Architecture and Ideology

114
ALEKSANDAR KUŠIĆ PhD student
Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade, aleksandar.kusic@gmail.com
DESIRE AND DUPLICITY: LESSONS OF THE PAST
Abstract |
The settlement of New Belgrade has witnessed in the past two decades a feverish activity
aimed at acquisition and exploitation of land previously unoccupied during the reign of
Yugoslav socialism. Post–socialist Capital has proven keen on turning space, the realm of the
common in the ideology of socialism, into a commodity exchanged through the fabric of private
property. Yet for all of their embedded–ness in times that followed the collapse of socialist
federation, these events are viewed today as called upon in the later periods of this very same
Yugoslav socialism. Supposedly part of a stance that left the embrace of ideology – never to
return – this addressing was defined most clearly in the study Iskustva prošlosti [Lessons of the
Past], published in 1985. The study was conceptualized as an all–out rejection of the Athens
Charter principles, viewed as implemented in an unmediated fashion throughout the spaces of
New Belgrade settlement. Approaching the study from the standpoint of the Lacanian theory
the paper aims to show that it speaks not only of a successful operation of ideological quilting,
but also of a prophesized arrival of new points of authority, one of politics, and the other of
economics. Acting as a medium that teaches how to desire a pact with the Politician and the
Capitalist, the study is seen as being doubly let down by its outcome – as the paper clearly
demonstrates through the examples of post–socialist, capitalist rampage.
Key words |
Ideology, Master, Late / Post–Socialism, New Belgrade, Lessons of the Past