Nathisvaran Govender

Walter Benjamin was a critical theorist and lover of architecture, and he spent most of his career studying urban spaces and places. In this paper, we use his theory of architecture to develop a normative critique that can be used to analyse public architecture in the context of the South African built environment. In this regard, we argue that architecture has to function simultaneously as a cultural sign and a material presence, and that failure to meet these criteria will result in the creation of oppressive structures. Since the advent of modernity, architecture has, for the most part, failed to function as both a cultural sign and a material presence. This is especially true of public architecture in contemporary South Africa, and the consequence is that public buildings continually fail to meet their objectives. By way of demonstrating our analysis, we apply our framework to the Mangaung Intermodal Transport Facility (MITF), a public building located in the Central Business District (CBD) of Bloemfontein that was designed in the spirit of modern architecture. Infamous as an oppressive structure in the urban fabric, we aim to use our analysis to better understand why this is the case. By developing and applying our Benjaminian critique, we hope to bring to light some of the challenges facing the South African built environment, and call for a deeper understanding of the architecture that is being produced in, and for, the country's communities.

The early Frankfurt School’s Studies in Authority sought to understand modern society’s susceptibility to authoritarian leadership. This research project resulted in two major works in 1936, Fromm’s Studies on Authority and Family and Horkheimer’s Egoism and Freedom Movements, and produced the concept of the Authoritarian Character. After 1939 the project was abandoned, Fromm and the Frankfurt School went their separate ways, and the Frankfurt School’s research focus turned in a new direction. This paper argues that, appearances notwithstanding, research on the Authoritarian Character did not end in 1939 and that Fromm’s later work on necrophilia and biophilia in the 1960s-70s should be reconsidered as his attempt to complete the Frankfurt School’s research project on the Authoritarian Character.

I argue in this paper that Paulo Freire’s work Pedagogy of the oppressed should be reconsidered as a contribution to critical theory, given its proximity to first-generation critical theory concerning both theory and praxis. Pedagogy of the oppressed, I argue, is well suited to provide a viable praxis for the social critique provided by first-generation critical theory. While Freire’s critique in Pedagogy of the oppressed can be viewed typically as pedagogical in character, if we consider Freire’s classroom as a microcosm of society, it mirrors the dialectical relations of both the oppressor and oppressed. Pedagogy of the oppressed offers a means of overcoming the state of social oppression through a total social liberating praxis. Consequently, I argue that Pedagogy of the oppressed should be reconsidered as a contribution to first-generation critical theory.

This paper revisits the conceptual history of the early Frankfurt School’s investigations into the authoritarian character, the set of sadomasochistic character traits that dispose an individual or group to seek their own domination. This research project, which produced Fromm’s Studies on Authority and Family and Horkheimer’s Egoism and Freedom Movements in 1936 and ended in 1939 with Fromm’s expulsion from the Frankfurt School, is generally held to have been a theoretically-unproductive and abortive endeavour. We dispute such a reading by reconstructing the key concepts and methods of this research project, and demonstrating its breadth and coherence. In so doing we illustrate the centrality of Fromm’s contribution to the Frankfurt School early work on authority and indicate that the proper point of origin for those seeking to grasp the Frankfurt School’s research on the authoritarian character is 1930, the year in which Fromm joined the Frankfurt School.