Henri Lefebvre’s Urban Critical Theory: Rethinking the City against Capitalism

ABSTRACT

In the article the author highlights the main ways of the Lefebvrian sociological analysis conceived starting from the transformations of the city in the Fordist era: From the production of urban marginality, through the proliferation of precarious living in the France of the Sixties and Seventies, to recording the gradual disappearance of the urban–rural dichotomy, that goes into an authentic spatial hegemony of urbanization processes. The goal is therefore to highlight the “urban critical theory” of Henri Lefebvre, coming to discuss the famous meaning of “right to the city,” strongly interconnected with the concept of “city as an artwork,” that is the idea of an urban space intended as horizontal and common design by those who live and inhabit in it.

KEYWORDS:

• Henri Lefebvre
• right to the city
• production of space
• urban outcasts
• rural space

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on Contributor

Francesco Biagi, is a PhD researcher in Political and Social Sciences at the University of Pisa (Italy) and collaborates with the research group GESTUAL (Group of Socio-Territorial, Urban and Local Action Studies) at the Faculty of Architecture of Lisbon (Portugal). He also writes and devotes himself to political philosophy and urban studies. He is rediscovering the Henri Lefebvre’s thought in order to understand the current neoliberal urban questions. With this aim he has published the monography Henri Lefebvre. Una teoria critica dello spazio (Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Theory of Space) (Jaca Book, Milano, 2019).

Notes

1 I share this interpretation with De Simoni (2015, 2016), but my approach to the author is somehow different: I do not effectively share the more general insertion of Lefebvre in the Post-Fordist and Post-Workerism debate.

2 In Italy, similar researches about the peripheries were undertaken by Danilo Montaldi (2010). Montaldi had engaged a strong bond with the members of Socialisme ou Barbarie. We may hypothesize that Lefebvre and Montaldi, even without any existing proof that they knew each other, actually reached a mutual debate.

3 On De Martino’s work, see Massenzio and Alessandri (2013).

4 On Sayad and the concept of “double absence” (see Saada 2000; Raimondi 2016; Avallone 2018).

5 The film shocked France at the Cannes Festival in 2010 opening a strong debate to the point that the film was labelled as anti-French for having mentioned historical events of the colonialist era that had been willingly excluded from the transalpine collective conscience. A real resentment against the film director took place for having conducted such a backward journey into the colonial past, especially for having evoked tortures and massacres carried out in the motherland and in the colonies.

6 Most probably Lefebvre was acquainted with Claude Lefort’s studies on Machiavelli (Lefort 1972) since he had initiated an amicable relationship with the Socialisme ou Barbarie group. On the conflict theory’s debate in Machiavelli’s thought, see Del Lucchese, Frosini, and Morfino (2015).

7 On the subprime economic crisis and its urban consequences, see Aalbers (2012).