Progressive Geographies

Antipode Intervention – “Towards a Metaphilosophy of the Urban” by Andy Merrifield. This piece discusses Lefebvre’s Metaphilosophy, forthcoming in English translation with Verso.

I suspect I’m not the only one thrilled by the prospect of seeing Henri Lefebvre’s great philosophical tract, Métaphilosophie, from half-a-century ago, finally make it into English. Thanks to the dedicated steady work of Stuart Elden, rapidly becoming Lefebvre’s Anglophone ambassador (I’m tempted to say an English Rémi Hess, but that wouldn’t be kind), and David Fernbach’s considerable translation skills, Metaphilosophy is due out next spring with Verso. This might well be the philosophical event of 2016. The translation has a wonderful postface essay by Marxist scholar Georges Labica, a former philo prof at Nanterre.[1] Labica says Métaphilosophie is a very important book, as important for us today as it was important for Lefebvre himself back then. Indeed, it’s perhaps Lefebvre’s mostimportant work, says Labica, a milestone text, the most satisfactorily executed and the best organised of all his books, demarcating what he once did from what he would soon do, punctuating his own past from an emergent future. Here, we have Lefebvre ploughing the land and planting seeds for what would eventually bloom into books on space and urbanism, and a third volume of the Critique of Everyday Life (in 1981), which, remember, is subtitled “Towards a Metaphilosophy of Everyday Life”.

Continues here.