Critique of Everyday Life: IntroductionHenri Lefebvre's three-volume Critique of Everyday Life is perhaps the richest, most prescient work by one of the twentieth century's greatest philosophers. Written at the birth of post-war consumerism, the Critique was a philosophical inspiration for the 1968 student revolution in France and is considered to be the founding text of all that we know as cultural studies, as well as a major influence on the fields of contemporary philosophy, geography, sociology, architecture, political theory and urbanism. A work of enormous range and subtlety, Lefebvre takes as his starting-point and guide the "trivial" details of quotidian experience: an experience colonized by the commodity, shadowed by inauthenticity, yet one which remains the only source of resistance and change. This is an enduringly radical text, untilmely today only in its intransigence and optimism. Volume One is a groundbreaking analysis of the alienating phenomena of daily life under capitalism. |
Contents
In Retrospect II What Has Changed in the Last | 29 |
Some Overviews on the Modern World VI Once | 83 |
Plans and Programme for the Future | 98 |
Copyright | |
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absolute abstract action activity analysis André Breton anguish appear aspects Baudelaire become bourgeois society bourgeoisie Brecht capitalism capitalist complete concrete Conscience mystifiée consciousness contradictions criticism critique of everyday culture defined dialectical dialectical materialism economic elements existence expression external fact festivals fetishism freedom Georges Friedmann grasp Guterman Hegel Henri Lefebvre human reality Ibid ideas ideologies illusion individual intellectual Jean Wahl knowledge labour Lefebvre's leisure linked living Lukács magic man's marvellous Marx Marx's Marxism masses meaning metaphysical modern mystery mystical myth naïve nature needs Norbert Guterman notion object organized Paris peasant petty bourgeois philosophical Pierre Morhange political possible practical precisely problem production proletarian rational reason relations religion rituals Roger Vailland sense simply situation social sociology spiritual strange Surrealism Surrealist theatre themes theory of alienation things thought Trans transformed trivial unity words worker