Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning
Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning
s p o n t a n e i t y Marx never really elaborated a theory of “contestation,” so in The Explosion Lefebvre lends a hand. What is crucial about contestation, Lefebvre believes, is “its aim to link economic factors (including economic demands) with politics” (p. 65). Contestation names names, points fingers, has institutions and men merge, makes abstractions real, and is one way “subjects” express themselves, ceasing to be “objects” of institutional will and economic capital. Contestation, Lefebvre says, “replaces the social and political mediations by which the demands were raised to an all-inclusive political level” (p. 65). In other words, contestation blooms because activists and contesters know, for certain, that capitalist representative “democracy” is a crock of shit. Contestation smacks as a refusal to be co-opted, a “refusal to be integrated.” Integration symbolizes cowardice, and its rejection shows “an awareness of what integration entails with respect to humiliation and dissociation” (p. 67). Contestation is “born from negation and has a negative character; it is essentially radical” (p. 67). It “brings to light its hidden origins; and it surges from the depths to the political summits, which it also illuminates in rejecting them” (p. 67). It rejects passivity, fosters participation, arises out of a latent institutional crisis, transforming it into “an open crisis which challenges hierarchies, centers of power” (p. 68). Contestation “obstructs and undermines a rationality prematurely identified with the real and the possible” (p. 68) and pillories the complacency of institutional wishful thinking, especially ideologies of TINA—There Is No Alternative. At the same time, contestation—the AFL–CIO (American Federation of Labor) might want to take note—“surges beyond the gap that lies between the realm of limited economic trade-union demands and the realm of politics, by rejecting the specialized political activity of political machines” (p. 68). In rejecting narrow economic demands, “contestation reaches the level of politics by a dialectical process that reflects its own style: critical and theoretical contestation, contesting praxis, and the theoretical 47
H e n r i L e F e b v r e examination of this process” (p. 69). Contestation “contemptuously and unequivocally rejects the ideology which views the passive act of consumption as conducive to happiness, and the purely visual preoccupation with pure spectacle as conducive to pleasure.” “What does contestation seek to substitute for this ideology?” asks Lefebvre. “Activity,” he answers, a “participation that is effective, continuous, permanent—participation which is both institutive and constitutive” (p. 68). Contestation exposes “lags”: lags between the people and the political process, lags between reality and possibility (the former always lags behind the latter), lags between consciousness and consciousness of consciousness itself. Contestation can help reality no longer lag behind dream. Frequently, Lefebvre maintains, contestation flares up spontaneously, and this can be a prodigiously creative force. In fact, contestation thrives off spontaneity, “has the outlook and limits of spontaneity” (p. 69). But Lefebvre recognizes its ambivalence and knows there’s no such thing as “absolute” spontaneity anyway, as it erupts out of prior conditions and is never purely “savage.” (Even the Direct Action Network [DAN], a conglomerate of grassroots groups who were most active in Seattle’s downtown battles, had painstakingly planned through the Internet its street maneuvering months prior. A lot of their spontaneity actually arose in response to police heavy-handedness.) The debate about spontaneity has a long and checkered history within socialism, having brought Rosa Luxemburg to blows with Lenin in 1904—to say nothing about dividing Marx and anarchist Mikhail Bakunin within the First International Working Men’s Association (1864–76). Lenin belittled spontaneity, insisted it was a “subjective element” that couldn’t congeal into a fully blown “objective factor.” In One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, he said the “spontaneous development of the workers’ movement leads precisely to its subordination to bourgeois ideology.” 5 He reckoned a “socialist consciousness” could be brought to the people only 4
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H e n r i L e F e b v r e<br />
examination of this process” (p. 69). Contestation “contemptuously<br />
and unequivocally rejects the ideology which views the passive<br />
act of consumption as conducive to happiness, and the purely<br />
visual preoccupation with pure spectacle as conducive to pleasure.”<br />
“What does contestation seek to substitute for this ideology?” asks<br />
<strong>Lefebvre</strong>. “Activity,” he answers, a “participation that is effective,<br />
continuous, permanent—participation which is both institutive and<br />
constitutive” (p. 68).<br />
Contestation exposes “lags”: lags between the people and the<br />
political process, lags between reality and possibility (the former<br />
always lags behind the latter), lags between consciousness and<br />
consciousness of consciousness itself. Contestation can help reality<br />
no longer lag behind dream. Frequently, <strong>Lefebvre</strong> maintains, contestation<br />
flares up spontaneously, and this can be a prodigiously<br />
creative force. In fact, contestation thrives off spontaneity, “has<br />
the outlook and limits of spontaneity” (p. 69). But <strong>Lefebvre</strong> recognizes<br />
its ambivalence and knows there’s no such thing as “absolute”<br />
spontaneity anyway, as it erupts out of prior conditions and is<br />
never purely “savage.” (Even the Direct Action Network [DAN],<br />
a conglomerate of grassroots groups who were most active in<br />
Seattle’s downtown battles, had painstakingly planned through the<br />
Internet its street maneuvering months prior. A lot of their spontaneity<br />
actually arose in response to police heavy-handedness.)<br />
The debate about spontaneity has a long and checkered history<br />
within socialism, having brought Rosa Luxemburg to blows with<br />
Lenin in 1904—to say nothing about dividing Marx and anarchist<br />
Mikhail Bakunin within the First International Working Men’s<br />
Association (1864–76). Lenin belittled spontaneity, insisted it was<br />
a “subjective element” that couldn’t congeal into a fully blown<br />
“objective factor.” In One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, he said<br />
the “spontaneous development of the workers’ movement leads<br />
precisely to its subordination to bourgeois ideology.” 5 He reckoned<br />
a “socialist consciousness” could be brought to the people only<br />
4
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