Lefebvre's Critique of Everyday Life

From the Foreword: Even though published in the late 50s, I think some of Lefebvre's commentary remains just as if not more pertinent to our day and age as it did in his time. He writes, "The same period which has witnessed a breathtaking development in the application of techniques of everyday life has also witnessed the no-less-breathtaking degradation of everyday life for large masses of human beings" (9). I think of the 50s, and what the home construct was supposedly like back then (although Lefebvre does warn us to take precaution in our affinity for nostalgia--"Mystical or metaphysical criticism of everyday life, be it from poets or philosophers, ends up in a reactionary position, even if and above all when its arguments have formal similarities with those of the 'left.' Escape from life or rejection of life, recourse to outmoded or exhausted ways of life, nostalgia for the past or dreams of a superhuman future, these positions are basically identical" (130)). To compare the 50s to today is to escape to an ideal time of what we have been told to idealize: warm apple pies, kitchen aprons, fathers in suits and jackets, bicycles with streamers, combed hair, summer vacations, lawn sprinklers, a pet dog, treehouses, Christmas trees...etc. These things have certainly carried over into our present day times; what I think Lefebvre is trying to create with this book is precisely opposite what was provided him in Paris during his time: a critical look at the implications of what these objects or ideas about these objects can do to a society that is "...caught in a hybrid compromise between aesthetic spectacle and knowledge" (132). I thought of the bell hooks' article we read for class when in his Foreword Lefebvre comments, "...it is not unusual to find peasants owning electric cookers, but the houses they live in are still dilapidated; they manage to buy gadgets, but cannot afford to repair their houses, and even less to modernize their farms...In the same way quite a large number of working-class couples have a wahing machine, a television set, or a car, but they have generally sacrificed something else for these gadgets" (9). The challenge, then, in Lefebvre's mind--and I beleive bell hooks recognized this fact in her article--is how to live so that the full knowledge of the everyday does not become unintentional (and thereby, ironically, mysterious or bizarre). For hooks, I think the understanding of the object's significance--its purpose for shedding light on a cultural aspect within her everyday life allowed her to blend the aesthetic with the knowledge. I think, in our advancing world of technology: iPhones, iPods, Twitter, Blogs (heh heh), Prius cars, spring fashion lines, etc, we are still accountable to Lefebvre's cautions. I think there is pessimism in his voice for good reason; however, rather than allow that pessimism to saturate his being, I got the sense when reading the book that Lefebvre was more interested in studying the lines or seams where the system has failed, in order to offer us another space in which to live. He seemed to have recognized that we have somehow lost our way (one of the most interesting discussions, especially in light of the Dadaist article we read, was Lefebvre's critique and breakdown of the Dadaist and Surrealist movements, both, according to him, failing at their most radical points to offer something "ordinary" or real, in the sense of the everyday) and we are in desperate straits to re-balance that system. This was, for me, a fascinating read; by writing, I think Lefebvre succeeds in bringing these issues to our attention. I know I am now more aware.

--Julie