Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning

G L o b a L i z a t i o n a n d t H e s t a t e
the list is endless and scattered everywhere across the globe—all
hint at potential routes and pathways of autogestion, of transforming
everyday life, of avoiding a spaced-out global ambition. “For
me,” Lefebvre said, back in 1966, “the problem of autogestion
shifts more and more away from enterprises towards the organization
of space.” 30
Despite its spontaneous genesis, autogestion will nonetheless
unfold over the long haul, by hook or by crook, steadily and
stealthily, pragmatically and politically. Everyday life cannot be
transcended in one leap:
But the dissociations that maintain the everyday as the “downto-earth”
foundation of society can be surmounted in and
through a process of autogestion. Attentive and detailed study
of the May 1968 events may yet produce surprises. There were
tentative, uneven attempts at autogestion, going beyond the
instructions that the specialized apparatuses handed down. …
Autogestion points the way to the transformation of everyday
life. The meaning of the revolutionary process is to “change
life.” But life cannot be changed by magic or by a poetic act, as
the surrealists believed. Speech freed from its servitude plays a
necessary part, but it is not enough. The transformation of everyday
life must also pass through institutions. Everything must be
said: but it is not enough to speak, and still less to write. 31
* * *
“ ‘Think globally, act locally,’ is still one of the best slogans progressives
ever slapped across the backside of a vehicle,” said The
Nation in an editorial not too long ago (February 18, 2002). The
virtues of a micropolitics of everyday life, of a “grassroots globalism,”
was made emphatic as a post–9/11 New York City was
abuzz with thousands of demonstrators rallying against the World
Economic Forum’s session there. There’s every reason to get
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