Henri Lefebvre was a Marxist sociologist and philosopher who analysed concepts of social space – how societies use space to express and enforce their structures and power relationships. In The Production Of Space he addresses these topics directly, starting from his definition of space as a social product and expanding outwards to look at social space from many different directions. Religion, architecture, urban planning, sex, bodily functions, semiotics, linguistics – each of these Lefebvre touches on as he explores and discusses the concept of space.
Now, you might well ask, why did I end up reading The Production Of Space in the first place? Well, it was a birthday present from my wife, and the reason she bought it for me is because I had been thinking a lot about the internet and the forms of social space it is giving rise to.
Approached from that perspective, The Production Of Space has little direct relevance – it was written in the late 1970s after all – but it does outline a theory of space that’s made me rebuild my mental model of the online world. That’s a whole new can of worms which I’m not going to open up in this review, so I’ll leave it for another time and get back to telling you about this book.
I haven’t read much philosophy since sixth-form college, so I should be honest and admit that The Production Of Space was a bit of a struggle for me, particularly in the beginning. A lightbulb turned on in my head when I connected his use of the term “production” with that of Marx, however, prompting various of flashbacks to A-level politics that helped me make more sense of Lefebvre’s writing. Readers who are not familiar with concepts like dialectic materialism, alienation, hegemony and the reproduction of social relations will find this book to be a real struggle – so take that as a warning.
But having said that, this isn’t an ideological or polemical book in the way some people might expect given the connection to Marxism. It’s political, yes, but what isn’t? If there’s an underlying message, it’s difficult to discern, and readers who are looking for books with a basic “point” or a straightforward ideological motive should look elsewhere. The Production Of Space is too wide-ranging, too eclectic in the arguments it unpacks and extends at length, to be boiled down to a single proposition.
So in the face of all that, and my lack of exposure to philosophy and sociology, I’ve found it difficult to come up with this review – you might have noticed that it was published some time after I finished the book. So here are some straightforward statements I feel I can make about it:
I’m glad I read it. It wasn’t easy. At times getting sentences into my brain felt like squeezing toothpaste back into the tube or pushing water uphill. I learnt a lot. Since reading it I look at the world in a different way. The day I finished it was a happy day, because I’d spent so long reading it and my brain welcomed the chance to dive into something less challenging. And finally, I enjoyed Lefebvre’s scathing put-downs of semiotics and linguistics even if they largely went over my head.
It’s good to read something every now and again that really stretches you, that really forces you to look beyond the surface of mundane reality for the patterns and structures that hold it together. If you want to have that experience, are interested in social space, and are happy to rely upon your conceptual vocabulary of Marxist economics for a few weeks, then I’d recommend The Production Of Space. But don’t expect an easy read!
