Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning

F o r e w o r d
Manhattan, meanwhile, is an island within an island, imagining
itself as a leader of Blue State (liberal, Democratic) sensibilities
while the record strongly indicates that it has actually been
the reverse. It is New York that has given us Rudolph Giuliani’s
chronic hostility toward the First Amendment; fake pre-modern
architecture; news magazines featuring cover stories on assorted
mythological religious figures; and other convulsions of Red State
backlash against the long-ago 1960s and in general anything that
breathes.
“Haven’t they heard Marx is dead?,” Giuliani replied when
asked about his plans to uproot community gardens to make room
for luxury housing. Heave-ho! While The New York Review of
Books canceled its subscription to liberal thought by publishing
stories that claimed to discredit Freud.
But never mind. So long as Andy Merrifield is living in France
and I remain in New York, Marx and Freud are still conversing
with one another across the divide of water, ideology, and time.
In my perplexed head, Merrifield and I are two halves of a whole.
We’re one of the last great Surrealists. Our mutual amour fou is
the city: the courting ground of crazy love.
Merrifield’s got his Marx down better than I’ll ever get my Freud.
He’s become a one-man, year-round, world-wide festival of non-vulgar
Marxism. I’m just an old-fashioned nut case. But Surrealists are
not required to be experts in either field. We define our own field. It
is bordered on two sides by history: one border chronicles the outer
life, the other one tracks the inner. Mr. M and Mr. F sit like referees
atop tall spindly chairs on either line. Out! In!
The remaining sides of the field are left open. One of these
trails off into the future, the other drifts backward toward a ground
of origin that is unknowable apart from myth. Culture happens in
the middle. The forms it takes are not invariably symptoms. But
sometimes the symptoms are thrilling also. We set up bleachers.
We boo and cheer.
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