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1/19

Everyday Life and the Challenge to History in Postwar France: Braudel, Lefebvre, CerteauAuthor(s): Derek SchillingSource: Diacritics, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Spring, 2003), pp. 23-40Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3805822

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2/19

EVERYDAY LIFE

AND

THE

CHALLENGE TO HISTORY IN

POSTWAR

FRANCE

BRAUDEL,

LEFEBVRE,

CERTEAU

DEREK

SCHILLING

The

everyday:

What is

most

difficult to discover. Far from a mere rhetorical

captatio,

these

words

of

caution with

which

Maurice

Blanchot

opens

his

1962

review

essay

on

the

work

of

Marxist

sociologist

Henri

Lefebvre

[ Everyday

Speech

12]

define a

con?

cept

whose

corrosive

power

erodes all schemes

of

thought.

Neither

subject

nor

object,

situated

in

a

prelogical

realm

on the other

side of

authenticity

and

inauthenticity,

the

everyday

points

for

Blanchot

less to the

real-world content

of

a

perceiving

conscious-

ness

than

to the

conditions

of

possibility

of

thought

itself.

If

the

everyday,

much like the

Heideggerian

One

(das Man)

with

which

it shares

an

ontic

priority,

strikes the

philoso-

pher

as a

concept

eminently

difficult to

discover,

it

is

precisely

because

at

each mo?

ment

of its

becoming

it

escapes

our

attempts

to

comprehend

it

[14].

Until

recently,

the

everyday

had

escaped

our

grasp

in a sense

quite

distinct from the

epistemological

one

Blanchot

had in

mind,

namely

as

an

object

of modern intellectual

history.

Surely,

in

France,

the

decades

following

the

Liberation

suffered no dearth of

writings

on

the

conjoined

themes

of

everydayness

and

everyday

life.

Lefebvre's

three-

volume

Critique

de la

vie

quotidienne (1947-81),

well known

in

communist

and leftist

circles,

took

root in

Marx's

category

of

alienation

and advocated

an increased knowl?

edge

of

present

living

conditions under

modernization;

from 1950

onward,

advocating

a

history

of

the

long

term

(longue

duree),

Fernand Braudel

investigated

the

rhythms

and

incipient

structures

of

everyday

life

characteristic of

the

preindustrial

world;

mili-

tants

of

the

Situationist

International

(1957-72)

called for

a streetwise revolution

in

everyday

life

to

disrupt

the

smooth

functioning

of

productivist society through

ludic

intervention and

the

unearthing

of

hidden

desire;

finally,

in

the wake of the failed revolt

of

May

1968,

anthropologists

of

culture such as Michel Maffesoli

(1979)

and

Michel

de

Certeau

(1980)

placed

their

research in

direct relation

to

the

quotidian,

the

first

empha-

sizing

the

ambiguity

of social

rites

against

the

rational

programming

of

daily

existence,

the

second

drawing

attention

to

the

inherent inventiveness of

the

everyday

in

order to

redress the

top-down

bias

of

Foucault's

critique

of

the

microtechnologies

of

power.

The

influence of

these

thinkers

aside,

intellectual

histories

covering

the

years

1945-81

in

France

paidscant

attention to the

everyday

as

a

category, privileging

instead

the

legacy

of

existential

phenomenology

on the one

hand and structuralism and

Lacanian

psycho-

analysis

on the

other.1

What

Francois

Dosse

coyly

referred to

as the chant du

signe

had

/

wish

to

thank the

participants

of

the

Stanford

University

French

Culture

Workshop for

their

comments on

a

draft

ofthis

paper

as well as

Michele H.

Richmanfor

her

guidance

and

insight.

1.

See,for

example,

Descombes,

Pavel,

and

Dosse,

History

of Structuralism.

Among

the

first

works

to

examine

the

confluence

of Lefebvre's

dialectical

critique of

everyday

life

and

the

late

Sartre was

Poster's

Existential

Marxism

[238-57].

diacritics /

spring

2003

diacritics

33.1:2340

23


3/19

enough

seductive

power

to

lure critics into

examining

the

discrete

components

of

signi-

fying

systems

while

neglecting

the contexts

within which

these

systems

evolved.2

It is a

commonplace

that

each

period

rewrites

intellectual

history

by projecting

its

own

preoccupations

onto

periods

past,

and the

present

cultural

turn

is no

exception

in

its

promotion

of the

everyday

as a

working

category.

Over

the

past

decade

and a

half,

in

an

effort

to

make

amends for

the abstractions of

French

theory, notably

for Baudrillard's

postmodernism of simulacra and simulation, British and North American scholars trained

in

sociology,

political

theory,

and

literature have made

significant

inroads toward con-

stituting

what

Michael Gardiner

has

called a clandestine

history

ofthe

everyday

[2].

Reasons

for

the

current

appeal

of

this

category

within critical

thought

are

many.

First

among

them is the

perception

ofthe

limits

of

language-based

paradigms?everyday

life

would seem

reassuringly

to

stand

on

the side

of

reality

and

praxis?and

the

concomitant

refusal

to

reduce

experience

to mediate

representations?everyday

life

would resist

trans-

lation

into

verbal

and visual

media,

so

many

techniques

that

come to

abolish,

as Blanchot

notes,

the

'nothing

happens'

ofthe

everyday

[18].

By

virtue of its

emphasis

on

ano-

nymity,

the

everyday

seems, second,

to allow

for a rehabilitation

of

ordinary

practices

while

precluding

the

wholesale reinstatement

of

anthropocentrism. Third,

one could

adduce

the

frustrations

generated

by

class-based

ideology

critique

and

by

macrostruc-

tural

explanations

of culture

that dismiss as iriessential

the

phenomenological

realm of

the

lived.

Thanks,

in

no

small

part,

to its semantic

breadth,

the

everyday

has

emerged

as

a

potential

substitute

for,

if

not an

improvement

on,

such

key

words as

culture,

prac?

tice,

experience,

totality,

and

modernity.

Questions

of

national

language

and intellectual

tradition

seem

paramount

in

ascer-

taining

how distinct

theories

of

everydayness

and

everyday

life took

shape

over

the

course

ofthe

twentieth

century. Early

work

by

Kaplan

and

Ross

(1987)

and

by Rigby

on

popular

culture

(1991)

[19-21,

33-37]

concentrated

on

specifically

French

investiga-

tions of

le

quotidien;

Ross's

understanding

of a

French

quotidian

(1997)

in

particular

springs

from

the

avant-garde

injunction

to

change

life

adapted by

the

Surrealists from

Rimbaud

and

Marx,

and

runs

through

Lefebvre's

left

politics

down

to

Certeau's

celebratory description

of

popular

tactics of resistance.

In their attention

to the liberat-

ing potential

of

daily

life,

French

theories would

remain distinct from

earlier,

German-

language

meditations on

Alltaglichkeit,

such as

Lukacs's

Metaphysics

ofTragedy

(1911)

and

Heidegger's Being

and

Time

(1926),

which

cast the

everyday

as

the

domain

of

inauthenticity,

triviality,

and

error. More

recently,

however,

challenging

these national

genealogies,

critics

like

Harry

Harootunian

have

traced

both

the

migration

of

concepts

of

everydayness

across

European

intellectual formations

(e.g.,

Lefebvre's

debt to

Heidegger

[109])

and their

genesis

under

modernity

outside

Europe,

as

in

the

Japan

of

the

1920s. Two further

studies,

by

Gardiner

(2000)

and

Highmore

(2002),

propose

broad

transnational

surveys

of theories

of

everyday

life,3

underscoring

the

extent

to

which

these

last

might

serve as a

rallying

point

for cultural

studies,

in

lieu of

standard socio-

logical

categories

but also of

nonstandard ones

put

into

use

by

critics from Adorno

to

Raymond

Williams.

2.

A

case

in

point

is Barthes

's

profession

in 1967's

The Fashion

System

ofhis

lack

ofinterest

in the

workings

of

the

fashion

industry infavor ofthe

semiological

system undergirding

the

writ-

ten

item

ofclothing.

One could

also mention A.-J.

Greimas,

who

brought

the same

analytic rigor

to the

semiotics

ofmunicipal

water

delivery

as to the

literary

text.

3.

Gardiner

examines,

in

succession,

the work

ofSimmel,

the

Surrealists,

Lefebvre,

Debord

and the

Situationists,

Certeau,

and

feminist

philosopher

Dorothy

Smith,

while

Highmore,

with

greater

attention

to

narrative

continuity,

treats

SimmeVs

impressionist

social

microscopy,

Surrealism's

questfor

the

marvelous,

Benjamin's

montages of

cultural

debris,

and the

British

Mass

Observation

movement,

before turning

in

hisflnal

chapters

to

Lefebvre

and

Certeau.

24


4/19

Highmore's

recent

plea

for a

cross-cultural

figuring

of

everyday

life

[175],

that

is,

for a

comprehensive

understanding

of the

differing

coordinates

of social

existence

under

modernity

in

a

global

frame

[175],

is no doubt a

welcome one.

Yet from the

standpoint

of

the

history

of

ideas,

a

transnational

approach

that

corrals

together

thinkers

with

highly

varied

agendas

and

research

methods,

not

to mention

vastly

disparate

local

geographies,

cannot

but

prompt

the

question

of the

conceptual

identity

of

the

everyday:

when is

a

theory properly

a

theory

of

everyday

life? It is

one

thing

to

extrapolate,

with

hindsight,

a

theory

of the

everyday

from works

that make

passing

reference

to themes

of

everydayness

(take

Highmore's generous reading

of Walter

Benjamin

[60-74]),

and

quite

another

to consider the

explicit

epistemological

articulation

given

to

the

everyday

as

a

strong

discursive

marker

by

figures

like Lefebvre or

Certeau,

who

do

not subsume

that

category

to

any

other.4

This

operative

difference

between the

passive

and

active,

between

the

implicit

and

explicit,

is

not

always sufficiently

underscored

by

commenta-

tors.

To the extent that

the

conceptual

identity

of the

everyday,

like

that

of

the

subject,

discourse,

or

ideology, might

interest

intellectual

historians,

it thus

seems reason?

able

to ask

what

precise

value

accrues,

in

a

given

writer's

oeuvre,

to the terms

everyday

life,

the

everyday,

or

everydayness

as

expressed

in the relevant national

language.

The

emergence

of the

everyday

as

a

specific

and

unsurpassable

horizon

for

thought,

as

Blanchot remarked in

his review

of Lefebvre

[13]

is itself

an event

to which one

might

wish

to

assign

inner

and

outer

limits,

without

neglecting

the

structuring

role of

national and

institutional

context.

In

what

follows

I

want

to focus on

the

ways

in which three

prominent

French

intel-

lectuals

writing

after

1945 chose to

describe

the limits of the

possible

under

the

aegis

of

everyday

life.

The

first,

Annales historian Fernand

Braudel,

has

been

cast

as

margin-

ally

relevant

to

this

nascent

intellectual

tradition

[Kaplan

and Ross

3],

rooted

for

many

in

themes

of

contestation and

revolt;

the

second

two,

Lefebvre

and

Certeau,

are

by

all

accounts central to it.51

would

like

to

contest the

assumption,

made

by

Ross

among

others,

that

the

everyday

is in

some

inherent

way

Surrealist,

rather than

social-scien-

tific,

in

its

derivation. It is

to

my

mind the

wide-reaching

institutional

realization

of

the

potential

of

interdisciplinarity

for the

human

sciences

(sciences

de

Vhomme),

coupled

with

the

rapid pace

of

modernization

in

the late 1950s

and 1960s

(including

the mod-

ernization

of the

social sciences

themselves),

that will

push

the

concept

of

the

everyday

from the

periphery

toward

the center of

intellectual

debate.

My

intent

here,

in

historicizing

the

concept

with a

French

context,

is

to

respond

to a malaise

created

by

the somewhat

forcible unification of

distinct

idioms under

the common

banner of

everyday

life

stud?

ies.

Not that

I wish

to

claim

that

everyday

life is a

particularly

French

affair,

any

more

so

than it

is German

or

Japanese.

Rather,

it strikes

me that the evolution

of

distinct

approaches

within a

given

national idiom can best

be understood

through

the

produc-

tive

tensions and

echoes that

these

approaches present

amongst

themselves

and in rela-

tion to

local histories. In

postwar

France,

concepts

of

everyday

life are

polemologically

constituted

and,

as

contingent

categories,

entertain

a dialectical relation

to

the

evolving

conditions

of

their

intellectual

production.

It

is

perhaps

no

accident that

both Braudel

(1902-85)

and

Lefebvre

(1901-91)

di-

rected

their attention

to the

everyday following

the

Liberation,

a

period

during

which

the

return

to

a

demilitarized

French

state,

to

adequate

foodstuffs

and

supplies?to

ev-

4. It is

revealing

that

Highmore,

in his

presentation

of

a

study

that

might

well have been

called

The

Everyday:

The

Adventures of a

Concept

from Simmel to Certeau

[18],

admits that not

until

his two

final

chapters

on

Lefebvre

and

Certeau

does

something

like 'the

everyday'

as a

specific

problematic

emerge

[32].

5.

For

two

comprehensive

commentaries,

see

Shields

and Buchanan.

diacritics /

spring

2003

25


5/19

erydayness,

in

a

word?was on

everyone's

mind.6 For

Certeau

(1925-86),

writing

a

generation

later,

it

was

in

part

the

failures

of

May

'68

that

brought

him

to conceive

the

everyday

as

the

locus of a voluntaristic neohumanism.

The

growing

conviction

that

systems

of

thought

can

only produce

orthodoxy

and

that

the

forces

of

recuperation

would

always

win out

against

those of

revolt,

pointed

to

the

importance

of

restoring

faith

in

the

ability

of

common men

and women

to resist.

With these contexts

in

mind,

I

would

like to address those discipline-specific questions that prompted

a turn

to

the

everyday

as a

category

and field of

inquiry, opening

up

onto

an

often

radical

style

of

interdisciplinarity

whose

repercussions

are

fully

in

force

today.

Material

Life

and the

Structures

ofthe Everyday:

Fernand

Braudel

French

historiography

ofthe

postwar

was marked

by

the

rich

inheritance

of Marc Bloch

and

Lucien

Febvre,

who

by

founding

the

journal

Annales

d'histoire

economique

etsociale

in

1929

had made a

decisive break

with the

nineteenth-century

philosophy

of

history

and

its

cumbersome

narrative

teleology. Spurred

on

by

Simiand's

devastating

1903

cri-

tique

of

historical

philology

and

his

call for

a unified

scientific

method based

on

recur-

rent

social

facts,

Bloch and

Febvre

had

questioned

the

centrality

of

the

political

by

diminishing

the

explanatory weight

lent

to actors

and events

within

traditional

narrative

accounts.7 No

longer

confined to the

disruptive,

crisis-ridden

time of

decision,

the

historian's

object

now

extended to

deep

transformations

affecting

social

structure,

mar-

ket

relations,

and

human

geography. Clearly

at

odds

with the

often

impressionistic

works

in the

Parisian

publishing

house

Hachette's

series La vie

quotidienne,

this innovative

work

in

socioeconomic

history

and

mentalites

prepared

the terrain for

the

anthropologi-

cally

aware,

and

statistically

grounded, analysis

of

daily

life

that

Fernand

Braudel

would

undertake at the turn

ofthe 1950s.

Appointed

head

ofthe

newly

formed Sixth Section

ofthe

Ecole

Pratique

des Hautes

Etudes in

1947,

Braudel succeeded Febvre both at

the

College

de

France and

in the

editorship

ofAnnales.

Under his

sway,

historiography

entered

its

storied

quantitative

mode,

favoring

the

accumulation and

statistical treatment

of data

covering imposingly

large

swaths of

time. Causal

explanations

and intellectual

history

fell into

disfavor,

while

cherished

periods

of the national

past

were abandoned

to

more

ideologically

in-

clined

practitioners

ofthe

discipline.

The rift between

narrative

historiography

and

sci?

entific

history

would

only deepen

with the

Annales' renewed

commitment

to collabora-

tive

research that took

cues from

geography,

demography,

and structural

anthropology.

In his

1950

inaugural

lecture at the

College

de

France,

Braudel

called for

a

reinvention

of the

historian's craft: the

fragile

art of

writing history

must measure

up

to the frac-

tured

state

ofthe realities it

treats,

he

argued

[On

History

6].

Freed from

the

idolatry

of

actors

and the

primacy

of

events

(and

reluctant,

no

doubt,

to

address

contemporary

ones),

the historian

takes as his

object

intermeshed

social

realities

m and

for

them-

selves,

beginning

with all the

major

forms

of collective

life

[11].

Between the

immu-

table

confines

of

geography

on the

one

hand and the

ephemeral

event on

the

other,

he

aims

to

rediscover,

beyond

all the

details,

life itself

[16].

As

Braudel

explained

in the

6.

Braudel

had

been

heldprisoner

ofwarfrom

1940 until

the end

ofhostilities,

while

Lefebvre,

removed

from

his

teaching

post

in

Toulouse

by

Occupation officials,

endured

financial

hardship

during

wartime,

although

he

managed

to

serve

as

a

Resistance

organizer

in

the

Forces

francaises

de Vinterieur

[Shields

26-27].

7.

On

the

epistemological

revolution

ofthe

Annales,

see

Dosse,

New

History,

andBourde

and Martin

[171-99].

ReveTs overview

of

postwar

French

historiography

is

particularly

lucid

[Revel

and Hunt

1-63].

26


6/19

landmark

1958

paper,

History

and the Social

Sciences,

these

facts were not

to be

confused with the

short time

span

(le

temps

couri),

a

time

linked to

individuals,

to

daily

life,

to our

illusions,

to our

hasty

awareness

[prises

de

conscience]?abovQ

all the

time

of the

chronicler

and the

journalist

[28].

Less uncertain

and

more

revealing

by

far

was

the

long

term

(longue

duree),

those

biological, geographical,

economic,

and mental

continuities that

formed an

historical infrastructure

[33]

constraining

what

it was

pos-

sible

to do or to

think.

Everyday

life

for Braudel

would

point

not

then to

inessential,

fleeting

realities,

but

to the

conditions

of the

possible

conceived

in a

global

frame.

In

Civilisation

materielle,

economie et

capitalisme,

the

three-volume work

that

Febvre

commissioned

him to write

in

1952,

he

couples

the

notions

of

the

everyday

and

historical

structure

(les

structures

du

quotidien).

Braudel's

argument

turns

on a

well-known

dilemma of the economic

historian,

for whom

there exist

not

one,

but

several

economies,

each

possessed

of

distinct

laws:

The one

most

frequently

written about is the so-called

market

economy,

in

other

words the

mechanisms

of production

and

exchange

linked to

rural ac-

tivities,

to

small

shops

and

workshops,

to

banks,

exchange s,fairs

and

(ofcourse)

markets.

It

was

on these

transparent

visible

realities,

and on the

easily

ob-

served

processes

that

took

place

within them that the

language

of

economic

science

was

originally founded.

And as a result

it

was

from

the start

confined

within

thisprivileged

arena

/spectacle privilegie/,

to

the

exclusion

ofany

oth-

ers.

[Structures

23]

Braudel takes

issue here

with

the

economic

history

of the

interwar

period,

focused on

those

visible

institutions that had left

a written

record behind

them. But

price

curves

and

wage

cycles

do

not tell

the

whole

story. Turning away

from

the

privileged

arena

of

production

and

exchange,

Braudel

enjoins

his

apprentices

to

explore

those

regions

about

which

the archive

is

silent:

But

there is

another,

shadowy

zone,

often

hard to

see

for

lack

of adequate

historical

documents,

lying

underneath the market

economy:

this is that el-

ementary

basic

activity

which went

on

everywhere

and

the volume

of

which

is

truly

fantastic.

This rich

zone,

like

a

layer

covering

the

earth,

I

have called

it

for

want

of

a

better

expression

material

life

or material

civilization.

[23]

Material

life,

synonymous

in

Braudel's

usage

with

everyday

life,

thus

forms a

pri-

mary,

infra-economic

level

of historical

inquiry.

Yet,

if

one

accepts

that

everyday

life

is

everywhere

run

according

to routine

[28],

how

is

one

to

determine

its

composition?

Demography,

responds

Braudel,

is

paramount,

for

only

in

light

of vast

movements such

as

epidemics,

migrations,

and

conquests

can the historian

properly

evaluate

the limits

of the

possible.

Historical

analysis

of the

everyday

must

then coordinate

the

durability

of the

long

term with the

minute

ffuctuations of low-level

occurrences:

Everyday

life

consists

of the little

things

one

hardly

notices

in time and

space.

The

more we reduce

the

focus

of

vision,

the

more

likely

we

are

to

find

ourselves

in the environment

of material

life

[29].

This

change

in

scale

gives

life

to

objects

not

previously

admitted into the

historian's

workshop,

such

as

foodstuffs,

drink, manners,

lodging,

and

clothing.

But

Braudel's

study

also will showcase

objects

outside of the domestic and

private

spheres,

from

energy

sources and

currency systems

to

modes

of

transport.

It is

worth

underscoring

the insistence

with

which the

author

of The

Structures

of

Everyday

Life

opposes

actor-centered

conceptions

of

history

in his

exploration

of

mate-

diacritics

/

spring

2003

27


7/19

The

Cleansing

She

seeks the

Way

down

many

paths.


8/19

rial life.

While it

may

be of interest to know

that Maxmilian

of

Austria sullied

his

fin-

gers

at

table,

whereas

Louis XIV

required

the

use

ofthe

fork,

historians

would do

them-

selves a

gross

disservice were

they

to make of

everyday

life a cult

of

singularity.

In and

of

itself,

literary

anecdote

is

void of

meaning,

for the

key

to

unlocking

the secrets

of

material

life is not the

singularity

of

practices,

but

their

longevity:

This is the dust of history, micro-history in the same sense that Georges Gurvitch

talks

about

micro-sociology:

little

facts

which

do,

it

is

true,

by

indefinite rep-

etition,

add

up

toform

linked chains. Each

ofthem

represents

the thousands

of

others that have

crossed the silent

depths

oftime

and

endured.

[560]

The

historian's

objective

is then to collect and

classify

data,

to

relate

these

data series

one to

another,

and

to

replace

them

within a broad

historical

framework.

Fragmentary

realities link

up

so

as to form

relatively

immutable structures

which

may encompass

several

centuries

[see

the case

of

daily

bread

104-82].

In

denouncing

the

myopia

of

event-based

history,

Braudel

points

to a second

rhythm

by

which the

stuff of

history

unfolds

in

slow

motion,

at

times even

at

the

limit

of

movement

[54].

Human

interven-

tion and

historical consciousness lose

in

importance

while

geographic

and

climatologi-

cal constraints

affecting

human

survival come

to the fore.

No

less

central

than statistics to

his

enterprise

in

Civilisation

materielle

is Braudel's

descriptive

anthropology. Only

against images

of

ordinary

life that allow

us to

perceive

class,

age,

and

regional

differences do data series?however

patiently

constructed?

become readable as

such.

Through

little

details,

travelers'

notes,

a

society

stands

re-

vealed. The

ways

people

eat,

dress,

or

lodge,

at the different

levels

of that

society,

are

never a

matter of indifference. These

snapshots

taken

by

the

historian

from

literary,

artistic,

and

other sources

point

up among

societies

contrasts

and

disparities

[.

.

.]

which are

not

all

superficial [29].

Refuting

both the actor-centered narrative of event-based

history

and

the

synthetic,

class-based

approach

taken

by

Marxist

historians,

the

research

on

the

infra-economy

espoused by

Braudel

brings

with it not

only

an

important

shift in

perspective

from event

to

structure;

it

would in his

estimation

bring everyday

life

no

more no

less,

into

the

domain of

history

[29].

This

move

away

from the

market entails

a return

to the rural.

Indeed,

everyday

life

in

Braudel's

sense

will

designate

above all

a

set

of

socioeconomic

practices

which,

deeply

entrenched

in

the

countryside,

have survived

the

upheavals

of

religious

wars,

monarchic

centralization,

and revolutions

both

political

and industrial.

That the

everyday,

the

routine,

the

unconscious

daily

round

[562]

is

by

Braudel's

definition

a

relatively unchanging object

linked

to

the

long

term

explains

to a

great

extent his

own reluctance to delve into the archives

of

industrial

and

postindustrial

Europe.

For it is not

simply

the

allure of

the unknown

which

attracts

him

to

the

preindustrial

era's

rural

base;

more

importantly,

that

period

presents

a felicitous

test

case

for

modeling

the

long

term itself. The

perceived

immobility

of the

everyday

thus

derives from the

viewpoint

the historian has

chosen

as his own.

It

seems

unlikely?

Braudel's claims

that

reality

is

one and

the same to

the

contrary?that

Civilisation

materielle

could serve as a

model for

knowledge

of

the

everyday

in

its

postwar

guise.

Described

as a

layer

of

stagnant history

[28]

ensconced

in the

rhythms

of centuries

past,

the

everyday points

not

only

to the

particulars

of

material

life that

limit

the

spread

of

civilization,

but to

representations

of lived

experience

that enable

the

analyst

to

cap-

ture

something

of the

past's

anthropological

depth.

However

innovative

this brand

of

new

history appeared

at its

inception,

its

emphasis

on

the

immobility

of the rural

stood

curiously

out

of

phase

with

the

rapid

modernization

of

France

during

what Jean

Fourastie

called the

trente

glorieuses

(1945-75).

Indeed,

the discontinuities

introduced

diacritics /

spring

2003

29


9/19

in

those

years

affecting

communications,

transport,

and the division

between work and

leisure seem

strangely foreign

to

the

congealed

realities

of which

Braudel

spoke.

His

history

of

everyday

life was

perhaps

also

the

archeology

of an

everyday

lost.

Modernization

and

Mystification:

Henri

Lefebvre's Critique

of

Everyday

Life

Contrary

to

popular

anecdote,

the

concept

of the

everyday

that

was to

undergird

Lefebvre's

Critique of

Everyday

Life

(1947-81)

did

not

simply

jump

from a box of

detergent

into the

philosopher's

lap.

If this

gross

domestic

revelation

recounted

in Le

temps

des

meprises

[34]

speaks

to

the

relationship

between

the lived

and the conceived

in

Lefebvre's

daily

practice

of

philosophy,

it

says

little of the

rigorous

dialectical method

which

the

Marxist

thinker

brought

to bear on the

concept throughout

his

long,

and unde-

niably productive,

career.8 The

roots

of

the

critique

of

everyday

life

can

be

traced

to

the

1930s,

when

Lefebvre

and

Norbert Guterman

translated

for

the French

public

selec-

tions from

Hegel,

Lenin,

and the

young

Marx.9

Extrapolating

from this

material

in

their

1936

book,

La

conscience

mystifiee, they explored

how the

failure of consciousness

to

synthesize

the

contents

of

material

reality

leads to a

state of

alienation,

exemplified

by

the

turn towards

religion,

mysticism,

and

ideology.

Thought

could

supersede

its failures

to

comprehend

experience

only

on

the condition

that it

posit

the fundamental

unity

of

reality

and

consciousness,

the individual and the social.

Lefebvre's

program

of

Hegelian

Marxism thus

set as its

primitive

goal

the disalienated

individual

or total

man,

an idea

sketched

out

in

Marx's

1844

Economic

and

Philosophical

Manuscripts.

What charac-

terizes

Lefebvre's

approach

to the

quotidian

is

an

unwavering

commitment

to dialectics

and

the

need to think the

totality,

and because

the

everyday

is

a dialectical

concept,

it

requires

the

perpetual realignment

of

thought

in relation to sociohistorical

reality.

Whence

the

complicated

publication

history

of

Critique

de la vie

quotidienne,

a book Lefebvre

considered

without

beginning

or end

[Blanchot,

L'homme

1070].10

What accounts

for the

critical

potential

that Lefebvre

perceives

in

everyday

life?

Pace the

historians,

the

everyday

cannot

be

equated

with

a sum of

measurable,

empiri?

cal

realities,

however wide in

scope;

nor

can it be conceived

as

an invariant

concept

or

apriori.

In the

expression critique

de la

vie

quotidienne,

the

genitive

allows

for not

one,

but two

critiques,

each

distinct in its

derivation

and effects.

The

first,

indirect

critique

originates

in the

early

moments

of Occidental

philosophy

in

fifth-century

BCE Athens.

Human

activities deemed

superior,

such as

dreaming,

art,

and

theology,

relentlessly

depreciate

the

everyday, accommodating only

those

transcendent

values

in which hu-

mans

encounter

their

essential

being.

In

order to

achieve

purity, thought

places

itself

apart

from the

here and now

by

means of an

epoche.

At this

stage,

argues

Lefebvre,

everyday

life is an

invisible

residue,

devoid of

truth and

beyond

the

grasp

of

thought

and

language.

Yet it is

precisely

the

specialized

workings

of

the

spirit

that

provoke,

8. For

a

comprehensive

bibliography

including

works

in

English,

see

Shields

[190-204].

9. On

Lefebvre

's

early

years

(the

Revue

marxiste and the

Philosophies

group),

see Burkhard.

The

first

article to invoke the

idea

of

a

critique

of

everyday life

was

Lefebvre

and Guterman's

1933 La

mystification:

Notes

pour

une

critique

de la vie

quotidienne,

published

in L'Avant-

poste.

10.

Volume one

of

Critique

de

la

vie

quotidienne,

released

in

1947

by

Grasset to limited

acclaim,

was reedited in 1958

by

LArche with a

long

introduction

by

Lefebvre;

a second

volume,

informed

by cybernetics,

linguistics,

and

rhythmanalysis,

followed

in 1962.

Lefebvre

met with

renewedpopularity

in

1967 with the

Gallimard

essay

La vie

quotidienne

dans

le

monde moderne.

A

third and

final

volume

of

Critique

de la vie

quotidienne,

De la modernite

au

modernisme,

appeared

in 1981 with

LArche.

30


10/19

through

dialectical

reversal,

a

second definition

of

everyday

life. When one

subtracts

from

the

totality

of

human

experience

those abstract

activities

that seek

transcendence

(religion,

philosophy,

art),

a

kind of

enormous,

shapeless,

ill-defined

mass

remains

[CVQ

1

252].

If

one measures

the

cumulative effects of

abstraction

against

the

sheer

volume

of this

multiform,

neglected

human raw

material

(matiere

humaine),

the situ-

ation

inverts itself:

The

day

dawns when

everyday

life also

emerges

as a

critique,

a

critique

of the

superior

activities

in

question (and

of what

they produce: ideologies).

The

devaluation of

everyday

life

by

ideologies

appears

as

one-sided

and

partial,

in

both

senses of the

word.

A

direct

critique

takes

the

place

of

indirect

criticism;

and

this direct

critique

involves a

rehabilitation of

everyday

life,

shedding

new

light

on

its

positive

content

[87].

From

this

point

on,

the existence

of

a

signifying

residue

adduces

not

the

inauthenticity

of

everyday

life

but

the

inability

of

specialized

disciplines

to account

for

human

existence

in its

totality.

This

second,

negative

critique

has

important

episte?

mological

consequences,

for the

apparently

inauthentic

remainder

is

given

to

appear

as

the

common denominator

which alone

unites all forms

of intellection.

In

other

words,

the

parcellary

sciences

rely

in fact

on

a

reality

which

they

reject

in

principle;

each

denies

the foundations of its

legitimacy.

The

materialist dialectician will

avenge

the

systematic

devalorization

of

the

quo-

tidian

by

turning

residual

human raw

material

into his

privileged

object.

Lefebvre's

notion of

matiere humaine

has little

to

do

with the

everyday

life

of historians.

If he

takes

French

historians

to

task

for

embellishing

their

explanations

with

painstakingly

detailed

and often

repellently

trivial

descriptions

of

everyday

life at

a

given

period,

it

is

because

these

descriptions

have no relation

whatsoever

with the idea

we

are

likely

to

develop

of

a

knowledge

of

everyday

life.

They only appear

to do

so;

and

they

are

merely

a mask

for whimsical

interpretations

of

history

[133].

Descriptive

realism

proves

little,

save the

belle-lettristic

skill

of the

stylist.

But no more could

the stakes of

the

everyday

lie in the

tidy ordering

of

the

past

through

data collection:

such reconstructions

serve

only

to obfuscate the true

objective

of

thought,

that

is,

in

Lefebvre's

view,

to

analyze

the

breadth and

magnificence

of

the

present

possibilities

which

are

opening

out

for

man

[229]

in

view of

a

far-reaching

transformation

of the

social

world.

Lefebvre's

rejection

of

empiricism

in

favor

of

dialectics

brings

with

it the convic-

tion that

historical

realities

are

bound

up

in

the

perceiving

consciousness

of

individuals.

On

the

one

hand,

the

everyday

designates

the most

alienating aspects

of life:

the

repeti-

tive

nature of

work

and

the

fatigue

that

results from

it,

the

burdens of

commuting

and

housework,

ideological

and sexual

oppression

in

private

and

in

public.

But the

every?

day

also

harbors

the

utopian

idea that

collective

praxis

can transform

relations

in a

lasting

fashion. The fact

remains,

laments

Lefebvre,

that most

inhabitants

ofthe

modern

age

''do

not know their

own lives

very

well,

or know

them

inadequately

[94].

The thrust

of his

Critique

is thus

perhaps

best

encapsulated

by Hegel's

dictum on

the

becoming

of

consciousness:

Was

ist

bekannt ist nicht

erkannt

( The

familiar

is not

necessarily

the

known )

[qtd.

in

Lefebvre

132].

This

error

underwrites

Lefebvre's

plea

to

recognize

the

everyday

as a reservoir

full

of human

content,

to

demystify

the social

mystery

[224]

of the

everyday,

and to

adapt sociological

analysis

so

as

to

allow for

the elucidation of

apparently

mundane

facts. Yet

it

is

never

enough

merely

to describe

individual

prac?

tices,

such

as the

weekly purchase

of

sugar

at a

dry

goods

shop

or

the

reading

of

women's

magazines;

more

important

is

the task

of

teasing

out

the

social

contradictions

these

ordinary

practices bring

to bear. This second

charge

is

made

difficult

by

the

media,

which

gloss

over social divisions and reduce

everyday

life to an individual

quest

for

material

well-being.

Only

a lucid

understanding

of

individual

situations

in

relation to

the social

totality

can

combat this

debilitating

form of

modern

collective

amnesia.

diacritics

/

spring

2003

31


11/19

In

spite

of its

marxian

roots,

Lefebvre's

program

for

a

transformed,

disalienated

everyday

sets itself

apart

from traditional

revolutionary politics.

The heterodox

Marxist

takes it

upon

himself

lucidly

to recreate

everyday

life

[227]

outside

of

rigid

party

hierarchies and

free from the strictures

of

revolutionary

discipline.

Conceived as

an

open,

evolving

humanism,

Lefebvre's

project

is a collective

one,

to

be realized in the

field

through

interviews and

dialogues.

Asking

simple

questions

about

life as it is lived

is

an

indispensable step in increasing collective awareness of

the causes of alienation

in

everyday

life: of

the

observed,

the

sociologist

must make

self-critical observers. At

the

end of

the

day,

Lefebvre

would

fix his

hopes

not on

the

coming

of

a classless

society,

but

rather?and

this is

perhaps

an even more ambitious

project?on

the transforma-

tion of

life in its

smallest,

most

everyday

detail

[226].

Man

must be

everyday,

or

he

will

not

be at

all

[127],

he

proclaims,

echoing

the

Surrealists

whom he lambasts for

subordinating

praxis

to

onirism,

the real

to

the unreal.

Indeed,

Aragon's

marvelous

quotidian

and

Breton's

found

objects

stumbled across

during

the

vagaries

of a

night-

time walk

hold

only

false

promises.

Modern

man cannot

content

himself with such

cheap

and

contaminated

substitute(s)

for

mystery

[122].

Against

such

hopes

of

meta-

physical transcendence,

he must

accept

the

workaday

world

as the sole locus of durable

transformation.

Following

Marx's

injunction

from the

Theses

on

Feuerbach,

he

must

move

from

interpretation

to

action,

seeking

out conditions

in

which total

man can live

out the

collective human

drama to the fullest.

The

combative

rhetoric of Lefebvre's

first

Critique

owes

much to

Lenin and

to

the

Lukacs of

History

and

Class

Consciousness,

not to

mention

the

optimism

that infused

French

Communist

milieus

after

the Liberation. For

all

its

militancy

however,

Critique

de

la vie

quotidienne

is

also

the

work of

a

practicing

sociologist

who

foresees

the need

for vast

field

studies:

A

trivial

day

in

our lives?what do

we make of it?

[196]

This

pivotal

question

only points

to others: Where should

one seek

out

everyday

life? How

might

it

best

be

observed?

If

empirical

study

of

the

everyday

is

problematic,

it

is

be?

cause

the

everyday

resides for Lefebvre in neither

work,

leisure,

nor

private

life,

but

in

the

totality

of social

interactions.

It remains the case

that some

groups

experience

the

constraints

of

everydayness

at

higher

cost than do others:

alienation

is

greater

for women

and

for the

working

class

than for the

bourgeois

male,

who

is able to

make

room

for

self-cultivation and to

escape

from routine

productive

activity.

In advanced industrial

society,

everydayness

is

thus

quasi-synonymous

with

assembly-line

work,

substandard

living

accommodations,

and

the

obligatory

use of

public

transport.

And here lies the

key

intuition

that

separates

Lefebvre from historians of

Braudel's

stamp:

it is

useless,

he

argues,

to look to the

countryside

for

a

model

of

everyday

life.

In

the

1950s,

the

legend-

ary styles

of life

whose

diversity

had

seduced

observers of

rural

society

into a

collect-

ing frenzy

had

begun

to

collapse

under the

weight

of

a

model

of

everydayness

based on

the life

of

city

dwellers.

In

the

second volume

of

the

Critique,

1962's

Fondements

d'une

sociologie

de

la

quotidiennete,

the

effects

of

the

economic

boom

in France

are

everywhere apparent.

To

be

sure,

the

widespread misery

of the immediate

postwar

has

not

altogether disappeared,

notes

Lefebvre;

the

everyday

has not been

absorbed

by

culture,

history,

politics,

or

technology.

It

is rather the

orientation

of the

concept

which

has

changed

with standard-

ization,

planned

obsolescence,

and the

progressive

erasure

of

class differences

through

the

creation

of

factitious

needs. As

fewer and fewer workers

need

concern themselves

with

the

struggle

for

daily

bread,

they

too

begin

to

voice their

rights

to material

enjoy-

ment of

capitalism's gains.

Modernization of

everyday

life

only

exacerbates the

waning

of local

particularisms

that

once

gave popular

urban

districts

of

France their ethno-

graphic

depth:

Our

everyday

life,

writes

Lefebvre,

no

longer

has

any style

[CVQ

2

321;

trans.

modified].

The

new towns

of

government

tract

housing

or

grands

ensembles

32


12/19

present

a limit case in

this

tendency

toward

homogeneity,

for

such inventions conceived

on

the

architect's

drawing

board and built

to

standard

specifications

rob the

community

of its

basic

spontaneity

[78].

If

between

the wars

Le

Corbusier

praised

the serial

poetry

of

these

machines

for

living,

Lefebvre

sees in them

a

class

conspiracy

which

aims

to

reprivatize

existence

by reducing

it to

the

merely

functional. To combat

the

reduction ofthe

lived

to

the

conceived,

he maintains

that

the

everyday

must

every-

where

be

apprehended

as a

total human

phenomenon [96],

a collective work

(ceuvre)

whose

dynamics

are

foreign

to the

logic

ofthe

assembly-line

product

(produit).

The time that

transpired

between first

(1947)

and

second

(1962)

volumes of Cri?

tique

of

Everyday

Life

was

characterized

by

an

unprecedented

degree

of

top-down

inter-

vention

in the lived

environment.

Whereas

Lefebvre's

Critique

of

the

immediate

post-

war

was wedded

to

working-class

liberation and consciousness

raising,

it would

present

itself

in the

1960s as

a

tactic,

following

Clausewitz's

distinction,

a

set

of

ruses

or

feints

placed

in

opposition

to

strategies

of

state control

[CVQ

2

135].

Changes wrought

in

France

by

technical

progress

were such

that for the author

of

Everyday

Life

in

the

Modern

World

(1967),

even the

most resourceful of

citizens

has

difficulty

in

finding

a

space

for

practice

not

yet

formalized

expressly by neocapitalist rationality.

All

that

ap-

pears

to remain of

the

quotidian

is

the

objective

side

of

the

conceptual

coin:

In the

modern

world

everyday

life

(le

quotidien)

has ceased to

be a

'subject'

rich

in

potential

subjectivity;

it

has

become

an

'object'

of social

organization

[EL 59-60].

Monopoly

capitalism,

no less

so than

socialist

bureaucracy,

forcibly programs

the

everyday

by

parceling

it

out

into

rationally

managed

subsystems.

The

productivist/consumerist

logic

governing

these

subsystems

creates

a closed

loop

that

imprisons

the

everyday;

use

val-

ues

are

endlessly

converted into

exchange

values,

works

into

products.

In this

ideologi-

cal

landscape,

Marxist humanism

loses its traditional

ally,

the

working

class.

Waning

in

number

and

in

political

force,

the

latter

withdraws

from

its

fabled historical mission

qua

revolutionary proletariat

and

mimics the middle

class,

which

itself lives

off

the

crumbs

ofthe

rich

[93;

trans.

mod.].

Only

a naive

populist,

admits

Lefebvre,

could

any longer

expect

the

study

of

working-class

milieus to withhold

some

hidden

truth

of

everyday

life.

As

the

world

continues its ineluctable march toward

the

perfection

of

the

system,

even

revolutionary praxis

comes to resemble

programming

put together by

some

punc-

tilious

bureaucrat:

the

revolution

betrayed

our

hopes

and

became

part

of

everyday

life

(quotidiennete),

an

institution,

a

bureaucracy

[37].

It would

seem

indeed,

on

both

sides

ofthe

Iron

Curtain,

that

managers

and administrators

had taken

careful note of Lefebvre's

theories,

precisely

so as to refashion

the

everyday

as

a

space

of total domination:

Ev?

eryday

life,

he

writes,

is no

longer

the

dispossessed,

the

common

ground

of

special-

ized

activities,

the

no-man's-land

[113].

It

now

lay

at the

very

forefront

of

political

discourse and

became the

target

of a

neocolonization

that Lefebvre considers

a com-

pensatory

formation

to colonial

troubles at

the turn

of

the 1960s.

Yet

if

collusion

be?

tween

state

and

private

interests

had

vanquished

daily

life

in

France as

it

was

lived,

it

did

not

entail

the

defeat of the

everyday

as

a

transformative

concept.

In

fact,

Lefebvre

considers

conditions all the

more

ripe

for

change

for

the

fact

that

new

living

conditions

and

labor

rhythms

engender

undeniable

feelings

of boredom.

To

escape

the

monotony

of

modern

society,

says

Lefebvre,

one must

bring

about

the

conquest

of

the

everyday

through

a

series of

actions?investments, assaults,

transformations

[73;

trans.

mod.].

The

everyday

becomes a

springboard

for collective

revolt

and

a

touchstone

for

rights

to

sexual

appropriation,

a

right

to

the

city

(le

droit

a

la

ville),

and

a

right

to

urban festival.

This

program

may

no

longer

aim at total

man,

but

by regenerating

styles

of life it

does

intend to

prevent

the inhabitant

of directed

consumer

society

from

becoming

homo

quotidianus

tout

court.

diacritics /

spring

2003

33


13/19

May

1968

marks both a

culmination

and a

turning point

in Lefebvre's

Critique.

In

Uirruption

de

Nanterre au

sommet

(1968),

he

would

describe those

five

historic

weeks

as

a

suspension

of the

everyday,

only

to note

that the breach in

state

power opened

by

the

student-worker revolt was

all

too

quick

to

mend.

The

Mouvement

de Mai

degen-

erated

into a

game

of sectarian

politics

before it could

secure

many lasting

gains;

in-

stead

of

changing

everyday

life,

student leaders had

thought only

of

changing power,

playing into the hands of the advanced industrial state. Transforming the everyday

requires

certain

conditions.

A

break with the

everyday by

means of

festival?violent or

peaceful?cannot

endure,

wrote Lefebvre on the effects of

recuperation

[ The

Every?

day

11].

And

it

is

precisely

the

uncanny adaptability

of

the

capitalist

system

that would

mark

the

evolution of

the

concept

during

the

1970s,

summarized

in the third

volume

of

Critique

de la vie

quotidienne,

De

la modernite au modernisme

(1981).

Increased

ho-

mogenization,

the

fragmentation

of

time,

space,

and

work,

and the

emergence

of strict

functional

hierarchies

continue

to

impoverish

the

everyday

at the

end

of

the trente

glorieuses.

No

longer, argues

Lefebvre,

does

daily

life contain hidden

riches

[19]

under its

apparent poverty;

no

longer

does

it

present

itself as the

point

of

departure

for

action

[22].

The

everyday

is

indeed

nothing more, nothing

less than a

norm associated

with

middle-class

living.

This

emergence

of a normative

everyday

existence

has insidi-

ous

effects

on

civic

action,

for

just

as

private companies promote

consumer

identity

at

the

expense

of

citizenship,

so too the state

replaces

the citizen

with the

user,

a

figure

emptied

of

political

content

[80].

Yet,

remarks

Lefebvre,

the state's hold

upon

the

social

body

is all the more

fragile

for the fact that it

only conveys

itself

to

the citizens

in and

by

its

intervention

in

the

everyday.

The colonization of

the

everyday begun

in the

1960s

has

been

so effective that the

French

state,

which

formerly

took

the

forces

of

production

as

its

base,

now

finds that

base in

the

everyday

itself.

Most

citizens,

oblivious

to this

fact,

continue to believe

nai'vely

in the

monumental

ideals and

symbols

of state

power

placed

above

their

heads

[123].

Lefebvre's criticism is

that if the state

is able

fully

to

dominate the

everyday,

it is in

large

part

because users

let themselves

be dominated

within

it,

accepting

with

the

gratitude

of

good

citizens those

small

perks

given

to

them.

Would not the true

sign

of the

end of

ideology,

and

perhaps

also

the

end

of

history,

come from

the fact that the

everyday

is the

only thing

left that counts?

Given

Lefebvre's

1981

diagnosis

of

French

modernization,

it is

hardly surprising

that he

again

reconsid-

ered the

value

of

his

philosophical

critique,

this time

by comparing

the

plight

of

the

quotidian

to the

return

of

tragic

sentiment:

Nothing

dies in the

everyday.

When

someone

disappears

we

say: uLife

goes

on

...

Things

must

go

on,

family,

the

workshop

and the

business,

the

office,

society

in its

entirety.

[.

..]

It

may

occur to

us,

however,

that

if

nothing

dies in

the

everyday

it is

because

in

daily life everything

is

already

dead: a

repetitive

existence buried

under its

own

repetition,

both

unfamiliar

and too well

known,

hidden under

the tired

rhetoric

ofbanalized

discourse.

Is there

everyday

life?

or

everyday

death?

[67]

Y

a-t-il

une vie

quotidienne?ou

une mort

quotidienne?

A term which

once

desig-

nated a

human

matter rich in

possibilities

would now announce

the decline

of a civi-

lization,

its

style

and its

values

[43].

What

is

admirable

in

Lefebvre's

analysis

is

that

at

the

very

moment

when

a fall

into undifferentiated neo-barbarism

[44]

seemed

pos?

sible,

if

not

imminent,

he still

insisted

upon making

the

everyday

the crux

of

his

thought

[163].

The

quotidian

was a

risk he

could not afford not to

take,

and the

metamorphoses

of

this

concept through

history

were

perhaps

the best

proof

of

the

vitality

of

the will-

fully

interminable

project

that was

Critique

de la

vie

quotidienne.

34


14/19

Surveillance

and

Invention: Michel de Certeau

If

Lefebvre's

insistence

on

consciousness and

the dialectic

removed the

quotidian

from

the

historian's

sphere

of

statistical

description,

Michel

de Certeau's

work

in

anthropol-

ogy

and

microsociology

would

challenge

in turn those

assumptions

made

by

his Marx-

ist

predecessor

Lefebvre. The

theoretical and

empirical

portions

of The Practice

of

Ev?

eryday Life, published

in

two volumes

in

1980

under

the

title Uinvention du

quotidien,

confirmed in

spectacular

fashion Lefebvre's idea

that

study

of

the

everyday

could

not

derive from a

single

discipline

or

method. The theoretical

part

of

Certeau's

project,11

which

drew

much

of

its

tone from

his

pamphlet

on

the

symbolic

revolution of

May

'68,

Laprise

deparole,

was

to

give interdisciplinarity

a new

face: the

book

was

a

patch-

work made in

the

image

of

its

creator,

an

ordained

brother

ofthe

Compagnie

de

Jesus,

a

founding

member of

the Ecole

freudienne,

and a

university

researcher active on

three

continents.

Bringing together

the art of war

(Clausewitz)

and

the art of

memory

(Yates),

the

barbarian's

ruse

(Vernant

et

Detienne)

and

the

anthropology

of

practice

(Bourdieu),

rhetoric,

semiotics,

and

discourse

analysis,

modal

logic

and

Wittgensteinian philoso?

phy,

Certeau

warned

his readers

from

the

outset

against inferring

a

single

directive

or

unified

theory

from

the results

presented.

What

was of

importance

was less

the

book

itself,

which

Certeau

considered

deliberately

unfinished,

than the

timely

creation

of

research

groups

that

could set

off

into the

field

with a

refurbished

kit of

tools

and

a new

attitude

to

go

with

them.

Like

Blanchot,

Certeau

voiced

his wish

to

penetrate

what Lukacs

famously

called

the

anarchy

ofthe

chiaroscuro

ofthe

everyday

[qtd.

in Practice

199].

Yet

unlike

his

predecessors,

he

was

under no

obligation

to discover

the

everyday.

When he

undertook

his

research in

the

early

1970s,

the

epistemic legitimacy

of

everyday practices

was

well-nigh

assured;

anthropology

in both its

traditional

and

its reflexive

(urban

or

rural)

guise gave

the

study

of

villages,

the

pedestrian

uses of

the

city

street,

reading,

or

the

preparation

of

food a

new-found

visibility.

It is

indicative

of

Certeau's

free-thinking

spirit

that

Lefebvre,

who

completed

his

final volume of

Critique

de la vie

quotidienne

just

after

Vinvention du

quotidien

was

released,

should

appear

in the latter as one

refer-

ence

among

others.12

Rather than invent a

concept

of

the

everyday,

then,

Certeau

at-

tempts

to

demonstrate the

invention

that

everyday

life

reveals.

Why

indeed,

he

asks,

should

we

rehearse

the

alienating aspects

of social

life

if

we

cannot

at

the

same time

complement

those

qualities

with a

positive

vision of

ordinary

human

activity?

Certeau's

appeal

to

compassion

for the common man

and

woman

exposes

the

religious underpin-

nings

of

his

thought:

researchers must

abandon

the elitist

prejudices

of scientism

and

begin

to

believe in

the thousand

ways

in which

individuals

escape

each and

every day

from the

strictures of

technical

rationality. Ordinary

actions should

be

reconsidered

in

light

of their

inventiveness,

that

is,

the

capacity

for

engendering

fresh

styles

of

life

within

the

interstices

of state and class

control.

This

theme of

the resistance

of

the

lived

to the

conceived,

clearly

present

in

Lefebvre's

work,

is the

thread that will

permit

Certeau

to find

his

way

through

the

labyrinthine

forms of

everyday

life.

The

Practice

of

Everyday Life

is

explicitly

dedicated to

chacun

(everyone

or

everyman

[1-2]),

a

character who

appears

as

mute and

marginal,

outside of

history,

but

also

numerically

superior.

If

Certeau's

Everyone

is an

updated

version

ofthe

antihe-

11. The

empirical

portion, Living

and

Cooking,

summarizes research conducted

by

Pierre

Mayol

in the

Lyons

Croix-Rousse

neighborhood

and

by

Luce Giard

on

homemaking.

12. In

a

note,

Certeau states

flatly,

without

providing

references,

that

the works

ofHenri

Lefebvre

on

everyday

life

constitute

afundamental

source

[205n5],

It

goes

without

saying

that

the

Marxist

philosopher

suffers

here a

sharp

rebuff.

diacritics

/

spring

2003

35


15/19

roes

of

humanist

theater,

Nobody,

Nemo,

and

Niemand,

in

the

present

day

he

possesses

another

name,

often

the

object

of bad

press:

the consumer.

For

Certeau,

the

commonly

held view of

the

consumer

as a

dupe

to the

system,

living

life

as

if

by

following

a user's

manual,

is but a

fiction.

Whoever takes to

the

field

to observe

everyday practices,

he

argues,

knows

by

what

millenary

ruses

individuals

free themselves

from the

proto-

cols

imposed upon

them,

making

the most of

their dominated

position.

The researcher's

task is to take note of such statistically unpredictable deviations from the norm. Graft-

ing

his

work on

Foucault's

analysis

in

Discipline

andPunish of

the

microtechnologies

of

power

that

encourage

self-regulation

of social

bodies,

Certeau

insists

that however

advanced these

technologies

might

be,

subjects

will

always enjoy

room for maneuver.

If

it

is true that

the

grid

of

'discipline'

is

everywhere

becoming

clearer

and more

exten-

sive,

he

writes,

it is all the

more

urgent

to

discover

how

an entire

society

resists

being

reduced to it

[xiv].

The

element

of

unpredictability

that is

part

and

parcel

of

basic

activities

such

as

walking,

reading,

or

cooking

remains

invisible

to

state

apparatuses

of

control,

which

simply

cannot

afford to

concern

themselves

with the

microsocial. Mov-

ing through

the

interstices of

power,

Certeau's

ordinary

folk

play

their

weaknesses off

those who

dominate

them; they pit temporally

based

tactics

against

the

place-cen-

tered

strategies

of

t

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