Henri Lefebvre
Encyclopedia
Henri Lefebvre was a French sociologist
, Marxist intellectual, and philosopher, best known for his work on dialectics, Marxism, everyday life, cities, and (social) space.
, Landes, France. He studied philosophy at the University of Paris
(the Sorbonne), graduating in 1920. By 1924 he was working with Paul Nizan
, Norbert Guterman
, Georges Friedmann
, Georges Politzer
and Pierre Morhange in the Philosophies group seeking a "philosophical revolution". This brought them into contact with the Surrealists
, Dada
ists, and other groups, before they moved towards the French Communist Party
(PCF). He later worked closely with wives and girlfriends, in some places publishing under their names or publishing with them. From 1930 to 1940, Lefebvre was a professor of philosophy; in 1940 he joined the French resistance
. From 1944 to 1949, he was the director of Radiodiffusion Française, a French radio broadcaster in Toulouse
.
Lefebvre joined the PCF in 1928 and became one of the most prominent French Marxist Intellectuals during the second quarter of the 20th century. Among his works was a highly influential, anti-Stalinist, text on dialectics called Dialectical Materialism (1940). Seven years later, Lefebvre published his first volume of The Critique of Everyday Life, which would later serve as a primary intellectual motive for the founding of COBRA
and, eventually, of the Situationist International. His early work on method was applauded and borrowed centrally by Sartre in The Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960). During Lefebvre’s thirty year stint with the PCF, he was chosen to publish critical attacks on opposed theorists, especially existentialists like Sartre and Lefebvre's former colleague Nizan, only to get himself expelled from the party for his own heterodox theoretical and political opinions in the late 1950s. Ironically, he became one of France’s most important critics of the PCF’s politics (e.g. immediately, the lack of an opinion on Algeria, and more generally, the partial apologism for and continuation of Stalinism
) and intellectual thought (i.e. Structuralism
, especially the work of Louis Althusser
). By the 1970s, Lefebvre had also published some of the first critical statements on the work of post-structuralists, especially Foucault
. During the following years he was involved in the editorial group of Arguments, a New Left
magazine whose
In 1961, Lefebvre became professor of sociology at the University of Strasbourg
, before joining the faculty at the new university at Nanterre
in 1965. He was one of the most respected professors, and he had influenced and analysed the May 1968 students revolt. In response to the events of 1968, he introduced the concept of The Right to the City
in his 1968 book Le Droit à la ville. Following the publication of this book, Lefebvre wrote several influential works on cities, urbanism, and space, including The Production of Space (1974), which became one of the most influential and heavily cited works of urban theory
.
Lefebvre died in 1991. In his obituary, Radical Philosophy
magazine honored his long and complex career:
, 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 Pensée marxiste et la ville), The Right to the City and The Urban Revolution were all themes of Lefebvre's writings in the late 1960s, which was concerned, amongst other aspects, with the deep transformation of "the city" into "the urban" which culminated in its omni-presence (the "complete urbanization of society").
In his book The Urban Question, Manuel Castells
criticizes Lefebvre's Marxist Humanism
and approach to the city influenced by Hegel and Nietzsche. Castells' political criticisms of Lefebvre's approach to Marxism echoed the Structuralist
Scientific 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 Lefebvre's effort in writing the long and theoretically dense The Production of Space.
Lefebvre contends that there are different modes of production of space (i.e. spatialization
) from natural space ('absolute space') to more complex spatialities whose significance is socially produced (i.e. social space). Lefebvre analyses each historical mode as a three-part dialectic between everyday practices and perceptions (le perçu), representations or theories of space (le conçu) and the spatial imaginary of the time (le vécu). His conception of "imaginary" draws from the work Cornelius Castoriadis
.
Lefebvre's argument in The Production of Space is that space is a social product, or a complex social construction (based on values, and the social production of meanings) which affects spatial practices and perceptions. This argument implies the shift of the research perspective from space to processes of its production; the embrace of the multiplicity of spaces that are socially produced and made productive in social practices; and the focus on the contradictory, conflictual, and, ultimately, political character of the processes of production of space. As a Marxist theorist (but highly critical of the economic structuralism that dominated the academic discourse in his period), Lefebvre argues that this social production of urban space is fundamental to the reproduction of society, hence of capitalism itself. The social production of space is commanded by a hegemonic class as a tool to reproduce its dominance (see Gramsci).
Lefebvre argued that every society - and therefore every mode of production - produces a certain space, its own space. The city of the ancient world cannot be understood as a simple agglomeration of people and things in space - it had its own spatial practice, making its own space (which was suitable for itself - Lefebvre argues that the intellectual climate of the city in the ancient world was very much related to the social production of its spatiality). Then if every society produces its own space, any "social existence" aspiring to be or declaring itself to be real, but not producing its own space, would be a strange entity, a very peculiar abstraction incapable of escaping the ideological or even cultural spheres. Based on this argument, Lefebvre criticized Soviet urban planners, on the basis that they failed to produce a socialist space, having just reproduced the modernist model of urban design (interventions on physical space, which were insufficient to grasp social space) and applied it onto that context:
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, Marxist intellectual, and philosopher, best known for his work on dialectics, Marxism, everyday life, cities, and (social) space.
Biography
Lefebvre was born in HagetmauHagetmau
Hagetmau is a commune in the Landes department in Aquitaine in south-western France.-See also:*Communes of the Landes department...
, Landes, France. He studied philosophy at the University of Paris
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
(the Sorbonne), graduating in 1920. By 1924 he was working with Paul Nizan
Paul Nizan
Paul Nizan was a French philosopher and writer.-Biography:He was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire and studied in Paris where he befriended fellow student Jean-Paul Sartre at the Lycée Henri IV...
, Norbert Guterman
Norbert Guterman
Norbert Guterman was a scholar, and translator of scholarly and literary works from French, Polish and Latin into English. His translations were remarkable for their range of subject matter and high quality....
, Georges Friedmann
Georges Friedmann
Georges Philippe Friedmann , French Sociologist.Georges Friedmann was the founder of a human work sociology after World War II. In 1921, after studying industrial chemistry, he entered a teacher training college on the rue d'Ulm, in Paris, France. During the war, he was an intellectual Marxist...
, Georges Politzer
Georges Politzer
Georges Politzer was a French philosopher and Marxist theoretician of Hungarian origin, affectionately referred to by some as the "red-headed philosopher" . He was a native of Oradea, a city in present-day Romania.-Biography:Politzer was already a militant by the time of his involvement in the...
and Pierre Morhange in the Philosophies group seeking a "philosophical revolution". This brought them into contact with the Surrealists
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
, Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
ists, and other groups, before they moved towards the French Communist Party
French Communist Party
The French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism.Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a large membership, behind only that of the Union for a Popular Movement , and considerable influence in French...
(PCF). He later worked closely with wives and girlfriends, in some places publishing under their names or publishing with them. From 1930 to 1940, Lefebvre was a professor of philosophy; in 1940 he joined the French resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
. From 1944 to 1949, he was the director of Radiodiffusion Française, a French radio broadcaster in Toulouse
Toulouse
Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...
.
Lefebvre joined the PCF in 1928 and became one of the most prominent French Marxist Intellectuals during the second quarter of the 20th century. Among his works was a highly influential, anti-Stalinist, text on dialectics called Dialectical Materialism (1940). Seven years later, Lefebvre published his first volume of The Critique of Everyday Life, which would later serve as a primary intellectual motive for the founding of COBRA
COBRA (avant-garde movement)
COBRA was a European avant-garde movement active from 1948 to 1951. The name was coined in 1948 by Christian Dotremont from the initials of the members' home cities: Copenhagen , Brussels , Amsterdam .-History:...
and, eventually, of the Situationist International. His early work on method was applauded and borrowed centrally by Sartre in The Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960). During Lefebvre’s thirty year stint with the PCF, he was chosen to publish critical attacks on opposed theorists, especially existentialists like Sartre and Lefebvre's former colleague Nizan, only to get himself expelled from the party for his own heterodox theoretical and political opinions in the late 1950s. Ironically, he became one of France’s most important critics of the PCF’s politics (e.g. immediately, the lack of an opinion on Algeria, and more generally, the partial apologism for and continuation of Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
) and intellectual thought (i.e. Structuralism
Structuralism
Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...
, especially the work of Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy....
). By the 1970s, Lefebvre had also published some of the first critical statements on the work of post-structuralists, especially Foucault
Foucault
Foucault can refer to:People:*Jean-Pierre Foucault , French television host*Léon Foucault , French physicist*Michel Foucault , French philosopher and historian...
. During the following years he was involved in the editorial group of Arguments, a New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
magazine whose
- "chief merit lay in having enabled the French public to become familiar with the experiments in revisionism carried out in Central Europe in the twenties and thirties"
In 1961, Lefebvre became professor of sociology at the University of Strasbourg
University of Strasbourg
The University of Strasbourg in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, is the largest university in France, with about 43,000 students and over 4,000 researchers....
, before joining the faculty at the new university at Nanterre
University of Paris X: Nanterre
Paris West University Nanterre La Défense formerly called Paris X Nanterre is a French university in the Academy of Versailles. It is one of the 13 successor universities of the University of Paris. It is located in the western suburb of Nanterre, near La Défense, the business district of Paris...
in 1965. He was one of the most respected professors, and he had influenced and analysed the May 1968 students revolt. In response to the events of 1968, he introduced the concept of The Right to the City
The Right to the City
The right to the city is an idea and a slogan that was first proposed by Henri Lefebvre in his 1968 book Le Droit à la ville. Lefebvre summaries the ideas as a "demand...[for] a transformed and renewed access to urban life"...
in his 1968 book Le Droit à la ville. Following the publication of this book, Lefebvre wrote several influential works on cities, urbanism, and space, including The Production of Space (1974), which became one of the most influential and heavily cited works of urban theory
Urban theory
Urbanomics describes the city formation phenomenon where economic priorities prevail to facilitate the city’s propensity to generate and accumulate wealth. Such city formation involves some irreversible spatial investments, massive resource allocations and financial investments recoverable only if...
.
Lefebvre died in 1991. In his obituary, Radical Philosophy
Radical Philosophy
Radical Philosophy is a British academic journal of critical theory and continental philosophy, appearing six times a year. It was established in 1972 with the purpose of providing a forum for the theoretical work which was emerging in the wake of the radical movements of the 1960s, in philosophy...
magazine honored his long and complex career:
- "the most prolific of French Marxist intellectuals, died during the night of 28–29 June 1991, less than a fortnight after his ninetieth birthday. During his long career, his work has gone in and out of fashion several times, and has influenced the development not only of philosophy but also of sociology, geography, political science and literary criticism."
The (social) production of space
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 l’espace (1974) (The Production of Space). These works have deeply influenced current urban theoryUrban theory
Urbanomics describes the city formation phenomenon where economic priorities prevail to facilitate the city’s propensity to generate and accumulate wealth. Such city formation involves some irreversible spatial investments, massive resource allocations and financial investments recoverable only if...
, mainly within human geography, as seen in the current work of authors such as David Harvey
David Harvey (geographer)
David Harvey is the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York . A leading social theorist of international standing, he received his PhD in Geography from University of Cambridge in 1961. Widely influential, he is among the top 20 most cited...
, Dolores Hayden
Dolores Hayden
Dolores Hayden is an American professor, urban historian, architect, author, and poet. She teaches architecture, urbanism, and American studies at Yale University.-Background:...
, and Edward Soja
Edward Soja
Edward William Soja is a postmodern political geographer and urban planner on the faculty at UCLA, where he is Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning, and the London School of Economics. He has a Ph.D. from Syracuse University...
, and in the contemporary discussions around the notion of Spatial justice
Spatial justice
Spatial justice links together social justice and space. The organization of space is a crucial dimension of human societies and reflects social facts and influences social relations . Consequently, both justice and injustice become visible in space...
. 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 Pensée marxiste et la ville), The Right to the City and The Urban Revolution were all themes of Lefebvre's writings in the late 1960s, which was concerned, amongst other aspects, with the deep transformation of "the city" into "the urban" which culminated in its omni-presence (the "complete urbanization of society").
In his book The Urban Question, Manuel Castells
Manuel Castells
Manuel Castells is a sociologist especially associated with information society and communication research....
criticizes Lefebvre's Marxist Humanism
Marxist humanism
Marxist humanism is a branch of Marxism that primarily focuses on Marx's earlier writings, especially the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 in which Marx espoused his theory of alienation, as opposed to his later works, which are considered to be concerned more with his structural...
and approach to the city influenced by Hegel and Nietzsche. Castells' political criticisms of Lefebvre's approach to Marxism echoed the Structuralist
Structuralism
Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...
Scientific Marxism school of Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy....
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 Lefebvre's effort in writing the long and theoretically dense The Production of Space.
Lefebvre contends that there are different modes of production of space (i.e. spatialization
Spatialization
Spatialization can refer to the spatial forms that social activities and material things, phenomena or processes take on. This term related to geography, sociology, urban planning and cultural studies...
) from natural space ('absolute space') to more complex spatialities whose significance is socially produced (i.e. social space). Lefebvre analyses each historical mode as a three-part dialectic between everyday practices and perceptions (le perçu), representations or theories of space (le conçu) and the spatial imaginary of the time (le vécu). His conception of "imaginary" draws from the work Cornelius Castoriadis
Cornelius Castoriadis
Cornelius Castoriadis was a Greek philosopher, social critic, economist, psychoanalyst, author of The Imaginary Institution of Society, and co-founder of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group.-Early life in Athens:...
.
Lefebvre's argument in The Production of Space is that space is a social product, or a complex social construction (based on values, and the social production of meanings) which affects spatial practices and perceptions. This argument implies the shift of the research perspective from space to processes of its production; the embrace of the multiplicity of spaces that are socially produced and made productive in social practices; and the focus on the contradictory, conflictual, and, ultimately, political character of the processes of production of space. As a Marxist theorist (but highly critical of the economic structuralism that dominated the academic discourse in his period), Lefebvre argues that this social production of urban space is fundamental to the reproduction of society, hence of capitalism itself. The social production of space is commanded by a hegemonic class as a tool to reproduce its dominance (see Gramsci).
- "(Social) space is a (social) product [...] the space thus produced also serves as a tool of thought and of action [...] in addition to being a means of production it is also a means of control, and hence of domination, of power."
Lefebvre argued that every society - and therefore every mode of production - produces a certain space, its own space. The city of the ancient world cannot be understood as a simple agglomeration of people and things in space - it had its own spatial practice, making its own space (which was suitable for itself - Lefebvre argues that the intellectual climate of the city in the ancient world was very much related to the social production of its spatiality). Then if every society produces its own space, any "social existence" aspiring to be or declaring itself to be real, but not producing its own space, would be a strange entity, a very peculiar abstraction incapable of escaping the ideological or even cultural spheres. Based on this argument, Lefebvre criticized Soviet urban planners, on the basis that they failed to produce a socialist space, having just reproduced the modernist model of urban design (interventions on physical space, which were insufficient to grasp social space) and applied it onto that context:
- "Change life! Change Society! These ideas lose completely their meaning without producing an appropriate space. A lesson to be learned from soviet constructivists from the 1920s and 30s, and of their failure, is that new social relations demand a new space, and vice-versa."
Books on Lefebvre
- Rob Shields, Love and Struggle - Spatial Dialectics (London: Routledge 1999)
- Stuart Elden, Understanding Henri Lefebvre: Theory and the Possible (London/New York: Continuum, 2004)
- Andy Merrifield, Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction (London: Routledge, 2006)
- Goonewardena, K., Kipfer, S., Milgrom, R. & Schmid, C. eds. Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre. (New York: Routledge, 2008)
- Stanek, L. Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011)
External links
- The Ignored Philosopher and Social Theorist: The Work of Henri Lefebvre by Stanley AronowitzStanley AronowitzStanley Aronowitz is professor of sociology, cultural studies, and urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is also a veteran political activist and cultural critic and an advocate for organized labor.-Social Text:...
, in: Situations, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 133–155 (PDF available). - Henri Lefebvre, Urban Research and Architecture Today
- Review of The Production of Space in Not Bored
- Review of The First Situationist Symphony in Not Bored
- "La Somme et la Reste" Newsletter (in French)
- "Henri Lefebvre: Introduction" (Slideshow) by Rob Shields
- "Henri Lefebvre: Philosopher of Everyday Life" (2001) by Rob Shields
- Lefebvre, Love and Struggle - Spatial Dialectics (London: Routledge 1999) by Rob Shields Includes largely complete bibliography of Henri Lefebvre's work.
- Review of Lefebvre, Love and Struggle
- "An English Précis of Henri Lefebvre's La Production de l'Espace" Urban and Regional Studies Working Paper (Sussex University 1986) by Rob Shields
- "Bioinformatic Alignments" by Jordan Crandall
- "Central Europe and the Nationalist Paradigm" (University of Texas at Austin 1996) by Katherine Arens
- "La Méthode d'Henri Lefebvre" in Multitudes by Rémi Hess (in French)
- Henri Lefebvre's relation to Critiques of Everyday Life (Situas, CoBrA etc)
- "Homage to Lefebvre" in Jornal a Página da Educação by Guilhermino Monteiro (in Portuguese)
- 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.
- "Taken for Granted - The Representation of Space and Place" by Sam Appleby
- "Towards a Heuristic Method: Sartre and Lefebvre" by Michael Kelly in Sartre Studies International, vol. 5, no. 1, 1999, pp. 1–15.
- Henri Lefebvre on Space Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory by Lukasz Stanek