Henri Lefebvre's 'Social Space'

Ok, so I have just read Henri Lefebvre’s chapter on ‘Social Space’ from the book ‘The production of Space’. We were warned in advance that this would be difficult, and I think it is even more difficult than I imagined! After finishing the chapter, I realise I’ve written two A4 pages of notes, with the intention of extracting the essential points from the text, and being able to arrive at some kind of conclusion when I read over them again. Well unfortunately it hasn’t been quite as simple as that!

Lefebvre seems to know what he is talking about, but the way he writes confuses the hell out of me. He starts talking about one point and seems to either leave it with another question or give an explanation that even after ten attempts of reading over the same paragraph, doesn’t seem to make sense in my head. I have to say that it is frustrating to read a piece of writing that shows me enough that I am really interested in what he has to say, but then finding that the way it is written doesn’t let me get to grips with it.

I think there is a real skill in being able to convey a complicated idea in a way that makes it more easily understandable. This related directly to our design units too – the main challenge is turning a complicated idea in your head into a language that anyone can start to understand. I don’t know, I’m sure many brilliant theorists would disagree with me making a big deal out of this, and argue that what Lefebvre writes makes perfect sense, but I just think that writing in the way he does gives the impression that he is hiding in words.

With this said, I still got something out of this text, if not particularly a conclusion – and having said that, that is one of the main things that I have taken from this course; that sometimes there are no answers, but there is a process, and things must not stop or settle, they must keep going. As frustrating as that can be, constantly questioning what we usually except as the ‘right thing’ or the ‘truth’, will make us better people (as well as drive us mad).

So Lefebvre looks into the true meanings of production, work, and social space. Throughout the chapter he finds different meanings such as a ‘work’ being unique and a ‘product’ being reproduced exactly. He talks about nature being a work, and gives the example of a rose not knowing that it is a rose.  He goes on to say that humanity is killing off nature with signs and images, and labour and products. When talking about social space he describes it as the outcome of a sequence, and set or operations, and so cannot be reduced to the rank of a simple object, but at the same time there is nothing imagined or unreal about it.

The problem is, I am taking this all in, but I have no idea what the point is that he’s getting at. Maybe that will become clear when I read more chapters of the book, but I suspect that it might not… as mentioned before, I believe that maybe Lefebvre’s level of thinking is above his level of writing. Writing is about communicating ideas clearly, and at least in my case he hasn’t been successful!