Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning

Foreword: Something Cool
The city of psychoanalysis salutes the land where the Children of
Marx and Coca-Cola grew up, or in many cases refused to. But
I’m showing my age. It’s been many years since New York could
muster up an audience for angst and Woody Allen. And Godard’s
cool Left Bank cocktail of student disaffection and ye-ye nonchalance
lost its sparkle long before Brigitte Bardot started flirting
with M. Le Pen.
Moreover, relations between these two places have become
more strained even as globalization has thrown everyone into
everyone else’s laps. As I write this, the United States is still in
denial that its position in the world is rapidly approaching the
shrunken irrelevancy of post-imperial Great Britain. We’re just an
island, separated from the great land mass of Eurasia, pretending
that we own the joint, indulging expensive fantasies about enlightening
the world while turning our backs on countries where concepts
of Enlightenment took root. Not good.
ix