The Architecture of Vernacular Subjectivities: North American and Slovenian Perspectives

Abstract

This article examines the construction of North American and Slovenian vernacular architecture studies and points to assumptions that guide researchers, including unofficial political beliefs held by scholars. Vernacular architecture studies in North America exhibit a concern for the contemporary everyday, which derives in part from widespread belief in the nation as flexible and incorporative, as well as a concomitant understanding that modernity is fluid and centered in the present. In contrast, Slovenian folkloristics and Slovenian architecture studies insist on traditional forms as vernacular architecture, a focus that stems from disciplinary continuities predating the socialist period, from myths of the nation that draw on nineteenth-century folkloristic constructions, and from an associated, temporally fixed notion of modernity. The striking differences between views of folk architecture in North America and Slovenia underscore the spatio-temporal specificity of modernity, as well as the need to acknowledge situated, not universal, subjectivities and disciplinary concepts.