henri the great
09 May 2006. Inspired by spatial imagination.
As I'd hoped, my thoughts below (not on the England football team) have elicited people pointing to others who've already said what I was trying to, while doing so much better and with real academic footnotes.
Thanks to Jonas for introducing me to Henri Lefebrve...
"Against 'mystification', against the banality of the 'metro-bulot-dodo' life of the suburban commuter, Lefebvre proposes that we seize and act-on all 'Moments' of revelation, emotional clarity and self-presence as the basis for becoming more self-fulfilled (l'homme totale - see 1959). This concept of 'Moments' reappears throughout his work as a theory of presence and the foundation of a practice of emancipation. Experiences of revelation, deja-vu sensations, but especially love and committed struggle are examples of Moments. By definition Moments are instances of dis-alienation. They have no duration but can be relived (see Hess 1994). Lefebvre argues that these cannot easily be reappropriated by consumer capitalism and commodified; they cannot be codified. They are 'escape-hatches' from the alienated condition of everyday life which can be experienced unexpectedly, anywhere and at any time...
"Historical notions of space are analysed on three axes. These three aspects are explained in different ways by Lefebvre - simplified for the purpose of introducing them, we might say that the 'perceived space' ('le perçu') of everyday social life and commonsensical perception blends popular action and outlook but is often ignored in the professional, and theoretical 'conceived space' ('le conçu') of cartographers, urban planners, or property speculators. Nonetheless, the person who is fully human (l'homme totale) also dwells in a 'lived space' ('le vecu') of the imagination and Moments which has been kept alive and accessible by the arts and literature. This 'third' space not only transcends but has the power to refigure the balance of popular 'perceived space' and the 'conceived space' of arrogant professionals and greedy capitalists.
This sphere offers complex re-coded and even de-coded versions of lived spatialisations, veiled criticism of dominant social orders and of the categories of social thought often expressed in aesthetic terms as symbolic resistance. Lefebvre cites Dada, the work of the Surrealists, and particularly the works of René Magritte as examples of art, literary comment and fantasy regarding other, possible, spatialisations. Also included in this aspect are clandestine and underground spatial practices which suggest and prompt alternative (revolutionary) restructurings of institutionalised discourses of space and new modes of spatial praxis, such as that of squatters, illegal aliens, and Third World slum dwellers, who fashion a spatial presence and practice outside of the norms of the prevailing (enforced) social spatialisation. For example in many countries, inequitous property ownership often privileges absentee landlords over landless peasants. Lefebvre calls this,
space as directly lived through its associated images and symbols, and hence the space of "inhabitants" and "users"... This is the dominated... space which the imagination seeks to change and appropriate. It overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its objects. Thus representational spaces may be said... to tend towards more of less coherent systems of non-verbal symbols and signs (1991c:39).
Lots more reading to be done here, I think.