Introduction to Modernity: Twelve Preludes, September 1959-May 1961

by Henri Lefebvre

Appearing for the first time in an English translation, Introduction to Modernity  is one of Henri Lefebvre’s greatest works. Published in 1962, when Lefebvre was beginning his career as a lecturer in sociology at the University of Strasbourg, it established his position in the vanguard of a movement which was to culminate in the events of May 1968. It is a book which supersedes the conventional divisions between academic disciplines. With dazzling skill, Lefebvre moves from philosophy to sociology, from literature to history, to present a profound analysis of the social, political and cultural forces at work in France and the world in the aftermath of Stalin’s death—an analysis in which the contours of our own “postmodernity” appear with startling clarity.

Lefebvre’s lectures have become legendary, and something of his charismatic presence and delivery is captured in this book, which he intended “to be understood in the mind’s ear ... and not simply to be read.” With its mercurial shifts of tone, now intensely poetic, now conversational, it not only explores modernity, it exemplifies it. Equally experimental in conception is the book’s remarkable structure, twelve “preludes” through which a range of recurrent themes are interwoven in free-form irony as a critical tool, utopianism, nature and culture, the Stalinization of Marxism, the alienation of everyday life, the cybernetic society ... What gradually emerges is not only a series of original concepts about humanity and culture, but an extraordinary invocation of the complexity of social contradictions.

Yet the fragmented structure of the book is not left to float free. Its shifting and eclectic melodies and leitmotifs have a solid ground the wish to rehabilitate the Marxist dialectic as a method for understanding and transforming the modern world. This program is at the heart of the book, and gives it its underlying coherence, making Introduction to Modernity  not only essential reading for all students of European cultural history, but also a key text for Marxism in the post-communist world of the late twentieth century. 

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Sociology, History, France, Nonfiction, Social

414 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1995

About the author

Henri Lefebvre was a French sociologist, Marxist intellectual, and philosopher, best known for pioneering the critique of everyday life, for introducing the concepts of the right to the city and the production of social space, and for his work on dialectics, alienation, and criticism of Stalinism, existentialism, and structuralism.

In his prolific career, Lefebvre wrote more than sixty books and three hundred articles. He founded or took part in the founding of several intellectual and academic journals such as Philosophies, La Revue Marxiste, Arguments, Socialisme et Barbarie, Espaces et Sociétés.

Lefebvre died in 1991. In his obituary, Radical Philosophy magazine honored his long and complex career and influence:
the most prolific of French Marxist intellectuals, died during the night of 28–29 June 1991, less than a fortnight after his ninetieth birthday. During his long career, his work has gone in and out of fashion several times, and has influenced the development not only of philosophy but also of sociology, geography, political science and literary criticism.

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Henri Lefebvre’s work must rank as some of the most enigmatic, challenging, insightful and provocative of twentieth century philosophy (or is it politics, cultural studies, anthropology or sociology?), and in this case he is at his most demanding – so therefore his most rewarding. It seems perplexing to read an ‘Introduction to Modernity’ written between 1959 & 1962 when European historians seem to see the modern period as beginning in the middle of the 18th century, when the period of high modernism is associated with the Euro-American cultural forms of the 1930s to 1950s, and when what are now seen as modernity’s great unifying narratives are associated with writers in the mid 19th to early 20th centuries (Marx & Freud especially). What’s more, it seems perplexing when so much of what Lefebvre does here seems to anticipate the dominant narratives of post-modernism – so I wonder, how can an Introduction to Modernity so clearly outline the topography of the post-modern?

In part I suspect this anticipation is Lefebvre’s brilliance – his commentary on the mystifying and ossifying ideologies of liberal capitalism, the sclerotic ideas of official Marxism (as seen at the time in the Communist party of France that he had so recently left), and the frankly obscurantist idealism of Sartre’s existentialism. Much of this book needs to be read as a debate with other tendencies in the French left at the time, but we miss its import if that is only how we see it. To my mind, with its expositions on the intellectual and political significance of irony, and its repeated assertions and enactments of rigorous dialectical thinking and analysis, 50 years after it was written ‘Introduction to Modernity’ retains its verve and challenges us in our increasingly cynical and idealist times to return to the material, to revisit dialectics, and to ground political and cultural practice in both humanism and our material worlds. Take your time with the last two preludes (Chapters 11 & 12) – they are long, enigmatic, and demanding to the extent of frustration, but read, revisit, and relish the multiple layers of engaging polysemous philosophical and cultural analysis.

[— · Rating 4 out of 5]

A genuinely superb theory book. Some may dislike how indulgent it is but to me the consistency of Lefebvre's enchanted prose more than excuses its brand of repetitious humour. As perfect as a series of critical preparations can be. Perhaps some of the best written passages to come from any francophone Marxist, period.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lefebvre is just so readable

[Xiao · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so entertaining, sweet, reflective, knowledgeable, educational and he integrates what most deem as common truths in a very unique and unexpected way. It was truly a joy to read and I find this writer to be unusually talented and inspirational. I've never found a book that was both psychologically and intellectually stimulating at the same time to this degree. Words cannot express the intelligence of the man who wrote this book.