Decolonial limits to Henri Lefebvre's spatial revolution

This commentary appreciates Hamish Kallin's (2024) account of the prospects for reconciliation of anarchist and Marxist approaches via engaging Henri Lefebvre's work, but signals equivocation about Lefebvre triggered by his depictions of colonialism, Islam and the tropics. I argue that these are inconsistent with ongoing decolonial moves in geography. Important rather than merely intriguing. It invites us, inter alia, to combine a study of the 'everyday' with a yearning for revolutionary change; to connect scales in such a way that does not depoliticise or fetishise the 'small'; to centre a critique of state power in our understanding of capitalist urbanisation; to amplify the anti-authoritarian impulse of spatial theory in this moment of widespread revanchism and surveillance; and to learn from a much broader history of radical activism. (p. 9) Kallin goes on to explain what led him to write the paper: 'Anarchism inspires me. It has done for a long time … but when I was an undergraduate student of geography I was searching for something that articulated the (or a) possibility of working with both Marx and anarchism, and I never really found it: so here have it' (p. 9). He explains that in reading Lefebvre a route to 'reconciliation' emerged, so that: 'At its simplest, Lefebvre's work serves as an invitation to think with the Marxist critique of capital (which remains vital) and the anarchist critique of power (which remains vital)'. (p. 9). Notably in English, there are many, many 'Lefebvres'; each is a partial understanding. If he is a Marxist—and there is no doubt about that—he began as a Surrealist, even a Dadaist. His experience with artistic avant-gardes seeking a revolution through art, not politics, influenced him for the rest of his life. They gave his Marxism some unexpected twists, such as its intense focus on alienation and opposition to economism. He is never 'just' a Marxist or just an Existentialist or a Nietzschean. He is always more, and this surplus or excess has contributed to the difficulty of coming to terms with his work. It should not surprise us therefore that Lefebvre also encountered anarchism and that his writings have, or enable, anarchist vectors. I want to argue, however, that there are some other strands present in Lefebvre's work that should give pause for thought. Lefebvre posited that the accumulation of capital—and, by extension, the reproduction of capitalist social relations—hinges on the creation of particular kinds of spatial arrangements. If capitalism is to endure, in other words, it must fashion landscapes that are appropriate to the production, circulation, and realization of surplus value. Moreover, insofar as the built environment is a locus of investment and an object of exchange, space also becomes enlisted in the accumulation process as capital itself. Lefebvre's axiom has inspired numerous geographers and theorists of urbanisation and there are multiple critical engagements with his work. As Kallin (2024, p. 5) points out: 'One of the oddities of Lefebvre's work is its rapid rise to citational fame since the turn of the millennium, broadly mapping on to the time-lapse between when he wrote and when (some of) his writing was translated into English'. Kallin adds that, it has also 'been playful and irreverent in ways that allow it to slip easily into the production lines of contemporary academia' (op cit.). Brenner and Elden (2009, p. 41) earlier noted how: 'The Anglo-American reception of Henri Lefebvre's work is vast and constantly expanding'. Today Google Scholar records more than 201,000 citations (and these, that probably miss some of Lefebvre's works and their translations into other languages, increase by more than 10,000 each year). James, of course, fought a life-long battle against this particular lie, insisting repeatedly on the path-breaking cultural and intellectual contributions of those from the Caribbean: Toussaint; Steelpan; Carnival; Mighty Sparrow; Garry Sobers—all products of an 'equatorial zone'. But it is not just the substantive point which matters. It is that Lefebvre's comment bespeaks a mode of 'critique' which is already racialised …. … draws connections between immediately lived and distant and older struggles, with the Nanterre 'ghetto' connected to the 'immigrant' (Algerian, West African, and Vietnamese) Latin Quarter. That Nanterre students travelled to the university by passing through some of the most deprived neighbourhoods of Paris was pivotal to student mobilisation, Lefebvre thought…. (op cit.) It is extraordinary that an anti-authoritarian thinker as attentive to world-historical circumstances…should have had so little to say in his books about French imperialism in Algeria and Vietnam, say, or about the struggles waged by the independence movements in those countries, or about the revolutions in Cuba and Nicaragua. Lefebvre's brilliance, to say nothing of his value to the geographer that stems from his realization that the struggle for empowerment, emancipation and the 'right to difference' (for the spatial and social body) is an intensely geographical project: nothing and no one, he implores, can ever avoid a 'trial by space'. (Merrifield, 1993, p. 527) More than 30 years on, Kallin opens his equally appreciative article with an epigraph, citing Lefebvre (1973, p. 138, italics mine): 'The purpose of the struggle is to go beyond democracy and beyond the democratic state, to build a society without state power'. I invite Kallin (and others engaging Lefebvre), to consider what, where and who Lefebvre deemed as outside or unworthy of 'the struggle'. I am grateful to Ben Anderson and Beth Greenhough for their comments on earlier drafts. However, I am responsible for the arguments here and any errors. None.