As the folks at laist note, Glassberg offers her song in response to a recent LA Times article suggesting (arguably about five years late in my humble opinion) that the neighborhood is now less "no man's land" and more upscale nightlife corridor.
Dec 10, 2010
Gentrification - The Song!
Scholars of gentrification will appreciate this lovely little ditty by Rachel Glassberg about her own Echo Park. She really hits on many of the important tenets of the literature!
Nov 13, 2010
A Tale of Two Main Streets...
The LA Times' Chris Reynolds has this neat photo essay (and story) comparing Disneyland's Main Street, USA to its "inspiration": that of Marceline, MO, where Walt grew up. (Although as one commenter helpfully points out, Disneyland's Main St. may owe more of its design to legendary imagineer Harper Goff and his hometown, Fort Collins.) Anyway it's an interesting contrast in comparative themes across very different socio-spatial realities.Marceline is a classic Midwestern grid-plan railroad town. It has a (2000 census) population of about 2,500 - apparently the same as it was within a few months of being founded in 1888. It has a population density of 787 people per mile in its 3.3 square miles, surrounded by pastoral Linn County farmland. Disneyland, meanwhile, has an average daily attendance of around 40,000 (variable to date, day of the week, and weather). That gives it an average population density of 307,692 people per mile in its 83 public acres (0.13 square miles), surrounded by pastoral Orange County sprawl.
(these google images are at an identical scale; click to zoom)From an earlier article on Marceline:
“Since the trains don’t stop here anymore, it’s kind of been a dying little town,” said Vicki Lodder, 57, a lifelong Marceline resident and owner of the recently opened Ma Vic’s Corner Cafe. “So many stores have closed. Marceline needs things on Main Street.”The train stopped stopping in Walt's hometown years ago. But on the bright side, Disneyland had record-setting annual attendance in 2009.
In 2000, Marceline had a median household income of $25,000 (and a per capita income of $15k). It was 98.2% white, although the Times reports there is a Mexican restaurant. Meanwhile, Disneyland's demographic makeup is uncertain, if rather fascinatingly discussed here (fascinating in that most commenters claim not to notice anything about race while in there). We do know that the population of Toontown is, of course, about seven hundred million, a lemon, and screw.
See also my somewhat similar photo essay comparing the built environments of Detroit and Phoenix.
Nov 8, 2010
Great Street Art footage via ETGS and Twin Shadow
This youtube video by CuppinNuggets for the Twin Shadow track "For Now" has all the great documentary street art footage from Exit Through the Gift Shop, including many of the folks I've had the pleasure of meeting or interviewing.
Oct 25, 2010
DIY Urban Design & the Right to the City
I'm going to be presenting a paper as part of a panel on "Rights, Space and Places" at the American Association of Geographers annual conference in Seattle in April. The panel is being organized by James DeFilippis and David Imbroscio. This is the abstract for my paper.
Do-It-Yourself Urban Design
Reimagining the Built Environment through Place-Based, Site-Specific Art and Activism
This paper presents research into practices of place-based, site-specific art and activism that question the normative uses and meanings of urban spaces. Small-scale acts of transgressive “beautification,” such as guerrilla gardening, adbusting, graffiti, yarn-bombing and other street art, assert freedom of expression and control with the built environment as canvass, while the defiant repurposing or misusing of spaces and structures through impromptu street closing, interventionist games, and guerrilla theater temporarily challenge authority and the status quo. In the context of theories of critical spatial practice and everyday resistance (Lefebvre, de Certeau, Scott and others), I argue that these phenomena constitute meaningful expressions of consciousness and critique of the neoliberal city. Rather than formal acts of “resistance” in any strong sense, however, I draw on empirical data from fieldwork in New York, London, and Los Angeles to show that the practices should be seen as individual, informal “right to the city” claims, often in direct response to specific socio-spatial conditions. These practices of place-based, site-specific art and activism suggest a new sense of the city’s “malleability” in some people’s eyes, defined by a willingness to reimagine the built environment on their own terms through a radical sort of ‘do-it-yourself’ urban design.
Do-It-Yourself Urban Design
Reimagining the Built Environment through Place-Based, Site-Specific Art and Activism
This paper presents research into practices of place-based, site-specific art and activism that question the normative uses and meanings of urban spaces. Small-scale acts of transgressive “beautification,” such as guerrilla gardening, adbusting, graffiti, yarn-bombing and other street art, assert freedom of expression and control with the built environment as canvass, while the defiant repurposing or misusing of spaces and structures through impromptu street closing, interventionist games, and guerrilla theater temporarily challenge authority and the status quo. In the context of theories of critical spatial practice and everyday resistance (Lefebvre, de Certeau, Scott and others), I argue that these phenomena constitute meaningful expressions of consciousness and critique of the neoliberal city. Rather than formal acts of “resistance” in any strong sense, however, I draw on empirical data from fieldwork in New York, London, and Los Angeles to show that the practices should be seen as individual, informal “right to the city” claims, often in direct response to specific socio-spatial conditions. These practices of place-based, site-specific art and activism suggest a new sense of the city’s “malleability” in some people’s eyes, defined by a willingness to reimagine the built environment on their own terms through a radical sort of ‘do-it-yourself’ urban design.
Oct 5, 2010
On the Value and Censorship of Tweetable Dissent
My pal John Wagner Givens has a great new blog post up on the Huffington Post about online censorship vis-a-vis the digitization of dissent, featuring a pointed critique of the whole concept of condensing radical thought down to 140 characters.
You should read it. And below are some comments I had, and John's response.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
You should read it. And below are some comments I had, and John's response.Re: Twitterpated: Censoring 140 Characteres
Great post John, great points. I'm glad you didn't just tweet it.
The idea of dissidents being forced (back) into self-publishing is an important one, and speaks to questions of how it's ironically often easier to control things online (and in other manufactured interfaces) than more traditional or analogue expression. That said, it would still seem an unfortunate step backward for a movement to have to abandon (lengthier) electronic communication altogether.
Also, to what degree have Chinese authorities censored that original 140-character instantaneous transmitter of protest, the text message?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Sep 3, 2010
Guerrilla Gardening in London
Today I had the honor of meeting with Richard Reynolds, the guy who literally wrote the book on guerrilla gardening (though, as he is eager to remind, by no means the first to practice it). We sat on his lush high rise balcony (above; not guerrilla) as he offered some remarkable insights on his own projects and background with guerrilla gardening, and the other subjects of my research, before suggesting a few sites nearby that bare the handiwork of his comrades. Here are two images of an amazing planted traffic island on St. George's road.
Sep 2, 2010
The Theoretical Contexts of Practices of Spatial Contention
This is the abstract for the paper I gave yesterday at the Royal Geographical Society in London. I was part of a session on "Complex Geographies of Post-Crisis Social Movements" organized by Maarten Loopmans and Walter J. Nichols.
Expression, Critique, and Resistance in Localized Practices of Contesting and Reclaiming Urban Space
This study suggests an understanding of contemporary practices of contesting or reclaiming urban space as instances of highly individualized, localized resistance to the commoditization of cityspace under advanced capitalism. Phenomena including so-called guerrilla gardening, adbusting and graffiti, political squatting, and other spatially-attuned activism and expression have received relatively little scholarly attention, yet could benefit from consideration in the context of critical geography and social movements literatures. At the same time, the theories behind these disciplines stand to gain from the empirical analysis of these phenomena.
With their subtle but swiftly growing importance in many cities over the past several decades, practices of spatial reclaiming also present examples of the rapid development and uptake of new repertoires of ‘contentious performance’ (Tilly), while the forms taken by this expression also raise questions of scale and place for contentious politics. This paper considers the meaning of these highly informal, localized, and often quite individual spatial actions for social movement studies as well as critical theory. Through a focused analysis of the relevant literature and research on critical spatial practice, everyday resistance, and the neoliberal city as preeminent site of struggle (including Lefebvre, Harvey, de Certeau, Scott, Goonewardena and others), I offer a theory of reclaiming as an expression of critique and resistance to contemporary urban socio-spatial conditions, as well as the methodological context in which specific instances of these phenomena can be studied and understood.
Expression, Critique, and Resistance in Localized Practices of Contesting and Reclaiming Urban Space
This study suggests an understanding of contemporary practices of contesting or reclaiming urban space as instances of highly individualized, localized resistance to the commoditization of cityspace under advanced capitalism. Phenomena including so-called guerrilla gardening, adbusting and graffiti, political squatting, and other spatially-attuned activism and expression have received relatively little scholarly attention, yet could benefit from consideration in the context of critical geography and social movements literatures. At the same time, the theories behind these disciplines stand to gain from the empirical analysis of these phenomena.
With their subtle but swiftly growing importance in many cities over the past several decades, practices of spatial reclaiming also present examples of the rapid development and uptake of new repertoires of ‘contentious performance’ (Tilly), while the forms taken by this expression also raise questions of scale and place for contentious politics. This paper considers the meaning of these highly informal, localized, and often quite individual spatial actions for social movement studies as well as critical theory. Through a focused analysis of the relevant literature and research on critical spatial practice, everyday resistance, and the neoliberal city as preeminent site of struggle (including Lefebvre, Harvey, de Certeau, Scott, Goonewardena and others), I offer a theory of reclaiming as an expression of critique and resistance to contemporary urban socio-spatial conditions, as well as the methodological context in which specific instances of these phenomena can be studied and understood.
Aug 26, 2010
On the Link Between Urban Space and "Everyday" Resistance
As I continue my research into the practices of urban spatial “reclaiming” and “intervention” that I’m calling “localized spatial contention,” a sort of ongoing project in much of my thinking has been clarifying the connection between urban space and “resistance.” In general this is obvious enough for anyone with a mind for critical human geography or other spatialized political economy, viewing cityspace as a primary site for the production and consumption of capital and thus a primary site for resistance. Sociologists, political scientists and others have likewise emphasized the easily observable fact that cities – their streets, public spaces, and buildings – are frequent cites of popular struggle. More subtly though, what about the ideas of self-expression and ‘critique’ as amounting to sub-revolutionary forms of resisting alienation and false consciousness that can be found in the writings of Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, and later cultural theorists?
Lefebvre sees the everyday dialectically, not only the trivial, stultifying, and alienating construct of mass culture but also – thus – as the venue for consciousness and transformation. He writes that transformation of society can only be achieved through transformation of the everyday, because the problem of revolutionary totality “is posed and is resolved on the level of everyday life” (1947 [2008], p 250). Consciousness alone is powerful: “consciousness of alienation – that strange awareness of the strange – liberates us, or begins to liberate us, from alienation” (1957 [2008], p 20). And so Lefebvre saw the practice of critique as itself emancipatory and something we might all engage in (even if he is inconsistent on the possibilities here and their value; see also my previous post on Lefebvre’s theory of “moments”).
The connection with space – and urban space in particular – came along with the rest of Lefebvre’s “spatial turn” that came to define his work in and beyond the 1960s. Lefebvre saw “the urban” as a new era or epoch of society, tied to the dominant mode of production (i.e. from feudal to industrial to urban), a “problematic” through which hegemonic social and economic forms (sometimes described as the far order) can be understood – and contested – in the everyday (the near order). These forms or levels come together as a single arena for Lefebvre’s lifelong critical project, the twin dialectics of the everyday and the urban: everyday life is a realm of alienation and false consciousness, yet it is through engagement with everyday life that one might transform the everyday, and thus transform social reality; the urban is where the hegemony of ‘far order’ global-level conditions are at their starkest and space is organized most explicitly for state control and the accumulation of capital, yet it is where the far order and the near order come together, and the site of contention.
In fact, as Goonewardena (2005, p 67) suggests, Lefebvre’s vision of revolutionary struggle is perhaps most clearly understood in terms of all three levels: a struggle waged against the hegemony of the “global,” using the utopian energies and possibilities inherent in the contradictions of “everyday life,” fought on the terrain of the urban intermediary. This is the link between urban space and everyday resistance.
What’s more, the starkness of the contradictions and the need for this struggle are, arguably, all the more apparent in the contemporary, neoliberal city. In The Urban Revolution (1970 [2003], p 92), Lefebvre offers the following appraisal of the city under advanced capitalism and the need for its transformation as part of the revolutionary project, an appraisal that could serve as a rallying cry for the forms of transgressive or counter-normative localized spatial contention that I’m studying:
Lefebvre sees the everyday dialectically, not only the trivial, stultifying, and alienating construct of mass culture but also – thus – as the venue for consciousness and transformation. He writes that transformation of society can only be achieved through transformation of the everyday, because the problem of revolutionary totality “is posed and is resolved on the level of everyday life” (1947 [2008], p 250). Consciousness alone is powerful: “consciousness of alienation – that strange awareness of the strange – liberates us, or begins to liberate us, from alienation” (1957 [2008], p 20). And so Lefebvre saw the practice of critique as itself emancipatory and something we might all engage in (even if he is inconsistent on the possibilities here and their value; see also my previous post on Lefebvre’s theory of “moments”).
The connection with space – and urban space in particular – came along with the rest of Lefebvre’s “spatial turn” that came to define his work in and beyond the 1960s. Lefebvre saw “the urban” as a new era or epoch of society, tied to the dominant mode of production (i.e. from feudal to industrial to urban), a “problematic” through which hegemonic social and economic forms (sometimes described as the far order) can be understood – and contested – in the everyday (the near order). These forms or levels come together as a single arena for Lefebvre’s lifelong critical project, the twin dialectics of the everyday and the urban: everyday life is a realm of alienation and false consciousness, yet it is through engagement with everyday life that one might transform the everyday, and thus transform social reality; the urban is where the hegemony of ‘far order’ global-level conditions are at their starkest and space is organized most explicitly for state control and the accumulation of capital, yet it is where the far order and the near order come together, and the site of contention.
In fact, as Goonewardena (2005, p 67) suggests, Lefebvre’s vision of revolutionary struggle is perhaps most clearly understood in terms of all three levels: a struggle waged against the hegemony of the “global,” using the utopian energies and possibilities inherent in the contradictions of “everyday life,” fought on the terrain of the urban intermediary. This is the link between urban space and everyday resistance.What’s more, the starkness of the contradictions and the need for this struggle are, arguably, all the more apparent in the contemporary, neoliberal city. In The Urban Revolution (1970 [2003], p 92), Lefebvre offers the following appraisal of the city under advanced capitalism and the need for its transformation as part of the revolutionary project, an appraisal that could serve as a rallying cry for the forms of transgressive or counter-normative localized spatial contention that I’m studying:
“Space becomes increasingly rare—it is expensive, a luxury and privilege maintained and kept up through a practice (the ‘‘center’’) and various strategies. The city does indeed grow richer. […] But it collapses under the weight of its wealth. The more it concentrates the necessities of life, the more unlivable it becomes. The notion that happiness is possible in the city, that life there is more intense, pleasure is enhanced, and leisure time more abundant is mystification and myth. If there is a connection between social relationships and space, between places and human groups, we must, if we are to establish cohesion, radically modify the structure of space.”
Works cited:
Goonewardena, Kanishka. 2005. “The Urban Sensorium: Space, Ideology, and the Aestheticization of Politics,” Antipode, Vol. 37, No. 1. 46-71.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1947 (2008). Critique of Everyday Life Vol. I: Introduction, 2nd Ed., trans. J. Moore. London and New York: Verso.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1957 (2008). “Foreword to the Second Edition” in H. Lefebvre, The Critique of Everyday Life Vol. I: Introduction, 2nd Ed., trans. J. Moore. London and New York: Verso.
Aug 24, 2010
The Back Garden Project: Nothing Gold Can Stay
The final installment of my series for GOOD, The Back Garden Project, is now up on their website. It consists in an update on how the plants are fairing after a very hot and dry summer, just in time for our first real rain in months.
I've really enjoyed the opportunity that having the blog with GOOD provided in terms of inspiration to really track, photograph, and reflect upon my efforts to restore this neglected little corner of Brooklyn. I learned a lot about native plants, New York City climate idiosycracies and polluted soil, and even a little about sustainable landscape design and construction (I built a path from discarded brick and stone, a planter out of an old Ikea shelving unit, and a compost bin, without hardware, out of found materials). I look forward to continuing to follow developments out in the back garden as summer turns to fall. Thanks for reading.
I've really enjoyed the opportunity that having the blog with GOOD provided in terms of inspiration to really track, photograph, and reflect upon my efforts to restore this neglected little corner of Brooklyn. I learned a lot about native plants, New York City climate idiosycracies and polluted soil, and even a little about sustainable landscape design and construction (I built a path from discarded brick and stone, a planter out of an old Ikea shelving unit, and a compost bin, without hardware, out of found materials). I look forward to continuing to follow developments out in the back garden as summer turns to fall. Thanks for reading.
Aug 17, 2010
On "Fringe" Gentrification Processes in a Neighborhood in Transition
This is the abstract for the paper I gave yesterday at the American Sociological Association conference in Atlanta. I was part of a session on "Transformative Developments in 21st Century Cities and Suburbs" organized Charles Jaret. I was pleased with my presentation and all the questions and feedback I received, as well as the interesting talks from the other panelists, whose projects I think all resonated with each other.
The Edge of the Island: Neighborhood Identity and Evolving Communities in 'Liminal Places'
This paper examines the contemporary processes at work in urban areas without clear spatial identities that are simultaneously facing the challenges of cultural change and gentrification. I do so through the close analysis of one such ‘liminal place’ on Chicago’s West Side. I use the phrase ‘community on the edge of the island’ to describe the area, inspired by an interviewee who referred to the tenuous search for a sort of ideal bohemian hipness as the need to stay as “close to the edge of the island” as possible without actually leaving it. Making use of ethnographic and geographic field work in the area and a review of relevant literature, the study examines how neighborhood identity is imagined, projected and negotiated by different actors, and the role of socio-economic processes, institutions, and spatial histories and mythologies themselves in these processes. First, I discuss the idea of a place without a name and introduce the area that I call Edgetown. This is followed by a more detailed analysis of the transitional nature of the area, leading in turn to the core discussion of the communities – both long-established and newly forming – that are to be found there and the specific time and space that make the “the edge of the island” such a revealing subject for understanding current neighborhood change.
The Edge of the Island: Neighborhood Identity and Evolving Communities in 'Liminal Places'
This paper examines the contemporary processes at work in urban areas without clear spatial identities that are simultaneously facing the challenges of cultural change and gentrification. I do so through the close analysis of one such ‘liminal place’ on Chicago’s West Side. I use the phrase ‘community on the edge of the island’ to describe the area, inspired by an interviewee who referred to the tenuous search for a sort of ideal bohemian hipness as the need to stay as “close to the edge of the island” as possible without actually leaving it. Making use of ethnographic and geographic field work in the area and a review of relevant literature, the study examines how neighborhood identity is imagined, projected and negotiated by different actors, and the role of socio-economic processes, institutions, and spatial histories and mythologies themselves in these processes. First, I discuss the idea of a place without a name and introduce the area that I call Edgetown. This is followed by a more detailed analysis of the transitional nature of the area, leading in turn to the core discussion of the communities – both long-established and newly forming – that are to be found there and the specific time and space that make the “the edge of the island” such a revealing subject for understanding current neighborhood change.
Jul 24, 2010
BGP Getting Some Cool Attention
My ongoing garden blog over at GOOD is getting linked by some other really cool spots around the web. These include Green Matters, the Mother Nature Network, the beautiful blog Sustain by Design, and the excellent and local Flatbush Gardener, among others. It's also generated some interest from the people behind the YardMap at Cornell and, via Twitter, @LearnEatLive and the Greater Birmingham Community Food Partnership (@GBCFP). Thanks to everyone for following along!
Here's a few other 'back garden projects' I just found on the web:
Here's a few other 'back garden projects' I just found on the web:
May 26, 2010
The Potential for 'Community Supportive' Transit
In a new article just published in the Journal of Urban Design, I present the findings of my research on the link between mass transit design and neighborhood identity. With a review of naming logics for several major transit systems, I argue that rail transit lines and stations are uniquely well-suited to the promotion of community identity through simple decisions about their identification and other basic design features.
By taking local identity into account, cities can not only foster a more transit-supportive community, but actually build more community-supportive transit. For cities like Los Angeles, trying to address recognized deficiencies in both mass transportation and community identity and cohesion, recognizing this connection could be crucial.
Here's the abstract for the article. It can be accessed here (or just email me for a copy).
Rail Transit Identification and Neighborhood Identity: Exploring the Potential for 'Community-Supportive Transit'
The preservation and promotion of neighbourhood identity is important in contemporary cities. Los Angeles, long known for its lack of both effective mass transit and, separately, local identity and cohesion among its neighbourhoods, is currently working to address each of these issues, yet little attention has been paid to the possibility that the two can be directly related. This paper investigates how rail transit line identification and station-naming decisions are not only important to community members but can have an impact on the neighbourhood identity. After introducing these ideas with the case of the identification of the Metro 'Expo Line' in LA, the paper turns to a comparison of naming logics for other local institutions and other major transit systems, arguing that cities could benefit from considering 'community supportive' transit design that promotes local identity in addition to more pragmatic wayfinding concerns.
Douglas, Gordon C. C. "Transit Identification and Neighborhood Identity: Exploring the Potential for 'Community-Supportive Transit,'" Journal of Urban Design, vol. 15, no. 2, May 2010. 175-193.
By taking local identity into account, cities can not only foster a more transit-supportive community, but actually build more community-supportive transit. For cities like Los Angeles, trying to address recognized deficiencies in both mass transportation and community identity and cohesion, recognizing this connection could be crucial.
Here's the abstract for the article. It can be accessed here (or just email me for a copy).
Rail Transit Identification and Neighborhood Identity: Exploring the Potential for 'Community-Supportive Transit'
The preservation and promotion of neighbourhood identity is important in contemporary cities. Los Angeles, long known for its lack of both effective mass transit and, separately, local identity and cohesion among its neighbourhoods, is currently working to address each of these issues, yet little attention has been paid to the possibility that the two can be directly related. This paper investigates how rail transit line identification and station-naming decisions are not only important to community members but can have an impact on the neighbourhood identity. After introducing these ideas with the case of the identification of the Metro 'Expo Line' in LA, the paper turns to a comparison of naming logics for other local institutions and other major transit systems, arguing that cities could benefit from considering 'community supportive' transit design that promotes local identity in addition to more pragmatic wayfinding concerns.
Douglas, Gordon C. C. "Transit Identification and Neighborhood Identity: Exploring the Potential for 'Community-Supportive Transit,'" Journal of Urban Design, vol. 15, no. 2, May 2010. 175-193.
Apr 7, 2010
The Back Garden Project
My efforts to transform my back garden here in Brooklyn are now being chronicled in a separate blog at GOOD magazine's website, good.is:
http://www.good.is/series/back-garden-project/
I'll be using the blog to track the adventure of clearing, planning, planting, and nurturing this garden over the coming months. Check it out.
http://www.good.is/series/back-garden-project/
I'll be using the blog to track the adventure of clearing, planning, planting, and nurturing this garden over the coming months. Check it out.
Mar 25, 2010
Lefebvre's Theory of Moments
Trying to get to the core of sub-revolutionary but nonetheless valuable forms of "resistance" has become central to my theoretical inquiries recently as I try to work out a context in the literature for understanding the practices of 'spatial contention' (street art, guerrilla gardening, political squatting, other counter-normative 'urban interventions) that I am researching. One of the most fertile thinkers on these ideas is Henri Lefebvre, the French Marxist and critical theorist who is currently enjoying something of a renaissance in anglophone urban studies.
Lefebvre emphasized the value of criticism at the level of the 'everyday' and essential for the revolutionary project and saw the practice of critique as itself emancipatory and something we might all engage in. How exactly this is to be accomplished is another question, however, an ambiguity developed in fits and starts over a long career. I'm working on a more thorough review of these ideas, but one of the most interesting yet at the same time frustratingly elusive concepts is that of the "moment," something that reveals the “breadth and magnificence of the possibilities” inherent in the existential ennui of daily life (1947 [2008], p 229).
Built out of the ideas of Leibniz, Hegel, and Marx (see note below),“moments” are strenuously intangible when variously described by Lefebvre, but the important components can be drawn out. The concept first turns up in a somewhat overly-nostalgic discussion of ancient and peasant cultures that Lefebvre idealizes as having been extant prior to alienation (which was to his mind a sort of historically progressing process tied to modernity, capitalism, and the commodity form). “Mystics and metaphysicians,” he argues, “used to acknowledge that everything in life revolved around exceptional moments… These moments were festivals: festivals of the mind or the heart, public or intimate festivals” (p 250).
Moments are first discussed at length in Lefebvre's 1959 autobiographical work La Somme et le reste (from which I've recently translated a seemingly-important untranslated chapter), mostly as a concept that he admits he had long struggled to define and finally described unsatisfactorily through examples of what he calls “partial totalities”: love, play, struggle, creative activity (1959 [1989], pp 235, 237).
Two years later, Lefebvre offered a “theory of moments” in which the moment is defined as “the attempt to achieve the total realization of a possibility” (1961 [2008], p 348), and is again exemplified as love and play, and as festival. Lefebvre adds years later that some moments “are seeking to shatter the everydayness trapped in generalized exchange,” and seek to “transform daily life through poetry” (1981 [2008], pp 57, 172). A somewhat clearer summary of the idea is offered by Merrifield (2006, p 29): “Just as alienation reflected an absence, a dead moment empty of critical content, the Lefebvrian moment signified a presence, a fullness, alive and connected.” While sloppily defined by Lefebvre, the idea of the moment is important to his theory, a shared, imprecise-but-mutually recognizable meme of experience that serves as a potentially liberating exception to the everyday that is nonetheless born of the everyday.
Still, the search for the possible via the festival or the moment are not ‘revolutionary’ in themselves for Lefebvre. As others have pointed out (Trebitsch, 2002 [2008]; Merrifield, 2006; 2008) the Lefebvrian moment can be seen as somewhat analogous to (and even inspirational of) “the situation” of Guy Debord and the Situationists, yet Lefebvre disputed the idea that simply subverting the everyday will lead to consciousness of ‘real life.’ Lefebvre even seems sometimes unsure of the chances for success even through his own philosophy of praxis, turning away from the emancipatory potential of his quotidien critique at times to a more skeptical tone and language suggesting the unlikelihood of the necessary revolutionary preconditions. The possibilities for clarity and critique (and thus transformation) are always present in Lefebvre’s theory, but his optimism for them is inconsistent. Particularly in his earlier work, they are fleeting, tentative, beyond the reach of most of us most of the time, confined to “certain privileged moments of lucidity” while “most people remain imprisoned within narrow, out-of-date frames of reference” (2008a, p 247).
Furthermore, Lefebvre argues that “Consciousness must be gained over and over again through action and struggle as well as through organizations whose role is to penetrate everyday life” (p 151). Through the critique of everyday life, the individual can learn “certain infinitely delicate but efficacious techniques which will give him active power over himself qua content” (p 248), but “the problem remains: how can the ‘masses’ – whether masses of moments of masses of human beings – ‘participate’ in a total vision” (p 250). Lefebvre thus explains and essentially accommodates for the lack of socialist revolutionary transformation at once, putting the ideal ‘total moment’ on “a distant horizon beyond our present vision” (2008d, p 66) and emphasizing the value of seemingly minor, personal moments whereby the transformation of everyday life might still be slowly affected.
*Note: Merrifield (2006, p 29) succinctly describes the significance of “moments” for Hegel and Marx: “All dialectical movement progressed through different moments: moments of skeptical, negative consciousness defined history for Hegel; moments of contradictory unity defined and structured capitalism for Marx. All reality for both thinkers was momentary, transient, in motion, in fluid state, whether as an idea or as material reality.”
Lefebvre emphasized the value of criticism at the level of the 'everyday' and essential for the revolutionary project and saw the practice of critique as itself emancipatory and something we might all engage in. How exactly this is to be accomplished is another question, however, an ambiguity developed in fits and starts over a long career. I'm working on a more thorough review of these ideas, but one of the most interesting yet at the same time frustratingly elusive concepts is that of the "moment," something that reveals the “breadth and magnificence of the possibilities” inherent in the existential ennui of daily life (1947 [2008], p 229).
Built out of the ideas of Leibniz, Hegel, and Marx (see note below),“moments” are strenuously intangible when variously described by Lefebvre, but the important components can be drawn out. The concept first turns up in a somewhat overly-nostalgic discussion of ancient and peasant cultures that Lefebvre idealizes as having been extant prior to alienation (which was to his mind a sort of historically progressing process tied to modernity, capitalism, and the commodity form). “Mystics and metaphysicians,” he argues, “used to acknowledge that everything in life revolved around exceptional moments… These moments were festivals: festivals of the mind or the heart, public or intimate festivals” (p 250).
Moments are first discussed at length in Lefebvre's 1959 autobiographical work La Somme et le reste (from which I've recently translated a seemingly-important untranslated chapter), mostly as a concept that he admits he had long struggled to define and finally described unsatisfactorily through examples of what he calls “partial totalities”: love, play, struggle, creative activity (1959 [1989], pp 235, 237).
Two years later, Lefebvre offered a “theory of moments” in which the moment is defined as “the attempt to achieve the total realization of a possibility” (1961 [2008], p 348), and is again exemplified as love and play, and as festival. Lefebvre adds years later that some moments “are seeking to shatter the everydayness trapped in generalized exchange,” and seek to “transform daily life through poetry” (1981 [2008], pp 57, 172). A somewhat clearer summary of the idea is offered by Merrifield (2006, p 29): “Just as alienation reflected an absence, a dead moment empty of critical content, the Lefebvrian moment signified a presence, a fullness, alive and connected.” While sloppily defined by Lefebvre, the idea of the moment is important to his theory, a shared, imprecise-but-mutually recognizable meme of experience that serves as a potentially liberating exception to the everyday that is nonetheless born of the everyday.
Still, the search for the possible via the festival or the moment are not ‘revolutionary’ in themselves for Lefebvre. As others have pointed out (Trebitsch, 2002 [2008]; Merrifield, 2006; 2008) the Lefebvrian moment can be seen as somewhat analogous to (and even inspirational of) “the situation” of Guy Debord and the Situationists, yet Lefebvre disputed the idea that simply subverting the everyday will lead to consciousness of ‘real life.’ Lefebvre even seems sometimes unsure of the chances for success even through his own philosophy of praxis, turning away from the emancipatory potential of his quotidien critique at times to a more skeptical tone and language suggesting the unlikelihood of the necessary revolutionary preconditions. The possibilities for clarity and critique (and thus transformation) are always present in Lefebvre’s theory, but his optimism for them is inconsistent. Particularly in his earlier work, they are fleeting, tentative, beyond the reach of most of us most of the time, confined to “certain privileged moments of lucidity” while “most people remain imprisoned within narrow, out-of-date frames of reference” (2008a, p 247).
Furthermore, Lefebvre argues that “Consciousness must be gained over and over again through action and struggle as well as through organizations whose role is to penetrate everyday life” (p 151). Through the critique of everyday life, the individual can learn “certain infinitely delicate but efficacious techniques which will give him active power over himself qua content” (p 248), but “the problem remains: how can the ‘masses’ – whether masses of moments of masses of human beings – ‘participate’ in a total vision” (p 250). Lefebvre thus explains and essentially accommodates for the lack of socialist revolutionary transformation at once, putting the ideal ‘total moment’ on “a distant horizon beyond our present vision” (2008d, p 66) and emphasizing the value of seemingly minor, personal moments whereby the transformation of everyday life might still be slowly affected.
*Note: Merrifield (2006, p 29) succinctly describes the significance of “moments” for Hegel and Marx: “All dialectical movement progressed through different moments: moments of skeptical, negative consciousness defined history for Hegel; moments of contradictory unity defined and structured capitalism for Marx. All reality for both thinkers was momentary, transient, in motion, in fluid state, whether as an idea or as material reality.”
Works cited:
Lefebvre, Henri. 1947 (2008). Critique of Everyday Life Vol. I: Introduction, 2nd Ed., trans. J. Moore. London and New York: Verso.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1957 (2008). “Foreword to the Second Edition” in H. Lefebvre, The Critique of Everyday Life Vol. I: Introduction, 2nd Ed., trans. J. Moore. London and New York: Verso.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1961 (2008). Critique of Everyday Life Vol. II: Foundations for a Sociology of the Everyday, trans. J. Moore. London and New York: Verso.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1981 (2008). Critique of Everyday Life Vol. III: From Modernity to Modernism, trans. G. Elliot. London and New York: Verso.
Merrifield, Andy. 2006. Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction. New York and London: Routledge.
Merrifield, Andy. 2008. “Lefebvre and Debord: A Faustian Fusion,” in K. Goonewardena, et al. eds., Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre. New York and London: Routledge.
Trebitsch, Michel. 2002 (2008). “Preface: The Moment of Radical Critique,” in H. Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life Vol. II: Foundations for a Sociology of the Everyday, trans. G. Elliot. London and New York: Verso.
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