Towards a spatialized utopia: romanticism and everyday life in the Marxism of Henri Lefebvre

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22296/2317-1529.rbeur.202139pt

Keywords:

Henri Lefebvre, The right to the city, Romanticism, Appropriation, Everyday life

Abstract

The presence of the spatial element in the reflections of Henri Lefebvre does not merely result from work involving the translation and adaptation of critical thinking developed up until his time. The realization that not even the highest expression of the critical tradition had sufficiently noticed this crucial dimension of life was one of the connecting points between theoretical advance, represented by the spatial orientation of critique, and the effort to renew the utopian horizon. A very distinct assimilation of the early work of Marx and the proximity to revolutionary romanticism, particularly of Nietzschean extraction, rendered a decisive impact on Lefebvrian conception. Practice, body, pleasure and instincts, recovering their place in the critical social imagination, went on to become the basis for the re-foundation of a theoretical-practical program that involved the formulation of the notion of the right to the city. The perspective of appropriation thus replaced the vague emancipatory statements of the subject's philosophies.

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Author Biography

César Ricardo Simoni Santos, Universidade de São Paulo, Departamento de Geografia, São Paulo, SP, Brazil

Professor in the Department of Geography at the Universidade de São Paulo (USP), accredited to the Postgraduate Program in Human Geography (PPGH) and affiliated with the Laboratory of Urban Geography (LABUR), also at USP. He is currently coordinator of the Grupo Limites da Acumulação e Reprodução do Espaço (Limiares), vice-coordinator of the Grupo de Geografia Urbana Crítica Radical (GESP) and Social Activities Gender Markets and Mobilities (SAGEMM) and a member of the Grupo de Teoria Urbana Crítica do Instituto de Estudos Avançados at USP (IEA). He is also the author of other works of interest to the field of critical urban theory, such as the book A fronteira urbana: industrialização, urbanização e mercado imobiliário no Brasil [The urban frontier: industrialization, urbanization and the real estate market in Brazil] and the article “Henri Lefebvre and the morphology of a spatial dialectic”, and one of the organizers of the book Geografia urbana crítica: teoria e método [Critical Urban Geography: theory and method].

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Published

2021-12-08

How to Cite

Santos, C. R. S. (2021). Towards a spatialized utopia: romanticism and everyday life in the Marxism of Henri Lefebvre. Revista Brasileira De Estudos Urbanos E Regionais, 23. https://doi.org/10.22296/2317-1529.rbeur.202139pt

Issue

Section

Articles - City, History & Culture