ABSTRACT
The inflationary, contradictory use of the term "postmodernism" suggests its esthetic use; it is an artistic phenomenon of sorts. The inflated, contradictory use of the term "postmodernism" also marks the degeneration of activist criticality into futile, self-righteous rage signalling nothing but its own preaching thunder. Postmodernism has a double dimension: desperate clinging to obsolete modes of hyper-individualistic yet conventionalized or institutionalized criticality; and recognition that the locus vivendi of activist criticality and sophisticated integrity is at once cognitive and empathic acceptance of intersubjectivity, with all its problems. It represents an expanded sense of the possibilities of the past. The architectural historian Heinrich Klotz is closer to an understanding of the emotional gains of postmodernist appropriation of the architectural past than Linda Hutcheon. Postmodernist architecture is not intent upon exclusivity and strict consequence, but is prepared for difficult compromises and proposes daring connections.
