Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning
Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning
U r b a n r e v o L U t i o n the dramatic, the historic, the dialectic, the imaginary, the possible–impossible. Anything that doesn’t reveal itself in rationality, or in his programmatic discourse, is rejected as folklore. 12 Little wonder these guys followed Le Corbusier’s wisdom and “killed the street.” The cybernanthropic urbanist maintains that streets are “traffic machines” where the “object-king” or “objectpilot” circulates, where vehicles imbued with surplus value shift commodities and labor power. “The invasion of the automobile,” Lefebvre says in The Urban Revolution, “and the pressure of this industry and its lobbyists … have destroyed all social and urban life” (p. 29; p. 18). “When you eliminate the street, there are consequences: the extinction of all life, the reduction of the city to a dormitory, to an aberrant functionalization of existence.” But the street “contains qualities ignored by Le Corbusier” (p. 30; p. 18). In the street, there’s an informative, symbolic, and ludic function. In the street, you play and you learn stuff. “Sure, the street is full of uncertainty. All the elements of urban life, elsewhere congealed in a fixed and redundant order, liberate themselves and gush onto the street and flow towards the center, where they meet and interact, freed from fixed moorings” (p. 30; p. 19). In the street, “disorder lives. It informs. It surprises.” However, in the street, he says, concurring with Jane Jacobs, whom he cites approvingly, this disorder constructs a superior order (p. 30; p. 19). That other sort of revolution unfurls in the street, Lefebvre reminds his Marxist readers, in case any are listening. “Doesn’t this likewise illustrate that disorder engenders another order? Isn’t the urban street a place of speech, a site of words much more than of things? Isn’t it a privileged domain where speech is scripted? Where words can become ‘wild,’ daubed on walls that elude rules and institutions?” (p. 30; p. 19). In the street, everyday tongues converse in argot rather than discourse in jargon, the remit of cybernanthropes and specialists, who conceive in offices rather than occupy streets. 13 In the street, you find rough talk, raw 91
H e n r i L e F e b v r e energy, profanities that disrupt and unnerve the cybernanthrope. The impulse for revolt will come from the street, Lefebvre knows. There, a new “style” will bloom, vanquishing the cybernanthrope, overcoming his faux urbanism. 14 This style will affirm the anthrope, a humanist nemesis, armed to the teeth with weapons of irony and humor, art and literature. “The war of anthropes contra cybernanthropes,” he says, “will be a guerrilla war. Anthropes will have to elaborate a strategy founded upon the destruction of the cybernanthrope’s order and equilibrium.” 15 “For vanquishing, or even for engaging in battle, anthropes should valorize imperfections: disequilibrium, troubles, oversights, gaps, excess and defects of consciousness, derailments, desires, passion and irony. The anthrope should always fight against a plan of logic, of technical perfection, of formal rigor, of functions and structures. Around rocks of equilibrium will be waves and air, elements that will erode and reclaim.” 16 * * * Revolutionary refrains emanating from below, from a street praxis, are admittedly hushed in The Urban Revolution. Lefebvre has given us a quieter, more reflective analytical text, more cautious in its militant musings. But the idea of “vanquishing by style” offers clues to his revolution hopes, even if they’re now dimmer. Here, for guidance, we must turn back the clocks briefly, to a pre- 1968 work, La Proclamation de la Commune, written in 1965. It’s hard to decide whether Lefebvre’s subject matter here was 1871 or 1968—whether he was excavating the past or foreseeing the future; whether this was a historic day in March 1871, shattering the Second Empire, reclaiming Paris’s center for the people, toppling the imperial mantle of Napoleon III and sidekick Baron Haussmann or an imminent student–worker eruption that would almost smash the Fifth Republic of de Gaulle. Either way, it was 92
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U r b a n r e v o L U t i o n<br />
the dramatic, the historic, the dialectic, the imaginary, the possible–impossible.<br />
Anything that doesn’t reveal itself in rationality,<br />
or in his programmatic discourse, is rejected as folklore. 12<br />
Little wonder these guys followed Le Corbusier’s wisdom and<br />
“killed the street.” The cybernanthropic urbanist maintains that<br />
streets are “traffic machines” where the “object-king” or “objectpilot”<br />
circulates, where vehicles imbued with surplus value shift<br />
commodities and labor power. “The invasion of the automobile,”<br />
<strong>Lefebvre</strong> says in The Urban Revolution, “and the pressure of this<br />
industry and its lobbyists … have destroyed all social and urban<br />
life” (p. 29; p. 18). “When you eliminate the street, there are consequences:<br />
the extinction of all life, the reduction of the city to a<br />
dormitory, to an aberrant functionalization of existence.” But the<br />
street “contains qualities ignored by Le Corbusier” (p. 30; p. 18).<br />
In the street, there’s an informative, symbolic, and ludic function.<br />
In the street, you play and you learn stuff. “Sure, the street is full<br />
of uncertainty. All the elements of urban life, elsewhere congealed<br />
in a fixed and redundant order, liberate themselves and gush onto<br />
the street and flow towards the center, where they meet and interact,<br />
freed from fixed moorings” (p. 30; p. 19). In the street, “disorder<br />
lives. It informs. It surprises.” However, in the street, he says,<br />
concurring with Jane Jacobs, whom he cites approvingly, this disorder<br />
constructs a superior order (p. 30; p. 19).<br />
That other sort of revolution unfurls in the street, <strong>Lefebvre</strong><br />
reminds his Marxist readers, in case any are listening. “Doesn’t<br />
this likewise illustrate that disorder engenders another order?<br />
Isn’t the urban street a place of speech, a site of words much<br />
more than of things? Isn’t it a privileged domain where speech is<br />
scripted? Where words can become ‘wild,’ daubed on walls that<br />
elude rules and institutions?” (p. 30; p. 19). In the street, everyday<br />
tongues converse in argot rather than discourse in jargon, the<br />
remit of cybernanthropes and specialists, who conceive in offices<br />
rather than occupy streets. 13 In the street, you find rough talk, raw<br />
91
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