JANE PICKERSGILL
The Critique of Everyday Life vol. 3 From Modernity to Modernism (Towards a Metaphilosophy of Daily Life)
Henri Lefebvre (1981)
The French philosopher and sociologist whose magnum opus (begun in the 1930’s and first published in 1947) ends in this volume published in 1981. The ideology of ‘Modernity’, he states, can be considered as beginning around 1900 and ending around 1980; it promised happiness and the satisfaction of all needs; which could be realised in daily life through a combination of labour, technology, and through language.
However, much as in contemporary art, which slid from values of reality into the abstract, daily life has also departed from concrete reference systems. The unlimited power of money (capital) has taken over, and with it the optimism of modernity has become tinged with nihilism. The values of socialism have died; having failed to deliver widespread happiness. Capitalism and conservatism have grown, both leading to the individual or family as the defining societal group.
At the very point that ideologies are being proclaimed dead, new generations have grown up in an age of plenty some of whom are torn between the demands of instant satisfaction and being disgusted with those who are or should feel satisfied. People reject morality, but also predominantly, the idea of any ethos which demands sacrifice.
The movement of peoples and commodities around the globe to satisfy the demands of markets for commodities is now dominant in many countries. The fetishization of commodities and its attendant ideology takes these products of human activity and makes them into ‘realities’ themselves. The object and its exchangeable value system has ended up permeating all our lives: particularly in the west. Almost everything is determined, and discussed, in terms of its negotiable value in currency, whilst the cost of it in terms of social relations and labour (which made its production possible), is swept aside, usually in the name of mythically unstoppable progress.
At the time of writing this book, the author identified 3 privileged commodities; sex, labour and information. He could not possibly have known just how important the latter would come to be due to technological advances. One could now argue that data has become the supreme exchangeable product. Despite data being ubiquitous and freely available there is a widespread and growing sense (amongst populations) of being deceived, both politically and economically, as to ownership of personal information, its value, its use and misuse.
Back to Critical Analysis