Skepticism and the Ordinary — From Burnt Norton To Las Vegas

Abstract

The premise of this article is that Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour’s Learning from Las Vegas exemplifies a full-scale engagement with the implications of philosophical skepticism. Drawing on the philosopher Stanley Cavell’s work on skepticism and the ordinary, I take up the classical questions of skepticism and bring them to bear directly on questions of language and architecture in that text. I argue that instead of light irony, complicity with the "culture industry," or the simple equation of architecture with communication, Learning from Las Vegas is fundamentally about the "intolerable wrestle with words and meanings" in the city.