructiveforgetting of thepast. about a culturally

remnants focus on the intertwining of nature and architecture

spaces farfrom all nature,complex interior present,as it were, pure architectural buildings. unfinished halls thatseem tobe partlyruins,partly typical ofany by thefactthat spatialconstriction This impressionisexacerbated
by an opening prison is not constituted by the absence of space but paradoxically Passages, staircases, and halls seem to disperse in all up of space toward infinity.14

directionsand lack spatial closure.The possibilityof an outside (evenwhen not naturallight stream excluded. Certainly, the represented) is therefore not inprinciple ing into theprisons points indirectlyto some
outside because

as theopposi remainso indefinable. Just tiality in their spatialarrangements, thebor confusing no longer and future dersbetweenpast,present, decorations for enced bybaroque theater prison
of the prisons has to dramas, his mise-en-scene be read primarily as a formal architectonic propo sition rather than as a simple message about the well when he wrote, "We see illogical spatial structures not because the goal is to represent prisons. On the contrary, building on an already seem to obtain. Even though Piranesi was influ tion of proximity and distance seems abolished

space. The Carceri are so fascinating both their temporality and their spa

conditionhumaine. Bruno Reudenbach put it

ofprisons, theCarceri developed iconography Piranesi was represent experimental space."15

space whose architectonic interested in prisons as a model fora vast interior representation allows the artist's fantasy to take off independent of any realistic limitations. As he had done in some of

of thearchitectonic fantasies the PrimaParte,Piranesican

the laws of Euclidean

celed

Giovanni Opposite, left: Battista Piranesi. Carceri d'invenzione, Title page, 1760 (Second Edition). Giovanni Opposite, right: Battista Piranesi. The Mole ofHadrian's Monument, Antichita romane, 1756. Top: Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Carceri d'invenzione, Plate Ill, "The Round Tower" 1760 (Second Edition). Bottom: Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Carceri d'invenzione, XIV, 1760 (Second Edition).

~~~~~~~~~Plate Ys_

Huyssen

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17

space.Units ofbuilt space are connectedatectonicallyand illogically. Any single never etchingrequiresseveraldistinct perspectivesso thatthegaze of thespectator more his orher gaze is disturbed. comes to rest. The closer thespectatorlooks,the In a detailed analysisof thearchitectural structure of the Carceri, Ulya Vogt-Goknil has shown how three-dimensional spaces evolve into two-dimensionalplanes, how depth dimensions are being pulled apart and breadthdimensions are being shrunk.16 Especially uncanny is therelationship between space and a kind of light thatseems toproduce darkness.Rays of lightleave their natural trajectory. They bend and curve around things,sliding from one object to another,occasionally the jumping over interstitial spaces. In all theseinstances, walls seem tobe sucking it.The rules of tectonicsand centralperspective up the lightinsteadof reflecting are canceled. Horace Walpole noted ofPiranesi: "He has imagined scenes that Reise emphasized thedif geometry."17 And Goethe inhis Italienische would startle tocreateeffects ference betweenhis perceptionof real ruinsand Piranesi's attempt fabulation.18 through must not be attributedto some Contrary tocertainclaims, such observations or to simpleplayfulnesson Piranesi's part.Piranesi refusedto represent inability homogeneous enlightened space inwhich above and below, inside and outside could be clearlydistinguished.Insteadhe privilegedarches and bridges, ladders down that disturbsand unmoors thegaze of thespectator. Insteadofviewing lim itedspaces from a fixed-observer a safedistance, thespecta perspectiveand from toris drawn intoa proliferating of staircases, labyrinth bridges,and passageways thatseem to lead intoinfinite depths left, right, and center.It is as ifthespectator's gaze is imprisonedby the representedspace, lured in and captured because no
firmpoint of view can be had as the eye wanders around in this labyrinth. Contrary towhat Alexander Kupfer claims, this does not suggest that space and time lose all meaning.19 The lack of central perspective and a firmpoint of view, the prolifera tion of perspectives and unfolding of spaces must be read differently: Piranesi and staircases, anterooms and passageways. While massive and static in their encasings, the prisons do suggest motion and transition, a back and forth,up and

followedto theirlogicalconclusion thespatializationofhistory and thetemporal izationof space that ofantiquities.Inhis Carceri alreadycharacterized his etchings d'invenzione-the modifyingnoun is significant-times and spaces are shoved intoeach other,telescoped and superimposed as ifin a palimpsestwhereby this of space becomes itself imagination a prison of inven complex temporally fraying
tion. Tour de force, as Adorno

Manfredo Tafurihas argued thatby breakingwith the temporaland spatial

says ofwhat are to him themost authentic works of art.

18

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Carceri d'invenzionealreadypoint toward perspectivalism of the Renaissance, the as developedmuch later by thecubists,construc basic principlesofconstruction difference however,is a fundamental tivists, and surrealists.20 Equally important, isnot ener Piranesi's imagination betweenPiranesi and thehistoricalavant-garde. multiperspectivalismand spatial flu utopian ideal of gized by some constructive in thesameway. montage or thefragment idity(Eisenstein);nor does he privilege aura of ruins,by their oppressive He ratherremainshaunted by the threatening of past and present,nature and culture,death and life.The work interlocking underminesany enlightenedand secure standpoint in thecourse of timeand in ethos of alter the location in space, and it is quite distant fromtheavant-garde's Piranesi's prisons are also ruins, more authenticeven native futures. Ultimately, and threatening simul Vedute di Roma. The irritating thanthe Roman ruinsof the which is of timesand spaces, of condensed and displaced perspectives, taneity presence by theincreased exacerbatedin thesecondversionof theprisonetchings ofuncanny space toan extreme only of torture instruments, pushes theimpression in theCarceri. Conclusion In theirreciprocaltensionand their obsessive intermingling of timesand spaces, whose utopia Piranesi's prisons and ruinscan be read as allegoriesof amodernity not only question and progress,linear timeand geometricspace they of freedom seems but cancel out.A past embodied in ruinedandmemory-ladenarchitecture Piranesi's imaginary of ruins to tower over thepresentof theage ofEnlightenment. is thus theproductof an age that only slowly freeditselffromtheoverwhelming In itsdecay,antique architecture dialec articulatesthat idealof classical antiquity. and contin posits thechangeability ticalconstellationofnatureand historythat gencyofboth nature and historyinsteadof opposing blindmythological nature Piranesi'swork thusbelongswith a tohistory as enlightenedontologicalagency. has accompanied enlightened consciousness that self-critical modernity fromits of ruins lies in thiscriticalaes The authenticity ofPiranesi's imaginary beginning. beautifuletchings. Ifthe consciousness and itsarticulationin terrifyingly thetic ofdestruction point toa naturalhistory etchingsofdecayingclassical architecture
in a Sebaldian mode, then the Carceri suggest a cultural history of incarceration in an infinite inner space that no longer has any outside-a critique of Romanticism avant la lettre. concept of natural Reading Piranesi through Adorno and through Benjamin's history, which is grounded in a philosophy of history, will also reveal the historical

Hoyssen

Nolt:algia

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of secularized theology with limitsof thisauthenticimaginary of ruins. As a form itsrisesand falls, declines and redemptions ofcultures,thephilosophy ofhistory produced by the Enlightenment stands itself likea ruin inour twenty-first-century present.Analogously, Piranesi's imaginaryof ruins has itselfbecome a ruin. Modernist architecture of points toanotherhistoricalboundaryof an imaginary ruins 'a la Piranesi. Concrete, steel,and glass buildingmaterials aren't subject to erosion and decay the way stone is. Modernist architecturerefusesthereturn of therealcatastrophes of thetwentieth culture tonature.Furthermore, century have thanruins inPiranesi's sense, even ifsome of thatrubble mainly left rubblerather has lentitself quitewell tobeautifying representations. The age of the"authentic ruin,"at any rate,is over; itsgenealogycan bewritten, but itcannotbe resurrected. and authentic remakes,all of The present is an age ofpreservation,restoration, has itself which cancel out the idea of theauthenticruin that become historical. But Piranesi's ruinsare accessible toreflective nostalgia.They embodya dialectic aswe try to imaginea future of modernity thatshould be remembered beyond the the falsepromises of corporateneoliberalismand globalized shopping mall. The not justofnostalgia, is at stake. future,

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Notes 1.Webster's 2. Svetlana New Twentieth 2nd ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, Century Dictionary, The Future ofNostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001). 1983), 1223.

Kluge's title The Blind Director. 6. Jean-Fran?ois

3. Boym, 4. Boym, 49-50. 5. See Alexander

Boym, xiv.

film entitled Der Angriff der Gegenwart Heidegger and

auf die ?brige Zeit Michel

(1985). English Roberts

Lyotard,

ofMinnesota Press, University (Minneapolis: 7. For a thorough discussion of asynchronous Futures Reinhart Past: On Koselleck, Stewart, the Semantics ofHistorical Studien Zeitschichten: The Origin

1990),

the Jews, trans. Andreas 43.

and Mark

Time

see Reinhart and asymmetric temporalities Columbia Press, (New York, University (Frankfurt am Main: (London: Press, New 1993). Hullot-Kentor Suhrkamp, Left Books,

Koselleck, 2004); 2000). 1977), 178. and

zurHistorik

8.Walter 9. Susan

Benjamin,

10. Theodor University 11. Theodor 1998), 220.

On Longing W. Adorno, Aesthetic Press, Beethoven:

of German Tragic Drama (Durham: Duke University Theory, 106. ed. and

trans. Robert ofMusic

(Minneapolis: Press,

ofMinnesota W. Adorno, Aesthetic

1997),

The Philosophy

(Stanford:

Stanford University

12. Adorno, 13. G.B. Piranesi

Theory, The

63. (New York: of Art, 1971), 115. Smith College Museum and Architecture the Labyrinth: Avant-Gardes and Robert Connolly Piranesi: Architektur "Careen"

Piranesi

Catalogue, Tafuri,

14. See Manfredo 15. Bruno 1979), 44.

and Sphere to the 1970s, trans. Pellegrino d'Acierno Reudenbach, Giovanni Battista

from (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), 31. als Bild (Munich: Prestel Verlag, Origo Verlag, (Hamburg: 1958).

16. Ulya Vogt-G?knil, Giovanni Battista 17. Vogt-G?knil, 28. 18. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Italienische Verlag, 19. Alexander 1961), 452. Kupfer, Piranesis Carceri:

Piranesi:

(Zurich: vol. XI

Reise,

Goethes Werke, und Unendlichkeit

Christian Wegner der Phantasie

Enge

in den Gef?ngnissen

(Stuttgart 1992), 46. 20. Tafuri, 55-64.

Huyssen

I Nostalgia

forRuins

21