Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning

s p o n t a n e i t y
in senseless acts of beauty—so long as they don’t degenerate into
“the ontology of unconditional spontaneity,” into “the metaphysics
of violence” (pp. 73–74). Reliance only on violence, he concludes,
leads to a “rebirth of a tragic consciousness” (p. 74), antithetical
to the dialectic of becoming. Consequently, serious concern with
contestation, spontaneity, and violence requires at the same time a
serious delineation of spontaneity and violence. Yet this needs to
be done in the name of theory, “which pure spontaneity tends to
ignore” (p. 74).
* * *
Civic commotion to corporate promotion faces a predictable ideological
barrage from mainstream media, from free-trade pundits,
experts, consultants, business school professors, and “objective”
economists—from those technocrats Lefebvre would christen
“cybernanthropes.” As ever, protesters are denounced as idiotic,
juvenile, naive: listen up, wise up, and grow up. There is no
alternative. Notwithstanding, “childish” pranks refuse to let up.
“Immature” young people can still teach grown-ups a thing or two
about mature life and politics. Even the sixty-something Lefebvre
knew as much. He knew that maturity often spelled certitude,
and certitude frequently translated into dogmatism; it tended to
move from the relative to the absolute. On the other hand, incertitude
spelled nihilism, lurched toward absolute violence, to a lot
of people getting hurt, especially young people. Lefebvre frames
the paradox thus: “Spontaneity acts like the elements: it occupies
whatever empty space it can find, and sometimes it devastates this
space. Thought offers another space, sometimes in vain; and other
forms, sometimes to no avail” (p. 52).
Lefebvre wanted to stake out a position somewhere in between,
somewhere that had a “unity of knowledge,” retained “political
awareness” and “theoretical understanding,” and expressed
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