抄書 vol.5: the production of space, henri lefebvre

1. spatial practice
2. representations of space
3. representational spaces

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plan of the present work
XX

'change life!' 'change society!' these precepts mean nothing without the production of an appropriate space. [...]

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spatial architectonics

[...]for our present purposes, we need to consider and elaborate upon a number of relationships usually treated as 'psychic' (i.e. relating to the psyche). we shall treat them, however, as material, because they arise in connection with the (material) body/subject and the (material) mirror/object; at the same time we shall look upon them as particular instances of a 'deeper' and more general relationship which we shall be coming back to later in our discussion -- that between repetition and differentiation. the relationships in question are the following.

1. symmetry (planes and axes): duplication, reflection -- also asymmetry as correlated with symmetry.
2. mirages and mirage effects: reflections, surface versus depth, the revealed versus the concealed, the opaque versus the transparent.
3. language as 'reflection', with its familiar pairs of opposites: connoting versus connoted, or what confers values versus what has value conferred upon it; and refraction through discourse.
4. consciousness of oneself and of the other, of the body and of the abstract realm of otherness and of becoming-other (alienation).
5. time, the immediate (directly experienced, hence blind and 'unconscious') link between repetition and differentiation.
6. lastly, space, with its double determinants: imaginary/real, produced/producing, material/social, immediate/mediated (milieu/transition), connection/separation, and so on. [...]
   

[...] the balance of forces between monuments and buildings has shifted. buildings are to monuments as everyday life is to festival, products to works, lived experience to the merely preceived, concrete to stone, and so on. what we are seeing here is a new dialectical process, but one just as vast as its predecessors. [...]

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from absolute space to abstract space

[...]'our' space thus remains qualified (and qualifying) beneath the sediments left behind by history, by accumulation, by quantification. the qualities in question are qualities of space, not (as latter-day representation suggests) qualities embedded in space. to say that such qualities constitute a 'culture', or 'cultural models', adds very little to our understanding of the matter. [...]

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openings and conclusions
XI

these thoughts offer a partial response to the first and last question: 'how does the theory of space relate to the revolutionary movement as it exists today?' [...]