H. Lefebvre και A. Heller: καθημερινή ζωή και νεωτερικότητα

Abstract

The hypothesis explored in this thesis is that of the "historicity of everyday life"; in other words, I attempt to explore the substantial link between everyday life having attained the status of a concept in the 20th century, and the main processes that characterise "modernity". I elaborate on this hypothesis by means of constructing a dialogue between two well-known theorists of "everyday life", H. Lefebvre and A. Heller, aspiring to demonstrate that the most fertile theoretical-methodological framework for approaching this hypothesis is that of a "social ontology". The first part of the thesis poses the most general theoretical problems pertaining to the concept of everyday life. Having presented the "turn" to the everyday as a highly divergent theoretical phenomenon, and having approached the theoretical difficulties related to the very "concept" of the everyday, in the first chapter I go on to demonstrate that, mainly according to H. Lefebvre, the basic theoretical significance of the concept lies in its being tied up to that of the critically re-examined concept of "totality". In connection to this, I investigate the philosophical status of the concept, and its functioning as a vehicle for a critical intervention within philosophy as well as Marxist theory. The framework termed "social ontology" is being analysed in the second chapter. According to the examination of the major difference between the two theorists with respect to this framework, the position of Heller is granted a foundational role in its articulation. Hence, her theory is being considered as a basis for the delineation of an "architecture" of everyday life, consisting in formal constants and structural relationships, and the project of a "social ontology" is analysed on the basic premise that this "architecture" is afforded a trans-historical status, yet one cannot obtain any substantial theoretical conclusions by conceiving it independently of the historical process. The second part of the thesis proceeds with a substantial analysis of these elaborations. In the third chapter, after a presentation of the divergent ways in which the concept of "modernity" is being understood and employed in the work of the two theorists, I proceed to an analysis of specific long-term processes which define modernity, and may be construed as factors which have caused radical transformations in the "architecture" of everyday life. They are categorised as follows: the two-sided rupture between everyday life and the theoretical practices, the denaturalisation of its basic conditions, the theoretical and practical problematisation of taken-for-grandness in itself, and the fragmentation of everyday life. The final chapter proceeds with the analysis of a phenomenon which is more restricted in historical terms, and is attached to Lefebvre's, rather narrow, concept of "modernity": what he terms "the colonisation" of everyday life. Therein the project of a "social ontology" is substantiated by means of an attempt to demonstrate the interrelatedness between the phenomenon of "colonisation" and the reinforcement of certain structural constants of everyday life, whereas another related, and seemingly contradictory, aspect of the same phenomenon is analysed as an organisation of everyday life in terms of an "attack" against it. Moreover, this is related to the central conception of the "everyday" by Lefebvre as the "establishment of everydayness", and to his position that this phenomenon has a specific and significant political function. In the conclusion, the main issue discussed is on what terms this programmatic attachment of the "everyday" to "modernity" can be understood as a "romantic" critique of the latter.