Critique of Everyday Life

Volume 2 by Henri Lefebvre

When Henri Lefebvre published this book in 1961, he brought an undeniable renewal to sociological analysis, far from the coldness of the disembodied world of statistics.

From the outset, he proclaims his ambition to both grasp everyday life in its diversity and complexity, and at the same time to try to maintain the coherence of his critical analysis.

That is to say, he fully integrates the apparent contradictions of people’s lives in order to use these contradictions to bring out a global understanding.

“All human life is a march or a step towards a possibility, the opening or closing of possibilities, a calculation and a choice that takes into account the hazards and the intervention of ‘others’.”

Lefebvre does not therefore indulge in any disillusioned observations but proposes many tracks for reviving a daily life crushed by the weight of the fetishism of goods and money.

“Dreams, with their discontinuities, their surprising ‘suspense’ and their apparent absurdities, summarize the transition from need to desire. They retrace the path from the certainty of need to the uncertainty of desire”.

Although often cited as a reference, Lefebvre has had very few followers in the world of sociology, which has been parasitized by ‘experts’ following orders from the system.

“Specialists have every right except that of imposing silence on critical thought in the name of a conception of reality that they rarely explain and which is not at all self-evident.”

For all those who cherish the project and the hope of a genuine transformation of our society, a careful reading of this book will be of the greatest benefit and they will certainly be surprised, for example, that Lefebvre was then able to conceive “ a society in which everyone – rediscovering the spontaneity of natural life and the initial creative impulse – would perceive the world as an artist, would enjoy the senses with the eye of a painter, the ear of a musician, the language of a poet. Art, transcended, would thus be absorbed into an everyday life transformed by its fusion with what remained outside it.

The comparison with the prospects for the future that our brave contemporary politicians and analysts now “offer” us can, in fact, only make you feel dizzy.

It should be noted that, in stark contrast to all these brilliant “specialists” who now camp out full-time in the media, many of Lefebvre’s critical theses are verified on a daily basis.

It is also worth noting that in this early critique of modernity, Lefebvre drew on, among other things, a very enlightening formulation by the young Marx: “The abstraction of the state as such belongs only to modern times, because the abstraction of private life belongs only to modern times.”

Let us quote Lefebvre again, at the heart of his reflexive method and on the subject of an essential factor in human relations that is in a very bad way today, namely living dialogue:

“Why speak, why use forms of communication and language in the act of speaking, if not to escape from an uneasiness, that is to say from hidden or proven intentions, challenges and mistrust, so that the act of understanding emerges from a lack of understanding, which is never completely eradicated? Does lively dialogue clear up a misunderstanding, without which there would be nothing to say, and which provides the “material” (both “material”, hidden emotions, poorly revealed opinions, symbols – and “equipment”, instructions for use of words, intentions, intellectual operators, visible approaches, manifested behaviors) on which the subjects work in a dialogue situation? Where does the root of the misunderstanding lie and hide that makes dialogue both indispensable and difficult, possible and often doomed to failure? First of all, in the language, in the words used and the way they are used, in the symbols used and the intentions of the users. And also in the systems of reference, which are generally not very explicit. “