The Significance of the Aesthetic in Postmodern Architectural Theory

Recent postmodern suspicion of truth, objectivity, and rationality has radically transformed our understanding of architecture and its relationship to politics. In this paper, I draw upon Hilary Putnam (1981), Nelson Goodman (1968), and Satya Mohanty (1997), who propose a sophisticated account of objectivity by reexamining the "hard" sciences, and by interpreting them as complex social practices. Building upon these writers, I argue that our subjective experiences of architecture are rational. As an alternative to both modern essentialism and postmodern skepticism, this paper defends a theory of objectivity that explains the relationship of architecture to political power without abandoning rational thought.