Reading the works and ideas of Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, and Doreen Massey have provided me with a rich dose of theoretical conceptualisations with regard to space. The texts themselves, if I were to be fully honest, are quite bemusing, even intimidating at times. Indeed, starting with Lefebvre’s own piece of writing has not been the most helpful in establishing a preliminary idea of space and spatiality for a beginner. Andy Merrifield was spot on when he wrote down how Lefebvre, in The Production of Space, “breezes through the history of Western philosophy as if it’s kids’ stuff”.¹  Fortunately, the works by Merrifield himself and Elden Stuart have proven very helpful in presenting Lefebvre’s arguments with a less esoteric register, while pieces by de Certeau and Massey have provided interpretations of spatiality from various refreshing vantage points.

One recurring theme in the various formulations of space is its relation with the social. With an identifiable Marxist tone, Lefebvre describes space as the direct product of modes of production (encompassing both material production and the production of society and knowledge). ² Similarly, Doreen Massey makes sense of space and place with the rationale that they were shaped by innumerable social relations of various nature, across wildly different scales. This line of thinking does not see the dissecting the genesis of space as its intellectual endpoint, however. Beyond repudiating the conventional perception of space as a meaningless backdrop to more prominent occurrences, space is seen to have momentous importance on its own. Lefebvre’s initial fascination with space comes precisely from his study of everyday life, where he discovered how the transition from rural to urban space had a huge bearing on people’s quotidian experience.³  Thus came his later emphasis on space as the indispensable coordinates of human life. As the locus and medium of human activities, it affects the latter through a triad of spatiality — physical space is concretely perceived; mental space is abstractly conceptualised; and social space is intimately lived by people.⁴  Indeed, “Space has long ceased to be a passive geographic or empty geometric milieu. It has become instrumental”.⁵  In a way, Michel de Certeau provided a lucid illumination on how spatiality itself could have profound influence. Describing the view of New York from the Twin Towers, the elevated viewer evolved into a voyeur, as if Icarus breaking free of the labyrinthine chains crafted by Daedalus — “It allows one to read it, to be a solar Eye, looking down like a god. The exaltation of a scopic and gnostic drive: the fiction of knowledge is related to this lust to be a viewpoint and nothing more”.⁶  Therefore, space deserves to become a subject of inquiry on its own, not least because its formation sheds light on social relations at work, but also for the independent significance it has come to possess. By extension, the relation between space and power is also a prominent thread of inquiry by these scholars. As Lefebvre argues, the close relation between space and mode of production (especially capitalism) led to space’s existence as “a means of control, and hence of domination, of power”. ⁷  Massey’s works, delving into the interlacing of social relations and space, have explained the connection with greater clarity. The triumphalist Western narrative of the age of discoveries, for example, painted the indigenous civilisation as a static existence on the spatial continuum, lacking a trajectory of their own in contrast to that of the conquering Europeans. ⁸  Taking up the gender scope, Massey also elucidated how feminine imageries were intimately bound with the conception of the motherland as well as the home, amounting to a domestication of women who were barred from venturing beyond their own households.⁹  Finally, articulations of a sense of place which have gained traction in the present age of globalisation are also susceptible to being hijacked by defensive, reactionary nationalism/localism.¹⁰  Space, therefore, is neither an empty container, nor a trivial, inanimate product of social relations. As an end in itself, it has the capacity to condition and drive human activities and broader historical developments. For all the struggle I have endured working through the highly abstruse texts, I have gradually come to learn the rationale behind thinking about space and spatiality.

Another motif in the intellectual picture of space is space and its relation with time. As Stuart has rightly pointed out, Lefebvre’s foremost contribution, rather than the elevation of space in lieu of time, was his examination of space alongside time.¹¹  According to Lefebvre, representational spaces, closely linked to the social life of people, are very much ‘the loci of passion, of action and of lived situations, and thus immediately imply time’.¹²  The temporal face of space — and indeed the spatial face of time — was explored more systematically in the works of Massey who laid great emphasis on the concept of “space/time”. In her brilliant introductory chapter to For Space, Massey engagingly set out the interlacing between space and time, as spatial articulations and conceptualisations often imply a temporal dimension. Taking Clinton’s denunciation of countries like Mozambique and Nicaragua who supposedly stood against the tides of globalisation as an example, the author centred on the President’s characterisation of the said countries as “behind”. Through “a sleight of hand in terms of the conceptualisation of space and time”, the simultaneous coexistence of different countries on Earth has its spatial dimension suppressed. Instead, the problem was given a historical temporality, with Mozambique and Nicaragua cast as those among us that are in a more primitive stage. ¹³  Apart from this, the temporal dimension of space was underlined from another vantage point, with space described as inherently dynamic, moulded by the multiplicity of social relations that were also undergoing constant change. Against the essentialist position, therefore, space is instead “unfixed, contested and multiple”.¹⁴  Thus, it becomes the natural conclusion that any reference to space must necessarily take into consideration the temporal implications, and vice versa. Personally, I find this contention very intriguing, despite still having difficulties fully grasping its theoretical intricacies. One potential interest I have derived from reading these works is how time might be experienced variously across different spaces — in a rural village in China’s inland, on the Bund in Yokohama, or aboard an international cargo ship, etc. In these drastically different scenarios, the experience of space and time informs each other. Though as yet heavily based on quotidian impressions, they can be developed into subjects of proper investigation.

1. Andy Merrifield, Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction (New York, 2006), p. 10 [↩]
2. Elden Stuart, Understanding Henri Lefebvre: Theory and the Possible (London, 2004), p. 184; Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, 1991), pp. 31-33. [↩]
3. Stuart, Understanding Henri Lefebvre, p. 181. [↩]
4. Stuart, Understanding Henri Lefebvre, pp. 192-193; Lefebvre, The Production of Space, pp. 33-36 [↩]
5. Stuart, Understanding Henri Lefebvre, p. 189. [↩]
6. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, 2011), p. 92. [↩]
7. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 26. [↩]
8. Doreen Massey, For Space (London, 2005), pp. 1-4. [↩]
9. Doreen Massey, Space, Place, and Gender (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 10-11. [↩]
10. Ibid., pp. 151-154. [↩]
11. Stuart, Understanding Henri Lefebvre, pp. 169-170. [↩]
12. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 42. [↩]
13. Massey, For Space, pp. 4-5. [↩]
14. Massey, Space, Place, and Gender, p. 5 [↩]