This computer listing reproduces 'An English Précis of Henri Lefebvre's La Production de l'Espace' University ofSussex, Brighton U.K. Urban and Regional Studies Working Paper 63 (April 1988). Andrew Sayer, working papereditor.

I wish to acknowledge my debt to Frederic Jameson who composed the original set of reading notes upon whichthe first version of this Precis was based. All translations, however, are mine and responsibility for thedecision of what to include, what to summarize, and how to paraphrase, must remain on my shoulders. It shouldalso be noted that a translation by M. Enders of Chapter 1 is available in Antipode 8. 31-5

Note: The 1991 English translation by Donald Nicholson-Smith is now available under the title The Production ofSpace (Oxford: Basil Blackwell). The major distinction with this work is Nicholson-SMith’s rendering of ‘lesspaces de représentation’ as ‘representational spaces’ (see R. Shields Lefebvre - Love and Struggle. A SpatialDialectics (Routledge 1999))

Translation copyright Rob Shields 1988. Introduction copyright Rob Shields 1987.

Page numbers and section numbers are to the 2nd French edition of La Production de l'Espace 1981 EditionsAnthropos Paris.

Each chapter begins with a hard-page. Originally written on a Tandy Model 100.

Reformatted June 2010 for internet distribution. Please note that the page numbers will have changed.

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HENRI LEFEBVRE: LA PRODUCTION DE L'ESPACERob ShieldsINTRODUCTION

It is necessary to briefly introduce Lefebvre for the English reader perhaps unfamiliar with the development ofFrench Marxism. Although often uncited, the thought of Henri Lefebvre underpins the discourse of the mid-twentieth century French intellectuals. With the work of perhaps only Sartre as his equal, Lefebvre was a centralrepresentative of French existential Marxism of the pre-1968 variety. In part, his stature is due to his long presenceon the scene of social theory in France; but on the other hand, his polymathic scope and range have led to his generalneglect. In English especially conflicting appreciations have led to a general puzzlement over Lefebvre's exactcontribution. Some authors, out of their entusiasm for the potentials opened up by his thought have presented hiswork in a highly positive light (Soja 1980; 1985). Others ignore his work almost entirely even when it is central totheir discussion (Poster 1975). Few of his works are available in translation and the general impression obtained inthe English urban studies literature is based on Castells' partial reading of early works (Martins 1982) and hisstructuralist critique of Lefebvre's too often unclear position and always difficult style (Castells 1977). More recentworks, such as those by Gottdiener (1985), reduce Lefebvre's Hegelian dialectics to a political economy. Such astate of confusion reins that, it seems, Lefebvre real contributions have become occluded. The lack of availability ofLefebvre's later works outside of France belies their importance and theoretical originality. Hopefully, in 1988 thepublishers Basil Blackwell will complete with the translation they have been working on for the last five years. Thispaper might be regarded as part of an on-going project which can only begin to attempt to sketch the implications ofLefebvre's four-hundred page analysis of La Production de l'espace into the working language of Englishsociologists and urban theorists. Although his influence has certainly waned since the 1970s, he remains, as PerryAnderson has commented, a loved outsider to the French academic establishment.

[Despite] `a general crisis of Marxism'... No intellectual change is ever universal. At least oneexception, of signal honour, stands out against the general shift of positions in these years. Theoldest living survivor of the Western Marxist tradition..., Henri Lefebvre, neither bent nor turnedin his eighth decade, continuing to produce imperturbable and original work on subjects typicallyignored by much of the Left. The price of such constancy, however, was relative isolation.(Anderson 1983:30)

Contemporaneous with such "founder-figures" as Kojève, (whose 1937-1939 lectures on Hegel collected byQueneau and later translated and published in English as An Introduction to Reading Hegel, (1947) remain as somethe seminal work for all students of Hegel) Lefebvre's work on dialectical materialism has earned him the positionof "father of the dialectic" in France. It is for this work that he is best known to English-speaking Marxologists. Inthe early 1930s, together with Norbert Guterman he published the first French translations of Marx's 1844 economicand political manuscripts and in a set of anthologies over the next thrity years introduced and wrote extensivecommentaries on many key works by Marx, Engels and Lenin which contributed to the Hegelian revival whichformed the basis for the expansion of Marxism in France. Lefebvre, seeking to mediate between Hegel's idealismand the materialism of Marx, encouraged interest in the problem of ideology and its role in the reproduction ofculture and thus of modes of production (Le Matérialism Dialectique 1939). This thematic, which began with hisbook La Conscience Mystifiée (1936), has continued in French intellectual thought through to the present day in thework of Bourdieu. Particularly striking is the centrality of his thesis, borrowed from Marx, that consciousness isproduced through material practices in the conduct of everyday life. There is no branch of French social thoughtuntouched by this problematic.His seminal critiques of the Party doctrine of Comintern marxism (Problèmes actuelsdu marxisme, 1958) earned him notoreity and eventual expulsion from the Parti Communiste Français. This stanceagainst reductionism has also characterized his critiques of Althusser, semiology and Sartrean existentialism.Lefebvre continued to play a central role in the French reassessment of Marxism through the late 1950's and 1960'swith his multi-volume studies of daily life (Critique de la vie quotidienne (1958), Fondement d'une sociologie de la

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quotidiennété (1961), La Vie quotidienne dans le monde moderne (1968)). Significantly, he continued to publishleading articles in the PCF's journal. Lefebvre is part of the founding initiative of French Neo-Marxism leading toBourdieu's Esquisse d'une theorie de la pratique (1972) and others of the "Daily Life" school (later represented bysuch as de Certeau (La Vie quotidienne, translated as Daily Life (1984)) and Debord (La Société du spectacle(1972)). His outspoken critique of structuralism through the 1960's earned him a position in the vanguard of thepost-structuralism reassessment of language, ideology and communications. His presence at Nanterre in May, 1968as one of the `grands professeurs' has led to his best remembered associations. Indeed, 1968 was seen as a crucialtest of Lefebvre's ideas--the central slogan "au dessous les paves, la plage" ("beneath the pavement, the beach")reeks of Lefebvre's spatial strategies and his critique of the urban milieu in terms of its repression of play and theludic sphere in favour of rationality and productivity. The failure of the 1968 student revolt accelerated the searchfor alternative formulations amongst French intellectuals. Lefebvre was bitterly criticized by such as Castells who,only after more than a decade had passed, were later to re-acknowledge their debt to this "grand old man" of theEuropean left (Castells 1983)Lefebvre himself dates his interest in urban life from 1956. His works on urbanisminclude Le Droit à la ville (1968), Du rural à l'urbain (1970), Révolution urbaine (1970), La Pensée marxiste et laville (1972) which predate his major work La Production de l'espace (1974). Lefebvre, pondering on theindustrializing landscapes of his childhood Occitaine (Les Temps de méprises 1975 Ch. 9), argues that theproduction of an appropriate system of spatial attitudes, habits and territorial divisions has been essential to thesurvival of Capitalism. This development was unanticipated by Marx. Lefebvre thus argues that it is necessary toredirect historical materialism towars a spatial problematic (Soja 1985:108). In practice this evolved as an extensionof his series of "approximations" which first centered around the problematic of everyday life and which were laterenlarged to encompass the spatialization of social relations in general. This might be summarized as the theses that:(1) social space is the location of the reproduction of relations of production and of "society" with all itsappurtenances, in general, and (2) the internal contradictions of capitalism have been managed through thedevelopment of a mediating system of spatiality and of modes of occupying geographic space.In volume four of Del'Etat (1978) this is developed as: (3) the production of this capitalist spatialization is accomplished through theactivities of the State which oversees what he calls the "statist mode of production".

Spatiality is not only a product but also a producer and reproducer of the relations of productionand domination, an instrument of both allocative and authoritative power. Class struggle, as wellas other social struggles are thus increasingly contained and defined in their spatiality and trappedin its `grid'. Social struggle must then become conciously and politically spatial struggle to regaincontrol over the social production of this "space". (Soja 1985:110 (quotation marks added))

After the first set of works explicitly concerned with urban struggles and the experience of May '68, Production del'espace forms the keystone of the `second moment' of Lefebvre's analysis of the urban. This may be seen asbeginning with his 1972 contribution to the colloquium `The Institutions of the Post-Industrial Society' sponsored bythe Museum of Modern Art in New York. Having already defined the essence of "urbanity" -- of the urban -- asbeing the simultaneity of many discrete social interactions brought together in "a centrality" Lefebvre proceeds toanalyse the impact of changing capitalist social relations of production upon the quality of access and participationin the urban. Lefebvre's earlier approaches focussed almost exclusively on this aspect of "urbanity" and arecritiqued for their vagueness and anti-structuralist bias by Castells (1977) whose La Question Urbaine is viewed bymany as almost exclusively an Althusserian structuralist response to Lefebvre's pre-1972 work (eg. Martins,1982:166; Gottdiener, 1985). Castells objections, the difficulties Castells' acknowledges with his alternativeformulation, and the problem of its inapplicability to Lefebvre's later work are assessed in the author's 1986 thesis(Carleton University, Ottawa).Lefebvre's post-1972 work as reconceptualized in Production de l'espace and restatedlater in De l'Etat (Vol 4, 1978) moves the analysis of "space" from the old synchronic order of discourses 'on' space(architypically, that of "social space" as found in sociological texts on "territoriality" (Hall, 1969) and social ecology(see Ericksen 1980) to the diachronic discovery of the process by which meta-level discourses 'of' space are sociallyproduced. In the process, Lefebvre attempted to establish the presence of a conceptual and socially practiced systemof "space" within the hegemonic "logico-epistemological" theory of space promulgated by philosophy and urbanplanning. Thus a large portion of the book is devoted to developing a radical phenomenology of space as a

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humanistic basis from which to launch a critique of the individual's and community's "rights to space" undercapitalism. This phenomenological base, and the sociological critique which is developed from it has made LaProduction de l'espace especially puzzling for mainstream urban studies scholars raised in the tradition of politicaleconomy or ecology.

A Note on the Meaning and Translation of "l'espace"

"Space", or more properly "l'espace", is used metaphorically and allegorically by Lefebvre. UnfortunatelyLefebvre's phrase "the production of space" (used differently by Harvey, 1985; and by Soja, 1980; see also mydiscussion in Shields 1991 Ch. 1) conveys a multitide of spurious ideas and is the proper-name of a history of mis-understanding dating back to Medieval Scholasticism. The lesson of this history is that "space" is far too loaded aterm to be bandied about. An examination of the very different concepts and semantic fields around the variouswords for "space" in even closely-related Western languages reveals that "space" entails not only a physical level ofconceptualization (distance, area etc.) but also social and abstract levels (eg. the notion of "social fields" (widelyused in the French literature) or "front and back spaces" (Goffman 1973) for the former level and such terms as"head space" or "discursive space" for the latter). A second problem is one of translation: our "Space" is not"l'espace" is not "Raum". None of these corresponds to what Kant and Leibniz called "spatium" nor do they signifywhat Descartes refered to "extensio". The semantic fields of these words do not neatly coincide. As the Inuit havetwenty different nouns to convey the (very important, in their history) nuances of what we naively lump together as"snow" so, if "space is important" we are in desparate need of a vocabulary for discussing/conceptualizing the variedproduction/consumption of varied spaces/places/landscapes on their own terms.1 Because Lefebvre is refering to notonly the empirical disposition of things in the landscape as "space"; but also attitudes and habitual practices, hismetaphoric "l'espace" might be better understood as the "spatialization" of social order. In this movement to space,abstract structures such as "culture" become concrete practices and arrangements in space. This term also capturesthe processual nature of "l'espace" that Lefebvre insists upon. That is, it is not just an achieved order in the builtenvironment, or an ideology but an order which is itself always undergoing change from within, through the actionsand innovations of social agents. This argument is developed further in my Henri Lefebvre, the Question of Spaceand the Postmodern Hypothesis (MA Thesis Carleton University 1986) and my Places on the Margin. AlternateGeographies of Modernity (London, Routledge 1991)

Notes

1. This is especially important if we are to avoid the problems indicated by critiques of discourses of "space" andthe "urban". Realists are right to remind us that the word `space' is a "contentless abstraction" (Sayer 1985) whichthus varies in meaning and implication between ideologies and between linguistic contexts. But the reality of`space' as in "urban space" is a "concrete abstraction" in Marx's sense (Capital: I--ie. an abstract form whichnonetheless has concrete implications, such as the commodity) which cannot be merely dismissed or accepted in ablind empiricism.

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References

Anderson, P. 1983 In the Tracks of Historical materialism (London: NLB)Castells, M 1977. The Urban Question (London: Edward Arnold). Castells 1983. The City and the Grassroots (Los Angeles: University of California Press). Ericksen, E.G. 1980. The Territorial Experience (Austin Tx.: University of Texas Press). Gottdiener, M. 1985. The Social Production of Urban Space (Austin Texas: University of Texas Press) Hall, E.T. 1969. The Hidden Dimension (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) Harvey, D. 1987. The Limits to Capital (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Kojève, A. 1945. An Introduction to Reading Hegel R. Queneau ed. (New York: Basic). Poster, M. 1979. Existential Marxism in Postwar France (Princeton Mass.: Princeton University Press)Sayer, A. 1985 `The Difference that Space makes' in D. Gregory and J. Urry 1985 Social Relations and SpatialStructures (London:Macmillan)Soja, E. 1980. `The Socio-Spatial Dialectic' in Annals of the American Association of Geographers 70. 207-22.Soja, E. 1985 `The Spatiality of Social Life: Towards a transformative retheorization' in D. Gregory and J. Urry1985. Social Relations and Spatial Structures (London: Macmillan)Shields, R. 1986. Henri Lefebvre, the Question of Space and the Postmodern Hypothesis (MA Thesis CarletonUniversity Ottawa) Shields R. 1991. Places on the Margin. Alternate Geographies of Modernity (London: Routledge)Shields R. Forthcoming Henri Lefebvre. A Critical Introduction (London: Routledge)

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Preci2This computer listing reproduces 'An English Précis of Henri Lefebvre's La Production de l'Espace' University ofSussex, Brighton U.K. Urban and Regional Studies Working Paper 63 (April 1988).

Translation copyright Rob Shields 1988. Introduction copyright Rob Shields 1987.

Page numbers and section numbers are to the 2nd french edition of La Production de l'Espace 1981 EditionsAnthropos Paris.

Each chapter begins with a hard-page.

HENRI LEFEBVRE: LA PRODUCTION DE L'ESPACE

CONTENTS OF THE BOOK

1. Plan of the Work (Dessein de l'ouvrage pp.7-84)

2. Social Space (L'Espace Social pp.85-196)

3. The Architectonics of Space (L'Architectonique Spatiale pp. 197-264)

4. From Absolute Space to Abstract Space (De l'Espace Absolute à l'Espace Abstrait pp.265-336)

5. Contradictory Space (L'Espace Contradictoire pp.337-406)

6. From the Contradictions of Space to a Space of Difference (Des Contradictions de l'Espace à l'EspaceDifférentiel pp.407-460)

7. `Departures' and Conclusions (Ouvertures et Conclusions pp.461-485)

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HENRI LEFEBVRE: LA PRODUCTION DE L'ESPACE1. Plan of the Work

1.1-1.13 Lefebvre outlines a number of traditional philosophical approaches to space:-Space as extension, after the influence of Descartes-Early (cosmological) approaches to space: Hegel, Marx, and Nietzche which have been relatively ignoredowing to the new situation of multinational, global, capitalism, which poses new theoretical problems.-space-time in mathematics and physics especially after Einstein-metaphoric appropriations of the concept:thus, "mental space", "pictorial space", "literary space" etc.-"sciences" of space especially in urbanism (rational land-use planning) and semiotics.

1.10-1.11 The multiplicity of these uses (and disciplines) of space is an ideological cover for more suspect practicesand ideologies of space.What is needed (given the diversity of uses of the concept) is a unitary theory of spacewhich will show the presence, within logico-epistemological "space" (that of the philosophers Kant, Hegel etc.) ofthe other levels of spatiality--the physical, the mental and (most importantly) the social. This theorization wouldseek not to abolish the distances and breaks between the above different "levels", but rather the mediations betweenthem, bringing them into a unified framework and allowing the possibility for new syntheses and the overcoming ofpreviously entrenched discipline dichotomies. This will involve the "overcoding" of existing disciplineunderstandings (a translation into spatial terms) rather than a "recoding". A new, unified object of knoweldge willnot be produced but rather a "discourse" which allows one to reflect on the objects, divisions, and spatial codes anddiscourses which exist already.This project has been attempted previously by (1) the surrealists (eg. Magrittechallenges the spatial canon of accepted possibility and causality); (2) Bataille's work on a poetics of proxemité; and(3) in the operation of modern technocracies (which subjugate and organize the "space of the state" for orderlyproduction and consumption). All involve the attempt to `unify', symbolically or otherwise, three distinct "levels" ofspace [26-29--see 2B, below]. The distinct but dialectically related "levels" are reified in unitary ideologies whichprevent the comprehension of the true operation of `space' in the daily conduct of state and capitalist power.

1.13Three hypotheses regarding "space":I. All of the notions and levels of space are social products. Thus all space is social space. This "space" is neither

transparent/readable (semiotics, idealism [36] nor is it opaque or natural (materialism, natural scienceunderstanding). Nature is the origin of modern "space". Today, in its "abolition" and repression into stateparks and nature reserves, the natural is present as a residue or trace (all past spatial forms are retained insucceeding spatial forms).

1.14(Social) Space is socially produced.IIA. Each mode of production has a distinct relationship to space: it produces its own unique type of space (thusimmediately raising the question of the relationship between that space and social reproduction). [40]

1.15-1.17IIB. There is a threefold dialectic of space(s) [42-3]:

1. Spatial Praxis: including the production and reproduction of specific `places', types and heirarchies of"place", and "spatial ensembles" (ie. urban developments/projects-Ed) appropriate to specific socialformations. This praxis assures the continuation of a social formation in a cohesive fashion. Suchcohesion implies, in connection with social space and the relation of individuals to that space, a certainmeasure of "spatial competence" and "spatial performance" (performativité)

2. Representations of Space ("Discourses on or about "space"-Ed) are linked to production relations and tothe order these impose. Most crucially, these "representations" are central to forms of knowledgewhich in turn ground the rational/professional power structure of the capitalist state. These structuredominant signs, codings, and "frontal relations" (in Goffman's sense).

3 . Spaces of Representation (Discourses of dominant spatial "systems"-Ed) offer a region of complexlycoded, decoded, and/or recoded alternatives offered as symbolic resistance. This is linked to the

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clandestine and underground dimension of social life and is particularly expressed in art (whichLefebvre sees as the "code" of "spaces of representation"-Ed). These suggest and prompt alternative,revolutionary, restructurings of institutionalized representations of space and new modes of spatialpraxis (Lefebvre suggests squatting; the birth of the tradition of "occupying" key spatial sites andbuildings as a means of protest; slums, barrios and favellas as a "re-appropriation" of space from acommodified private property system which favours absentee landlords and vacant tracts of urban land(held for speculation-Ed)

III. Third hypothesis or implication: Lefebvre's object of study is the process of the production of space, not spaceitself. In various historical moments, the above three "levels" will combine in distinct structural hierarchies (eg. didthe ancient Orient know of the Western distinction between representations of space and spaces of representation?The ideogram is both at once) [53]. In view of the changing spatial relations in which ideologies function (eg. insome social formations these three dimensions reinforce eachother, in others they are contradictory) it will benecessary to re-evaluate the older conceptions of ideology.

1.18IV. Fourth hypothesis or implication: Clarifying the relationship between space and modes of production requiresnew historical periodizations [57]:

- Absolute Space, the space of the primitive nomad who survives "in spite of" space/nature. This still existsin fragments of nature (caverns, peaks, rivers). Above this most archaic level occured the emergence of, - Historical or Relative Space [60], a political supersession of Absolute space (through the territorializaionof space under the first despots-Ed). This culminates in the classical Western polis.- Abstract Space coincides with capitalism [60-65]. It involves the repression of the lived, qualitativeexperience of space by the abstract and dehumanized codes of urban planning and the homogenization ofexperience under capitalism.- This is at the same time Contradictory Space [65] which is characterized by paradoxes and contradictions,even in the face of the homogenization and unification of space under capital. There are political questionsto be asked of the silence of those who use contemporary space and are dominated by it -- their lack ofresistance, or, on the other hand, their symbolic and distorted forms of resistance. For example, rationalcapitalism produces rationalized "spaces of production" under the aegis of the nation-state, but therepression of desire this involves leads the the production of "spaces of leisure" (free zones of escape,denial, resistance through folly and unproductiveness). However, this is also the space of festival and apotential space of the carnivalesque (the unleashing of libidinal intensities and energies) and thus revoltagainst the normative order of planned, rational/homogenous, space. Hypothesis: there is thus a region ofpolitical praxis which requires the elaboration of a whole spatial dimension of theory and practice [65].

1.19The idea of "production of space" can be linked to a more concrete analysis of the history of European classstruggles and oppression.

1.20A "new society" will require its own "new" (social) space. "To change one's life, change society" must beamended to include space. This is the "strategic hypothesis" of the book. [72-78]

1.21Importance of a dialectical method of analysis of society and space

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2. Social Space

2.1 The "Production" of Space: The concept of "production" as it emerges from Hegel and from Marx and Engels--for whom it was the concrete universal--must be enlarged from its narrow, industrial, sense (the production ofproducts, commodities, exchange values) to include all types of productions: The production of nature; productionas solely an economic idea; production of built environments etc. The difference between "works" and "products".Works ("Oeuvres") are valued in terms of their use value. Such "oeuvres" can be thought of as works whichapproach, asymptotically, the productions of nature itself. Classical cities were oeuvres [83ff]. eg. Venice, 13thcentury Tuscany.

The capitalist order (speculative real estate) converts these "oeuvres" into products...in the case of urbanoeuvres, turning their monumental and festive aspects into museums of dead historical styles (eg. Venice,Florence [89-96]. Marx demonstrates that produced objects embody an "inner truth" of social relations andforms. Similarly we should demonstrate the "inner truth" of these `spaces'.

2.2 Thus it is possible to conceive of a "spatial problematic". This would not abolish more traditional problematics(eg. class struggle etc.) but transcodes them; it includes urban and daily life under the more general problem of thereproduction of the relations of production. It is a totalizing problematic, which repudiates the "positivist" divisionof labour of the social science disciplines [97ff]. It requires the demolition of pre-existing ideologies of space and isrealizeable only in the light of the political project to produce a radically new type of social space. This would thusinvolve an ideological critique of space understood in terms of a diachronic analysis of the production of space (asa concept, as a reality) as against the old discourses which focus on particular (limited conceptions of) spaces. Sucha discourse analysis would demonstrate a reality of space as part of primary nature, part social relations and part ofthe forces and means of production. Examples of regional development patterns in France [97-102].

2.3 Social space is a multiplicity of social spaces which interpenetrate. The unraveling of the relations betweenthese spaces and their forces is the object of this analysis.

2.4 How and in what sense is a critique of space possible? An examination of the relations between the three`dimensions' or `levels' of the three-part dialectic reveals a logic of space which governs a wide range of normativeand discursive processes. In particular, there are the marked effects of the increasing primacy of the visual inmodern times [112-114] Together with this, one must include a consideration of the loss of a sense of temporality[114-115]. Time is more fundamental than space in the sense of being the "raw material" of daily life. "But, Time isdisappearing in the social space of modernity." [114] "It is the time of living, time as an irreducible `good' whicheludes the logic of visualisation and of spatialisation, as far as it has a logic. Raised to ontological dignity byphilosophers, time is killed by society." [115] This is due to the modern normative trinity: "readibility, visibility andintelligibility". Which involves the fragmentation of space as in the photographic image. The fragmentation ofspace into "lots" presupposes this logic of visualization which replaces reality with fragments of itself (as inimages). The second logic is that of an incessant metaphorisation [see 118] --likewise, persons become merelybodies or numbers (analogons). Space has both the attributes of a subject and of an object: A facade exposes certainacts, and relegates others to the realm of the obscene by hiding them. This in turn suggests a psychoanalysis ofspace.

2.5 So, what is the equivalent of Marx's analysis of the "inner truth" of the commodity form for space? Why nottreat space after the model of Capital? -- to look for the essential beneath the reality. This "essential" will not be asubstance but a form -- a concrete abstraction [120]. A political economy of space is possible which wouldreconsider the old object of political economy, broadening the notion of production to include that of the productionof space [124]. This would focus on how the current political economy of space runs the risk of coinciding with theappearance of space as simply the global milieu of a definitive installation of capitalism. What is implied is the welldeveloped distinction between thought and discourse within a space, and thought and discourses on space which arenothing but words and signs and the thinking of space, which departs from the better known and less sophisticateddistinction above. This distinction in turn supposes a critical examination of materials (words, images, symbols) as

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well as of materiel: the processes of assemblage, the method by which such materials are cut up and presentedwithin the frameworks of the divisions of scientific work [125]. The distinction between materials and materielpermits us to discern the effemeral and the durable: that which in any given scientific operation is not used up orexhausted but which can be used again, adapted, or transferred for application on other tasks. Materiel falls intodisuse and becomes obsolete. Such a re-examination also allows us to examine various philosophies of space, whichare often ideological. But this is not all: the primary task is to consider how such philosophical ideologies of spaceintervene in the form of strategies in space (eg. "to attempt to produce a global space, theirs, and to give this thestatus of an absolute, bringing a logic and not least the renewal of the concept of space") [126].

2.6 "To reduce, is one scientific procedure, faced with the complexity and the chaos of immediate observations....Reductionism is introduced under the colours of science." [126] It is an "ideology which does not give its name."[128]. To this corresponds the political practice of the State which wishes to be and makes itself that which reduces(cf. combustion) contradictions into itself through the "mediation of knowledge, by strategically using a mixture ofscience and ideology." [127] Specialization follows from such "reductionality", "and each specialist doesn't justwant knowledge. With respect to the constitutive reduction of his domain, he adopts an attitude which justifies it,that of denial ... doesn't every specialized science have an involvement, immediate or mediated, with space?(a) Eachspecialty, one already knows, attributes to itself its own mental and social space, in defining itself with a certainarbitrariness, in cutting itself away from the totality of "nature-society" ("nature-société")" ... (b) All specialtiesenclose themselves in the nomenclature and classification of that which it finds in space ... the "positive" activity ofeach and every specialty. For better or worse, each specialty opccupies itself with pronouncements (utterances) onspace ... (c) The specialties oppose a boiled down model of knowledge to the global thought of (social) space. Thisalso has the advantage of liquidating time (which is reduced to a simple "variable") [128-9].

For this reason the specialties are opposed to an overarching contemplation of the production of space ..."(a dialogue with possible objections they would raise follows, [see 129-30])Conclusion: "Spatial form" (in the sense of the "commodity form") equals the relationship between centresand peripheries. For example, the architypical urban form is one of `simultaneity': of the meeting, theassembly (no separation of centre and periphery).

2.7 "All social space is the result of a process with multiple aspects and movements: signifying and non-signifying,perceived and acted (lived), practical and theoretical. In short, all social space has a history, departing from thisinitial base: nature, the original given (datum) and the originary since always endowed in the form of particular sites,climates, settings etc. The relation of one space to the sense of time/historical times which engendered it differs, aslong as one is expressly exposing the history of space as such, from the representations admitted by historians ...whose analysis framents and chops it up. ...in the history of space as such, the historical, the diachronic, thegenerating past incessantly inscribes itself in the spatial, as if on a painting ... [One imagines time and space throughthe systems of measurement which follow from the body]. The relation of the body to (the) space ... the space, themanner of measuring it and speaking of it presents to members of the society an image and a living mirror of theirbodies ... the adoption of the gods of another people brings along with it the adoption of their space and theirmeasure. The Pantheon implies that Rome was the moment of the mastery and transcendance of those vanquishedgods and the [respective] subordinated spaces which were then implicated in and bound up with a master-space, thatof the Empire and the world ... The status of space and its measurement has not changed except with an extremeslowness, since this change is far from being complete. Even in France, land of the "metric system", curiousmeasurments are still applied by habit, for the size of shoes.* In the figure of the decimal system, a slow revolutionis underway ... The fluctuations of measurement and by consequence the fluctuation of representations of spaceaccompany history ... conferring on it a certain sense or logic: the tendency to the quantitative, to the homogenous,and to the disappearance of bodies which seek refuge in art." [130-2]* A pun on the accepted French way of talkingof shoe sizesin terms of "toe-tips" ("pointures" des chausures).

2.8 To approach the history of space in a more concrete fashion, one can examine the nation and nationalism. Ahistory of space must be dialectical, focussing on the production process (of space) not on spatial objects or productsas static entities. The history of space coincides neither with an inventory of subjects in space (which one could call

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the material culture or civilization), nor with the representation and discourses on space. It should take into accountspaces of representation and representations of space, but above all, the links between the two as well as with socialpractice.

"The history of space does not have to choose between "processes" and "structures", between change andinvariance, between events and institutions, etc ...

2.8 Key distinctions between raw material (matériau) and technique (matériel) in production must beacknowledged (see literature survey [130-141]. An example of this dialectical perspective, would be the observationthat Absolute space persists in the shape of Bachelardian forms [143-144] -- the archaic within the instrumentalized.All of the older orders of space are still present, surcharged and repressed within even the most contemporary(banal) forms of space.

Modernism and space: architecture and art. The Bauhaus as a privileged moment in the production of apure, contemporary, abstract space [146-151].

2.9, 2.10 & 2.11 Structuralist analysis applied as a methodology for spatial analysis [154-175]: Two doctrinesemerge. Hermeneutics which sees sign systems as transparent (everything reduced to a readable text) and the"hermeneutics of suspicion" (Foucault, Derrida) which sees language as reification and repression (in the tradition ofNeitzche) punctured by fitful eruptions of the forces of desire which burst through the frozen objectification oflanguage. The relationship between space, as a discursive entity, and language. Neitzche's theory of tropes appliedas a description of way in which concrete space is made abstract by way of language. The "truth" of such a"linguistic" analysis of space lies in its revelation of the process of production and objectification.

2.12The metholodogical problems of "reading space" [167ff]. Many representations which "occlude" theunderstanding of space come from semiology, notably the thesis according to which social space results in a simplemarking on or imprinting of natural space, leaving "traces". Semiology presupposes that such `marking' has a sense-- it must be significant and be brought into a system of encoding and decoding. This view oversimplifies humansocial spatial relations to the level of animals marking territory with scents [165] rather than abstractly throughsymbolism. Such symbols always imply a certain affective investment, "an emotive charge ... deposited, so to speakin a place ("lieu") and representing it for those who are away from that (now) priviledged place. In agro-pastoraltimes, the symbolism of a place and the spatial practice were inseparable." [166] When there is only this simple,physical symbolism can one speak of a production of space? "Not yet, although (their) bodies, mobile and active, inthis way `spread out' (étendre) their spatial perception and occupations, as a spider its net. If there is production, andas far as there is production, it is for a long time limited merely to markings, signs and symbols; they do not changethe materiality of that which they receive. Mother-Earth (La Terre-Mère), cradle (birth-place), field of sexual labour,grave, remains Earth.... This activity characterizes nothing but the beginnings of organized society...neither do thecairns and natural indices of primitive hunters and fishermen suffice. During these periods, the natural spaces aresimply settings. Social activity modifies them little."

"This simple, binary, representation of space engenders the reverse and complementary representation:"fabricated" space results only in the denaturalization or denaturation of natural space. By whichinterventions? Those, evidently, of science and technology, thus of abstraction." But this representation ofspace merely attempts to conjure, "snaps its fingers at" the diversity of social spaces, their historicalgeneses, and brings them together through a reduction to have a common character, that of abstraction.[166-7]"Semiology introduces the idea that space dissimulates a reading (relève d'un lectury) and by consequencea practice: reading-inscribing. As for space in the city, it consists of a discourse, a language (Barthes)."Reading space? Yes and no. Yes: the "reader" deciphers, decodes. The speaker, who expresses himself,translates his surroundings into a discourse. And however no. Social space is not only a blank page onwhich people (but whom?) have written their message. The space of nature and urban space aresurcharged. All is muddle and blurriness (Tout y est brouillon et brouillé). Signs? More like orders (Dessignes? Pluto des consignes), multiple, interfering prescriptions. If there is a text, trace, writing, it is in thecontext of conventions, of intentions, orderings, in the sense of the disorder and of the order of society. Is

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space `signifying'? Certainly. What? That which one must do and that which one cannot do. Echoes ofpower (Ce qui renvoie au pouvoir). But the message of power has always been made into a muddle,voluntarily. It conceals itself. Space doesn't say everything. Above all, it speaks of the forbidden (Il ditsurtout l'interdit (l'inter-dit).) Its mode of existence, its practical "realtiy" (including its form) differsradically from the reality of a written object, a book. Result and logic, product and producing, it is also astake (enjeu), a place or site (lieu) of projects and of actions put into play by these actions (strategies)object therefore of bets on times to come, wagers which which are apparently clear to their bettors, butnever completely." [167]"A space ordinates because it implies an order, thus a disorder.... This "space" is produced before beingread (and has not been produced to be read or comprehended but to be lived by people having a body and alife, in their ... context. In other words, the reading comes after the production, except in the spacial casewhere the space has been produced to be read. What poses a question, is the criteria of readability ... itseams clear that space engendered (produced) to be read must be the most like a cheat, the most truculentof spaces. The graphic effect of readibility hides intentions and strategic actions (especially as it appears inspace -- as monumentality). This is nothing but an optical illusion. Monumentality always `imposes'readible evidence; it says just what it wants to say, but it hides much more. Political, military, at theextreme facist, the monument screens the will to power and the abitrariness of force beneath the signs andsurfaces which pretend to explain the collective will and thought. And it hides at the same time the presentand the possible." [168] Vitruvius. Venturi begins to see space as a field of forces, full of tensions, ofdistortions but it is not clear (in 1972) whether he will continue on this path to leave functionalism, behindor whether he is only making formalistic adjustments to theory [170]. Opacity, trompe-l'oeil, historicismand pastiche in architecture. [170-172]

2.13Form structure and function of space. Kristeva [175]. Example of the Latin American city with its Plaza Mayoras a spatial strategy which organizes and implies productive labour for its colonial inhabitants. Three levels ofJapanese space. [179-184]

2.14Even for abstract space, a semiotic analysis tends to simply replicate the categories of the producers andideologues of such a space: to isolate structure from form and function over-privileges one dimension of space (thecognitive representation of space (le conçu)) over the other two (perception (le perçu) and practice (le vecu)). Codesand deciphering. Reading space. Relation between the signifier (space, spatial formes etc.) and its signified (themessage or meaning). Conventions: how is it that we can `understand' at at least at a basic level, the Piaza SanMarco in Venice even as a foreigner. The possibility of multiple readings. Semantic space; material space.

2.15A more significant (dialectical) distinction than the various semiotic theories have to offer is to be found in thedifferentiation of dominated and appropriated space. The former is the site of hegemonic forces (suburbia), thelatter is the site of emergent spatial revolution on the other (eg. Latin American favellas, squatters settlements). Thislast must be differentiated from the détournement ("hijacking") of space in which hegemonic space is seized and re-functioned locally and momentarily as opposed to the fresh production of new space (ie. new categories of space)through its wholesale reappropriation. Historical analysis of "appropriation", "domination" etc. of space [185-196].Appropriation vs. détournement (eg. of Les Halles). Détournement as only a provisional strategy. What is requiredis the production of new types of humane space.

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preci3

3. The Architectonics of Space

3.1 Debates of the classical scholars over the status of space. Relative or Absolute? "At the extreme point of theformal abstraction which classical metaphysics established in the form of ontology by speculative decree, thequestion of space "in itself" was substantially posed. Spinoza, from the beginnings of his Ethics considered absolutespace to be one attribute or mode of absolute being, God. ...Is it the unkowable? No, it is the indiscernable(Leibniz)." [197] Today, mathematics has sided definitively with the Leibnizian view, against Spinoza, Descartes,Newton and even Kant. "Space, in se...is not `nothing' and neither is it some thing...even less is it the totality ofthings or the form of their sum; it is the indiscernable. To see any "thing" (in space) it is necessary to introduce axesand an origin, right and left, which is to say a direction to axes, an orientation... Leibniz wanted to say that one mustoccupy space ... A body. Not just the body in general, corporeality, but a definite body, which indicates the directionof a gesture, a rotation in it's turns, which marks off and orientates space. For Leibniz space was absolutely relative,which is to say endowed with a perfect abstraction which makes it, for mathematical thought, the originary (passingeasily for transcendence) of a concrete character (in it bodies exist and manifest their material existence)." [197-8]Space is not pre-existing, empty, endowed only with formal properties. The debate between the relative andabsolute positions is equivalent only to the rejection of alternative representations -- discourses on space.

"Space" is not a container with bodies as "things in space." This is the origin of the strategy of separationand fragmentation of the body -- a space in itself -- from the space it is in. If one accepts this absolute view,it follows that any body can be placed in any location. The two become indifferent to each other; we shouldgrasp the organism or object as a centre for the "production of space" around itself (cf. the mathematics ofHerman Weyl or the sculpture of the Cubists). [199] In this view, space is not external to the body butgenerated by it. "the laws of that space, that is to say its `discernible'-ness, are those of the living body andthe deployment of its energies." [200] The Body is the concrete transcendence of the subject-object split,being both subject and object-in-space. The relation of the body and space is expressed as symmetry,mirage, reflection and rotation. These are the properties of the body/space, not imposed categories asphilosophers have thought (cf. H. Weyl, Symétries et mathématique moderne Princeton, 2nd. ed.) "Here isthus a route from the abstract to the concrete, which has major importance in demonstrating their reciprocalinherence. This `route' links also the mental and the social. The concept `The Production of Space' takeson a much greater force.With several reservations and precautions this concept can be extended to social space. "If there was aspecific social space, produced by forces deployed in sociospatial practices it would include similarproperties -- dualities, symmetries -- which mustn't be mistaken to be derived from either the human spirit,nor from some trancendental spirit, but from the "occupation" of space, itself, an occupation which it wouldbe adviseable to understand ... in the order and succession of the productive operations. And then whathappens to the ancient notion of Nature? It is transformed." [200]There are two possible routes to an explanation of the "automorphology" or "biomorphology" of nature bywhich, for example a rose comes to exhibit its symmetry. (1) It is an exhibition of some sort of finality,evidence of a metaphysical draughtsman. (2) Space, as such, must be considered materialistically: Thenature-space relation doesn't imply the mediation of some external power, nor are their "falsely-clearresolutions on the model of an "inside-outside representation of space." [201]Marx asks `does a spider do work?' Could one think of the space of a spider in the manner of an abstractspace occupied by separate objects? No. This would be to attribute to the spider an analytical-intellectualspace. If it is `instinct' could one say that the spider weaves a web as an extension of its body? Theproduction of space, firstly, that of the body itself, continues until the secretions have produced a`habitation' which serves, at the same time as an instrument ... The spider marks out directions, orients itselfafter angles, establishing symmetries and dis-symmetries and by this practice extends itself in space.For the living body, the fundamental sites...[the "signature"] of space, are immediately qualified by thebody itself. It is also always "other", `in front' of the ego, even while still `inside' a given space. From this

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datum of simple presence, the determination of space has three aspects: the gesture, the mark (excretions,footprints) and the trace (the intentional marking out of space). While the trace comes late, early on inevolution animals mark out territory and places. "In the beginning was the place, Topos. Yes, long beforethe Word, Logos."[203]Lived space (espace vécu) has its own rationality internal to the body long before space perceived by andfor the `I' presents itself as a rupture. Before this analytic separation, long before knowledge, there was this`intelligence of the body'.Time is traced out in space. Necessarily, it is local. Space and time appear in their natural manifestations(the growth rings of a tree) as different yet inseparable. In this manner one begins to glimpse the dualitywhich is constitutive of the uniity of the living, material, being. Its `other' it carries within itself. Thisdoubles its symmetry: a bilateral symmetry, one of rotation.Around the living being is the so-called `personal space', and within an interior space. The fundamentaldivision of the skin, provides the model for the division of social space. However, in societies, suchinsider-outsider separations and barriers become absolute and impermiable ... a "closed frontier". [205] Yetthe model is still valid: all space-envelopes distinguish, in a relative fashion, an inside and an outside.

3.2 The living organism is a framework which captures the surrounding energies of the environment, gatheringexcesses to harness them to its own ends, productively modifying or engendering a space/area. The princples ofeconomy are insufficient to describe biological process which depends on gathering surpluses. The alternativeprinciple of necessity makes virtue of struggle etc. Hypothesis of excess from Spinoza via Schiller and Goethethrough Marx to Nietzsche: Dyonisian aspect of existence. Freud returns to economic mecanicism: Eros-Thanatos;Pleasure principle-Reality principle = loss of dialectical view.

The "Nietzchian distinction between the Apollonian and the Dionisiac retains the two aspects of the livingbeing and its relations with space and vice versa: violence and stability, excess but equilibrium" [207].Living beings cannot be reduced to the capture of energies and their economical employment. Priorities,enemies, and environment constitute its space or which it is a part (an element) receiving information.Bataille, W. Reich. Fine versus massive Energies. flux and currents. energy and environment as space. To expend energy productively is central to the notion of a "living body" and central to its relations withitself and the space it is in. v game is a `work' ("oeuvre"), a ludic space is a product of an act6vity whichregularizes space (assigns rules). Productive energies as relation with self take the form of reproduction,itself characterized by repetitions, acts reflexes. Excessive energy as normal energy, has a double relation with itself (the body which stores it up) and withthe "milieu", with space. In the life of every being (species, individual, group) there are moments when theavailable energy abounds, tends to explode. It can return against itself or be expended in gratuity or grace.Negative effects are not rare, and are associated with excesses of energy. As a consequence, the famous"death instinct" has nothing but a derivative existence which is misinterpreted by Freud in his symptomaticstudies, appearing as narcissism, sadomasochism, anxiety etc. "There is a radical difference between theconception of an instinct or desire for death, a "vanishing" power (neantisant) opposing itself to a anaffirmation of life [which is] always foiled -- and the thesis of the return of repressed vital energy, after anecessary excess as such. Even if it is necessary to conceive in space of the "negative" of energy, that inwhich it [energy] expends itself, diffuses, degrades ... death and the self-destruction are effects not causesand reasons. The "death wish" doesn't define itself except as improductive usage, the `misuse' offundamental energy. It results, dialectically in a conflictual relation internal to this energy, a repletionwhich can't be reduced to simple mecanisms of defence, equilibrium and their balance." [210]

3.3 "Above, space has been taken partes extra partes after Spinoza ... Even the concept of form and reflection orduplication on the interior of the form the constituents as such, otherwise called the concept of symmetry with itsconstitutive dualities (symmetry of reflection and of rotation) implies a circumscribed space: a body withcontours and frontiers. On all evidence these partitions and repartitions of energies do not suffice: thefluxes circulate, and are propagated in an infinite space." [210]

"The infinite and the finite would they not be the illusion, the one and the other, the one of the

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other? the effects of a mirage? reflections or refractions, the within and the with-out of each part?Time in se [finitude] is an absurdity; the same of space [infinitude] in itself. The relative and the absoluterelfect the one on the other: endlessly referring the one to the other, like space and time (envoient sans cessl'un à l'autre, comme l'espace et le temps). [They are] a double surface, and double appearances, whichhave one law and reality, that of reflection and refraction. Maximal difference [See Ch.6] is present in eachmovement or moment of difference, even if minimal." [211]

3.4 However, in engendering the surface, the image and the mirror-image, the reflection crosses the surface towardthe depths of the relation pepetition-difference. The duplication (symmetry) repeats and however produces adifference, constitutive of a space. Duplication and symmetry-dissymmetry introduce notions of causalityirreducible to classical notions of linear and serial causality. [212]

The double existence of space in social life: members situate themselves in space as objective entities at thecentre of their experience ie. subjects [212]. Social status implies a role and a function: "an individual anda personality. Moreover, a site, a place, a post. At the same time space is a mediator (intermediary); a eachlevel, on each contour which is aimed at some other thing. This tends to establish social space astransparence occupied only by influences and "presences". kZ one level opacities: bodies and and objects;on the other levels transparent ensembles of objects.Without these two aspects of space language itself becomes incomprehensible ... [213]

3.5 The mirror reveals the intersection between body and conscious of being a body, allowing us to `reflect' on ourbeing as bodies, as unities in the sense of subjects because it transofrms that which one is into its sign. Theunproductive surface of the mirror signifies "me". It offers the most unifying relationship with the ego in search ofitself but also is the one in which the form and content is the most dissociated. [216] However, those psychoanalystswho see in all private property a sort of "mirror effect" under the pretext that the possession of an object by the"Ego" refers or points back to itself, overstep the reasonable limits of this argument.

"The mirror is thus an object amongst other objects but different from all other objects: evanescent andfascinating. In it and through it reassemble the traits of other objects with respect to their spatial milieu:object in space, informing on space, speaking of space ... In natural and social life, the mirror introduces atruly double spatiality: imaginary as origin and separation, concrete and practical in as much as coexistenceand difference." Thought is often defined using the metaphor of a mirror. Even before its actualmanufacture, the mirror existed magically, mithically. Thus the surface of water symbolises the surface ofconsciousness and the material decoding which brings the obscure to the light."In the orientation adopted here it is necesary to establish and develp certain general relations usuallyconsidered as psychic as material (with a double substance as the body subject and the mirror-object); butat the same time as one case of a relation more "profound" and more general which reappears in repetitionand differentiation: Symmetry: duplication, reflection, dissymetries.-Mirage and its effects: reflections,surface-depth relations.-Language: [mental] "reflection", oppositions, refraction through discourse.-Consciousness of oneself and others, of the body and of abstraction, of alterity and alteration (alienation)-Space with its dual determinations: fictional-real, product and productive, materiel (equipment)-social;immediate-mediated (milieu and transition), connextion-separation etc. [217]

A similar set of factors and characteristics appears when sex is considered. Theory of doubles. Space andconsciousness Lacan's "mirror-stage" seen as a dialectical enrichment of this original production.

3.6 "To bring out the bases and the fundamentals upon which are erected, in the course of a genetic process, thespaces of diverse societies. is nothing but the beginning of an exploration of this, apparently translucent, `reality'.[218-9] The effects of mirage (see above) become extraordinary. "The power of a landscape doesn't come fromwhat it offers by way of spectacle but by way of that which it presents as a mirror or mirage to each person ... Thisarouses the touristic illusion, that of participation in a work (eg. a city like Venice) and of comprehension becauseone passes through a country and landscape, because one receives passively an image. It also causes one to forgetthe concreteness of the work, the products which are generated by the activity which produces it." [219]

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"These mirage effects are far-reaching. In modernity, the more that absolute political space asserts itself,the more its transparency becomes deceptive, the more the illusion of a `New Life' is reinforced." [219]This promise is neither true nor false. That the conditions for this new life" are coming into being is truth:"that the indication and that which is in proximity coincide, that the immediately possible separates itselfout from the far-off and the impossible, this is the error. The space which contains the conditions coincideswith those which both hinder and those which permit. Its transparence is deceptives; it is in need ofelucidation, even though it appears to abolish this need. Total revolution (material, economic, social,poticial, psychic, cultural, erotic etc.) seems close, immanent to the present In truth, to change the world,one must change space. The absolute revolution? It is our image and our mirage, seen only in the mirror ofabsolute (political) space." [219-220]

3.7 Social space emerges out of the measurements and paths of tribal practice, frontiers, liminal zones, andtemporary habitations, all of which project a "representation `space' into the cosmos" [220ff]. The body (humanbody, agent etc.) must also therefore be analysed as a `social body'. Frontiers: cosmological; personal; social;geographical etc. [223-224].

"Social space is not socialized space (this implicit thesis mars the work of G. Matoré L'espace humain(Paris: La Colomb) which is however one of the best works concerning the semantics of space and spatialmetaphors)" [220]. The idea that a socialization of what pre-existed society took place reveals an ideologyand a "reactive" mirage-effect. To believe, for example, that natural space, described by geography,socializes itself destines the ideologue to soon ... regret the passing of this natural space and to soon saythat this type of space has no importance because it has disappeared.Social change comes about as a result of pre-existing social practices. The Natural, the original point zerois impossible to determine and the notion of pure, empty "natural" space which is later filled by social lifeand modified by its practices is part of this impossible search. Vacant space, empty of mental and sociallife permitting the socialization of the non-social is one representation of space." [220] Actual historicalspace, is socializing (through a multiplicity of networks) rather than socialized. The work space is not anempty container occupied by the entity work.Work space consisting of great worksites (factories, offices etc.) and their linking networks results from therepetitive gestures and actions of productive labour as well as the division of labour (technical and social)and by consequence markets (local, national, global) and finally property relations. Work space doesn'ttake on contours and frontiers except abstractly as one spatial network amongst others which interpenetrate.Its existence is thus relative. [221]Space is always a duality: field of action (site) and support for action (systems of sites which facilitateenergy flows and resulting actions). It is at one and the same time quantitative (with dimensions eg.distance) and qualitative (where distance is also measured in terms of fatigue); it is the `union' of materials(objects, things) and the ensemble of materiel (tools, equipment). Space thus appears as an objectivity butdoesn't exist socially except for activity (movement, transportation, action etc.) [222]"On the one hand homogeneous directions are offered, but on the other, certain directions are valorized.The same goes for angles and rotations (left--sinister, right--rectitude). On the one hand space ishomogenous, open to reasonned action, but on the other, for individuals and groups, it is full ofinterdictions, occult qualities, the favourable and unfavourable." [222] Social spaces are not definedthrough a reduction to this duality which furnishes the materials for very different realizations in differentspaces. In geographical, natural space, paths appear as simple linear traces. These routes and paths growand establish places (privileged sites) and boundaries. Through these "pores", which accentuate localparticularities in the process of making use of these (eg. a ford across a river) flow more and more densehuman movements.These spatio-temporal activities and determinations corresp6nd to an anthropological level of social realitydefined by marking off areas and boundaries and orientation. This spatial mode is dominant in archaicagro-pastoral societies. Man never ceases to mark off space, to leave traces which are at once symbolic andpractical. He is indispensible to this space with plots changing directions, rotations, which come about inrelation to his body considered as a centre; and in relation to other bodies (even celestial ones ie.

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cosmology). [223]The network of paths and routes constitutes a space which is as concrete as that of the body and whichextends it. Features of the terrain become associated either with memories or possible actions. Thisqualified space which is symbolic and practical is filled with myths and tales which support it and it them.Networks and frontiers constitute a concrete space closer to a spider's web than a geometric space wheresymbolism and practice cannot be separated.The relations between frontiers have a great importance along with the relations between boundaries andnamed places (eg. for the shepherd, the brook, the favourable pastures etc.). This network of relations aresuperimposed upon the network of known sites. (a) accessible spaces of everyday use with the rules andmodalities of this practice. (b) frontiers and forbidden zones, spaces relatively closed (friendly neighbours)or totally closed (neighbouring enemies)(c) residences, either sedentary or mobile(d) connecting points(sutures), often the sites of passage and meetings, sites of exchange which may be often forbidden except inthe course of specific rites including declarations of peace and war). Frontiers, being such points, are thusalso the points of friction depending on the situation (nomads versus sedentary groups separated by naturalobstacles etc.) [224]

Social space has a three dimensional character: mountains and heights, celestial beings; grottos, cavernsand hidden place; and plains and water surfaces which unite these two are elaborated in a representation ofthe Cosmos. These are further developed in myths of the Earth-Mother and World. This qualified space isevaluated in time, in poorly defined measures (the step, fatigue etc.) and via the body (the foot, one arm-span etc.). Here, rather than seeing himself as a point amongst others in an absract milieu (as we do in ourabstract space of plans and maps) the "primitive" situates himself with relation to a central social object: ahut, staff, and later religious site or temple.

3.8 The historical sensorium of this social body [227-234]; (Hegel's transhistorical `Geist') offers `precious'indications of the type of social space which it produces and lives.

Sound and space [231]."At both the starting and ending points, we find the body...but which body? The body of both the peasant'sox coupled to the plow and the cavallier's horse serve as a medium, a means and instrument, between theman and his space. The difference between these two body-mediums (the ox and horse) implies ananalogous difference in the spaces, which is to say that the wheat field is a world apart from the battlefield."[225] Which definition of the body and which body then are we talking about? That which carries theintellectus (Platos) or the habitus (Saint Thomas)? The glorious or grotesque body? (Rabelais, Bakhtin)The Cartesian body-object or the body-subject of phenomenology and existentialism? And what of thefragmented body, represented by images and words? Should one start from the discourse on the body? Buthow can one set such limits if one starts from such an abstracted body? And what of the "social-body"--amurdered body, shattered by the overwhelming practice of the division of labour? The question is how tocritique space if one accepts the body in this already "social" space, mutilated by it? How can one definethe body itself without bringing in ideologies?"In the preceeding sections, the body has been treated only as the "spatial-body", which is neither subjectnor object, just the product and producer of a space, linked intimately through various determinations:symmetries, the interaction and reciprocity of actions, axes and places, centres and peripheries, andconcrete spatio-temporal oppositions. The materiality of this "spatial-body" comes from its spatiality andthe energy which it deploys and employs, not from the reunion of particles and parcels in a framework noris its materiality attributed to some nature which is indifferent to space. As far as it is a matter of a"machine" it is a double one--"sloughing off" massive energies (metabolism, muscles, ultimately the sexdrive) on the one hand and on the other by fine energies (the information of the senses, knowledge). Such adialectization concretizes the abstract Cartesian concept of machine situated in a what is itself arepresentation of space elaborated abstractly [226]"The inherent conflicts in the spatio-temporal reality of the body (which is neither a substance, entity,mecanism, flux nor closed system) cumulates with the conflicts between knowledge and action, between

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the brain and sex, and between desires and needs in the human being," [226] which is a dialectical totality."The ogranism has no understanding nor existence except when taken with its spatial extensions, the spacewith which it is in contact and which it produces." [227]Does the history of the body have any relation to the history of space? Smell, taste and sound. Theseparation of the senses in social practice such that smells are isolated from the other correspondingsensations with which they occur (eg. an acrid smell, heat and sizzling). Hence the emergence of `cuisine'as an "art" which re-assembles these senses. [228-230]"The spatial body, becoming social, isn't introduced into a pre-existing world, it produces and reproduces it.This body carries in it properties and spatial determinations. In the realm of the practico-sensible, theperception of right and left is projected and marked on the environment." [230] Space is produced with thislateral symmetry."The perceptions of the two ears do not coincide. This difference alerts the infant and gives the density,physical volume of the space within which it finds itself. Audition thus mediates between the spatial bodyand the localization of external bodies ... Completely homogeneous space, perfectly simultaneous, falls intoindiscernability" [231] In the homogeneous modern space of architecture and urbanism, thisindiscernability occurs because the markers of localization and lateralization are obliterated, being addedlater for decoration only. The result is a physical malaise felt by the body which must work to re-orientateitself and re-territorialize the space. This Cartesian space "is unfortunately also that of the white page, thatof the floor plan, elevations and sections ... [which] substitutes a verbal, semantic and semiologic spacewhich only aggravates the problem. A narrow and withered rationality omits the depth and profoundness ofspace, of the total body ... It forgets that space doesn't consist of the projection of an intellectualrepresentation ... but that it is first of all heard and acted ..." [231-2] Thus the brain which is assimilated toa message-receiving machine in information theory (placing in parenthesis its role and relation as an organ)should be considered as part of a total, interacting, body which constitutes spaces in which there aremessages and codes in the first place. Only then can we understand the continual resurfacing and return ofthe repressed features of space (eg. the subterranean, the labyrinthine, the uterine) which mark out thecontours of the Ego's relation to space via the medium of (and as) the body. This is why "The history of thebody in the final phase of the West is that of its revolts" (Octavio Paz, Conjunctions et Disjunctions p.132)[232]. The carnal body revolts, but it is not a question of a return to origins, to the archaic, but of theactual, omitted but true, dimensions of "our" body which have been forbidden from manifesting themselvesin the social-space of the modern world. This elementary revolution is not only a question of demanding atheoretical critique but of a "turning the world upside down" (cf. Marx) an inversion of sense, a subversionwhich amounts to a "breaking of the tables of the Law" (cf. Neitzsche). [233]The unconscious is an interstice, space, at the intersection of the ego and the body. That which could not beaccommodated during either the long formations and deformations of childhood. Language, signs, slipthrough this interstice which permits and, indeed, encourages, the sliding of meaning between the level ofcarnal life and abstract reasoning--metaphorization. This operation introduces a strange movement of"disincarnation" (verbal) and "reincarnation" (real), of chaining and unlinking [of meanings and signs], ofspatialization in an abstract expanse (étendu) and localization in a specific area (étendu). This is the mixedspace (still natural, already produced) of the first years of life, and later of poetry, art -- the "space ofrepresentations". [234]

3.9 The body becomes occulted in linear analytical reasoning which evacuates difference because it unites the boththe linear and the cyclical (eg. the cycles of time and needs and the linearity of gestures, or the market, of themanipulation of things). The body retains the inventive force of difference even in the midst of repetitive activities.

It is suggested that the fragmentation of the body, the poor rapport of the Ego and its body is due to theabstract naming of the body in language which dissociates various parts and reassigns them in a space ofrepresentation where they are subsequently seen as pathological. But this exonnerates the Judeo-Christiantradition which misunderstands the body as evil and the Taylorism of the capitalist division of labour whichis even pushed to the point of dividing workers from their bodies, reducing the unity of the body to specfiedand timed gestures. [236]

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The relation of the body and space reflects the relation of consciousness and the body. The total bodysituates itself and fragments itself in the process of practical functions, which includes discourse, but whichcan not be reduced to it alone. This obscures the problems of the abstract, fragmented, relation to space bywhich consciousness, body and space are separated in the name of productivity. [236]

3.10This analysis can and must be completed by a `rhythm analysis' in which time is grasped in its spatial form asconsecutive movements. [237]

3.11The data of the unconscious is also to be considered in terms of the spatial articulation between objects anddesire (désire--Hegel's `lack' inherited into French thought via Koyré-Ed [237ff]).

3.12Finally, spatial practice is, on this level, most concretely articulated in the various historical and culturalsystems of "gestalt". All of these analyses would be conducted against the background of history itself, with itsinitial moment of production upon nature, then of accumulation (dissociation of space and time, abstract thought andeconomic practice), and finally, in late capitalism and its "modernities", revealed as the necessary precondition forthe production of space itself [245-250].

3.13Binary oppositions: objects in absolute space; accumulation gives rise to the dissociation of space and time.This leads to a relative space of real objects and an ineffable emotional space (which is neutralized) [see 251-253].

1st Moment: Objects in space. Production still respects nature, desacralizing it in the process of humanwork (mostly agricultural) but concentrates the sacred character of the elements in religious and politicalbuildings. The form of thought and action is not separated from content.2nd Moment: Accumulation and production for exchange. The emergence of capital. Objects aredissociated from space, form from content. Abstraction of signs erects notions of Absolute Truth. Spacebecomes seen as either a substance (Cartesian according to Lefebvre but more properly Leibnezian-Ed) oras pure a priori (Kant). Space and time are dissociated with the former being subordinated to the later inthe praxis of accumulation. [251]3rd Moment: Space and objects are relativized. Space, in se, cannot be seized, becoming unthinkable.Time, in se, is also relativized. Unity of time and space (time is grasped as spatial change, space intime(s)). Capitalism begins by producing things and investing in sites. The need to reproduce socialrelations modifies this. And this is what makes it necessary to reproduce nature and master space inproducing it (the political-economic space of capitalism) on a global scale through a reduction of time inorder to halt the production of new social relations.As for Marx, the `virtual' may guide our knowledge of the real allowing us to push thought to its limits, notthrough an extrapolation of surface trends but by a consideration of the underlying history of accumulation."Production, at the limit, today, is no longer a matter of producing this or that, things or works [oeuvres]but of producing space." Merchandize will occupy the entire global space. Exchange value will imposethe law of value on the entire planet. In a sense, the history of the world is nothing but that of merchandize.This hypothesis pushed to its extremes permits the discovery of obstacles and objections. At the limit, willthe state produce its own space, the absolute political? Or can one see the dissappearance in and throughthe global market of the nation-state and of its space? [253]

3.14-3.15 Monumentality in architecture is a key phenomenon for the above deciphering of the historicaldevelopment of space, most strikingly in its degradation in the modern era. In a sense, monumental architecture isof the most base kind whereby, through psychoanalytic processes of metonymy (displacement) and metaphor(substitution of the similar), the inherent semiology of the build edifice, is replaced by the pastiche of monumentalsignification. [253-260] Worse, monumentality obscures the action of power.

3.16The complexity of social space appears in the liberation of difference through critical thought. Threeinterlinked levels may be distinguished. (1) Singularities around bodies which valorize places on the basis ofdiffering rythms; (2) a level of Generality, thus of social practices and social order, the division of labour etc. with its

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symbols of power and violence; and (3) the level of Particularities attributed to groups and families in definedspaces. [261]

3.17It would seem that the ultimate limit and horizon of the architectonics of space has been reached in the presentmoment of global capitalism [262].

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4. From Absolute Space to Abstract Space

4.1 Summary of Preceeding sections [265-270]. The most modern type of space carries all of the earlier types (thehistorical spatializations) sedimented and surcharged within itself. Psychoanalysis of historical spaces.

4.2 The oldest of these, Absolute Space [270ff], derives from the (primitive) practices of hunters and gatherers andthe earliest farmers where the small social group is seen as the centre of both time and space (which are unified inseasonal activities such as the harvest) around which the cosmos lies. Since then it has come to appear astranscendent and sacred such that its forces and character are attributed to the forces of nature. It is composed ofsites which are sacred and malevolent, in se, not just signifiers of good or bad experiences. There is no"environment", nor "site" which is distinct from the global texture. The signified isn't separated from its signifier.Neither is there the difference between public and private except where life has a distinct status as religious orpolitical.

This is transformed into the space of the sacred city in early civilizations, with its symbiotic relation of cityand surrounding countryside. This space is "lived" (vécu) in relation to the body not reasoned (concu) orunderstood by the intellect. Thus it is a space of representation more than representation of space. [373]Dimensions, above all up (cosmic, life) and down (subterrainean, repressed, lived) take on symbolic values.This space still exists in Western religious sanctuaries. Its forms are organized around the thematics ofidentification and imitation [274ff].We must "radically" distinguish Roman space and spatiality from that of the Greeks [275ff]: the latter werealways based on a harmony of form, function and structure which is de-stabilized in the Roman practicewhich reified the Greek orders into mere decoration. Hegel's analysis of Greek art [276]. Greek habitus isinseparably social and mental. Under Aristotle the habitus is separated from the Intuitus. In the Romanintuitus form, function, and structure of each thing is subordinated to a principle of both material (need) andjurisdiction (civic) which fixes its social use. "The unity of the Law, or Right, Property, the City State,because lived and perceived rather than concieved avoids any irremediable cracks. Need versus desire inRome [277].

4.3 The notion of Mundis: as both image or symbol and site. [280] Category of the Other, of exclusion and laterChristian site of passage between life and death. Roman concept of Urbs et Orbs. Rome as imago mundi whichconcentrates that which tends to disperse around it and which thus exorcises the subterranean forces of death. [280-283] Rome offers a space which is the scene of new social powers: a political space established not only throughaction but also through an implicit practice and images (eg. the Pantheon which collects all gods and,metaphorically, all sites into a built framework). This representation of space incorporated into the City, into thepaternistic laws, becomes a space of representation which submerges itself in the Mundis, a subterranean, infernalabyss. This later becomes the heart of Christianity.

Thus a double spatial pracitce relates the Urbs (sacred) to the dominated countries (submissive) via theroad; private life is constituted juridically along the same lines of ownership and of need resulting in adisequilibrium of public and private space. A double representation of space which is on the one handconcentric Urbs and Orbs and on the other the perpendicular axes of the military camp. Thirdly, a doublespace of representation separates the masculine (military, authority) from the feminine (abyss, site of death,world to be conquered). From this derived the increasing primacy of patriarchy and empire (self-consciouspower) over subterranean powers ("folly, Nietzchean excess, etc." which are repressed and re-emerge inBachanalian orgies) which is the new "space of the state".

4.4 Christianity exists on the word play "Mundus et immundus" and the Augustinian disjunction between time andspace, subject and object (with the deprecation of the latter). Marxist history, in over-valuing the economic has leftthe status of these terms in obscurity, fetichized by some, discredited by others. [285]

4.5 The generating image of the space of ancient Greece is that of the happy disposition of homes in a spatial andsocial hierarchy--the Polis. The mediation of Cosmos and World through the temple.

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4.6 Mode of existence of absolute space: real or fictive? [290]

4.7 The Roman villa, by uniting and fixing the relation of private property and space produces a new space whichlater, slowly, laicizes the religious and political space of Rome and early Christianity in the high Middle Ages. Itsubmits space to the dominium of the paternal social organisation of the villa or latifundia. This definition of place,the fixing of a juridico-social establishment to the earth is the necessary precondition for the emergence of historicalspace of capitalist accumulation when the "villa" will become the seigneurial domain or village depending on thecase.

4.8-4.9 The Christian middle ages are seen as the re-emergence of these `cryptic' (subterranean) forces (mundus etimmundus)-- complemented by a new luminosity and open, public, space of markets and exchange. This leadseventually to Renaissance perspective, increasing objectification, and finally the reification of capital.

Commodities and commerce and the marketplace -- which are at first liberating operations only later, in themarket, in capitalist accumulation, develop their negative consequences [294].

4.10The key form of the Renaissance is the city, where revival of Vitruvian architectural categories goes hand inhand with the perspectival approach [309ff]. The origins of present spatial codes in perspectival rules [310ff] iscodified by Vitruvius who proposed a complete lexicon of the elements of space (air, light, brick etc.); syntacticrules governing the disposition of these elements; and a stylistics (a prescriptive esthetics). The only thing missingis an analysis of the effect of city.[313] The dominance of the visual (le perçu) and the primacy of the facade, laterperfected by the 19th century bougeoisie emerges in the "arena" of Papal Rome.

4.11-4.14 With capitalism and the global market, violence takes on an economic role in the aid of accumulation. Itis in this manner that the economic becomes dominant. Northern Europe, "The space of wars becomes the spacewhich is rich and peopled, the cradle of capitalism." [319] War is thus unjustly classed as negative, while theeconomic is raised up as productive. The life of this space is violence which is often, however, latent, celebrated inthe triumphal arches and military monuments.

4.12Space, for Hegel teminates historical time by achieving the rational and the real simultaneously in the form ofthe State. [321] In misunderstanding space, Hegel also misunderstood violence, conceiving it only throughspeculative categories, a fault criticized by Marx and Engels. The State, as a "framework", consolidates a "relationof forces" between classes and class fractions and between the spaces they occupy. To this should be added "spatialframework" which is necessary to establish the concreteness of the State and its institutions.[324]

4.13Visual and mathematical space from Descartes to Diderot.[327-328]

4.14The dominant strategy of abstract space proper emerges as a three-fold primacy of geometry (cf. Gallileo,Descartes); of the visual (perspective) and of the phallic (Lacanian notion of "masculine" violence, reduction ofreality to images (plans)) [330] as the approved mode of expression of power and the state through an empty andneutralized space [331].

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5. Contradictory Space

5.1 Space shouldn't be theorized in terms of its own codes and logic; a dialectical theory of space must be able toconceptualize space in terms of contradictions [337].

5.2 This "dialectical" theory doesn't only involve the idea of a "plural" or "polyvalent" space but demands theanswer to the question "Is there a logic of space?" [338]. This is not ipso facto a critique of the Cartesian conceptionof space where space is given "en bloc" as a supra-sensible infinitude whereby some logic predetermines a networkof "real" relations consitutive of the world of objects.

Haussman is the precursor of the most recent spatial practice in which the space of the city is broken,fragmented and segregated in order to produce a new unity, order, and homogeneity (of state power). Thisnew space is dominated by a fundamentally visual logic which transforms (1) solids into images andsimulations (2) "dwelling" into "habitat" (mass housing), and (3) finally reduces space to the object ofplanning science.

5.3 The logical relations of this abstract/contradictory space are those of inclusion and exclusion, conjunction anddisjunction which may be represented geometrically in the manner of Venn diagrams where larger circles (sets)enclose others. This captures the sense in which a human being is in a social space. But in the comprehension ofspace there are also forbidden zones where the relation of inclusion doesn't hold. Rather the relation is one ofexclusion. Each "space" has a dual relation to its internal set and to the exterior. In this manner, space tends to betreated anthropologically as a means for classification operations: as a nomenclature or taxinomy. [341]

5.4 This reduction of contained to the container eliminates the interplay of differences, the movement of dialectic tologic, and social space to a purely formal mental space. [342]

As for the logic of space, in a sense it is constituted by mathematics in toto. However, space, "purely"conceived, has neither elements nor form (cf. Leibniz), its parts being homogeneously indiscernable. Tointroduce determination, it is necessary to introduce a content: the act of thinking of difference. [343]Along with empiricist studies (eg. E.T. Hall's proxemics), Phenomenology may be criticized from thisbasis. [343-5]. Summary [345]

5.5-5.7 Abstract space emerges in artistic expression with Picasso [346-349] as well as with the modern architects(Gropius, Mies, Cobusier et al). Its distinctive feature is (1) homogeneity [347-8] at the level of exchangeableproperty, and de-sacralized meanings and (2) fragmentation (the division of space through power).

5.8 In the same period in the "advanced" countries of the West the consideration of space outside of the limitedrealm of art and philosophy began to fragment, exemplified by the extremes of behaviourism (where space becamethe sum of stimulii experienced by a subject) and ethnography (where a analogical theory of cultural space became acultural model of space).

5.9 Abstract space cannot be conceived of abstractly because abstraction at once reduces it to homogeneity yetfractures and obfuscates its true unity. [353] Abstraction separates logic and dialectic, reduces contradictions tocoherence, mixes up the residues of the reduction (eg. social logic and social practice). Abstract space, considered asan instrument, is firstly the site of nature, the tool which wishes to master it and, as far as possible, to destroy it. Itcorresponds with both the amplification of the practices of labour but also a new abstract labour which has a socialexistence. [354]

The space of homogenisation is clearly anything but homogeneous. It contains and unifies dispersedelements and fragments. Historically it appears as the milieu of socio-political compromise between the

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aristocracy (ownership of land) and the bourgeoisie (money), but it is supported by the conflict betweenfinancial capital and action in the name of the proletariat. [355]

5.10In this spatial "tissue" intervene the avant-garde artists who take account of the collapse of referentials. Theseartists present objects in the space of the dominant social practice. At the same time, architects support, as anideology behind their actions, an empty space, primordial, a container which receives fragmented contents, a neutralmilieu or habitat receiving disjointed things, people. In short, incoherence under the sign of coherence -- separationand disjunction in cohesion -- flux and ephermera in stability -- conflictual relations in the name of the apparentiallogic and the effective combinatory.

This abstract space contains many other traits. It is this space, this arrangement which dissociates desiresand needs, to then link them up again often worse off than better. This is where the middle classes installthemselves and spread out, neutral (in appearance) because socially and politically situated between thepoles of the bourgeoisie and working class. This space is not the "expression" of the middle classes but, onthe contrary it is that which the grand strategies have assigned to them. These classes find what they'relooking for: a mirror for their "reality", tranquilizing representations, an image of a social world where theyhave their place, labelled, insured, reserved. Whereas in truth in this space they are manipulated along withtheir uncertain aspirations and their very certain needs.In abstract space, where strategies are deployed, also the frolics and debates (les ébats et débats) ofMimesis: fashion, sport, art, advertizing, and sexuality transposed into ideology are unroled. [356]

5.11This Abstract Space of anaphorization (which metamorphizes the body out of itself into an visual ideal) is alsothe space of a strange substitution concerning sex. Natural sexual relations imply a reciprocity; in turn this tie mayrecieve an abstract justification and legitimation which changes it into a social reality. Physical reciprocity islegalized in contractual reciprocity, in an "engagement" which has authority as its witness and guarantee. But in thecourse of this process, the initial bond undergoes a grave modification.

The space of substitution which replaces nature with cold abstraction, the absence of pleasure, is the mentalspace of castration (at once fictional and real, symbolic and concrete). It is that of the metaphorizationwhere (in particular) the image of the woman supplants the woman, where her body is fragmented, wheredesire breaks down, where life crumbles, dissipates. Sex, having lost its status of naturality calls in vain for a "culture" of the body, becoming itself also alocalization, a specification, a specialization with its sites and organs, erogeneous zones assigned by thesexologists, and organs of reproduction. Sexuality (neither culture nor nature) appears dominated in asmuch as it is a coded and decoded subsystem: a specified mediation between the real and the imaginary,between desire and anxiety, between needs and frustrations. In the abstraction of a space fragmented intospecialized sites, the body itself is fragmented and pulverized. The body represented by images, byadvertizements (legs for stockings, breasts for bras,the face for make-up etc.) decomposes desire,dedicating it to anxious frustration and the unsatisfying satisfaction of localized (restricted) needs. Inabstract space ... the death of the body is accomplished in a double fashion: symbolic and concrete: by thefragmentation of the living and by the effect of violences. In particular the female body is changed intoexchange value, a sign of merchandise and merchandise itself.Sex and sexuality, pleasure and enjoyment (jouissance) are identified with sites specialized for leisure:vacation cities and villages, ski slopes, sunny beaches. These spaces of leisure become eroticized: thenoctural spaces of the "quartiers" and red light districts devoted to the illusory festival. Like a game, theEros becomes consumer and consumed not by means of signs but by means of spectacles. Abstract space isdoubly castrating: (1) in isolating the phallus, and (2) in projecting it outside of the body, in fixing it inspace (verticality), in putting it under the "surveillance" of the eye. The visual and the discursive reinforceeachother (in contextualizing everything) in the world of signs. Under the rule of commercial terrorism(sous la férule du terrorisme commerciale), in the words of Schelsky, and also and above all throughlocalization, through spaces fragmented and specialized in a globally homogeneous manner (form). Theabstraction of the body perfects itself through fragmentation and (functional) localization. [357]"A curious space: homogenous yet composed of ghettos." [358] It is falsely true, not the object of a falseconsiousness but a site and milieu which itself engenders false consiousness. The appropriation which

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ought to symbolize itself sees itself there signified and rendered illusory. This space contains much inmasking (denying) the contained by indicating it through signs. It contains the imaginary specified:fantastic images derived from the established order which appear to reveal "other things" but which are infact the contents themselves. These "representations" impose and prescribe in and through the space whichsupports them and which gives them their efficacity. In it operates the incessant substitution of things bycodes and representations. The "world of signs" is not only the space occupied by these signs and images(object-signs and object-images) but it is the space where the Ego is no longer in rapport with its nature,with a material, not even with things, but with things doubled by their signs and supplanted by them. The"I", "sign-bearer" (porte-signes) has no other business except with the other "sign-bearers".This homogenizing, fractured space is fragmented in an elaborate, differentiated, fashion into sectors orsub-system which appear to provide objective analyses, systemic analyses. eg. the "urban system"... butcan it actually be found in this or that city? The end result of this sectorial division of the world and societyinto sub-systems is chaos.

5.12When the square in the city, the meeting place in the process of circulation (eg. la Place des Vosges) gives wayto the roundabout (eg. la Place de la Concorde) the quality of urban life is degraded to the benefit of the regime ofabstract space in which atoms circulate (ie. cars). Haussman is generally credited with breaking-up the historicalspace of Paris but this involved a less-discussed reduction and flattening out of this space into the surface-space ofthe plan. In this process, "those who see and do not know anything but of looking, those who draw and knownothing but of drawing and those who circulate and can do nothing but drive around in their cars contribute to themutilation and cutting-up of space. The end result is that those who drive around look only to see where they aregoing and do not see anything more than road signs and directions, thus they do not perceive anything more thantheir route (materialized, mechanized, technicized) and this, only from the single angle of functional utility: rapidity,readibility. However, those who do not know about anything but seeing end up by not seeing well." [360-61] Thereading of a space fabricated with a view to readibility finds, not unexpectedly, a coherent and persuasive text laidout. This space is defined through the perceptions of an abstract subject, the driver, who is in only visual contactwith his or her surrounding world. "This abstract space thus becomes the simulacrum of actual space (historically,that of nature). The roadway becomes a lived simulation of that which in fact is central to urbanity: the encounter."[361]

5.13In this Abstract Space a historical substitution of habitat for home may be found. Historically, "home" onlyhad a real meaning for the aristocracy. [362] The bourgeois apartment parodies the aristocratic "hotel" in reversingits emphasis on the internal intimate community of the home. Instead, the exterior facade become important, a strictregime of functional separation and concealment is undertaken and appearance, what can be seen by the outsideworld, becomes paramount. This visual strategy is analogous to the repression of the Eros on the level of the personand its replacement by signifiers of intimacy which is mythified.

The analysis of the bourgeois practice of space verifies the above theory of Abstract Space and shows theunity of the lived and conceived aspects of spatiality. [364]Habitat is defined rationally and quantified as first the minimum inhabitable volume -- a threshold oftolerability -- and later as the minimum necessary to maintain social control -- a threshold of sociability (orsocialization-Ed). Urban housing schemes and new towns adopt this approach, but internal frontiersquickly appear which mark out the "fracture lines in the homogeneity" [365], zones within people reallylive, constituting a real "Social Space".Cartesian rationalism hands down the notion that a hierarchy of levels, of variables and dimensions canadequately portray reality. But this introduces logical implications with the process of disjunction andconjunction necessary to isolate different levels and recombine them into a hierarchy. In terms of the studyof space this process masks the concrete relation homogeneous-heterogenous. This oversight is crucial tothe legitimation of the rational state bureaucracy and its practices of space such as zoning. "The unity ofreason covers and reinforces the multiple administrative divisions, juxtapositions, superimpositions, a sortof puzzle in which each piece corresponds to an "operation". [366]"Abstract Space is ... repressive `par essence et par excellence' but in a fashion particularly easy to bear

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because it is multiple: an immanent repression manifests itself sometimes through reduction, sometimesthrough functional localization, sometimes through hierarchisation and segregation, and sometimes throughestheticisation. To look (from afar), to contemplate (that which has been separated), to manage the pointsof view and perspectives changes the effects of a strategy into esthetic art objects." [366]

5.14The space of work-place can pervade a surrounding, dependent, settlement establishing, de facto, the status ofworkers as unfree labour even outside of the workplace. In as much as these "islands" of labour dependent on anenterprise link up through the market system there is a tendency to produce a totalitarian politico-capitalism. Thelarge city cannot be captured in this way and is hence the cradle of democratic autonomy and freedom. [367-8]

5.15Space is broken into assigned and forbidden sites. In Abstract Space, the interdiction is the key marker of zonesas it is the inverse side of the regime of private property.

5.16Political power is central to the apparent transparence of space and to its maintenance. In Abstract Space powerdoes not appear as such -- it is not a thing nor pure form -- but is reproduced under and through an "organization ofspace" eliding, eluding and evacuating all that is opposed to it. [370]

5.17An analysis of space which remains faithful to the dialectics of Capital must insist on:(1) the increasingtendency towards the transformation of space as land into exchange value and an arena of speculative capital(private property, zoning) and, (2) the centrality of the machine in this transformation of the city into a mere elementof the cpaitalist system (city as solely the "space of production", the "place of machines", a means and medium forproduction and reproduction. Thus (under the category of "leisure") use values (eg. clean water, nature, light, time)become scarce and mal-distributed resources (no one has enough of all) and thus the objects of exchange (along withsuch primary resources as oil etc.). [370-392]

5.18This requires a new meditation on use value as such. To attempt to establish the categories and concepts of theproduction of space it is necessary to return to the concept of Marx, and not only those of social work and ofproduction. "What is a commodity? A concrete absraction. Abstraction? Yes, and not despite its character as athing, but on the contrary, in as much as social "thing", detached during its existence from its materiality, its usage,from productive activity, from the need that it might satisfy ..." [392]

5.19"Today, the scientific and technological transformations of the modern world render a reconsideration ofmarxist thought inevitable. On the other hand, taken in their original exposé by Marx, these concepts and theirtheoretical development no longer have any object. The renewal of marxist concepts can be developed in an optimalfashion by taking full account of space..." [395-6]

5.20For Marx, Nature figured amongst the productive forces. Today a distinction has been imposed, which Marxdid not introduce, between the domination and the appropriation of nature which represents a conflict which unfoldsin space: dominated and appropriated spaces. [396] Also, Nature appears as a resource, with use value. Nature re-enters the scheme of production and consumption at the moment that the circuits of exchange value cease. Itspatializes concepts such as needs, commodity, and consumption. And it reveals that consumption (use) is alsoproductive.

The Machine harnesses energies and space. The City as a vast machine [398]. With the development of themodern modes of capitalist production, the extraction of surplus value becomes de-territorialized, notablywith the development of a global financial circuit. Still the city continues in its old role of coordinating theflows of energies. The economy appears practically as a connexion of flux and networks whose rationalityis monitored by institutions and programmed through the spatial framework where these institutions havetheir operational effects. [401]

5.21Constant capital or investment represents dead labour. Under capitalism the dead hold the living. A newsociety cannot be defined except through a reversal of the world to its inverse. How can the living take hold of the

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dead? Response: in the production of a new space which is a product, but not a thing, and which is itself productivebut not of abstract things like money and merchandise which dominate in Abstract Space, the site and source ofabstractions. [402]

5.22Summary: Social space figures amongst the productive forces; appears as a privileged product sometimesconsumed simply (tourism) sometimes productively (machines, cities) in as much as it is a productive framework. Itserves as a political instrument allowing control of society and the means of production through its management. Itsupports the reproduction of relations of production and property. It is the practical equivalent of the ensemble ofsuperstructural institutions and ideologies. It contains virtualities -- the work (oeuvre) and reappropration under thebanner of art and above all in the exigencies of the body which deploys a space around itself and extends itselfthrough it. Thus space itself resists the bureaucratic management of space and suggests the sources of a counter-space. [402-3]

5.23Thus space is a resource -- "nature is true wealth" (Marx).

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6. From the Contradictions of Space to theSpace of Difference

6.1-

6.5 Summary of the principal contradictions of abstract space:

1. Quantity vs. Quality: The repression of quality which re-emerges as "leisure": from the space ofconsumption to the consumption of space in leisure and leisure space, or: from daily life to the non-daily life of the festival, from work to non-work" [409]

2. Global vs. Local: The contrast of a global spatial practice and reality under the system of multinationalcapitalism, and the preserved "myth" of the parcel, housing lot, and "home" which is the lived realityfor most Europeans. Abstract space is both of these at once, without any possibility of synthesistherefore, it is "contradictory space".

3. Use value vs. Exchange Value: Another formulation would be in terms of the classic opposition offorces and relations of production understood in the largest sense as forces potentially productive ofnew space, but shackled by the social relations of capitalism.

6.6 Dominated space realizes on the land the structures and frameworks of political strategy. Through the action ofpower, the space of daily practices carries in itself norms and constraints. More than just being expressive of power,it is repressive in the name of power. [413] Social space gains such an efficacious normative-repressive role that theeffects of ideologies and representaions as such fall by the wayside in comparison to it. Logic and logistics occultthe latent violence of this spatial order and practice. The practice of space regulates life. Space doesn't have powerin itself and the contradictions of space are not determined by it, rather the contradictions of society (eg. between theforces of production and the relations of production) "come into daylight" and are realized in this space, at the levelof space, engendering contradictions in space.

6.7-8 Empiricism masks contradiction under the banner of "inconsistencies". These contradictions arediscernable at all levels from the empirical data of daily life all the way through the political, aesthetic, andtheoretical realms. Notably there is a process which favours productive consumption (of space as well as things)over unproductive consumption for the purpose of enjoyment (eg. the extension of roadways is preserved over themaintenance of parks because roadways represent one aspect of the utilization of space for materially productivepurposes).

6.8 Other examples would include the devaluation and then the revaluation of historic sites and great architecturewhich is destroyed unless it can be made productive (through tourism and the leisure industries).

Consider the manner in which the production of the architect is already ideologically limited in advance byessentially visual, reductive procedures [416-419] -- in other words, consider the impoverishing influenceon buildings by their initial conception in the form of the "project" or sketched outline, by theirunquestioning acceptance of the "lot" as a given, neutral, parcel and by the discourse of the architects andplanners which does not accomodate the spatial realities of the users. The architect has a representation ofspace based on the graphic mediation of plans and perspectives which is a conceived space which is totallydifferent from and cannot accommodate the lived space of real people.Space becomes a field constituted by a practice which consists of cuts (découpages) (ie. lots),specializations (functional separations) and is seen as passive vis à vis these operations. "The division oflabour, the division of needs ... localized, pushed to the separation of functions, people and things, find theirframework in the spatial field which appears neutral, objective, a rational site: without fear, withoutreproach." [418]Lived space on the other hand is subjective, not a space of calculation. It is a space of representation whichhas its origins in the experiences of childhood. We can conceive of a possible primacy of this concrete

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space which would permit a diversification of types and logics of space -- fixed, semi-fixed, mobile andvacant accommodating both the effemeral features of living and the stable, "objective" features of life(Heidegger's categories of "wandering" and "dwelling") [419]

6.9 The paradox of abstract space is that on the one hand ever-fresh contradictions are produced, even while, on theother hand they are continually flattened or occulted. Thus city planning is universally recognized as a disaster, yetit has succeeded in effectively silencing those who suffer from it the most. Critique of Jane Jacobs [420] andAdvocacy Planning [421].

6.10There is a fundamental contradiction between globalization (the ability to manage space on a grand scale, thushomogenization) and parcelization (private property). Dispersion of various aspects of capitalist productions(Fordism) further robs space of its coherence. It is dominated by strategic designs of multi-nationals andsuperpowers. The micro-level of space remains the site of struggle where the objective is always and still theoccupation of a space by the various modes of politics and war.

Three "frameworks" or "levels" (grilles) which comprise a taxonomy of this complex space:(1) It woulddistinguish the oppositions and contrasts of space (analogical spaces) -- isotopias -- and the relativeexclusiveness of various sub-spaces -- the heterotopias. Finally the symbolic and imaginary zones -- theutopias -- nature, pure knowledge, and absolute power. Paradoxically, the symbolically derived spaces(parks, religious buildings) are the best appropriated.(2) A classification of the attributes of sites (public vs.private); the mediations made by users (passages, routes). (3) The strategic order in the spatial chaos -- thearticulation of spatial markets in land with the spaces of markets. But this model of separations eliminatesmany of the contradictions which we would hope to reveal ...

6.11 Instead, one can envision a "science of social space" which is to say a "science of the usage of space" focussingon the status of Abstract Space as a second nature [425]. The form of buildings, space, corresponds to a perceptionof space. The functions correspond to the living-out of a space of representation. The structure is conceived,implying a representation of space. As a totality it is situated in the practice of space -- its usage.

6.12Abstract space serves as an instrument of domination, suffocating the development and progress of other typesof space. It assassinates its historical conditions, its internal differences and any eventual, different, spaces in orderto impose an abstract homogeneity. [427] This represents a kind of externalized Freudian death wish in which auto-destruction is deployed on a planet-wide scale. But rather than analyse yet again the metaphysics of this impulse itis essential to analyse the instrument -- space -- and its specific, strategic, effect which is that all obstacles --everything that "differs" or is different, is annihilated.

6.13-

6.15The theory of alienation is insufficient. Theories of difference reveal the weakness of logic and the importanceof dialectics which establishes (1) the distinction between minimal difference (ie. that between repeated elements)and maximal difference (ie. that which is totally different, in another class etc.) and (2) between induced differences(ie. within a mode of production) and produced differences (eg. differences announcing a new mode of productionwhich accumulate within an old mode).

Particularities, those primary sites and resources, are suppressed differences. Difference, heterogeneity, inthe regime of homogeneity emerges as central to resistance in the face of centrality and normality whichrecuperate and eliminate transgressions. A reawakening of the "politics of spatial difference" (as opposedto the dictat of spatial homogenization) in which the rich creativity of the excluded can be developed intoconcrete alternatives to the present spatial system is required. Latin American favellas [430-31] exemplifya movement from opposition and "alternatives" (induced difference) to contradiction and "surpassment"(produced difference). Without dialectical movement, any logic or strategy (which is reified as "optimal")engenders a space which produces a sort of tourniquet on change (eg. U.S. highway construction [432]) anda self-reinforcing vicious circle.

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6.16"Each strategy of space is aimed at several objectives in the same manner that abstract space holds on to or is inpossession of many `properties'." This strategic space permits a simultaneous pushing of disruptive groups(workers) toward the peripheries; the organization of the centre as site of decisions, power and information; and thespatial planning of production and flows of goods, information etc. ... The space of this social practice becomes aspace of arrangement: of classification in the service of a class ... the "operative" notion of classification andarrangement governs the entire space, from private to public ... In effect this capacity aligns public space on the"`privatized' space" of the dominant class fraction ... The entire space is treated on the model of...the private family,reproducing the relations of production on the model of biological reproduction." [432-3].6.17Mimesis (imitation, substitution) plays an important role in the reproduction and perpetuation of a spatialculture where abstract desires are "spatialized" and abstract spatiality is given a concrete, common-sensical unitythrough the primacy of the visual. Mimesis governs the substitution of the production of things in space for theindividual and collective production of space whereby the productive capacity of space is harnessed.

6.18The State and space. Feminism and the notion of a "feminist spatiality" or mode of spatial practice. The role ofelites in demonstrating the impossibility of living as a homogenized "mass".

6.19-6.21 There are all sorts of tendencies to a "counter-space" (alternative spatial systems, arrangements,practices, norms) at work around us, with all their ambiguities and failures. Of these, the most striking is leisurespace (eg. the Caribbean Basin or the Mediterranean) which represents the ultimate commodification of nature andspace but which is also the moment of non-work, jouissance, and festival which negates the entire system. Thespace of leisure, in particular the beach, is the ultimate "Contradictory Space" being both a zone where the body-subject is re-unified with the body-as-object and a site of the reproduction of labour and the relations of production.[443] As such it indicates the points of possible rupture in the present system of contradictory, abstract, space.

6.22-6.25 The "Festival" of May '68 demonstrates the continuing existence of a genuine urban vitality within thenewer, dominant, abstract space. This marks the ruptures which accompanied the transition from a mode ofproduction of "things-in-space" to a new mode of production of space itself. [449-50] This new spatial practice isreflected at all levels of social action and on all three dimensions of the spatial dialectic. It also changes thetemporal-spatial balance which is the basic parameter of our experiences.

6.26The practice of space is not defined by a system but on the other hand by the "theatralization", dramatization, ofthe differential moments and values inherent in space. The technical theorization of space in planning results in itsfetishization where coherence and illusory transparence are substituted for the uneasy pax étatique, the conflicts anddifferences which actually exist. [452].6.27The dialectical relation of needs and desires is also obscured in the ecological discourse which takes space as anindifferent medium. [454]

6.28-6.30 The practice of space is revealed through the body's simultaneous and continuous production ofdifference even in the process of repetitive gestures and actions. There should be a "right to difference" whichwould fill out the content of law in contrast to the merely formal emphasis of the "right to private property". [456-7]

This practice is the "truth of space" which can be said to contrast with the philosopher's emphasis on thenotion of "true space" (abstract, imposed on reality by force of will and enforced). This practice establishesthe nature of truly social space as that of centrality, the site of communitas, communion, and encounterwhich dialectically is always engaged in a "gathering to itself" and which always also differentiating itselfinto the surrounding periphery which is organized around it. (Heidegger) Centrality is a much more usefulnotion than totality, which it displaces, relativizes, and dialecticizes. [459-60]

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7. Overtures and Conclusions

7.1 "A question traverses the preceding analyses and interpretations: What is the mode of existence of socialrelations?... What is a relation [ie. those studied by the social sciences] and where does it reside when it is neveractualized in a well determined situation?" There is no form to which these "relations" can be attached, nor afunction. "`Structure' itself arranges elementary unities within a whole; it requires on the one hand the ensemble(the whole) and on the other unities. Analytic thought thus itself returns to the [metaphysical] entitites andsubstantialities which it once claimed to supplant: the `subject' and the `object', unconsciousness, global praxis ...There are no relations without supports [Pas de rapport sans support]" [461] Social relations can only beunderstood as Marx's concrete abstractions. "Social relations, concrete abstractions, have no real existence exceptin and through space. Their support is spatial. The connexion "support-rapport" requires analysis in each givencase. It carries an implication-explication: a genesis, a critique of institutions, substitutions, transfers,metaphorizations, anaomorphisms etc. which have transformed space." [465]

7.2 These propositions imply-explain a project themselves: a spatio-analysis [spatio-analyse] or spatio-logic. Thisoffers both advantages and problems. First, what is of interest is not space as such, not types and prototypes ofspace but an exposé of the production of space. The usage of space must be put in the foreground. This implies acritique of existing arrangements of space/spatiality. This would be completed by a rhythm-analysis[rhythmanalyse] of the appropriation (not consumption) of space in terms of the body. All of space proceeds fromthe body even if it has been metamorphosized to the point of obscuring this origin.

7.3 The foregoing theory and research might be situated at the level of a meta-philosophy which denounces themetaphors of philosophy as ideological. In particular, occidental philosophy has betrayed the body, contributingactively to the grand metaphhorisation which disavows and abandons the body-subject. "The living body being atthe same time "subject" and "object" does not support the separation of concepts ... With the Logos-King, with thetrue space, the metnal and the social are separated, like the lived and the thought, like subject and object. There hasalways been some sort of project aimed at reducing the exterior to the interior, the social to the mental, through aningenious topology. In vain! Abstract spatiality and the practiced spatiality look at eachother from afar in theempire of the visual. By contrast, in the the Reason of the State, promised by Hegelian philosophy ... knowledgeand power contract a solid, legitimated, alliance. The subjectivism of desire and the objectivism of representationsrespect this alliance and do not approach the Logos ..." [467-8]

7.4 We are living in a moment of transition -- the "End of this or that" -- characterized by its contradictions between(economic) knowledge and social development, between the social and the political, between power and knowledge,between abstract and differential space. "This shortened list is neither exhaustive nor a hierarchy, it just suffices toput under our nose the bouquet of flowers poisoned by this epoque." [469] To define it it is neceassary to establishfrom where we came and where we are going -- a moment of non-work, the ultimate sense of the accumulation oftechnical means. It is also a "distant goal and meaning which cannot be attained except by risking catastrophe,bitterly savouring the last hours of all which had value and [was] success. The bitter analytic of finitude, broughtinto the foreground by philosophers since Hegel, brought into fashion by diverse "moderns" since Valéry, repeatswithout respite: this world is finished, time exhausted, finitude is here.

The same dialectical movement goes from primary and primordial nature to the second nature, from naturalspace to space at the same time produced and a work of art, the reunion of art and science. This secondnature dies slowly and difficultly, the result of automization (pushed to the extend of occupying the vastdomain of necessity, which is to say the production of things in space). This cannot have place except atthe end of the interminable period occupied by labour (divided indefinitely), by acculumlation, and byreductions. A colossal process, full of risks and perils and which can either collapse at any moment or openup possibilities." [470]This vast transition can be specified in a number of fashions as it involves a number of key cleavages.Space has been formed as predominantly male, with norms inherent to the relation dominated-dominating.The invention of an appropriated space, opposed to dominated space; and the development of an

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architecture of joy and gratification imply the feminization of space."It might also be said that we are in a transition period between the mode of production of things in spaceand a mode of production of space itself. The production of things was promised by capitalism, dominatedby the bourgeoisie and its political creation, the state. The production of space involves other conditions,among which the disappearance of private property in space and simultaneously the political state, thedominator of space. This implies the passage from domination to appropriation and the primacy of usevalue over exchange. If this doesn't take place, the worst will arrive ... Only the notion of a conflictualpassage from one mode of production (of things) to an other (of space) permits us to hold on to the marxistthesis which attributes a fundamental importance to productive forces, disengaging it [marxism] fromproductivism, delivering it from the dogmatism of (quantitative) belief." [471]

7.5 "Space becomes the principal site and area of struggles and actions towards a goal. It has never ceased to be thesite of resources, the milieu where strategies are deployed, but it becomes something more than the theatre, theindifferent scene or the framework of action. Space doesn't abolish the other materials and resources from the socio-political game ... apart from just enveloping them, it reassembles and substitutes itself for each of them." [471-2] Itis both medium, milieu and intermediary -- instrument -- as well as goal.

The differential analysis has emphasized the constitutive dualities (eg. symmetry-dissymmetry) of socialspace which are supports of more complex determinations. "As a support of production and reproductionabstract space engenders illusions, thus a tendancy to false consciousness, which is to say the consciousnessof a fictive-real space ... The diversity of processes may give the imporession of an absence -- of the lack ofa definite status for abstract space. Illusion. The theory resituates the truth of this space: its contradictorycharacter and dominant tendency to the homogeneous (the establishment of a dominated)." [472-3].

7.6 Every society has dominated space through violence, political ruse and labour. Today this takes place at theglobal scale as well as at the level of the implicated spaces ...

"Languages are spoken and written in a mental space-time which Reason tends to privilege metaphysically.They ennunciate poorly the social time, the spatial practice." [476] The words are lacking to explain ourspatiality.

7.7 The distinction between the infra and the supra the within (l'en-deçà) and the with-out (l'en-delà) is asimportant to the spatial realm as to that of politics. The critique of what happens within has no meaning except byreference to what exists "outside" as possibility [477].

The political status of space? "It politicizes that which calls for its depoliticization. Politicized spacedestroys its political conditions, because its management and appropriation refute, deny the State with itspolitical parties. They call for other forms of management (self-management) of territories,neighbourhoods etc. Space thus aggravates the inherent conflict in the political, and in the State as such. Itintroduced more strongly the anti-political in the poltical, which is to say, political critique which tendstowards the end of the political moment, towards its auto-destruction." [478]

7.8 The development of spatiality, the investment in the production of space is not a question of something to bedone along the way but a question of life or death. A socialism has demonstrated, the failure to establish a newspace results in a falling back into historical spatializations.

7.9 While the confrontations and contestations of space can all be derived from the struggle of the classes,spatial struggles cannot be reduced to class struggle: it is not as if it were a battle of borders separating a fieldcontaining the dominant classes and a field containing the dominated. Rather the demarcations of the struggle forspace traverses all domaines and sectors of knowledge, ideology, politics etc. Space is the uniting factor acrossapparently unrelated and disorganized revolts and struggles.

7.10The production of space is thus part of the project for a new society, with a new mode of production. Tosuccessfully oppose the abstraction of dominant space, however, this project must become concrete. The "spatial

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revolution" can thus only be conceived of through analogies with the great peasant and industrial revolutions.

7.11These proposals respond partly to the question of the relation of a theory of space to the revolutionarymovement such as it exists now. The key remains to refuse to take the term "space" trivially, without analysis, or toconfuse the space of social practice with the space of the goegraphers or economists ... Such spaces can only end byserving the interests and progression of domination whereby space becomes the "regulator" which resolves andmediates social contradictions. The foregoing theory thus contributes to the dissociation of the present social orderby revealing the contradictions at the heart of its prosperity. [482]

7.12In the service of revising the process of capitalist accumulation, the Soviet model of spatial managementprivileges central sites and enterprises while the others remain peripheral and are marginalised, becoming more andmore stagnant. The Chinese approach holds more hope: it involves the linking up of people with their local andnational space in the construction of a new society. This involves both a production in space of diverse goods and aproduction of an entire social space which is better and better appropriated. [483] This strategy which emphasizesthe periphery, even at the cost of a slowing down of development, leads inevitably to the transcendance of the urban-rural split through a mutual transformation of the two terms.

However, this would not necessarily be the most appropriate strategy for an industrialized country. "Atransformation of society presupposes the collective possession and management of space through theperpetual intervention of the "interested" with their multiple interests, diverse and even contradictory.Thus, confrontation. It is this which comes to light across the so-called "environmental" problems ..." [484]The orientation of this process which has already started is towards the transcendance of the separationsand dissociations of the oeuvre (object carrying the mark of a subject, the creator, artist etc.) and theproduct (repeated, reproduced). What is a stake, what must be done, at the limit, is to produce the space ofthe human species...to create a planetary space as a social support for a metamorphosized daily life, open tomultiple possibilities.This is "an orientation. Nothing more or less. It might be called a meaning or sense. [What is] To beknown: an organ [voice] who perceives, a direction which conceives itself, a living movement which makesits way towards the horizon. Nothing which resembles a system." [485]

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