I found 'The production of space' by Henri Lefebvre difficult to follow due to his writing style (where he puts a lot of explanation within brackets to explain further) as well the subject being discussed. I had to go over his paragraphs time after time to get the grip of the concepts brought forward by Lefebvre, and then I began to find his ideas interesting and thought provoking.
Henri Lefebvre was a neo-Marxist and existentialist philosopher, a sociologist of urban and rural life and a theorist of the state, of international flows of capital and of social space. He was a witness to the modernization of everyday life, the industrialization of the economy and suburbanization of cities in France.
Henri Lefebvre was a neo-Marxist and existentialist philosopher, a sociologist of urban and rural life and a theorist of the state, of international flows of capital and of social space. He was a witness to the modernization of everyday life, the industrialization of the economy and suburbanization of cities in France.
Lefebvre talks of social space itself as a national and 'planetary' expression of modes of production. From 'nature' and 'production' to 'works' and 'products'. It is the relationships between these classifications that Lefebvre is predominantly interested in and how he defined the boundaries for each. Rather than discussing a particular theory of social space, he examined struggles over the meaning of space and considered how relations across territories were given cultural meaning. He talks of nature as a work and not of a production, as it does not know that it is producing a product, such as fruit. Lefebvre also talks about social space in relation to the micro scale of a garden to a whole sprawling city, such as Venice, and the complex relationships to the representation of social space, or the meaning of a Chinese characters and the thinking behind these forms and its deep cultural meaning which do not exist independently of its graphic representation.
As I go along his book, I am not saying I find myself agreeing with Lefebvre's concepts of social space but I am fascinated with his concepts of how he defines and blurs the boundaries of many different aspects, such as where the boundaries of a 'work' and 'product' lie. I think the following quote does a pretty good job in summing up his concepts:
And do you know what "the world" is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income; enclosed by "nothingness" as by a boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set in a definite space as a definite force, and not a space that might be "empty" here or there, but rather a force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there [...]. Frederick Nietzsche, The Will to Power.
And do you know what "the world" is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income; enclosed by "nothingness" as by a boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set in a definite space as a definite force, and not a space that might be "empty" here or there, but rather a force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there [...]. Frederick Nietzsche, The Will to Power.
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