Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning

H e n r i L e F e b v r e
against an omnipotent abstract state: “if we are consigned to the
non-place of Empire,” they write, “can we construct a powerful
non-place and realize it concretely, as the terrain of a postmodern
republicanism?” (p. 208). From this terrain, though, there’s no
staging post for politics and no grounding for struggle: the space of
global politics cannibalizes the politics of place. Positing universality
without particularity, the global without the national, negation
without transition severs the dialectical mediation between
form and content, between space and place, and cuts off bridge
building between real people and real problems. Empire, consequently,
parts company with Marx and Lefebvre’s radical vision
and leaves us nothing, in the here and now, to stave off death on
credit. “The transformation of society,” reasons Lefebvre, “defines
itself first of all as an ensemble of reforms, going from agrarian
to planetary reforms that imply the control of investment; but this
sum of necessary reforms doesn’t suffice: one needs to add to it
something essential: the transformation of society is a series of
reforms plus the elimination of the bourgeoisie as the controlling
class of the means of production.” 17
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Making space for a politics of place, and putting place in its reformable
global space, is something Lefebvre’s spatial dialectic does
with remarkable prowess. The neocapitalist order, he recognizes
in The Production of Space (POS in citations), has stripped space
of its naturalness and uniqueness, giving a “relative” character to
erstwhile “absolute spaces,” transforming them into something
more “abstract.” Absolute space was “historical space,” “fragments
of nature,” located on sites that were chosen for “intrinsic
qualities” (POS, p. 48): caves, mountaintops, streams, rivers,
springs, islands, and so forth. This was a natural space, Lefebvre
says, “soon populated by political forces.” Colonization was an
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