Episode 5: Marianela D'Aprile - Palaces for the People
A conversation with Marianela D'Aprile, an activist with the Democratic Socialists of America who writes about politics, architecture and culture.
Episode 5 was a conversation with Chicago-based journalist and activist Marianela D’Aprile, a writer who has published essays in a great many publications, including Jacobin, Surface, Common Edge, and The Nation.
I first encountered Marianela’s writing this year, in her terrific essay ‘Delete your fake account’, a review of the novel ‘Fake Accounts’ by Lauren Oyler. I was immediately struck by her analysis of online identities, and what’s at stake politically, socially and culturally in a world where we all act through the ‘avatars’ of our social media profiles.
Her principal focus as a writer is architecture, although she is equally fascinated by music, culture and politics, and has written extensively on each. What fascinated me as I began to explore more of her writing was her ability to tie in some of the most complex ideas of left-wing theory and praxis with any topic she chooses to write about, be that the decolonisation of architecture, or the ‘labor feminism’ of Dolly Parton and ‘9 to 5’.
Also an activist with the Democratic Socialists of America, Marianela has written extensively about the prospect of a more democratic, left-leaning politics in America at a time when the hard right has rarely been more powerful or visible. We spoke about her involvement with the DSA, and her belief in the change-making abilities of politicians like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
This was a fascinating conversation, lots of it about a topic I know only the barest of information about, namely architecture, and how useful it is as a vehicle for talking about the ideologies at play behind capitalism. In particular, her notion of public space as being one of the best metaphors for a more human, more communitarian approach to politics and people is something that will stay with me.
My own engagement with public space during the pandemic confirms what Marianela argues - that we should think more about what we all share, how best to share it, and what we can gain by approaching life together, rather than alone.
Beyond the canon: Reading recommendations from Marianela D’Aprile
Lots of the reading recommendations from Episode 5 are from Marianela’s own work. She writes with singular precision and clarity, and has her finger on the pulse of modern (especially online) politics in a way that a great many old, white male writers on the left just… don’t.
Her architecture essays, which is where her political writing flourished and took root, is incredibly good at clarifying what are quite complicated, specialised arguments around the built environment, and what it means for people and politics. Don’t take my word for it - follow Marianela on Twitter, and check out a page of her best articles over at her website.
I would perhaps recommend starting, as I did, with ‘Delete your fake account’, a review of the novel ‘Fake Accounts’ by Lauren Oyler. She nails the slippery, ephemeral nature of online identities and performative politics better than almost anyone I have read on the topic. Discussing this essay, I mentioned the 2013 Charlie Brooker documentary ‘How Video Games Changed the World’, where Brooker argues that Twitter is the most influential video game ever created, because it encourages us to ‘role-play’ as ‘avatars’ loosely based upon our own self-image.
As Marianela writes:
“The dangers of this mediated mode of relating go beyond purposeful misrepresentation or accidental misinterpretation. Eventually, the personas we construct — which are based on what we think people want to see, what will be palatable, what will get a stranger to swipe right on our dating profile — end up unmooring us from our actual selves. Projections, tied to or rooted in our selves as they might be, exist outside of us. We are alone as we create them, alone as we present them to the world, and alone as we watch the world interact not with us, but with our invented doppelgängers.”
That’s one of the best and most incisive definitions I’ve read of what happens when we ‘act’ or ‘speak’ online, whether in a political activist context, or on dating apps. Have a read of the full essay.
One of the topics we discussed in the episode was public space, and how this is thought about and legislated for in politics at a symbolic level, and at the level of public planning, architecture and design. Marianela’s piece on Covid-19 and public space offers a brilliant analysis of the design of Chicago’s Armour Square Park (pictured above), designed in the Beaux-Arts style.
Her piece on the Amazon HQ in Arlington, Virginia (famously compared to the poop emoji) is a fantastic read. Her definition of corporate architecture as ‘antihuman’ is a terrific bit of power analysis:
“Because it’s so capital-intensive, requiring so much money and labor, major architectural projects almost always end up expressing the goals of those in power.”
As we discussed architecture and the canon, she mentioned a few names, including Mies van der Rohe (who constructed a monument to the revolutionary socialist philosopher Rosa Luxemburg) and Le Corbusier. She also mentioned more contemporary figures like Bjarke Engels, who has encountered controversy for cosying up to hard-right Brazilian politician Jair Bolsonaro.
Her proposition that we should re-focus the study of these figures around the economic, cultural and political contexts from which they emerged, rather than mythologising them as auteurs, could be equally applied to any cultural figure, or artistic discipline.
As a side-note, I briefly mentioned the story of the Kingdom of Kush, which was long considered to be a ‘derivative’ culture of the ancient Egyptian dynasties, but has since been found to predate them. There’s a great piece about why and how colonialist and imperialist scholars overlooked and rewrote the history of Kush over at The Smithsonian Magazine.
We discussed two of Marianela’s responses to pieces by other architects, further exploring the notions of decolonisation and the ‘canon’ in architecture. I learned a lot from these pieces, which offer a really accessible window into this complex area of debate. Check out ‘Not everything is architecture’ and ‘The politics of architecture are not a matter of taste’.
Marianela’s recommendation for anyone wanting to explore a little deeper into the politics of architecture is the book ‘Critique of Architecture’ by Doug Spencer, which offers a concrete framework for the analysis of the built environment in political and critical terms.
The episode’s title comes from a book by Eric Klinenberg, ‘Palaces for the People’. That’s one I’ve added to my reading list, to help me understand a little more about the politics of architecture as understood through the lens of democratic socialism.
For more on the Democratic Socialists of America, and their campaign to bring socialist ideas into the political mainstream, read her 2018 essay ‘What you need to know about Democratic Socialism’, a rousing call to action that does a great job of opening the doors of left-wing solidarity to a new generation of politically-engaged citizens. On the same topic, Marianela recommends an essay by one of her Jacobin colleagues, “What is Democratic Socialism?, by Neal Meyer.
Marianela also writes about music, an endeavour that can be compared (as we discuss in the podcast) to “dancing about architecture.” There’s a nice synergy to that, and her music writing has a relaxed, intimate, personal quality that offers a warm contrast to her sharp-edged political essays. Subscribe to The Immense Wave to read about bands like Belle & Sebastian, Perfume Genius, and many more.
Finally, you can read much more of Marianela’s work at her website, www.daprile.work. I very much enjoyed meeting Marianela and she’s definitely on my list of guests to invite back on again one day for another conversation.
Coming up on Episode 6: Dr. Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes
I can’t believe we’ve been going for six months! Thanks to everyone who has listened to, shared and engaged with Strange Exiles so far. It feels like we’re building something together, and I am incredibly grateful for your support.
I could not be more thrilled to announce next month’s guest. This man was at the very top of the list of people I wanted for the podcast, and I am still a little bit overwhelmed that he said yes to coming on the show.
Writer and philosopher Dr. Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes is the author of ‘Noumenautics: Metaphysics, Meta-ethics and Psychedelics’. A research fellow and lecturer at Exeter University, he specialises in ontology and the philosophy of mind.
His pioneering work on the validity of psychedelic experiences in philosophical enquiry is accompanied by a vast expertise on the works of A.N. Whitehead, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Baruch Spinoza.
His major early work was ‘Neo-Nihilism: The Philosophy of Power’ (also collected in ‘Noumenautics’), an essay that reimagined the philosophy of nihilism for the modern era, drawing on the works of Nietzsche and the cold logic of Hume’s guillotine.
I can’t overstate how influential his writing, and this essay in particular, have been on my own thinking and writing. It was an absolute pleasure to speak with the good Doctor, and I look forward to sharing our conversation.
To get ready for the next episode, go and watch his talk on 'Consciousness and psychedelics’ for TedX.
Look out for Episode 6 later this month.
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Take care of each other.
- Bram E Gieben, Glasgow, May 2021