The past two seminars have been resided over by Malcolm Miles with his powerpoint called "When the Music's Over; Art, Museums, Austerity..?" Again, Lefebvre was the hot topic of conversation this time, his piece "The Urban Revolution," made up part of our required reading. Again this chapter of 25 pages took well over three hours to read. I find his stuff unnecessarily complex and inaccessible, however that may be the frustrated naive teenager within me talking.
Chapter 4; Levels and Dimensions, is an extremely slippery chapter, as is most of Lefebvre's work, and coming to terms with some of the language was quite hard. As Henri Lefebvre was French, and wrote all of his pieces in his native tongue, then one has to wonder whether there is some elements lost in the translation. The translation, or any book in fact, has the same attribute as space and place, in the sense that each and every person carries with them the 'burden' of their past, all of us have experienced a different upbringing and posses alternative attitudes, experiences, intelligence and opinions, therefore, in any given 'place,' there are an infinite amount of 'spaces'...one person can enter the place, factors such as mood, weather and presences as well as the above mentioned 'burden' can alter that persons idea of the space, and create the idea of what that space is in that persons mind, which is incontrovertibly different from what another would experience... So getting back to the translation, The Urban Revolution, or "La Révolution Urbaine" was translated by Robert Bononno as late as 2003, which means 33 years passed before any non-French speaking person could read this piece. Again, you have to wonder what is lost, mixed and transfused in the conversion, even if the same translator undertook the project, there were much different forces at play thirty-three years ago. But even in the present day, I would get great satisfaction out of giving the French edition of the piece to another suitably bi-lingual and see the differences of meanings they would present. Then take into consideration another factor, possibly that the translator has an education in philosophy...architecture...anthropology...nursing? Then they themselves would see the book in different terms and adjust it accordingly. What I am trying to get to, although it may look like I'm ranting, is that The Urban Revolution may not even be what Lefebvre is trying to say, there could be some distortion of the main points going on, and how would we know the difference?
Although it may seem like I don't believe that the translation has any validity, that is not true. I have every faith in Bononno and his intellect, and therefore believe that this is what Lefebvre was trying to get across, but I can't help but think the text must be (even slightly) more comprehensible in the original language.
But enough of that, the basis of the piece we were given to read, or what I took form the piece were two main points. The first were the levels of the city, G, M and P. G is the highest level, the Global level'
“Power – the state as will and representation – is exercised at the global level. As will, the power of the state and the people who hold this power are associated with a political strategy or strategies. As representation, politicians have an ideologically justified political conception of space.” Lefebvre 1970
M is the 'medium level';
“Level M (mixed, mediator, or intermediary) is the specifically urban level. It is the level of the “city,” as the term is currently used. Let’s assume we can mentally withdraw from the map the city whatever is part of the global level, the state, and society – namely buildings such as ministries, prefectures, and cathedrals – and whatever depends on level P – privately owned buildings. Remaining on the map will be a built and an unbuilt domain: streets, squares, avenues, public buildings such as city halls, parish churches, schools and so on… What remains before us assumes a form that holds some relationship to the site (the immediate surroundings) and the situation (distant surroundings, global conditions)."
And P, the 'private' level, or the level of the individual;
“Level P appears (wrongly) to be somewhat more modest, even unimportant. Here only the built domain in the form of various buildings is of interest: housing primarily, including large apartment buildings, private homes both large and small, campgrounds, shantytowns.”
Lefebvre goes on to talk about what the individual levels entail and include, but the reader also has to remember that this was written in 1970...huge global and social changes have taken place which would have changed the way in which Lefebvre would have undertaken the task to identify these 'levels.' With the invention and current fixation of the internet, it means that everyone has access to the global at any given time, there are fluid interactions and interpenetrations which have developed between these 'levels,' so much so, that maybe they cannot be called 'levels any more as levels puts three separate and uncommunicating plateaus such as those in a video game.
There has been an undeniable shift in the paradigm, these 'levels' now exist in a much more fluid and interactionary way. This new development has some positive and some negative connotations, but living in a time where this mode of the three levels is all I know of, I feel like it wouldn't be right for me to comment on them.
However, one thing has not changed in the past thirty three years, and I believe it won't change for thirty three more. That;
“It has been said many times, in keeping with Marx, that the “essence” of “man” cannot be found in the isolated individual but consists of a set of relationships or concrete (practical) social relationships. Generic man (in general) is only an abstraction.” (Lefebvre, 1970)
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