Understanding Henri Lefebvre Theory and the Possible Stuart Elden continuum LONDON • NEW YORK Continuum The Tower Building, 15 East 26th Street 11 York Road New York London SE1 7NX NY 10010 www.continuumbooks.com © Stuart Elden 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 0-8264-7002-5 (HB) 0-8264-7003-3 (PB) Typeset by Refinecatch Ltd, Bungay Suffolk Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall Contents Acknowledgements v Introduction: Henri Lefebvre 1901-91 1 1 Rethinking Marxism 15 A new reading of Marx 15 The 'juvenile presumptions' of existentialism 19 Structuralism as the French ideology 22 Logic and dialectics 27 Applications of the dialectic 36 Alienation 39 Production 43 The Party and beyond 46 2 Engaging with philosophy 65 Beyond Marxism 65 The Philosophies group, Schelling and Hegel 67 Nietzsche against the fascists 73 Heidegger and the metaphysics of the Grand Guignol 76 Metaphilosophy 83 Descartes and literature 85 3 The critique of everyday life 110 A day in the life 111 A critique of the present 115 Festival and revolution 117 4 From the rural to the urban 127 The town and the country 129 A sack of potatoes 135 Reading rural spaces 13 7 The spectre of the urban 140 Reading urban spaces 147 iv CONTENTS 5 Space and history 169 Time and moments 170 History 175 The production of space 181 Time, space and rhythm 192 6 Politics and the state 211 De VEt&t-An overview 215 The State Mode of Production 222 Autogestion and the right to difference 226 The world scale 231 The state organization of space 236 Politics, the political and the possible 241 Bibliography of Lefebvre's writings 257 Index of Names 263 Acknowledgements Elgin Diaz, Elizabeth Lebas, Adam Holden and Warren Montag read the entire manuscript of this book and it has benefited immeasurably from their careful and generous comments. Neil Brenner's report for the publishers was extremely helpful. Some early parts of the work here were improved by Mark Neocleous' useful suggestions, and I learnt much from working with Eleonore Kofman. Conversations with those already mentioned, and Sharon Cowan, Jeremy Crampton, Laurence Hemming, Morris Kaplan, James Olsen, Marisa Richardson, Maja Zehfuss and my colleagues at Dur- ham helped me to sharpen up many of my ideas. Working with Imogen Forster and Gerald Moore on translations has improved my ability to render Lefebvre into appropriate English. As an editor, Tristan Palmer has been extremely supportive of this and other Lefebvre projects. I am grateful to them all. I have given papers on Lefebvre at the University of Manchester, Brunei University, Friedrich-Alexander Universitat Erlangen-Niirnberg, University College London, University of Durham, Open University and the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution. I would like to thank these venues and their audiences for the opportunity to develop this work and improve its presentation. Tracking down Lefebvre's books and articles has taken me to a wide range of libraries. I am particularly grateful to the staff of the rare books and manuscripts library at Columbia University for access to Norbert Guterman's papers which include works and letters by Lefebvre. Some of these ideas first appeared in print in other places: part of Chap- ter 2 as 'Through the eyes of the fantastic: Lefebvre, Rabelais and intel- lectual history', Historical Materialism 10(4), December 2002, pp. 89-111; and a version of parts of Chapters 2 and 5 as 'Between Marx and Heidegger: politics, philosophy and Lefebvre's The Production of Space', Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography 36(1), January 2004. Some early ideas were outlined in 'Politics, philosophy, geography: Henri Lefebvre in recent Anglo-American scholarship', Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography 33(5), November 2001, pp. 809-25, although little of that text finds its way in here. I am grateful to the editors of these two journals for giving me the opportunity to try out some arguments, and to their referees who provided helpful comments and criticisms. I would also like to thank Jesko Fezer for translating a lecture of vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS mine into German, which appeared as ' »Es gibt eine Politik des Raumes, weil Raum Politisch ist.« Henri Lefebvre und die Produktion des Raums', An Architektur l,July 2002, pp. 27-35. This was a valuable experience, especially given the argument here that much of Lefebvre's work is the translation of German ideas into a French context. As ever I owe an incalculable personal debt to my mother, grandmother, Ian, Nicky, and Rachel; and to Susan, now my wife, for her love, patience and support. Stuart Elden Durham, July 2003 Introduction: Henri Lefebvre 1901-91 Lefebvre had an extraordinary life. It stretched from the very beginning of the century until a decade before its end. It is no surprise that his French biographer has accordingly called his work the adventure of the century.! Born eighteen years after Marx's death, and only six after Engels', Lefebvre was a youth of sixteen at the Russian Revolution, in his late thirties at the outbreak of World War Two, 60 at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, and still writing at the fall of the Berlin Wall. He obtained his licence in phil- osophy the year Althusser was born, and published his first articles two years before Foucault's birth, yet outlived both of them. In 1950, introducing his work to a French audience in a survey volume of contemporary thought, he wrote the following biographical note: Born in 1901, of a family belonging to the middle class. A strongly religious (Catholic) education. Youth tormented, rebellious, anarchistic. Found balance around his thirtieth year in and through Marxism. Has not followed a regular career, either University or otherwise. Currently in charge of research in the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, sociology section. Sees philosophy as a critical conscience on real life. Places theatre above philosophy (as he conceives it, not as it is!) Has only accomplished a small part of the programme of life and work that he has planned. Doesn't hope to arrive at the end.2 The parallel American volume of this collection cuts this down to a purely academic 'Born in 1901, formerly professor of Philosophy in Tou- louse. At present, in charge of studies at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, sociological section, in Paris',3 before listing some of his books. This is unfortunate, because the longer version seems revealing in terms of giving a glimpse of his formative years and the broad outlook he took. Lefebvre here explicitly states his Marxism, and how he sees philosophy 'as a critical conscience on real life'. This Marxism and this view of philosophy will be the guiding threads of this study, which seeks to situate Lefebvre within his intellectual context, to show how his many writings on disparate topics interrelate, and to demonstrate the importance of Lefebvre's writings for a range of contemporary concerns. Although this is a book about Lefebvre the thinker, the biographical, 2 UNDERSTANDING HENRI EEFEBVRE especially in the context of his two autobiographies, will inform the substan- tive chapters of this book. However it is worth providing a brief outline of his life at the outset, both for background and to introduce and outline the themes to be discussed in this book as a whole. Whereas Nietzsche claimed that 'I am one thing, my writings are another matter',4 Lefebvre argues that his work is his life.0 I would not want to reduce Lefebvre's writings to Lefebvre the man, but in his case, perhaps more legitimately than with many other writers, the work and the life were closely interrelated. Lefebvre was born just outside the Pyrenees in 1901 at Hegetmau. His mother was Bearnaise, with some Basque blood; his father had roots in Breton and Picardy. In his own terms, his father gave him a robust and stocky body; the mother a long face, almost Iberian. This led to his being described as having 'the head of Don Quixote on the body of Sancho Pancha'.() Although he left the Pyrenees in his early teens he was to retain strong attachments to it. Lefebvre was educated at the Louis-le-Grand Lycee in Paris, and originally intended to be an engineer, but following a bout of pleurisy he transferred to philosophy with Maurice Blondel at Aix-en- Provence, chosen, Hess claims, because of its climate.7 From 1919 he was educated at the Sorbonne with Leon Brunschvicg, writing on Jansen and Pascal. He attained his degree in philosophy, and in the early 1920s he was a member of a small group of left-wing students including Georges Politzer, Norbert Guterman, Georges Friedmann and Pierre Morhange. They founded the journal entitled Philosophies from which they took their name and in which Lefebvre published many of his first articles. This journal was founded with the belief that a challenge to the dominant philosophy of Bergson was necessary8 Leading on from some of this work, he associated with the surrealists, particularly Tristan Tzara and Andre Breton, and he and Guterman were among the signatories to a piece in La revolution surrealiste? He was later to break with them acrimoniously.10 With the dissolution of Philosophies and its successor L 'esprit Lefebvre moved away from academic work and during this time did his military service, worked in a factory, and drove a cab in Paris.