Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning

M y s t i F i e d c o n s c i o U s n e s s
interpretation of Hegel, stressing the social and structural origins
of “unhappy consciousness,” calling for solutions rooted in praxis
not faith. This trajectory was immeasurably aided by another big
formative event for Lefebvre: the rediscovery of the Hegelian origins
of Marxism, as evinced with the debut appearance in the early
1930s of Marx’s Paris Manuscripts of 1844. Almost immediately
he and Norbert Guterman began translating and popularizing
Marx’s early writings, extracting them alongside snippets from
Hegel. 10 The duo would drag Hegel closer and closer to Marx and
Marx closer and closer to Hegel. In the process, they’d stake out a
rich, heterodox Hegelian–Marxism in between. “The importance
of Hegel’s Phenomenology,” wrote the young Marx, in a text many
times studied by Lefebvre, “and its final result—the dialectic of
negativity as the moving and producing principle—lies in the fact
that Hegel conceives the self-creation of man as a process, [and]
objectification as loss of object, as alienation.” 11
Yet the Hegelian fix to alienation, to unhappy consciousness,
had recourse to the thinking alone, to abstract dialectical logic.
All the drama is in the head; everything is form without any real
content, any real materiality and concrete objectivity. People populate
Hegel’s universe, but, as Marx said, they course around as
mere “forms of consciousness,” as minds without men. Hegel, for
Marx, “turns man into the man of consciousness, instead of turning
consciousness into the consciousness of real men.” As such,
Hegel posited a philosophical history not a philosophy of history.
“This movement of history,” Marx claimed, “is not yet the real
history of man as a given subject.” 12
Lefebvre’s originality lies in how he unites Hegel’s unhappy
consciousness with young Marx’s humanist critique. In the mix,
he warned neither individual nor collective forms of consciousness
necessarily represent a criterion of truth: modern consciousness
is a consciousness manipulated by ideology, ideology propagandized
by state power. Different kinds of authority enter into
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