Lefebvre, Henri (1901–1991)

Most well known to geographers today on account of his elaboration of the spatial character of contemporary capitalism, Henri Lefebvre also has an honored place in what is called cultural studies due to the interdisciplinary nature of his writings. Born in Hagetmau in the Pyrenees, Lefebvre became a professor of both philosophy and sociology and ultimately a prominent French intellectual whose life spanned almost the entirety of the 20th century (1901–1991). The expansive character of his life parallels his prolific output as the author of more than 60 books, many of which still await translation from French into English. Although the breadth of topics covered in his works is staggering, two of this self-proclaimed Marxist philosopher's most enduring themes center on everyday life and the production of space. To understand Lefebvre's life—and his life's work—is to understand the key problems of the 20th century as a whole. Moved by the large and violent struggles that coincided with his early life, namely, World War I and the Russian Revolution, Lefebvre came to be regarded as a lifelong committed activist. He shared ideas with proponents of surrealism and existentialism such as André Breton and Jean-Paul Sartre, and during World War II, he became a resistance fighter in [Page 1769]the south of France. After the war, he worked as a taxi driver in Paris, gaining the significant knowledge of city life that is expressed in his theoretical writings. He cultivated an often turbulent relationship with the French Communist Party from 1928 until his expulsion in 1957, soon afterward publishing an autobiography titled La somme et le reste [The sum and the rest] in 1959. His friendship with the Situationists, including Guy Debord, ended in a dispute over the ownership of ideas. Still, Lefebvre was regarded as one of the intellectual godfathers of the upheavals of May 1968, and he published The Explosion (1968), a depiction of the events of that year. He also came to heavily denounce the structuralism of Louis Althusser, who reciprocated Lefebvre's feelings of contempt.

Although his life's work is located at the intersections of geography, sociology, literary criticism, and urban studies, Lefebvre initially moved to the Sorbonne in Paris during the 1920s as a student of philosophy. There, he soon formed part of a group of rebellious young philosophers whose chief target of attack was Henri Bergson, a noted philosopher of temporality. Whereas both thinkers were intent on reconciling philosophy with lived experience, in contrast to Bergson, Lefebvre underscored the encounter between philosophy and the ideas of Karl Marx. In The Survival of Capitalism (1973), Lefebvre remarks that although Marxian thought is not comprehensive enough on its own, it is “indispensable,” as is evidenced by the titles of two of his works that have seen English translation: Dialectical Materialism (1939) and The Sociology of Marx (1966). It was Marx's notion of alienation that first captured Lefebvre's attention, as demonstrated by his early work titled La conscience mystifiée (Mystified Consciousness, 1936, cowritten with Norbert Guterman and still untranslated). This early work on a topic that he believed Marx had not sufficiently explored brought Lefebvre to outline his most extensive and most ambitious project: a critique of “everyday life.”

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