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Biography
most notably outlined in his eponymous 3 volume study, signicance is socially produced (i.e. social space).[22]
which came out in individual installments, decades apart, Lefebvre analyses each historical mode as a three-part
in 1947, 1961, and 1981.
dialectic between everyday practices and perceptions (le
(le conu) and
Lefebvre argued that everyday life was an underdevel- peru), representations or theories of space[23]
the
spatial
imaginary
of
the
time
(le
vcu).
oped sector compared to technology and production,
and moreover that in the mid 20th century, capitalism
changed such that everyday life was to be colonized
turned into a zone of sheer consumption. In this zone
of everydayness (boredom) shared by everyone in society regardless of class or specialty, autocritique of everyday realities of boredom vs. societal promises of free
time and leisure, could lead to people understanding and
then revolutionizing their everyday lives. This was essential to Lefebvre because everyday life was where he
saw capitalism surviving and reproducing itself. Without
revolutionizing everyday life, capitalism would continue
to diminish the quality of everyday life, and inhibit real
self-expression. The critique of everyday life was crucial
because it was for him only through the development of
the conditions of human liferather than abstract control
of productive forcesthat humans could reach a concrete
utopian existence.[20]
Lefebvres work on everyday life was heavily inuential in
French theory, particularly for the Situationists, as well as
in politics (e.g. for the May 1968 student revolts).[21]
Lefebvre dedicated a great deal of his philosophical writings to understanding the importance of (the production
of) space in what he called the reproduction of social relations of production. This idea is the central argument
in the book The Survival of Capitalism, written as a sort
of prelude to La Production de lespace (1974) (The Production of Space). These works have deeply inuenced
current urban theory, mainly within human geography, as
seen in the current work of authors such as David Harvey,
Dolores Hayden, and Edward Soja, and in the contemporary discussions around the notion of Spatial justice.
Lefebvre is widely recognized as a Marxist thinker who
was responsible for widening considerably the scope of
Marxist theory, embracing everyday life and the contemporary meanings and implications of the ever expanding
reach of the urban in the western world throughout the
20th century. The generalization of industry, and its relation to cities (which is treated in La Pense marxiste et
la ville), The Right to the City and The Urban Revolution
were all themes of Lefebvres writings in the late 1960s,
which was concerned, among other aspects, with the deep
transformation of the city into the urban which culminated in its omni-presence (the complete urbanization
of society).
Lefebvre contends that there are dierent modes of production of space (i.e. spatialization) from natural space
('absolute space') to more complex spatialities whose
3.1
In his book The Urban Question, Manuel Castells criticizes Lefebvres Marxist Humanism and approach to the
city inuenced by Hegel and Nietzsche. Castells political criticisms of Lefebvres approach to Marxism echoed
the Structuralist Scientic Marxism school of Louis Althusser of which Lefebvre was an immediate critic. Many
responses to Castells are provided in The Survival of Capitalism, and some may argue that the acceptance of those
critiques in the academic world would be a motive for
Lefebvres eort in writing the long and theoretically
dense The Production of Space.
Bibliography
1963 La valle de Campan - Etude de sociologie rurale, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
1936 with Norbert Guterman, La Conscience mystie, Paris: Gallimard (new ed. Paris: Le Sycomore,
1979).
5
1974 La production de l'espace, Paris: Anthropos.
Translation and Prcis.
1974 with Leszek Koakowski Evolution or Revolution, F. Elders, ed. Reexive Water: The Basic Concerns of Mankind, London: Souvenir. pp. 199267.
ISBN 0-285-64742-3
1975 Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, ou le royaume des ombres, Paris: Tournai, Casterman. Collection Synthses contemporaines. ISBN 2-203-23109-2
1975 Le temps des mprises: Entretiens avec Claude
Glayman, Paris: Stock. ISBN 2-234-00174-9
1978 with Catherine Rgulier La rvolution n'est
plus ce qu'elle tait, Paris: ditions Libres-Hallier
(German trans. Munich, 1979). ISBN 2-26400849-0
1978 Les contradictions de l'Etat moderne, La dialectique de l'Etat, Vol. 4 of 4 De 1'Etat, Paris: UGE,
Collection 10/18.
1980 La prsence et l'absence, Paris: Casterman.
ISBN 2-203-23172-6
1981 Critique de la vie quotidienne, III. De la modernit au modernisme (Pour une mtaphilosophie du
quotidien) Paris: L'Arche.
1981 De la modernit au modernisme: pour une mtaphilosophie du quotidien, Paris: L'Arche Collection Le sens de la march".
1985 with Catherine Rgulier-Lefebvre, Le projet
rythmanalytique Communications 41. pp. 191
199.
1986 with Serge Renaudie and Pierre Guilbaud,
International Competition for the New Belgrade
Urban Structure Improvement, in Autogestion, or
Henri Lefebvre in New Belgrade, Vancouver: Fillip
Editions. ISBN 978-0-9738133-5-7
1988 Toward a Leftist Cultural Politics: Remarks Occasioned by the Centenary of Marxs Death, D. Reifman trans., L.Grossberg and C.Nelson (eds.) Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Urbana: University of Illinois Press; New York: Macmillan. pp.
7588. ISBN 0-252-01108-2
REFERENCES
5 References
[1] Schrift (2006), p. 152.
[2] Schrift (2006), p. 153.
[3] Ian H. Birchall, Sartre against Stalinism, Berghahn Books,
2004, p. 176: Sartre praised highly [Lefebvres] work on
sociological methodology, saying of it: 'It remains regrettable that Lefebvre has not found imitators among other
Marxist intellectuals.
[4] Shields, Rob (1999). Lefebvre Love and Struggle. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-09370-8.
[5] Michel Trebitsch: Introduction to Critique of Everyday
Life, Vol. 1
1991 The Production of Space, Donald NicholsonSmith trans., Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Originally
published 1974. ISBN 0-631-14048-4
7 Further reading
[13] Right to the City as a response to the crisis: Convergence or divergence of urban social movements?, Knut
Unger, Reclaiming Spaces
[14] Radical Philosophy obituary, 1991
[15] Gombin, Richard (1971). The Origins of Modern Leftism.
Penguin. ISBN 0-14-021846-7., p40
[16] Radical Philosophy obituary, 1991.
[17] Lefebvre, Henri (1947). The Critique of Everyday Life.
Verso. ISBN 1844671941., p40
[18] Lefebvre, Henri; Regular, Catherine (2004). Rhythmanalysis. Continuum. ISBN 0826472990.
[19] Prface : Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life.
Volume I. Introduction. Retrieved 17 May 2016.
[20] Elden, 2004, pp. 110126.
[21] Ross, Kristin (2005). May 68 and its afterlives. University
of Chicago. ISBN 0226727998.
[22] Place, A Short Introduction by Tim Cresswell
8 External links
Quotations related to Henri Lefebvre at Wikiquote
Sources
Stuart Elden, Understanding Henri Lefebvre: Theory and the Possible, London/New York: Continuum, 2004.
Alan D. Schrift, Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes And Thinkers, Blackwell Publishing, 2006.
8
Bioinformatic Alignments by Jordan Crandall
Central Europe and the Nationalist Paradigm
(University of Texas at Austin 1996) by Katherine
Arens
La Mthode d'Henri Lefebvre in Multitudes by
Rmi Hess (in French)
Stadt, Raum und Gesellschaft: Henri Lefebvre und
die Theorie der Produktion des Raumes by Christian
Schmid (in German)
Postmodern Spacings in Postmodern Culture by
Mark Nunes et al.
Towards a Heuristic Method: Sartre and Lefebvre
by Michael Kelly in Sartre Studies International, vol.
5, no. 1, 1999, pp. 115.
Henri Lefebvre on Space Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory by Lukasz
Stanek
ukasz Stanek: Methodologies and Situations of Urban Research:. Re-reading Henri Lefebvres The
Production of Space. In: Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 4 (2007), pp.
461465.
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