The Production of Space by Henri Lefebvre, challenging piece to read at first so I read it to my colleagues at work, who where not too happy I was taking up valuable time from there lunch break, but by doing this little task I think I understood a fraction of what Henri was trying to get at, about ten percent of what I read made sense but the other ninety was absolutely a waste of paper.
The bit I did understand was the production of space, who creates these spaces and why? As a product why do we like certain spaces so much?. Well the discussion we had in our seminar went in a different direction to what I thought we were going to discuss, almost a mirror image of the night before watching question time on TV and seeing the leader of the BNP publicise himself on the BBC , this was an incredible advantageous tactic for the Labour party, they almost looked like heroes on the same stage as the BNP party. Yes it was theatre, but not the kind that had a light entertaining feel, it was rather deep, uncomfortable and entertaining.
I commend the Labour for the orchestrated performance, yes they seem to have the power, a very clever power, but ‘silly rabbit tricks are for kids’, lets see you takes the bait.
How did we connect back to the original thought of the day? I don’t seem to recall that moment but we bounced on the Marxism, the exploitation of the class system….right I think we get on top the production of space again here somewhere….the bourgeoisie who create the hallucination of spaces which we all strive to enjoy! I think we are all guilty in that department. How does Marxism and the production fit together? Henri describes that Marxism theory as being “eroded” one of the core values quoted from Wikipedia is “The productive capacity of society is the foundation of society, and as this capacity increases over time the social relations of production, class relations, evolve through this struggle of the classes and pass through definite stages (primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism). The legal, political, ideological and other aspects (ex. art) of society are derived from these production relations as is the consciousness of the individuals of which the society is composed”, so nostalgia allows us to see the pattern of the past, it allows you to think what may come in the future. We have the means but do we know how to apply?. I once heard something similar which came to mind during this discussion ‘we are drowning in information but starved for knowledge’.
I just wanted to post this video as well as I know that we all imagine a reality that is tailor made for us, but as we have not reached that stage yet I like to think that it one day it could be done just like in this video.
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