3. Philosophy and Sociology of Space

See: Ibidem, pp. 26–27.

Lefebvre’s mention is explicitly addressed to Gramsci. See: Ibidem, p. 10.

See: M. Foucault, “Des espaces autres”, in Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, n. 5, octobre 1984, pp. 46–49, now in D. Defert, F. Ewald (edited by), Dits et écrits, Gallimard, Paris, 1994, Vol. IV, pp. 752–762 (it was a conference held at the Cercle d’étude architectuales, Tunisi, March 14, 1967). See: H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 4.

See particularly Discourse on the Method and Metaphysical Meditations. Lefebvre’s position is antithetic to the Cartesian space dualism between res extensa and res cogitans.

Ibidem, p. 14.

Ibidem, p. 15.

See: H. Lefebvre, Nietzsche, Syllepse, Paris, 2003. Id., Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Casteman, Paris, 1975.

Ibidem, p. 73.

Ibidem, pp. 26–27.

Ibidem, p. 85.

Ibidem, p. 94.

Ibidem, pp. 101–102.

Ibidem, p. 137.

Ibidem, p. 125.

From the wide secondary literature available, I took my inspiration on the interpretation offered by Stanek. See: Ł. Stanek, “Space as Concrete Abstraction. Hegel, Marx, and Modern Urbanism in Henri Lefebvre”, in S. Kipfer, K. Goonewardena, C. Schmid, R. Milgrom (edited by), Space, Difference, Everyday Life, pp. 62–79. Within the Italian debate, even De Simoni highlights the Lefebvrian critique of the Bauhaus. See: Id., Filosofia politica dello spazio: il programma di ricerca di Henri Lefebvre e le sue conseguenze teoriche, pp. 132–134.

H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 33. In his English translation Donald Nicholson-Smith chose these three translations: “spatial practice” [pratique spatiale], “representations of space” [représentation de l'espace] and “representational spaces” [espaces de représentation]. Other scholars—see Space, Difference, Everyday Life, edited by S. Kipfer, K. Goonewardena, C. Schmid, R. Milgrom—prefer to translate with “spatial practice,” “representations of space” and “spaces of representation.” I personally chose this second version, which I consider most commonly used. [author’s note]

Ibidem, p. 44.

Ibidem, p. 33.

Ibidem, pp. 38–39.

Ibidem, p. 350.

See: K. Marx, “The Capital” (1887), in Collected Works of Marx & Engels, Vol. 35, p. 81 (Sect. 4 “The Fetishism of Commodities”).

Ibidem, pp. 182–184, 296–300.

This intuition appears already in 1939, with the publication of Dialectical Materialism, and is and is further developed in 1947 with Logique formelle, logique dialectique. In this text the author proposes the concept of dépassement, whose meaning refers both to the idea of Überwinden of Nietzsche, and to the Aufhebung of Hegel. In this regard Lefebvre uses Marx's point of view of a philosophy tangibly rooted in the fluxus of reality. At the same time, and in a heterodox way, it also accepts Nietzsche's contribution, to underline the coherence of theory with respect to human experience. That experience can be enriched through Art and Poetry (according to the Promethean metaphor of living as a “work of art”), offering new and unexplored possibilities. In my opinion the best book to highlight this Lefebvrian dialectic triad is Hegel Marx Nietzsche ou le royaume des ombres (1975).

See: D. Harvey, The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism, Profile Books, London, 2010. Id., Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, Profile Books, London, 2014. In this regard, Guido Borelli on Chapter IV of his volume reduces the Lefebvrian theory of space substantially to the so called “secondary circuit of capital” that indicates the economic valuation of the housing and real-estate market. Despite the fact that Lefebvre elaborated further on the Marxian tradition, allowing it the access to spatial studies, I don’t think that the theory of space of the Hagetmau philosopher can be reduced to the correction of the Marxian theories on the Capital, realized through their application to the real-estate political economy. Surely, that insight is an important piece in the Lefebvrian thought, however it is solely a portion of a more ample constellation of the urban and spatial studies conducted by Lefebvre. If Harvey remembers Lefebvre mainly for the question connected to the right to the city, to the urban revolution and to the translation of Karl Marx’s thought into the spatial dimension, Borelli sticks to resuming a part of the third problem, more precisely, the “secondary circuit of capital,” a term that besides isn’t used by Lefebvre (see: G. Borelli, Immagini di città. Processi spaziali e interpretazioni sociologiche, Mondadori, Milano, 2012, pp. 61–88).

E. Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory, Verso, London, 1989. For a brief recognition of Soja’s point of view see: S. Elden, “Politics, Philosophy, Geography: Henri Lefebvre in Recent Anglo-American Scholarship”, in Antipodes, Volume 33, n. 5, 2001, pp. 809–825. Thierry Paquot instead argues his disagreement on post-modern interpretations: “Henri Lefebvre penseur de l’urbain”, in T. Paquot, C. Younès, Le territoire des philosophes. Lieu et espace dans la pensée au XX siècle, La Decouverte, Paris, 2009, p. 237.

E. Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places, Blackwell, Oxford, 1996.

See: R. Shields, Lefebvre: Love and Struggle, Routledge, London, 1999, p. 120. S. Elden, Understanding Henri Lefebvre, Continuum, London, 2004, p. 37.

M. Gottdiener, “A Marx for Our Time: Henri Lefebvre and The Production of Space”, in Sociological Theory, Volume 11, n. 1, 1993, pp. 129–134. M. Gottdiener, R. Hutchinson, The New Urban Sociology, Westview Press, Boulder, 2006. S. Zukin, “A Decade of the New Urban Research”, in Theory & Society, n. 9, 1980, pp. 575–601. J. Walton, “Urban Sociology: The Contribution and Limits of Political Economy”, in Annual Review of Sociology, Volume 19, 1993, pp. 301–320.

Ibidem, p. 247.

See: H. Arendt, Was ist Politik? Fragmente aus dem Nachlass, Piper, Munchen, 2003, partly translated in English: J. Kohn (edited by), The Promise of Politics, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, New York, 2009.

These perceptions of the democratic space as empty place were also developed during the Sixties and Seventies by Claude Lefort, founding member of the Socialisme ou Barbarie journal, a group the actively participated in the Parisian political life and that collaborated with the Situationists; the group Arguments and the French radical gauche, an atmosphere that Lefebvre also experienced (see: C. Lefort, “The Image of the Body Totalitarianism”, in The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy, Democracy, Totalitarianism, MIT Press, Cambridge (MA), 1896). This is the course that guides the historical-political analysis of the French Revolution by Paolo Viola that re-appropriates the ancient image to describe the end of absolute monarchy in France (see: P. Viola, Il Trono vuoto. La transizione della sovranità nella Rivoluzione Francese, Einaudi, Torino, 1988). Por a systematic analysis of Lefort’s entire intellectual production regarding the node between “empty place” and “democracy.” See: M. Abensour, Democracy Against the State: Marx and the Machiavellian Moment, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2011.

Ibidem, p. 46.

See Chapter IV: Ibidem, pp. 229–291.

See Chapter VI: Ibidem, pp. 352–400.

Ibidem.

See: Ibidem, p. 358.

See: Ibidem, p. 50.

Ibidem, p. 290 (in addition see also the complete paragraph XIV: pp. 285–291).

Ibidem, pp. 355–356.

Ibidem, p. 52.

With the expression French Theory I refer to the interpretation, developed in the United States, of the idea of postmodernism of some French authors. This concept is the product of American universities which attribute it to some philosophers who, while showing points of convergence with American scholars, maintain a substantial autonomy of thought that cannot be reduced to that type of marketing operation (see: F. Cusset, French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co: Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2008). To highlight the contact between American hermeneutics and French philosophy, I am therefore forced to use the definition French Theory, despite my radical refusal from a theoretical point of view. Other critics use the same idea, in spite of many doubts (see the philosophical school that derives from the thought of Roberto Esposito who, in recent years, has constantly followed this course, mitigating his doubts and even assuming the existence of an Italian school). This vulgar reductionism, beyond the limits indicated by Cusset, redefines the philosophical and political debate through the principle of a nationalist idea, and it is the product of the impositions of the cultural industry, in which even “Philosophy” becomes “merchandize” for the public. Finally, as we will see in the last chapter, I demarcate myself not only from the political geographer Soja, within the debate of the United States, but also from the philosophical current of “post-workerism” which refers to the thought of Antonio Negri. This current interprets Lefebvre through post-structuralist categories, starting from the biopolitical instance, then considering the analysis of the metropolis produced by Negri himself, and finally approaching the category of “significant voids” of Laclau: it is through this course that this current proposes its reading of “right to the city.”

Deleuze, as he inscribes his thought on Bergson’s trail (see the last paragraph of this chapter), is not compatible with the concept of “difference” as theorized by Lefebvre.

See: J. Deridda, Writing and Difference, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1978. Id., Politics of Friendship, Verso, London, 1997.

Foucault theoretically elaborates the concept of “difference” by identifying it on the subjects and identities at the margins of society. Similar multiple subjectivities and inscribed in the interstices that are, precisely, “marginal,” would create heterotopian dimensions of life, that is, alternative forms of life to society that co-exist at the borders of the dominating governmental apparatus. Obviously, such a point of view is not compatible with the concept of difference imagined by Lefebvre.

Ibidem, p. 23.

Ibidem, p. 103.

Despite Lefebvre’s not subtracting from historiography I believe it useful to also refer to these volumes: I. Cervelli, Le Origini della Comune di Parigi. Una cronaca (31 ottobre 1870–18 marzo 1871), Viella, Roma, 2015. P. O. Lissagaray, History of the Paris Commune of 1871, Red and Black Publishers, St Petersburg (FL), 2007. Id., Huit journées de mai derrière les barricades, Gallimard, Paris, 1968.

I partially take some distance from De Simoni, who is very mush influenced by the reading of the metropolis as proposed by the contemporaneous post-workerism, that interprets the analysis of the Commune by Lefebvre as an attempt to elaborate an “archetype” of the political conflict of the urban riot. Despite the fact that her aesthetical-political interpretation of the urban riot from the Eighteen-hundreds until now is sharp and well argued, I think that it reduces the potentialities of that event only to “destitutioning power,” removing the “constituent power” that, conversely I here wish to highlight. See: S. De Simoni, “La Comune di Parigi come archetipo della rivoluzione urbana”, in F. Biagi, M. Cappitti, M. Pezzella, Il tempo del possibile. L’attualità della Comune di Parigi, monographic supplement to n. 3/2018 of “Il Ponte”, Firenze, pp. 101–110.

Ibidem, pp. 389–390.

See: Ibidem, p. 21.

F. Jesi, Spartakus. Simbologia della rivolta, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 2000, p. 69. Besides see also: Id., “Lettura del Bateau ivre di Rimbaud”, in Il tempo della festa, Nottetempo, Roma, 2014, p. 47.

Ibidem, pp. 45–46.

Ibidem.

It must be added that Lefebvre doesn’t mention his friend Guy Debord and that decision will become one of the reasons for the mutual resentment that will put an end to the relation of the author with the situationist movement (see supra in Chapter 1 the paragraph dedicated to the relation between Debord and Lefebvre).

See: G. Debord, A. Kotanyi, R. Vaneigem, “Sur la Comune”, in Internationale Situationniste, n. 12, Septembre 1969. Conseil Central de l'International Situationniste, “Aux poubelles de l’histoire”, in Internationale Situationniste, n. 8, Janvier 1963.

The reflections that are here displayed find inspiration and roots in the studies on the Paris Commune conducted by Kristin Ross that confirm Lefebvre’s inquiries, see: K. Ross, The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune, Verso, London, 2008. (In the French edition there is a more recent and valuable foreword by the author available online at the site of the Parisian publishers, see: id., Rimbaud, la Commune de Paris et l’invention de l’histoire spatiale, Les Prairies ordinaires, Paris, 2013.) See also: Id., Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune, Verso, London, 2015.

Ibidem, p. 42.

Ibidem, p. 38.

Ibidem, p. 390.

Ibidem, p. 22.

As is widely known, Lefebvre follows Marx’s analysis, who foresees in the Commune the most successful example of the overcoming and abolition of the state form (see particularly: H. Lefebvre, La proclamation de la Commune, pp. 390–391). Such concepts however deserve some clarification. The power of the State is already “superseded,” Marx writes after having defined the Commune as “local municipal liberty” (K. Marx, “The Civil War in France” (1871), in Collected Work of Marx & Engels, Vol. 22, p. 334). In German, Marx uses the verb absschaffen [abolish]—used to express for instance the death penalty or torture per decreto—to define the anarchic perspective on the problem of authority (represented in those years mainly by Proudhon and Bakunin). The other terms Marx uses in his Commune’s writings instead underline mostly a processual movement regarding a decision imposed by law and the terms are: the verbs absterben (to perish), auflösen e verschwinden (dissolve, disappear), fallen (fall by oneself) or einschlafen (fall asleep on one’s own, that is, “extinguish” in a figurated sense) often used in official documents as synonym of “dying.” Other formulas are “become superfluous, useless, deprive oneself of one’s own function.” Marx thus means to underline the process of erosion and extinction of the State political form through the practical acts and concrete decisions adopted by the Paris Commune such as: drastic reduction of the labor day, the change that occurs in the ownership relations and the radical socio-political change of work and human activities (also the question of the political institutions). In this regard see the precise argumentation by Daniel Bensaïd in: “Politiques de Marx,” foreword of K. Marx, F. Engels, Inventer l'inconnu, textes et correspondances autour de la Commune, La Fabrique, Paris, 2008.

Ibidem, p. 36.

Ibidem, p. 150.

See: F. Dupuis-Déri, Qui a peur du peuple? Le débat entre l’agoraphobie et l’agoraphilie politique”, Variations. Revue Internationale de théorie critique”, Éditions Burozoiques, n. 15, 2011. Id., La peur du peuple: Agoraphobie et agoraphilie politiques, Lux Éditeur, Montréal (QC), 2016.

I explicitly refer to Hannah Arendt’s political thought who understands the concerted action in public space as an act similar to a miracle, to the point she ends up referring to revolutions and to the political forms of the Consiliarist tradition as a “lost treasure.” See: H. Arendt, On Revolution, Penguin, New York, 1990. Id., Was ist Politik? Fragmente aus dem Nachlass, Piper, Muenchen, 2003, partly translated in English: J. Kohn (edited by), The Promise of Politics, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, New York, 2009.

H. Lefebvre, “Engels et l’utopie”, in Espace et politique. Le droit à la ville II, Anthropos, Paris, 2000, p. 90. There is an English version, but I prefer use the original volume. See: “Engels and Utopia”, in Marxist Thought and the City, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2016.

Ibidem, p. 87.

H. Lefebvre, “Engels et l’utopie”, in Espace et politique. Le droit à la ville II, p. 90.

Ibidem, p. 137.

Ibidem, p. 138.

Ibidem, pp. 130–131.

H. Lefebvre, “The Right to the City”, in Writings on Cities, Wiley-Blackwell, London, 1996, p. 151. See also: Id., “Humanisme et urbanisme. Quelque propositions”, in Du rural à l'urbain, pp. 153–158.

Ibidem, pp. 128–130.

Ibidem, pp. 128–129.

In addition to the references contained in The Urban Revolution, see: H. Lefebvre, “La ville et l’urbain”, in Espace et politique. Le droit à la ville II, pp. 79–80.

See: R. Hess, Henri Lefebvre et la pensée du possibile. Théorie des moments et construction de la personne, Anthropos, Paris, 2008. I summarize in this paragraph the theses of critique of everyday life on the spatial and urban studies of Lefebvre, however for a broader analysis see: C. Stenghel, Per una filosofia del quotidiano. Pensare il cambiamento a partire dalla riflessione di Henri Lefebvre, Phd Thesis, 24 April 2018, University of Padova (Italy).

H. Lefebvre, The Critique of Everyday Life. Vol. I, Verso, London, 2008, p. 230.

Ibidem.

It is necessary to precise that Lefebvre resumes the concentration camp’s heritage born with totalitarism in order to read it along the course of development of the capitalist forms of life. Paradoxically the darkest moment in European history, would unveil, thus, showing the degeneration of its possibilities, the essence itself of everyday life inherent to the modern foundation: “ if Fascism represents the most extreme form of capitalism, the concentration camp is the most extreme and paroxysmal form of a modern housing estate, or of an industrial town. There are many intermediary stages between our towns and the concentration camps: miners’ villages, temporary housing on construction sites, villages for immigrant workers… Nevertheless, the link is clear” (Ibidem, pp. 245–246).

Ibidem, p. 232.

Ibidem, p. 248.

Ibidem, p. 249.

Ibidem.

Man should consider is own life “not just as a means but as an end” (Ibidem, p. 199).

See Introduction to Modernity and Everyday Life in the Modern World.

See H. Lefebvre, The Critique of Everyday Life. Vol. II, Verso, London, 2008, pp. 10–11. On the relation between the everyday and colonization see also A. Raulin, La vie quotidienne entre colonisation et émancipation, in Henri Lefebvre. Une pensée devenue monde?, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2012.

Ibidem, p. 597.

Ibidem.

See the two introductions to the Italian edition of Everyday Life in the Modern World: P. Jedlowski, “Henri Lefebvre e la critica della vita quotidiana”, in H. Lefebvre, La vita quotidiana nel mondo moderno, Il Saggiatore, Milano, 1979, pp. 7–31. A. Vigorelli, “Vita quotidiana e riproduzione dei rapporti di produzione”, in H. Lefebvre, La vita quotidiana nel mondo moderno, pp. 32–55.

Ibidem, p. 22.

Ibidem, p. 23.

See: Ibidem, p. 27.

Ibidem, p. 32.

Ibidem, p. 37.

Ibidem.

H. Lefebvre, “La re-production des rapports de production”, in L’Homme et la société, n. 22, 1971, pp. 3–23; later in: La survie du capitalisme: la reproduction des rapports de production, Anthropos, Paris, 1973, pp. 57–126; English trans.: “Reproduction of the Relations of Production”, in The Survival of Capitalism: Reproduction of the Relations of Production, S. Martin’s Press, New York, 1973, pp. 42–91.

Ibidem, p. 85.

Ibidem, p. 40.

Ibidem.

Ibidem, p. 342. On the “theory of the moments,” Lefebvre’s references are, firstly, the pamphlet by Politzer (La fin d’une parade philosophique, le bergsonisme, 1929), secondly, Leibniz’s thought (see: Ibidem, p. 370 footnote 2).

See: H. Bergson, Durée et simultanéité, à propos de la théorie d'Einstein (1922), PUF, Paris, 1998. Id., Essais sur les données immédiates de la conscience (1889), PUF, Paris, 2007.

Ibidem, p. 343.

“In day-to-day language, the word ‘moment’ and the word ‘instant’ are almost interchangeable. However, there is a distinction between them. When we say ‘It was an enjoyable moment…’, for example, it implies a certain length of time, a value, a nostalgia and the hope of reliving that moment or preserving it as a privileged lapse of time, embalmed in memory. It is not just any old instant, nor a simple ephemeral and transitory one” (Ibidem, p. 343).

Ibidem, p. 344. I highlight again the difference between Lefebvre and Deleuze, in fact, Deleuze follows the Bergson’s point of view.

See: M. Pezzella, La memoria del possibile, Jaca Book, Milano, 2009, pp. 281–336; M. Tomba, Attraverso la piccola porta. Quattro studi su Walter Benjamin, pp. 77–114.

See Lefebvre’s reference by Debord: Ibidem.

G. Debord, “Rapport sur la construction des situations” (1957), in Oeuvres, p. 325. See also: Id., “Problèmes préliminaires à la construction d'une situation”, in Internationale Situationniste, n. 1, June 1958.

For these reflections I am still grateful to Mario Pezzella for the dialogue we had in Rome during the conference “Il Diritto alla Città” (24–25 November 2016, Dipartimento di Architettura dell’Università di Roma). See: M. Pezzella, La Comune di Parigi. Un urbanesimo rivoluzionario, online: https://​www.​fondazionecritic​asociale.​org/​2017/​06/​12/​la-comune-parigi-un-urbanesimo-rivoluzionario/​.

W. Benjamin, “L’oeuvre d'art à l’époque de sa reproduction mécanisé” (1936), in Opere complete, Vol. VI, Einaudi, Torino, 2004, footnote 1, p. 532. This is the first French draft of the essay, at least in the numbering followed by the Italian edition, in accordance with the French version, the only one published in Benjamin’s life. See also: M. Löwy, Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s on the Concept of History, London, Verso, 2005, p. 76. G. Debord, “Contribution a une definition situationniste du jeu”, in Internationale Situationniste, n. 1, June 1958. Id., “Le retour de Charles Fourier”, in Internationale Situationniste, n. 12, 1969.

See: M. Pezzella, La memoria del possibile, pp. 52–53. For a contextualization of the urban studies by the Situationists, see: T. Paquot (edited by), Les situationistes en ville, Infolio, Gollion, 2015. Finally a broadened and detailed account of the artistic-architectonic foundations of the situationist thought was edited by Gianfranco Marelli (see particularly the Chapters I and II): Id., L’amara vittoria del situazionismo. Storia critica dell’Internationale Situationniste 1957–1972, Mimesis, Milano, 2017. Id., Una bibita mescolata alla sete, BFS Edizioni, Pisa, 2015.

Ibidem, p. 207.

G. Debord, “Écologie, psycogéographie et transformation du milieu humain” (1959), in Oeuvres, p. 460. See also: A. Khatib, “Essai de description psichogéographique des Halles”, in Internationale Situationniste, n. 2, 1958.

G. Debord, “Écologie, psycogéographie et transformation du milieu humain” (1959), in Oeuvres. See also: Id., “Urbanisme unitaire à la fin des années 50”, in Internationale Situationniste, n. 3, December 1959. Constant, “Une autre ville pour une autre vie”, in Internationale Situationniste,, n. 3, December 1959. G. Debord, “Résolution sur le Bureau d'urbanisme unitaire”, in Internationale Situationniste, n. 5, December 1960. A. Kotanyi, R. Vaneigem, “Programme élémentaire du bureau d'urbanisme unitaire”, in Internationale Situationniste, n. 6, August 1961. R. Vaneigem, “Commentaires contre l'urbanisme”, in Internationale Situationniste, n. 6, August 1961. G. Debord, “L’urbanisme comme volonté et comme représentation”, in Internationale Situationniste, n. 8, August 1963.

On the “Ludic city,” see: F. Careri, Walkscapes. Camminare come pratica estetica, pp. 74–76. And the volume dedicated to Constant’s thought: Id., Constant. New Babylon, una città nomande. For a recognition of the anti-functionalist artistic avant-gardes see: L. Lippolis, La rivoluzione delle avanguardie, in P.P. Poggio (edited by), L’Altro Novecento. Comunismo eretico e pensiero critico, Vol. 1, Jaca Book, Milano, 2010, pp. 97–112.

H. Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life. Vol. I, p. 148. Id., Critique of Everyday Life. Vol. II, p. 41.

Ibidem.

Ibidem.

Ibidem.

Anselm Jappe underlines the differences between Lefebvre and Debord, referring the situationist critique to his “theory of the possibles.” Lefebvre is criticized for being too imprecise and for not having concretely founded the “change” in life practices (see: Id., Guy Debord, p. 96). However, I would like to highlight the common points of view of the two authors: if we don't limit our reading to the two volumes of the Critique, a global vision of Lefebvre's thought allows us to affirm that he accepted Debord's critique as presented in Thèses sur la révolution culturelle. Moreover, in the early sixties the critiques between Debord and Lefebvre were neither accusatory nor ironic, as instead will happen after their rift; indeed, during the first phase, it was a very prolific theoretical debate (see: G. Debord, “Thèses sur la révolution culturelle”, in Internationale Situationniste, n. 1, June 1958).