Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning

F o r e w o r d
He dramatizes this position in his first chapter, “From the City to
Urban Society,” with a dialectical exchange for and against the
concepts of streets and monuments. The likelihood is that most
readers can identify with both positions, in whole or in part.
Neither is unintelligent, and the recognition that we can and do
live with these opposites is tonic. We can defer judgment until
we’re more adept at grasping the dialectic process revealed by the
unfolding of urban experience.
Freudians and Marxists are similarly engaged in the dispelling
of illusion, however, and as a journalist I am naturally interested
in all techniques that have shown themselves effective in
performing this task. Journalists are also supposed to be involved
in this, but the truth is that we create, perpetuate, and reinforce at
least as many illusions as we dispel. But the ideal is not dead, and
if it is not always possible for us to draw aside as many veils as we
might like for readers—because, among other reasons, we want
to share with them the delight we feel when an illusion is done
well—we can at least point them in the direction of writers like
Andy Merrifield who can accompany them further on the road
to the enlightenment that even the most misguided among us are
actually seeking. The Buddhists call this unveiling process shakubuku.
I call it Shake and Bake.
* * *
Lefebvre pulled the plug on formalism: that was his decisive contribution
to those who regard buildings primarily as pieces of
the city, not as autonomous works of art. I hasten to add that this
disconnection represented an expansion of aesthetic values, not
a denial of them. What Lefebvre rescinded was the equation of
aesthetics with the simplistic brand of formalism promoted by the
Museum of Modern Art. Philip Johnson, who played an important
role in adapting that brand for architecture, used to chide me
xii