O si Lefebvre reloaded

La estrategia fue no abrir el libro de nuevo para no ser deborada, pero algo asi paso leyendo las hojas de notas. al menos sirve para darse cuenta que Lefebvre es mucho mas refinado que los usos que le di hasta ahora. La anotation fue inundada luego por parte de las notas.

Lefebvre, H. 1991 [1974] The Production of Space. Trans by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Blackwell: London.
1. Lefebvre considers that place is social: each social formation (each society and mode of production in his terms) produces space in a particular way in which contradictory relations and social hierarchies unfold; but is also produced: not only as a result-means of economic production, but in the generation of social relations, which means to consider their relevance in the reproduction of social relations (form biological reproduction, workforce reproduction and reproduction of social relations of production which include the visible and invisible representations). He is against economicistic explanations of space which regard space as an object, and thus generates a space fetishism, by erasing social relations (see p88-93).
Lefebvre incorporates the propositions of phenomenological perspective (he is in dialogue with Bachelard, Heidegger who consider are only focusing in two dimensions of space: abstract conceptions and the lived representational): “Being has a history and a history is nothing but the history of being” (p121), thus he also takes historical dimensions and the social contradictions into the understanding of any place production.
He regards space as a concrete abstaction (p 100 –for space time p 118). His analysis of the production of an abstract space as a necessary condition for capitalism and the violence that this process demands, echoes in the historical incorporation of the Chaco to the Argentinean state.

2. Hence, Lefebvre proposes a three-dimensional process in the production of places: 1) conceived: the planning of places from positions of power, 2) lived: the representations of places by its users that may challenge those ideological dimensions, and 3) perceived: the practices over places that effectively produce and reproduce them, following both the lines set by power positions and alternative constructions. (p 33-38)

3. After this definition he dedicates the rest of the book to define the transition form absolute space (form middle ages to absolutists state especially ch. 4 p 229-262) to the production of the abstract space of capitalism (p 262- . Space as a product and a means of capitalist (national and bourgeoise) domination embodies its contradictions which prefigure the possibility of a new space. He has a chapter analyzing the contradictions of abstract space (p 352-) “Contradiction of space make contradictions of social relations operative” (365). He states that difference arrises in the peripheries: which contradicts the universality of the abstract space. (373) If labour is abstracted space of capitalism need is abstract too, spatial practices are related to production and reproduction, knowledge crates an homogeneous space measurable (ie. geometry which he criticizes form the beginning of the book), and the lived space is limited to work, and the visual.

Abstract space is based on the city predominance over the country, in architecture is marked by the division inside/outside, the façade and the perspective. Abstract space is not just an empty or natural or homogeneous, it is also complex and obscure: creates differential hierarchically structured spaces; it is obscure, send aspects of the social to the obscene by negating them (for obscene p 99). In sum he defines it as predominantly visual (p282), geometric and phallic (p285). For the first there is a need of making transparent spaces for control, the space of capitalism as one in which “there is nothing to hide”, for the second the making of an isomorphic space the space for the commodity and the commodification of space, and the phallic as its masculinist preponderance, and ojectual absolut verticality of buildings (ie see 40, 166). He exemplifies the fracture of space with the female body as without organs (Lacan) (p 355).
State. Capitalism is the result of the expansion of the space of accumulation and the rise of forces of production, but is the link violence and the economic which gives place to the constitution of the State. The establishment of the state as an abstraction veils the class struggle, by establishing an ideology of sovereignty. It is state what produces territory as a result of its dominion of space (279-280) “Every space s born of violence… state power endures only by virtue of violence directed toward space” (280). Violence directed over nature and population, creates unity, creates the rationality of accumulation, bureaucracy an reassured by monopoly of force by arm. Space is fragmented, hierachized, submitted to sovereign power of state.

4. His analysis includes a long reflection on how the soviet revolution’s project failed as a result (he argues) of the failure of inaugurating a new spatiality, in this he shares the ideas of situationists in the need of motorizing revolution form the everyday life, but rather than arguing for the way this would be done through artistic movements (Lefebvre will say “ representations of the relations of production which subsume power relations, these two occur in space: space contains tehm in the form of buildings, movements and works of art” p 33), he sees the importance of liberating space. Space can be appropriated for new uses, new practices (p 165). It is for this that his book is ultimately a political project of a differential space which need the establishment of new knowledge, new relations, possibility of difference.

5. Lefbvre’s unending book can be re-read in search of different topics (ie. knowledge, language, visuality, ), one of the tangential topics I’ve been interested in is his understanding of body-space. For Lefebvre, the body is the agent of the social production of space, and then it is part of each dimension through its productive energy. The body is separated from objects and the world, language is put as a mediation in te production of a knowledge which is “over” the world. But also body’s sexual drive is repressed, it is thus a castrated body. (p 40) To reestablish practice and sensorial qualities of the body is also a way of producing a new type of knowledge by decentering (esto resuena a Nietzsche, creo). A new type of knowledge should overcome dichotomies. In this way competence and performance within spaces are embodied activities and a way of knowledge, bodies are the motor of practice and what enables perception. Therefore the lived body is the base of experience. An experience shaped by power relations but also that can be contested from the body. The body has the potential of inaugurating a new type of space. This brings to another contradiction: the abstraction of space from social relations can only be achieved through violence that is reproduced by dominant knowledge of the space . Again it is through the body that this contradiction can be recognized and then overcome. Synthesizing his conception of the body as a potential for political transformation he states that: “The restoration of the body means the restoration of the sensory-sensual, of speech, of the voice, of the smell, of hearing. In short the non-visual. And of the sexual…” (363) “The social space contains potentialities (of work and re-appropriation) (…) that correspond to demands of a body “transported” outside itself in space, a body which by putting up resistance inaugurates a project of a different space.” (349).


6. Space and Language (131-166): space has meaning and may imply a message, but space is cannot be understood as language, rather discourse is in – about – of space. He critiques Jackobson, Barthes, Pierce, Nietzsche.
“No space ever vanishes utterly living no trace” (p 164). Every new addition reinterprets the past.” (P 164) But also “ Nothing disappears completely, however, nor can what subsist be defined solely in terms of traces memories o relics.” (229)

Varios contradictions:
Quanity vs Quality
Exchange valu vs use vale
Violence vs knowledge
Savoir vs connnaissance
Domination vs appropiation
Repetition vs differece

“A space in which each individual and or collective subject would become aquainted with use and enjoyment is at present only at infancy” (p 381) Cantrak power can be challenged by local powers in which the machine of the state is replaced by machines managed form below. This questo of counter space overwhelms the division between reform and revolution
“The enigma of the body is its tendency to produce difference unconsciously” (395)

The end of my notes just say What is the subject? A momentary centre. The object? Likewise. The body? A focusing, active and productive energy.