Summary - Clearing the ground

Summary – Clearing the ground

By Henri Lefebvre

Lefebvre begins by clarifying the meaning of the critique of everyday life by stating that it is not restricted to ‘organic functions’ and repetitive actions but instead suggests firstly that this critique involves not just observing how people live in various locations around the world but more of a questioning and challenging of possibilities of what can be changed and transformed to improve this living. Secondly Lefebvre suggests that the everyday has a deeper meaning than notions of daily routines and is linked by its linearity to overarching concepts of seasons and time. In addition Lefebvre argues that art, politics and state life are not ‘external and superior to real life’ but instead if one uses a perspective of critiquing human existence then ‘dialectical links, reciprocities and implications’ can be discovered which transform our view of our existence from being an ‘unrelated hierarchy’ to a discovery of existence being made up of ‘the humble and sordid’ but also ‘the time and place where the human either fulfills itself or fails’.

Lefebvre then discusses the notion of critiquing everyday life in relation to history where he suggests that this carries the danger of a limited perception of everyday life as purely anecdotal as history ‘as a science does not exhaust the human. It neither eliminates nor absorbs political economy, sociology or psychology’ ie. that history cannot encompass the depth or breadth of human existence. He explores the idea of a ‘historical drift’ - the gap between ‘intentions, actions and results’ - and that history itself and historical representations held by institutions have been rejected and critiqued by people and people groups seeking freedom from representations that ‘chained them to their previous everyday life’. Lefebvre states that is at this point ‘that the everyday and historical come together … but in the active and violently negative critique which history makes of the everyday’. In this way Lefebvre states that even though the historian may wish to implement a critique of everyday life this will ‘in turn challenge and accuse history’ as history itself reduces the everyday. In addition Lefebvre explores by quoting Marx that in terms of the modern everyday we cannot look at it solely through an historical lens because ‘today in our society everyday life and culture, everyday life and historical event’ are dissociated – the modern condition of there being ‘a rift between the private and public life’ therefore disabling the desire to perceptibly critique everyday life due to this ‘abstract reality’ suggested by Marx.

Lefebvre then examines the notion of the everyday and seeks to define it:

‘It surrounds us, besieges us on all sides and from all directions. We are inside it and outside it. No so-called ‘elevated’ activity can be reduced to it nor can it be separated from it…. It is at the heart of the everyday that projects become works of creativity’. Lefebvre expands on this hypothesis by looking at examples from various aspects of society functions such as scientific discovery, a soldier’s experience and the everyday life of a nation state, exploring how each of these arenas consist of functions and practices rooted in everyday life and that it is in the soil of this everyday life and mundane activity that ‘is the springboard for sublime actions’, heroism, discovery and dramatic moments.

Lefebvre then explores another definition of everyday life centred around the mundane repetitive activities of an housewife quoting that it is ‘the ensemble of activities which of necessity result from the general processes of development: evolution, growth and ageing of biological or social protection or change, those processes which escape immediate notice and which are only perceptible in their consequence’. Lefevbvre then discusses the limitations of this definition by stating that in order to study and critique everyday life one could just record ‘trivial details from one day to the next, the daily gestures with their inevitable repetitions’ and create some video interviews portaying common themes which would surface such as loneliness, monotony, the advantages/disadvantages of marriage and career. This could then lead one to explore attitudes towards the everyday which would consist of acceptance but in his view mainly rejection and continuing this train of thought Lefebvre suggests that looking at what a society rejects shows a social groups characteristics eg. Consumerism and waste in western nations versus initiative and creativity with ‘waste materials’ in undeveloped countries.

However Lefebvre states that this method of critiquing everyday life whilst insightful could paint a picture of bleakness, ‘the sordid side of life, on suffering’ and linger on an old fashioned idea of representing the common person as well as veering towards promoting existentialism as an escape from ‘stodgy sociological pretentiousness’. Lefebvre suggests that his hypothesis for the study instead prefers to promote the idea that ‘it is in everyday life and starting from everyday life that genuine creations are achieved, those creations which produce the human and which men produce as part of the process of becoming human: works of creativity. These superior activities are born from seeds contained in everyday practice.’ He suggests that ‘feelings, ideas, lifestyles and pleasures are confirmed in the everyday’ and even ‘when exceptional activities have created them ‘they have to turn back towards everyday life to verify and confirm the validity of that creation’. In this way ‘whatever is produced or constructed in the superior realms of social practice must demonstrate its reality in the everyday whether it be art, philosophy or politics. At this level alone can it be authenticated’.

In this way Lefebvre suggests that the praxis of the human world is not only made up of culture, history, society, ideological and political superstructures but instead that the base structure of everyday life in his industrial analogy has a dialectical and circuitry way of intersecting with these superstructures as an intermediate level where life is played out. In this way Lefebvre suggests we can study what is possible by examining this tangible intermediate level and seeing what has previously been impossible however he states that he is not promoting a technocratic or humanistic interpretation but instead suggesting we use a concrete centre of reference- the everyday- to judge ‘the possible and the potential’.

Lefebvre then asks us to change perspective by imagining the exclusion of specialized activities from being put into practice and suggests that we would expect different responses by getting rid of techniques yet keeping the time and rhythm. Lefebvre suggests that scientists and technocrats etc would then say that as a society we had nothing left, metaphysicians and those dealing with the metaphysical would say we still had everything left and perhaps everyone else would say we still have something left – ‘a mixture of nature and culture, the historical and the lived, the individual and the social, the real and the unreal, a place of transitions, meetings, interactions and conflicts in short a level of reality’.

Lefebvre then pushes this example further by exploring that this everyday level of reality is not the same for individuals by examining the situations of an housewife, a ‘society woman’ and a ‘mathematician’ showing that the ‘more technical an activity becomes the more remote from everyday life the time it takes up becomes and the more urgent becomes the need for the everyday’ suggesting that the mathematician’s challenge is to find fulfillment in everyday life as a human being and not get obsessed with the specialized activity whereas for the housewife Lefebvre suggests her challenge is to not get swallowed up by the everyday in which she finds herself immersed.

In conclusion Lefebvre’s statement about the everyday holds seeds to ponder for us in our artistic practice that ‘nothing could be more superficial: its banality, triviality and repetitiveness. And yet in another sense nothing could be more profound. It is existence and the  ‘lived’ revealed as they are before speculative thought has transcribed them: what must be changed and what is the hardest of all to change’.

This article has been so interesting and relevant to me in relation to my practice in general and in specific in terms of my VIAM project for this semester which is looking at the intersection between the divine and the everyday, the material and the immaterial and in a sense I am challenged by the notion that ideologies are manifested in our everyday life choices as that is where they are made visible and affirmed which challenges me to examine my choices in related to my ideologies – am I really living them out or just saying them? In addition it confirms in a sense that God’s communication with us is also rooted in the everyday and the material – when I think of the parables Jesus taught of they were all connected to everyday events such as shepherding, finding coins, marriages, tending vineyards which made sense to the farming communities that Jesus interacted with. This article affirms the notion that it is in everyday life and starting from everyday life that genuine creations are achieved’ and this is what I hope for in my project by starting at looking at the everyday and mundane I can make visible the intangible and mysterious possibilities and potential that exists in our everyday life.