. social space .

"The Production of Space" by Henri Lefebvre

[p.68] 'Nature' itself, as apprehended in social life by the sense organs, has been modified and therefore in a sense produced.

[p.68-69] (In the mind of Marx and Engels): products. This narrowing of the concept brings it closer to its everyday, and hence banal, sense - the sense it has for the economists. As for the questions of who does the producing, and how they do it, the more restricted the notion becomes the less it connotes creativity, inventiveness or imagination; rather, it tends to refer solely to labour. [Did Mark Smout just mentioned 'economist' today - asking if my thesis somehow related to economists? On the first thought, I personally don't want to go down that path. But I guess maybe I could re-think the potential in that direction.]

[p.69] 'Who produces?', 'What?', 'How?', 'Why and for whom?' Outside the context of these questions and their answers, the concept of production remains purely abstract. In Marx, as in Engels, the concept never attains concreteness.

[p.69] What constitutes the forces of production, according to Marx and Engels? Nature, first of all, plays a part, then labour, hence the organization (or division) of labour, and hence also the instruments of labour, including technology and, ultimately, knowledge.

(So production is the end-product or the process?) [p.70] A work has something irreplaceable and unique about it; a product can be reproduced exactly, and in fact is the result of repetitive acts and gestures.

[p.71] Production in the Marxist sense transcends the philosophical opposition between 'subject' and 'object', along with all the relationships constructed by the philosophers on the basis of that opposition.

[p.71] All productive activity is defined less by invariable or constant factors than by the incessant to-and-fro between temporality (succession, concatenation) and spatiality (simultaneity, synchronicity).

[p.72] The phrase 'production of knowledge' does make a certain amount of sense so far as the development of concepts is concerned: every concept must come into being and must mature. But without the facts, and without the discourse of social beings or 'subjects', who could be said to produce concepts?

[p.73] A city - a space which is fashioned, shaped and invested by social activities during a finite historical period.

[p.74] A city has, after all, 'composed' by people, by well-defined groups.

[p.75] It is obvious, sad to say, that repetition has everywhere defeated uniqueness, that the artificial and contrived have driven all spontaneity and naturalness from the field, and, in short, that products have vanquished works. Repetitious spaces are the outcome of repetitive gestures (those of the workers) associated with instruments which are both duplicatable and designed to duplicate. [It is then important for us to view the 'homologous' spaces differently by ourselves in order not to be 'bored' by them I guess.]

[p.75] Space is undoubtedly produced even when the scale is not that of major highways, airports or public works.

[p.77] Social space contains a great diversity of objects, both natural and social, including the networks and pathways which facilitate the exchange of material things and information. Such 'objects' are thus not only things but also relations.

[p.81] How can illusion and reality be distinguished in the realm of pleasure?

[p.86] (Can I use this to summarize/describe what is shown in my film "Des(hopping)ire Land"?) We are confronted not by one social space but by many - indeed, by an unlimited multiplicity or uncountable set of social spaces which we refer to generically as 'social space'. No space disappears in the course of growth and development: the worldwide does not abolish the local. The intertwine of social spaces is also a law. Considered in isolation, such spaces are mere abstractions. As concrete abstractions, however, they attain 'real' existence by virtue of networks and pathways, by virtue of bunches or clusters of relationships. Instances of this are the worldwide network of communication, exchange and information. It is important to note that such newly developed networks do not eradicate from their social context those earlier ones, superimposed upon one another over the years, which constitute the various markets: local, regional, national and international markets; the market in commodities, the money or capital market, the labour market, and the market in works, symbols and signs; and lastly - the most recently created - the market in spaces themselves. Social spaces interpenetrate one another and/or superimpose themselves upon one another.

[p.87] Visible boundaries, such as walls or enclosures in general, give rise for their part to an appearance of separation between spaces where in fact what exists is an ambiguous continuity. The space of a room, bedroom, house or garden may be cut off in a sense from social space by barriers and walls, by all the signs of private property, yet still remain fundamentally part of that space.

[p.91-92] The real knowledge that we hope to attain would have a retrospective as well as a prospective import. Its implications for history, for example, and for our understanding of time, will become apparent if our hypothesis turns out to be correct. It will help us to grasp how societies generate their (social) space and time - their representational spaces and their representations of space. It should also allow us, not to foresee the future, but to bring relevant factors to bear on the future in prospect - on the project, in other words, of another space and another time in another (possible or impossible) society.

-stop here for now- as the book has to go back to the library because someone has requested it :S
will get it back later if needed.