Lost in Space? Lefebvre, Harvey, and the Spatiality of Negation

Abstract

Urban public spaces have become focal points for mass uprisings and occupations. There is thus a significant spatial dimension to the movement against austerity. This article looks for clues to how to theorize the relation between space and “saying no” to austerity in the work of Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey. The article finds that the two versions of the “production of space” offered up by these ostensibly complementary thinkers are not as easily reconcilable as one might be led to think—and notwithstanding their respective championing of “the right to the city.” Indeed, both thinkers open the door to markedly different notions of the critique of capitalist space and of the spatiality of emancipatory politics.

Sonifying the quantified self: Rhythmanalysis and performance research in and against the reduction of life-time to labour-time

“…cit.). The most immediate resemblance between Lefebvre and Open Marxism (Bonefeld et al 1992) is their common commitment to a 'antidogmatic', anti-totalitarian Marxism (Charnock 2014). From this starting point, existing contributions have staked out their affinities around issues of fetishism, alienation and abstraction, particularly with reference to Lefebvre's work on space (1991).…”

“…Answering the recent call in this journal for further engagement between formanalytical approaches to critical social theory and the work of Henri Lefebvre on everyday life (O'Kane 2018), the case study is guided by an Open Marxist reading (Charnock 2010(Charnock , 2014) of Lefebvre's rhythmanalysis. Whereas previous work in the tradition has productively explored Lefebvre's work on space (op.…”

“…Answering the recent call in this journal for further engagement between form-analytical approaches to critical social theory and the work of Henri Lefebvre on everyday life (O’Kane 2018), the case study is guided by an Open Marxist reading (Charnock 2010, 2014) of Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis. Whereas previous work in the tradition has productively explored Lefebvre’s work on space (Charnock 2010; 2014; Kerr 1994; O’Kane 2018; Wilson 2013), Lefebvre’s work on time has received less consideration through the lens of what might broadly be called the ‘critique of political economy as a critical social theory’ which, best exhibited in the work of Werner Bonefeld (2016a, 2016b), is informed in equal measure by Marx (1976) and Adorno (1990). Specifically, Lefebvre’s work on time, read through the critique of political economy as a critical social theory, provides a window into how living, or subjective, concrete labour, is negated as dead, objective, abstract labour through its quantitative measurement.…”

Spatial dialectics and the geography of social movements: the case of Occupy London

“…In a first step, Soja () re‐iterated Lefebvre's argument that the production of space and society is a co‐constitutive dialectic, thus clarifying concerns of Harvey () and Castells () that Lefebvre was seemingly fetishising space as an autonomous field with a capacity to externally shape human activity. This concern has been carefully revisited by Charnock (, 318), who holds that those who follow Lefebvre risk being ‘lost in space’ which, at worst, could lead to an ‘ affirmative notion of emancipatory politics’ of the sort that led to the fetishisation of space in many Occupy camps. Yet Soja's reading of Lefebvre develops a ‘socio‐spatial dialectic’ in which space is neither a ‘separate structure with its own autonomous laws’ nor a mere ‘expression of the … social (i.e.…”

‘I will return as millions?’

“…Charges commonly levelled at scholars in this field are either that they have lost the scientific clarity of Marxism (Castree, 2007;Charnock, 2014) or are simply renovating the image of sinister Eurocentric Marxism (Grosfoguel, 2007)[2].…”