Lefebvre, The Production of Space. Discussion questions

[Lauren Gifford]

Discussion questions, The Production of Space (Henri Lefebvre)

Lauren Gifford

GEOG 5100: Social Theory

18 September 2012

 

1.     - How does Lefebvre differentiate between natural and socially constructed space? How does this differ from the notion that nature is a social construct?

2.     - Lefebvre writes a lot about the inherent power that accompanies the reproduction of space (for example, 32-33). How is the reproduction of space, or spaces, a political act?

3.     - In seeking to understand how space is constructed, is Lefebvre taking an epistemological approach? If so, how is the production of space similar to the production of knowledge? How is it different? Or is it one in the same?

4.     - How is Lefebvre’s idea of how space is constructed similar to how Marx believes capitalisms are reproduced?

5.     - Lefebvre expands upon Gramsci’s use of the term hegemony to describe an aspect of capitalism that is intertwined with, yet separate from, capital (10). How does hegemony manifest itself in the reproduction of space? What does it look like?

6.     - How is abstract space, “a tool of domination” (370) and how is that related to the hegemonic construction of spaces? What are physical examples of this? (Agamben’s state of exception?)

7.     - How can we apply Lefebvre’s notions on the construction of space to modern, “virtual” spaces, like financial markets, the Internet, etc? Is this at all related to the abstract spaces of slaves or feudal communities he mentions (37)?

8.     - Lefebvre seeks to connect the theoretical and physical in the production of space. How does that social construction of space differ across scales? How is it the same?

9.     - In considering only the construction of space, is Lefebvre rendering unnecessary the understanding of what a space contains? Is the meaning in the development, or the final construction? Is he simply leaving this analysis to others?

10.  - What scholars and thinkers have been influenced by Lefebvre? How can we tell? What will his legacy look like?

 

 

Key Terms/concepts:

-       - Special practice

-       - Representations of space

-       - Spaces of representation

-       - Relative space vs. abstract space

-       - Space as a state of nature

-       - Hegemony

-       - Quantity-quality contradiction

 

 

Finally, I found this in a Goodreads review of The Production of Space:

“This book is so magisterial, so essential, and such a hot mess that it's nearly impossible to review.”

[Elizabeth Dunn]

These are great, Lauren!

One helpful distinction to add to the list:  Think about the triad of spatial practice/ representations of space/ representational spaces in more direct terms:  as physicality/ ideality/experientiality.

IMHO, that helps a lot.

[Kaitlin Fertaly]

Hi everyone,

  I have a question about the Lefebvre reading that I am hoping someone could help me grapple with.  On pg 47, Lefebvre is talking about the production of space and the production of history and (I think) he is setting up a discussion of the transitions between modes of production and how this requires new space to be created.  In roughly the middle of the page is writes that "What the establishment of this code meant was that 'people'--inhabitants, builders, politicians--stopped going from urban messages to the code in order to decipher reality...and began instead to go from code to messages so as to produce a discourse and a reality adequate to the code."  And he goes on in a few sentences to say that this allowed the organization of the cities and institutions.  

  I think that this relates somehow to the structuralist/post-structuralist arguments, but I'm really lost as to what he means, practically speaking, by message and code and the implications of their reversed reading.  Any thoughts?

Thanks!!

Kaitlin  

[Chandler Griffith]

Kaitlin, 

I think that here he is referring to the way semiologists have tried to code/decode urban landscapes. Earlier, talking about semiotics, he says that "any attempt to use such code as a means of deciphering social space must surely reduce that space itself to the status of message, and the inhabiting of it to the status of a reading."

That said, I might be totally wrong!

[Elizabeth Dunn]

I was stumped by this one too---I have a set of big question marks next to it in the text. 

What I *think* he's doing is foreshadowing the argument he will make in Chapters 5 and 6.   He's going to argue that capitalism transforms relative space (the space where people can appropriate nature to meet their own needs) into abstract space (the space where capital extracts profit and then convinces everybody it's not exploiting them by putting up false signs of comfort and happiness.   If abstract space is just a representational space---one where people are fooled into thinking they aren't being dominated because they're busy decoding all these abstract signs---then inhabitants wouldn't be moving from the concrete conditions of urban life into a code that represents them by, for example, consuming images of their own real lives.  Instead, they'd be looking at these fake signs that the capitalists are putting up to fool them, and trying to use those to interpret the real conditions of their lives, thus producing what Gramsci called hegemony and Marx called false consciousness.

Hang on until you read Chapter 5, then tell me what you think.