This chapter asks: How can Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life inform a critical theory of communication? How can it inform a critique of digital capitalism?
Section 5.2 focuses on Lefebvre’s concept of society. Section 5.3 discusses the role of communication in everyday life. Section 5.4 analyses the role of communication in capitalism. Section 5.5 draws the reader’s attention to the communication of ideology. Conclusions are drawn in section 5.6.
5.2 Lefebvre’s Concept of Society
5.2.1 Practices and Structures
Lefebvre outlines a dialectical concept of structure. Structures are “(relative) stabilities, defined and relatively constant contours, regularities, form which are born and survive, which produce and which reproduce, at the heart of innumerable interactions” (CEL2, 162). Structures exist everywhere. They enable and constrain and are the result of the interactions of moments and elements. In society, such interactions are communication flows between humans who stand in social relations to each other.
Lefebvre was a critical of structuralism and structuralists such as Lévi-Strauss, Saussure, Barthes, Althusser, and so forth. The problem of structuralism is that it “proceeds by privileging structure absolutely” and substantifying structure (CEL2, 176). It “totalizes structure” (186). Structures’ plasticity, negations, and their inner contradictions are marginalised (176). Structuralism “loses touch with historicity”, dialectical development, and processes (177). It “reifies actions” and is therefore a form of reification and alienation (177).
Lefebvre sees totality as a dialectical aspect of structure. Immanent in every totality and every process of totalisation is the potential for negation, the “breaking of totality” (CEL2, 183). He sees dialectical negation as more fundamental than totality (186). Lefebvre argues that a totality is made up by the dialectical interaction of need, work, and pleasure (189–193). Work satisfies and transforms human needs. The human being is a human of need, a human at work, and a human of pleasure (192). Humans have biological and social needs, transform the world and satisfy their needs through practices, and are beings that strive towards satisfaction and enjoyment so that they lead a pleasurable life.
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Theorists