Henri Lefebvre The Production of Space - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1 / 75
About This Presentation
Title:

Henri Lefebvre The Production of Space

Description:

Henri Lefebvre The Production of Space Henri Lefebvre The Production of Space ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:2648
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 76
Provided by: researche6
Category:

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: Henri Lefebvre The Production of Space


1
Henri Lefebvre The Production of Space
2
Henri Lefebvre The Production of Space
  • ?????/??????.?????????,???????????????????????????
    ?????(1974)???????????????????????????(?????????
    ??)?????/??????????????????????????????
  • ????????,?????????????????,???????????????????????
    ??????,??????????????,???????

3
  • Henri Lefebvre, the most prolific of French
    Marxist intellectuals, was born in 1901.
  • 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.

4
  • Born in the Landes of South-West France in 1901,
    Lefebvre went to study philosophy in Paris at the
    age of twenty, and soon became attracted to
    Marxism, which was certainly not taught at the
    university, but was being espoused by many young
    intellectuals in the aftermath of the October
    revolution.

5
  • Lefebvre joined the French Communist Party (PCF)
    in 1928 and for most of the next thirty years, he
    secured a margin of tolerance for his rather
    heterodox interpretation of Marxism.

6
  • Lefebvre read widely in German philosophy,
    finding particular affinities with Friedrich
    Nietzsche, but also with Friedrich Schelling and
    Martin Heidegger. Lefebvre affirmed the
    superiority of Friedrich Hegel's dialectic over
    formal logic, based on the dialectic's attempt to
    achieve a synthesis of the concept and its
    content, and therefore a synthesis of thought and
    being.

7
Henri Lefebvre The Production of Space
  • From 1930 - 1940 Lefebvre was a professor of
    philosophy in 1940 he joined the French
    resistance. From 1944 - 1949 he was the director
    of Radiodiffusion Française, a French radio
    broadcaster in Toulouse.

8
  • In 1958 Lefebvre was expelled from the PCF.
    During the following years he was involved in the
    editorial group of Arguments, a New Left 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."

9
Henri Lefebvre The Production of Space
  • 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 wrote in French, English, and German.
  • Lefebvre died in 1991.

10
  • In his obituary, Radical Philosophy magazine
    wrote
  • 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.

11
  • Henri Lefebvre has considerable claims to be the
    greatest living philosopher. His work spans some
    sixty years and includes original work on a
    diverse range of subjects, from dialectical
    materialism to architecture, urbanism and the
    experience of everyday life. The Production of
    Space is his major philosophical work and its
    translation has been long awaited by scholars in
    many different fields.

12
  • The book is a search for a reconciliation between
    mental space (the space of the philosophers) and
    real space (the physical and social spheres in
    which we all live). In the course of his
    exploration, Henri Lefebvre moves from
    metaphysical and ideological considerations of
    the meaning of space to its experience in the
    everyday life of home and city.

13
  • Lefebvre seeks to bridge the gap between the
    realms of theory and practice, between the mental
    and the social, and between philosophy and
    reality. In doing so, he ranges through art,
    literature, architecture and economics.

14
  • In The Production of Space (1974), Henri Lefevre
    contends that there are different levels of
    space, from very abstract, crude, natural space
    ('absolute space') to more complex spatialities
    whose significance is socially produced ('social
    space).

15
  • In Lefebvre's argument, the 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.
    He further argues that this social production of
    urban space is fundamental to the reproduction of
    society, hence of capitalism itself.

16
  • The notion of hegemony as proposed by Antonio
    Gramsci is used as a reference to show how the
    social production of space is commanded by a
    hegemonic class as a tool to reproduce its
    dominance. Social space is a social product - the
    space produced in a certain manner serves as a
    tool of thought and action. It is not only a
    means of production but also a means of control,
    and hence of domination/power. Lefebvre argues
    that every society and every mode of production
    produces its own space.

17
  • The city of the ancient world had its own spatial
    practice, making its own space. Lefebvre argues
    that the intellectual climate of the city in the
    ancient world was very much related to the social
    production of its spatiality. In this sense,
    every society produces not only its own space,
    but also its very peculiar abstraction incapable
    of escaping the ideological or even cultural
    spheres.

18
  • Based on this argument, Lefebvre criticizes
    Soviet urban planners, on the basis that they
    failed to produce a socialist space, having just
    reproduced the modernist model of urban design.
    In the context "Change life! Change Society!
    these ideas lose completely their meanings
    without producing an appropriate space in
    society.

19
  • Lefebvre makes distinguished and widely read
    contributions to both urban and rural sociology,
    to sociolinguistics, and to the sociology of
    everyday life. To some extent he is now regarded
    as having been a founder in French sociology.

20
  • Lefebvre's many works reached a much wider
    audience during the 1970s, and began to be
    translated into English as well as other
    languages. He and those with whom he had worked
    during the late fifties and sixties (Morin,
    Chatelet, Axelos, Goldmann, Castoriadis,
    Fougeyrollas and others) became the senior
    figures of the non-communist Marxist revival.

21
  • In many occasions, Lefebvre claims that the
    organization of the urban time and space to fit
    the lived experience of its citizens and
    residents could become the focus for a renewal of
    direct democratic relationships in modern society.

22
  • As an assertive and energetic Marxist to the very
    end of his long life, Lefebvre believes that a
    reading of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels provide
    the best framework for understanding the nature
    and development of society, and a revolutionary
    project offers the best chance of assisting
    positive human development through the reverses
    and uncertainties of history.

23
  • In The Production of Space (1974), Lefebvre tries
    to establish a critical review of the
    relationship between the capitalistic mode of
    production and the space of everyday life as
    constructed, configured and maintained by the
    spontaneous and cultivated human body.

24
  • In his later stage, Lefebvre focuses the study
    under the theme of Rhythm. The theory of space
    is the review of the synthetic act of
    re-inscribing the living body into space, and
    thus space is perceived, articulated and acted
    upon in an organic and material context.

25
  • Lefebvre's works hold a unique position in the
    intellectual history of Marxism and in the way
    this history became appropriated by geographers
    from the late 1960s onward.

26
  • Lefebvre's works stand out in several ways.
    First, his views depart significantly from the
    official Marxist doctrine by the French Communist
    Party (PCF) in the 1950s and 1960s, but are
    highly critical of the humanist Marxism.

27
  • Second, Lefebvre's views also depart from both
    Althusserian Marxism and post-structuralist
    thinkers such as Foucault, Derrida, and Barthes.
    However, he emphasizes the importance of
    reproduction, discourse, text, and representation.

28
  • Lefebvre addresses the relationship between the
    concept of space and experiential social space.
    He explains that the discursively constructed
    representation of space and lived space are not
    independent of each other, but that the
    separation of these spaces in scientific practice
    serves distinct ideological purposes.

29
  • The perceived, conceived, and lived aspects of
    social space cannot be captured or understood by
    reducing space merely to a coded message and a
    representation of that code. Viewing the
    knowledge of lived space as a reading and
    representation of these codes provides a
    generative process through which this coding is
    constructed, or produced.

30
  • Lefebvre argues that we need to discover or
    construct a theoretical unity linking different
    spaces in our society, i.e., physical space
    (nature), mental space (the discursive
    construction of space), and social space (or
    experienced, lived space).

31
  • This aim suggests that we have to decode, or
    read, space (concepts, codes, and messages). The
    reading of space, then, becomes the construction
    and reconstruction of the process of
    signification through social-spatial practices.

32
  • First of all, social space is a social product.
    This social space embraces a multitude of
    intersections, which gives meaning to places.

33
  • Then, space is produced through the conflictual
    unity of a spatial triad the perceived, the
    conceived, and the lived.
  • The perceived is captured as spatial practices,
    which embrace production and reproduction and are
    expressed in daily routines, and in the practice
    of everyday life.

34
  • The conceived embodies representations of space,
    which are tied to the relations of production. It
    is the conceptualized and discursively
    constructed space used and produced by planners,
    architects, geographers, and social engineers,
    which codify, textualize, and hence represent
    space.

35
  • Lived space, or representational space, embodies
    complex symbolisms. It is the space of symbols
    and images, which the imagination continuously
    seeks to change and appropriate.
  • The perceived, conceived, and lived space
    constitute a unity, but not necessarily a
    coherence. Each of these categories is deeply
    conflictual and contradictory, and thus deeply
    political.

36
  • Furthermore, social space incorporates social
    actions and constitutes a process--a process of
    creation, and a process of production. We must,
    therefore, shift from the study of things in
    space to the actual production of space.

37
  • Besides, the understanding of space as a process
    of production is that space is historical. Each
    combination of forces and relations of production
    constitutes its own appropriate space. Hence,
    transformative socio-spatial practices (social or
    class struggle) produce new spaces.

38
  • Lefebvre further states that it is class
    struggle, inscribed in space, that prevents the
    totalizing, homogenizing and abstract force of
    capital from eliminating differences. Class
    struggle, broadly defined as acts of social
    resistance to the totalizing force of commodities
    and money, has the capacity to differentiate and
    generate differences.

39
  • The Theoretical Background of Chapter 1 in The
    Production of Space
  • The traditional philosophy of space (categories
    of an immanent order), and science of space
    (mathematics) (pp. 1-3)
  • The present discourse on space and its
    multiplicity Society as a whole continues in
    subjection to political practice, that is, state
    power. (pp. 3-8)

40
  • Space and capitalist hegemony Many facets of
    capitalism the hegemony of one class and space
    serving as an active locus of relations
  • (pp. 9-11)
  • Lefebvre's theoretical position
  • a unitary theory of physical, mental and social
    space each of these two kinds of space involves,
    underpins and presupposes the other. (pp. 11-14)

41
  • The aim of Lefebvre's theoretical
  • The project I am outlining does not aim to
    produce a discourse on space, but rather to
    expose the actual production of space by bringing
    the various  kinds of space and the modalities of
    their genesis together within a single theory.

42
  •   The Production of Space aims to foster the
    confrontation between those ideas and
    propositions of space which illuminate the modern
    world and to treat them as prefigurations lying
    at the threshold of modernity. (p.24) 

43
  •  
  • The dialectical character Instead of emphasizing
    the rigorously formal aspect of codes, Lefebvre
    stresses on their dialectical  character in the
    theory of space.  Codes will be seen as part of a
    practical relationship, as part of an interaction
    between subjects, their space and surroundings. 

44
  • Lefebvre's critique of two illusions The
    illusion of transparency and the realist illusion
    (pp. 27-30)
  • The illusion of transparency -- space appears
    as luminous, as intelligible, as giving actions
    free rein.  It is related to the ideology which
    privileges speech and writing has a kinship with
    philosophical idealism.

45
  • The realist illusion The belief that things
    have more of an existence than the subject,
    thought and desires.  
  • Lefebvres argument Social space is a social
    product. 
  • Its implication Every society and, hence, every
    mode of production has its subvariants and
    produces a space, its own space. (p. 30)

46
  • Social space contains (1) The social relations
    of reproduction, i.e. the bio-physiological
    relations between the sexes and between age
    groups, along with the specific organization of
    the family and (2) The relations of production,
    i.e. the division of labor and its organization
    in the form of hierarchical social functions.

47
  • Three interrelated levels in capitalist society
    (1) Biological reproduction (the family) (2) The
    reproduction of labor power (3) the reproduction
    of the social relations of production. 
  • (p. 32)

48
  • If space is a product, our knowledge of it must
    be expected to reproduce and expound the process
    of production.  The object of interest must be
    expected to shift from things in space to the
    actual production of space.  (pp. 36-37)

49
  • Lefebvre's  spatial triad the perceived, the
    conceived, and the lived (pp. 38-39)
  • 1. Spatial practice embraces production and
    reproduction. Spatial practice ensures
    continuity and some degree of cohesion. (p. 33)
    The spatial practice of a society secretes that
    society's space it propounds and presupposed it,
    in a dialectical interaction it produces it
    slowly and surely as it masters and appropriates
    it. (p. 38)For example, in the Middle Ages, the
    cities embraced not only the network of local
    roads, but also the main roads between towns and
    the great pilgrims ways.  

50
  • 2. Representation of space The conceptualized
    space, the space of scientists, planners,
    urbanists, technocratic subdiverders and social
    engineers identify what is lived and what is
    perceived with what is conceived. For example,
    in the Middle Ages, the Earth, the world, and the
    Cosmos were fixed spheres within finite spaces,
    diametrically bisected by the surface of the
    Earth below is Hell, and above the Firmament.
    (p. 38)

51
  • 3. Representational spaces embody complex
    symbolisms, coded and linked to the clandestine
    or underground side of social life.  It is the
    space as directly lived through its associated
    images and symbols, and hence its the space of
    inhabitants and users, and even some artists,
    writers and philosophers, who describe and aspire
    to do no more than describe. For example, in the
    Middle Ages, the village church, graveyard, hall
    and fields, or the square and the belfry were the
    representational space. (p. 39)
  •  

52
  • Absolute space is made up of fragments of nature,
    but its very consecration ends up by stripping
    them of their natural characteristics and
    uniqueness. (p. 48)
  •   Abstract space is the space of accumulation
    (the accumulation of all wealth and resources
    knowledge, technology, money, precious objects,
    works of art and symbols)

53
  • Lefebvre's triad includes spatial practices,
    representations of space, and representational
    spaces.  The model tends to distinguish
    professional practices such as planning
    (representations of space) from spatial patterns
    of everyday life (spatial practices) and from the
    symbolic meanings enacted in spatial form
    (representational spaces).

54
  • Spatial practice, which embraces social
    production and reproduction and the particular
    locations and spatial forms characteristic of a
    given social formation. Through everyday
    practices, space is dialectically created as a
    human and social space. This aspect of spatiality
    helps to ensure continuity and some degree of
    cohesion in social configurations. The spatial
    practice of a society at the same time propounds
    and presupposes its space in a dialectic
    interaction. Lefebvre characterizes this space
    as a perceived space , which embodies the
    interrelations between institutional practices
    and daily experiences and routines.

55
  • Representations of space are connected with the
    dominant order of any society and hence with its
    codes, signs and knowledge about space. This is
    a conceived space, conceptualized and
    discursively constructed by professionals and
    technocrats planners, developers, urbanists,
    social engineers and scientists and mediated
    through systems of verbal signs. These
    representations are abstract, but have a
    substantial and decisive role in the production
    of space through social and political practices.

56
  • Representational spaces embody complex symbolisms
    linked to the clandestine or underground side of
    social life. This space embraces places and
    their symbolic value. It is the lived space the
    space of inhabitants and users as well as of some
    artists and writers, the space they seek to
    create through appropriation of the environment.

57
  • Philosophers, such as Descartes, , Leibniz, Kant,
    Foucault, Noam Chomsky, J. M. Rey, Kristeva,
    Barthes and Derrida discuss the concept of space
    and the social space. However, the
    philosophico-epistemological notion of space is
    fetishized and the mental space comes to envelop
    the social and physical ones. (pp. 1-5)

58
  • Science of space has three propositions
  • It represents the political use of knowledge.
  • It implies an ideology to employ a disinterested
    knowledge,
  • It embodies at best a technological utopia within
    the framework of the existing mode of production.
  • (pp. 8-9)

59
  • In terms of a unitary theory of space, we are
    concerned with, first, the physicalnature, the
    Cosmos secondly, the mental, including logical
    and formal abstractions and, thirdly, the
    social. In other words, we are concerned with
    logical-epistemological space, the space of
    social practice, the space occupied by sensory
    phenomena, including products of the imagination
    such as projects and projections, symbols and
    utopias.
  • (pp. 11-12)

60
  • Following the theses and hypotheses of Hegel,
    Marx and Nietzsche, the concept of space and time
    carries three characteristics
  • The state is consolidating on a world scale. It
    plans and organizes society rationally, with the
    help of knowledge and technology.
  • The rationality of the state, of its techniques,
    plans and programmes provokes opposition.
  • Class struggle continues on its way to the state.
    (pp. 23-24)

61
  • There are four implications to say that social
    space is a social product.
  • Natural space is disappearing. (p. 30)
  • 2. Every society or every mode of production
    produces its own space. (p. 31)
  • 3. If space is a product, our knowledge of it
    must be expected to reproduce and expound the
    process of production. (p. 36)
  • 4. The forces of production (nature labor and
    the organization of labor technology and
    knowledge) and the relations of production play a
    part in the production of space. (p. 46)

62
  • Social space incorporates social actions, the
    actions of subjects both individual and
    collective who are born and who die, who suffer
    and who act. From the point of view of these
    subjects, the behavior of their space is vital
    and mortal within it, they develop, give
    expression to themselves, and encounter
    prohibitions then they perish, and that same
    space contain their graves. Thus, social space
    works as a tool for the analysis of society.

63
  • In seeking to understand the three moments of
    social space, it may help to consider the body.
    Social practice presupposes the use of the body
    the use of the hands and sensory organs. This is
    the realm of the perceived. As for the
    representations of the body, they derive from
    knowledge of anatomy, of physiology, of sickness
    and its cure. Lastly, the lived experience of the
    body is concerned with culture and morality.
  • (p. 40)

64
  • We should have to study not only the history of
    space, but also the history of representations.
    History would have to take in not only the
    genesis of these spaces but also their
    interconnections, distortions, displacements,
    mutual interactions, and their links with the
    spatial practice of the particular society or
    mode of production. (p. 42)

65
  • Spatial practice, representations of space and
    representational spaces contribute in different
    ways to the production of space according to
    their qualities and attributes, according to the
    society or mode of production in question, and
    according to the historical period. Relations
    between the three moments of the perceived, the
    conceived and the lived are never simple or
    stable. (p. 46)

66
  • Absolute space was made up of fragments of nature
    located at sites which were chosen for their
    intrinsic qualities, but whose very consecration
    ended up by stripping them of their natural
    characteristics and uniqueness. Thus natural
    space was soon populated by political forces.
    Typically, architecture picked a site in nature
    and transferred it to the political realm by
    means of a symbolic mediation. (p. 48)

67
  • Abstract space takes over from historical space,
    which lived on as substratum or underpinning of
    representational spaces. Abstract space
    functions objectively as a set of things/signs
    and their formal relationships. For example,
    monuments have a phallic aspect tower exude
    arrogance and the bureaucratic and political
    authoritarianism immanent to a repressive space
    is everywhere. (p. 49)

68
  • The reproduction of the social relations of
    production within abstract space inevitably obeys
    two tendencies the dissolution of old relations
    on the one hand and the generation of new
    relations on the other. Thus, despite of its
    negativity, abstract space carries within itself
    the seeds of a new kind of space.
  • (p. 52)

69
  • Capitalism and neocapitalism have produced
    abstract space, which includes the world of
    commodities, its logic and its worldwide
    strategies, as well as the power of money and
    that of the political state. This abstract space
    is founded on the vast network of banks, business
    centers and major productive entities, such as
    motorways, airports, and information. (p. 53)

70
  • The class struggle in the production of space is
    a cardinal one in that this production is
    performed solely by classes, fractions of classes
    and groups representative of classes. It has the
    capacity to differentiate and generate
    differences which are not intrinsic to economic
    growth. The forms of the class struggle are now
    far more varied than formerly. They include the
    political action of minorities. (p. 55)

71
  • A remarkable instance of the production of space
    on the basis of a difference internal to the
    dominant mode of production is supplied by the
    current transformation of the perimeter of the
    Mediterranean into a leisure-oriented space for
    industrialized Europe. Economically and
    socially, architecturally and urbanistically, it
    has been subjected to a sort of neocolonization.
    (p.58)

72
  • Change life! and Change society! mean nothing
    without the production of an appropriate space.
    The injunction to change life originated with the
    poets and philosophers has fallen into the public
    domain with political slogans, such as Live
    better! Live differently! the quality of
    life, and lifestyle. (p. 59)

73
  • The reconstruction of a spatial code of a
    language to inhabitants, architects and
    scientists, indeed, recaptures the unity of
    dissociated elements, breaking down barriers
    between private and public, and identifying both
    confluences and oppositions in space. It, thus,
    brings together the micro and macro levels and
    comprises disparate elements and links
    homogeneous mass of space. (p.64)

74
  • The new concept of the production of space,
    appeared at the start, must operates and works in
    such a way according to the fashion of the
    Hegeliansa life and strength of its own space
    and an autonomous reality to knowledge, and then
    validates its own coming-into-being, and,
    finally, arrives at a truth of in-itself-and-for-i
    tself completely and yet relatively. (p.67)

75
  • Thank you for your attention!
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com