Overview

A fresh interdisciplinary examination of the thought of Henri Lefebvre which sheds light on the politics of utopia and commoning through the examination of the wide-ranging socio-political dimensions of space. The book emphasizes political elements of Lefebvre’s work that have been little explored in research such as his understanding of nationalism, ideology and anti-fascism, while further extending existing research on key concepts by Lefebvre, such as the right to the city, through interdisciplinary perspectives and interpretations. Chapters consider how Lefebvre's thought can contribute to various fields of knowledge such as philosophy and critical studies, politics, space and urban studies, gender and the body. This collection sheds light on space as a site of political conflict and as a potential commons, as well as to raise new discussions and approaches to the question of self-governance.

Full Product Details

Author:   Yannis Flytzanis (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN:  

9781350537811

ISBN 10:   1350537810
Pages:   248
Publication Date:   06 August 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors Introduction: Reclaiming Henri Lefebvre’s critical legacy PART 1: UPDATING AND INVENTING CRITICAL FRAMEWORKS 1. Some aspects of Lefebvre’s contribution to the understanding of ‘ideology’ Chryssoula Mitsopoulou 2. Commodity fetishism in Lefebvre’s thought or the political character (?) of a non-political concept Nikos Folinas 3. Rhythmanalysis: Lefebvre’s secret garden Guido Borelli 4. Henri Lefebvre: a heterodox reader of Marx – polis, politics and democracy Yannis Flytzanis PART 2: SPACE AS SOCIAL PRAXIS 5. Exploded politics of space: ambiguous households and bodies Rob Shields 6. Encounters of gender and (urban) space, drawing on the work of Henri Lefebvre Dina Vaiou 7. The possibility of a more egalitarian and accessible city? Henri Lefebvre’s Le Droit a la Ville Laurence Costes 8. On the primary sources of Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the ‘Production of Space’ Rolando Espinosa PART 3. POLITICAL STRUGGLES, SOCIAL PRACTICES AND VISIONS OF THE FUTURE 9. Henri Lefebvre and the national question(s): dilemmas and actualities Stefan Kipfer 10. Reclaiming the Lefebvrean Right to the City through urban commoning Stavros Stavrides 11. Crossing urban studies with utopian thought: a Lefebvrian point of view Francesco Biagi 12. Henri Lefebvre and Cornelius Castoriadis’s autogestion: reinventing the polis as project Marianna Charitonidou Index

Reviews

'This is a wonderful collection of new, heterodox engagements with Lefebvre’s critical thinking, proposing renewed concrete utopias, radical democracy, and the collective imagination of urban life to confront the multiple challenges of the contemporary world' * Christian Schmid, ETH Zürich, Switzerland * 'Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991), though a pioneering figure of French Marxism and radical intellectual discourse, has for long remained curiously under-appreciated relative to some of his contemporaries blessed with fame far beyond Paris. Against this backdrop, Henri Lefebvre: Space, Philosophy and the Political offers an impressive contribution to a series of studies devoted to Lefebvre's oeuvre over the last two decades. This judiciously edited volume not only reveals the incomparable originality of Lefebvre as a philosopher--especially in novel conceptions of everyday life, space and state--but also underlines the enduring relevance of his theoretical innovations to contemporary imaginaries of revolutionary praxis.' * Kanishka Goonewardena, University of Toronto, Canada *

Author Information

Yannis Flytzanis is a lecturer in Social Theory and Law, and Critical Theory at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. In the academic year 2023-2024, he taught as a visiting professor in the Postgraduate Programme in Social Philosophy at the University of Paris I-Sorbonne, France, and is a junior fellow of the Michel Villey Institute for Legal Culture and Philosophy of Law at the University of Paris II, France. In 2022, he published his monograph, in Greek, entitled Radical Democracy and the Politics of Rights: Critical Social Theory of Politics and Rights in Henri Lefebvre.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Countries Available

All regions