State, Space, World: Selected Essays of Henri Lefebvre

by Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden, Editors
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, London, USA, UK, 2009
320 pp., illus. 1 b/w. Trade, $85.50; paper, $28.50
ISBN: 978-0-8166-5316-4; ISBN: 978-0-8166-5317-1.

Reviewed by Aparna Sharma

a.sharma@arts.ucla.edu

State Space World : Selected Essays brings to English speaking readers some of the key writings of Henri Lefebvre that combine his Marxist state theories and their application to his readings of space within the capitalist context. The book is divided into two sections: State, Society, Autogestion; and Space, State Spatiality, World. A comprehensive introduction by the editors provides an insightful overview of the span of Lefebvre's concepts while contextualizing his writings in terms of the key philosophical influences on his thought i.e. Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger. This facilitates in understanding how Lefebvre's writings have both political-economy and philosophical dimensions that often tend to be divorced resulting in short-sighted economic determinism within Marxist thought. Part I opens with two seminal lectures, 'The State and Society' and 'The Withering Away of the State: The Sources of Marxist-Leninist State Theory' that involve a revisitation of classical Marxist texts such as Marx's 'Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law', 'The Poverty of Philosophy' and Lenin's 'State and Revolution.' These two essays form the basis of understanding Lefebvre's approach to state theory and democratic transformation. Crucial in this section of the book is first, Lefebvre's critique of Stalinism in both theory and practice, and second, his theoretical interpretation of the concept of 'autogestion' that remains largely misconstrued within varied forms of Marxist practice. Lefebvre turns to Lenin to elaborate on autogestion as he felt that this concept had not fully developed within Marx. Autogestion is the process of the state withering away and it is a consequent stage of revolutionary overthrow. Lefebvre cites Lenin thus: 'The organ of suppression is now the majority of the population, and not a minority, as was always the case under slavery, serfdom, and wage slavery. And since the majority of people itself suppresses its oppressors, a special force of 'suppression' is no longer necessary! In this sense the state begins to wither away' (2009: 88). This is a very critical move that outlines the theoretical span for the revolutionary project. Numerous examples of anti-state and pro-democracy movements come to mind here such as the Maoist-Naxalite resurgence in India and the pro-democracy movement of Burma. While critique of the elitist and authoritarian state apparatus as a discriminating outfit has within these movements the fashionings of political appeal, one finds that the understanding of revolutionary overthrow as for example among the Naxalites is often fraught with contradictions and remains largely wanting in theoretical rigour. This is reflected not only in grassroots politicking, but also culturally if one observes the cinema of Indian filmmakers who have attempted to respond to the Naxalite sentiment. While the concepts of 'bottom-up' and grassroots politics have in recent years gained substantial currency across disciplines, Lefebvre's discussion of autogestion as derived from Lenin's writings posits the withering away of the state as an organic process of the revolutionary project, formulating as a genuinely interventionist political alternative.

Lefebvre's overarching study of the state and its complicity with capital installs his interest in 'space.' In his writings he plots the relationship between space and mode of production. According to Lefebvre, social bodies and relations are enacted and expressed through space because space 'participates in the production of goods, things, and commodities; it consumes productively; but at the same time it is totally covered by exploitation and domination' (2009: 202). In identifying how the state effects and relates with space, Lefebvre classifies three modalities: the production of space as in a national territory; the production of social space 'an (artificial) edifice of hierarchically ordered institutions', and the state as occupying mental space including 'the representations of the State that people construct' (2009: 224-225). Lefebvre proposes a schema for the organization of space the enactment of spatial relations within it. This schema includes 'homogenization-fragmentation-hierarchization' (2009: 212-216).

According to Lefebvre capitalistic space follows from perspectival space of the Renaissance and heralds the destruction of the former mode. This has implications for art history for in his essay, 'Space and the State' Lefebvre critiques the Bauhaus and Cubists on the grounds that the departure from perspective resulted in the discovery of representing objects in space without privileging any side or façade -- a feature that according to him characterizes capitalistic space. For him the Bauhaus' conception of space spread alongside neo-capitalism. In some senses this is a valid observation, however, the cubist, Bauhaus, or indeed the modernist project, which was not homogenous or unified, was certainly underpinned by a critique of the dominant aesthetic values and thereby worldviews. This is true of the modernist stance not only in Europe or North America, but more globally. What Lefebvre perhaps does not clearly distinguish is the appropriation and fixation of modernist strategies into a prescriptive aesthetics befitting neo-capitalist circulation.

The text State, Space, World: Selected Essays concludes with Lefebvre's ideas of the historicized 'global' and 'worldwide' experience. It is understandable that such conceptions are called up as a counter move embedded with a critique of capitalism that hierarchises and commodifies cultural disparity too. Lefebvre's essays speak across disciplines ranging from those directly associated with space such as economics, architecture, urban planning and social geography onto disciplines involved with the study of corporeal experience including performance, cultural theory, cinema and new media. For artists his essays maybe most usefully deployed when combined with methods befitting postmodern encounters such as James Clifford's call for an ethnography of conjunctures or observational cinema as exemplified through the practice of David MacDougall. At the end of State, Space, World: Selected Essays are included recommendations for further reading and a publication history. This is very useful for any further engagement with Lefebvre's influential writings.

For Lefebvre the body is an 'organic, living and thinking being' (229). And so, in modern space 'the body no longer has a presence, it is only represented, in a spatial environment reduced to its optical components. This space is also phallic...'; he states.   (234) In the essay, 'Space and the State' Lefebvre.