The Production of Space by Lefebvre - Essay Example

Page Lefebvre (1994, quoted in notbored.org, n.d in his book The Production of Space gives an insightful and realistic expression of geography, "An existing space may outlive its original purpose and the raison d'etre which determines its forms, functions, and structures; it may thus in a sense become vacant, and susceptible of being diverted, reappropriated and put to a use quite different from its initial one." According to Lefebvre, "space" is otherwise known as a society. Time is only measured by instruments such as clocks and is only paid attention to when we are at work and the society we created actually has no real sense of time. This quote best introduces the topic of this writing as we focus on how classic urban theory shapes the views of the nature of hyper stimulation, phantasmagoria, and alienation. We shall also discuss geographers' understanding of the modern city and the contradictions of modernity, which are characterized by a tendency to order, space, and time whilst, simultaneously, its ruination and fragmentation (Berman 1982). Continuing the modern post urban experience in shaping spaces and consumptions of modern geographies of the twentieth century is the course of geography. We have come a long way from ancient civilization where one leader controlled everyone and everything. We lived and functioned in the manner that the sovereign leader ordered. Armstrong (2005) states that, "According to Page 2 Foucault, this 'juridico-discursive' conception of power (Foucault 1978: 82) has its origins in the practices of power characteristic of pre-modern societies. In such societies, he claims, power was centralized and coordinated by a sovereign authority who exercised absolute control over the population through the threat or open display of violence. From the seventeenth century onwards, however, as the growth and care of populations increasingly became the primary concerns of the state, new mechanisms of power emerged which centred around the administration and management of 'life'. Modern civilization and architecture, as we know it today, is quite different from the days of complete surveillance of daily life and living. We have gone from building houses and temples according to one sovereign leader's exact specifications to a geography of modernity in which "an organic community lives in an age where a multiplicity of international and domestic material transformations"(Mackinder 1904: 434). This transformation is so extreme that not only do we use architecture to embrace all forms of dreaming and fantasy, but we also can use our hairstyles and clothing to create the geography that we fantasize, making it into our own reality. Geographers are influenced by Lefebvre's understanding of the modern Page 3 city. He states that space and time are driven by the forces of production and by industry, proletarian and revolutionary rationality. Some geographers mimic His view of space, as quoted in Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space, "is actually experienced, in its depths, as duplications, echoes and reverberations, redundancies and doublings-up which engender -- and are engendered by -- the strangest of contrasts." While the internal divisions (the nine sharply-defined chapters) of The Society of the Spectacle -- reminiscent somehow of wide boulevards that ensure the smooth circulation of traffic -- make sure that the book's major themes do not interfere with each other, The Production of Space (to once again quote its author out of context) is "penetrated by, and shot through with, the weaker tendencies characteristic of networks and pathways." Unlike Debord, who uses the same paths to arrive at different points, Lefebvre arrives at the same points by using different paths". Berman (1982) states that the contradictions of modernity are characterised by a tendency to order space and time while simultaneously promoting their ruination and fragmentation. Wikipedia (n.d.) states that Berman is a Marxist Humanist Writer and Philosopher. His definition of modernism is listed: Others believe that the really distinctive forms of contemporary art Page 4 and thought have made a quantum leap beyond all the diverse sensibilities of modernism, and earned the right to call themselves "post-modern". I want to respond to these antithetical but complementary claims by reviewing the vision of modernity with which this book began. To be modern, I said, is to experience personal and social life as a maelstrom, to find one's world and oneself in perpetual disintegration and renewal, trouble and anguish, ambiguity and contradiction: to be part of a universe in which all that is solid melts into air. To be a modernist is to make oneself somehow at home in the maelstrom, to make its rhythms one's own, to move within its currents in search of the forms of reality, of beauty, of freedom, of justice, that its fervid and perilous flow allows.(All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, The Experience of Modernity, verso ninth edition Pages 345-346). Be as it may, the contradictions of modernity, in relation to the experience and relationship of the modern city and subject, has shaped the order of space and time whilst maintaining and continuing the modern and post modern urban experience. The shaping of spaces and consumptions of modern geographies carries on into the the twentieth century. Bibliography Armstrong, A. (2005). Foucault and Feminism. Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available from the Internet. Retrieved from: , (Accessed 29 December 2005). Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space (n.d.) Available from: , (Accessed 29 December 2005). Marshall Berman. (2005). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Available from the Internet. Retrieved from: < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Berman>. Linehan, D. (n.d.). Make the Modern: World Fairs and Exhibitions. GG3017: The Spaces and Subject of Modernity. Available from the Internet. Retrieved from: . Read More