approached as a space of possibility as well as a space of reasons, as a space of transformative as well as disciplined life, as a space that is far from the real as much as it is real.
notions have been used extensively in human geography, political or legal research, and less so in organization studies, the concept of abstract space remains weirdly underrepresented, “overlooking the significance of
abstraction” (Wilson, 2013b: 365). Weirdly though, because it is crucial for Lefebvre himself, who, when seeking to describe a history of spaces - “the dialectic of spatial history” as Dimendberg coins it (1998: 22) - begins by unfolding the development from absolute to abstract space.
Absolute space was a space of mediation, of the translation of political and religious symbols onto natural sites: caves and trees, mountains and rivers. Whilst absolute spaces reside outside the city and places of
inhabitants, they were nevertheless transferred and moved into the heart of those socio-political forces, which had occupied them (e.g. the Greek city state), but remained elusive, so hovering “between speech and writing, between the prescribed and the forbidden, between accessible and reserved spaces, and between full and empty" (1991/1974: 163) and indeed could actually contain nothing, yet were also filled with aspects and beliefs (think of the Greek Parthenon for example, Lefebvre 1991/1974: 237). Absolute
Space continued to be “always bodily, spatially, and politically embedded in a material order, an imago mundi 'out there'” (Blum & Nast, 1995: 568).
Lefebvre denotes a political or religious character (while emphasizing the religious, hinting both at the primary reason for occupying natural spaces and transforming them into absolute ones, as well as to the role of religion as political force) to absolute spaces, and this character being performed and exercised through linguistic and bodily practices, meaning that absolute space, is “lived rather than then conceived”, it is “representational space, rather than representation of space” (Lefebvre, 1991/1974: 234 – 252).
Absolute space therefore is universal to the groups and societies of its concern (and again: we find a mutual relationship, a dependency and
oscillation between space and society), “an alleged internal unity between [a society’s] artistic, religious and political forms” (Dimendberg, 1998: 22).
Therefore, form and function, signifier and signified, meaning and action were inseparable. This unity was supplied through an originary logos that meant that meaning was lived in an immediate sense (Blum & Nast, 1995).
The force through which these absolute spaces lost meaning and then indeed their space, or were gradually transformed into visibility, the ability to be practiced, lived indeed, is history itself (or more precisely: the alienation of labour from it social contexts (Lefebvre, 191/2974: 49). Lefebvre detects the reasons for these changes in “history smashing naturalness forever and upon its ruins establishing the space of accumulation (the accumulation of all wealth and resources: knowledge, technology, money, precious objects, works of art and symbols)” (Lefebvre, 1991/1974: 48-49). The appearance of abstract space as the dominant spatial form we encounter nowadays, as we will discuss further below, is hence situated within a certain historical context, the revolutionary changes experienced by societies through the emergence and establishment of capitalism and the transformation of politics and economy in the mid and late 18th century (Dimendberg, 1998). Yet, the beginning of the change from absolute to abstract spaces may be situated within the 12th century, where beliefs and rituals are being challenged:
“thought and philosophy coming to surface”, leading to a decryption of society as a whole and indeed of the spaces through which these societies achieved, practiced, exercised and produced unity, leading to the emergence (the production) of a new space, a space both social and mental, a space as practice and of organized perception, a secularized space, a space of
accumulation, and a representational space (Lefebvre, 1991/1974: 262-263).
The production of new spaces allowed for new social-spatial practices, leading to a politicization of space: the formation of the nation state as the outcome of its own totalization, the occupation (indeed through violence and war) of space through sovereignty (and indeed often against church and the clerks), treating the state as “political society, dominating and transcending civil society, groups and classes” (Lefebvre 1991/1974: 279). In an Hegelian, Marxist reading of History, these processes, the submission of the city state, the feudal states and Merchant cities could only be achieved through
violence, the building of a military apparatus and its ability to dominate, yet also responsible for the realization of technological, scientific and social possibilities. Space then becomes abstract space, “the negation of historical
and absolute space […], a consequence of the industrial and political
revolutions“ (Dimendberg, 1998: 23) a measurable unit, a politicised space and symbolized through its own codings.
Firstly, as measurable, abstract space has a geometric format - the space which can be calculated and defined. This further allows for a reduction of the three-dimensional idea of space to a two-dimensional coding, e.g. through plans and maps or texts. Secondly, abstract space is a space of visual rather than a multi- sensory format, following a strategy of the optical totalization of whole societies. Space is rendered to its visuality over all other senses (a text to bread), and all different perceptions of space, e.g. a rhythmic one, are made to point to their own transformation towards visuality. Space, Lefebvre notes, “has no existence independently of an intense, aggressive and repressive visualization” (Lefebvre 1991/1974: 286).
And thirdly, the symbolization of violence and power (the “phallic format”), yet not remaining in abstraction purely, but being exercised through
dominant symbols, through police, bureaucratic apparatus and the military, all of which enable space to become commodified (Lefebvre, 1991/1974:
285-286). Hence, “according to Lefebvre, the modern form of space is abstract space; a social space in which difference and distinction are
continually eroded by the commodification of space” (Allen & Pryke, 1994:
457). And as Stewart concludes: “Abstract space is characterized by both the fragmentation and homogenization of space, and both processes are the result of the commodification of space. Homogeneity is promoted by the need for commodities to be exchangeable (and the contractual enforcement of this). Exchange demands comparability, interchangeability; hence the 'parcellization' of space into homogeneous blocs” (1995: 615). The notion of homogeneity plays a decisive role for understanding the politics of abstract space and, as we will later see, also for understanding the spatial politics through which refugee camps are being produced. Guy Debord may have coined the notion of the abstraction of space for the first time in the society of the spectacle in 1967:
“The capitalist production system has unified space, breaking down the boundaries between this society and the next. This unification is also a process, at once extensive and intensive, of trivialization. Just as the accumulation of commodities mass-produced for the abstract space of the market inevitably shattered all regional and legal barriers, as well those corporative restrictions that served in the Middle Age to preserve the quality of craft production, so too was it bound to
dissipate the independence and quality of places. The power to homogeneize is the heavy artillery that has battered down all Chinese walls “(1994/1967: thesis 165).
The breaking down of the boundaries between this society and the next, the processes of unification, Lefebvre notes, is the essence of abstract space: its goal and perspective, its means and end, is homogeneity. The presence and form, maybe, to be more precise, the façade of abstract space, is homogeneous and it is so, recalling the visual format of abstract space, through its representations, “on the one hand as representations of space (geometric homogeneity) and on the other hand a representational space (the phallic homogeneity)” (Lefebvre, 1991/1974: 288).
Still, Lefebvre reminds us, whereas the orientation of abstract space is homogeneity, the space itself can never be homogeneous. Recalling the constant production of space as socio-spatial product, as well as an
understanding of space as being constantly intertwined with and produced through the spatial triad of lived, perceived and conceived spaces, we are urged to go behind the curtain of the visual representations of abstract space: for it only seems as if there was no mystery, no hidden trajectories, no imminent paradoxes within the alleged transparency of the appearance of abstract spaces. Certainly, while abstractions of space seek to unify or produce unified images and imaginations of itself, society does not partake as a whole in the benefits provided and produced through such, there are beneficiaries and those who have no part in space. For Lefebvre the reason for such heterogeneity (injustice or exclusion to phrase it more politically and more precise) lies in the intrinsic violence of abstract spaces: space is a
strategic tool34 and its use is marked by the introduction of any action which introduces and transcends the rational into reality, an introduction often carried out through and via the occupation of symbols and signs
(abstractions) over nature, a violent introduction originating out of the rational. (Lefebvre, 1991/974: 289).35 Insofar as these tendencies are orchestrated, they are the result of a strategy hinting at a civic order and ordering elements (sign, symbols, language, legal and political frame), as much as they are product of institutionalized powers (the state and its executive) seeking to achieve a “repressive efficiency” (Butler, 2009: 324).
The production of the state can only be achieved through the production of abstract space, or “the concrete abstraction of social space, the production of a homogeneous national territory” (Wilson, 2013b: 370).36
The processes of abstraction, or, differently read, the notion alienation then play a central role in Lefebvre’s understanding of abstract space,
through which social bounds and ties are being redistributed and altered, transferred into a realm of measurability, technocracy and the politics of planning, controlling and organizing, managed and exercised on the territory of and through the state37. Abstract spaces then, again borrowing a
Foucauldian term, may be seen as spaces of govermentality, or: a spatial understanding of govermentality, being marked through its
“metophorization, which, applied to the historical and cumulative sphere, transfers them into a sphere where violence is cloaked in rationality and a rationality of unification is used to justify violence (Lefebvre, 1991/1974:
282; Italics in original).
34 „ A strategic space [...] seeks to impose itself on reality despite the fact that it is an abstraction” Lefebvre (1991/1974 :94).
35 This homogeneity shows itself in modern architecture, where (at airports, streets, office buildings), unlike in the old cities, shaped by the creative force of nature “the sameness need not be underlined, and only details differ among the ugly buildings, functional edifices and even monuments. We enter into a world of combinations whose every element is known and recognized” (Lefebvre 2009/1980: 212-213).
36 Or, as Lefebvre puts it in his essay on ”The urban revolution”: The state can ”introduce its presence, control and surveillance in the most isolated corners [through an organization]
according to rationality of the identical and repetitive” (2003/1970: 86).
37 Also through its institutions: hospitals, classrooms, universities, tax authorities, urban planners and so forth (Lefebvre 1991/1974: 280)
And still, abstract space, as any socio-spatial concept within the work of Lefebvre, is not a static concept or entity, it can never be homogeneous, even though homogeneity is its goal, the social production of the everyday, the lived experience always holds the possibility of resistance, of counter-narrating, of seeing differently. We have to keep both in mind: the history of the spaces, leading to the becoming of abstract spaces in which we are experiencing (and maybe even, as part of a state machinery, contributing to, in our own ways) processes of unification, the attempt to produce
homogeneity amongst society, always being a violent attempt of organizing, and yet also the potential of the lived experience, the impossibility of
homogeneity and our possibility to lift and look and finally to walk behind the curtain.