"Modern concepts are like a kind of electrical supercharge to his brain (a natural consequence of the extreme complexity of these concepts and of the situations in which we struggle), and, to pursue the metaphor, his nerves and senses are frequently short-circuited"
— Lefebvre, Henri (1901-1991)
Author
Date
1947, 1958
Metaphor
"Modern concepts are like a kind of electrical supercharge to his brain (a natural consequence of the extreme complexity of these concepts and of the situations in which we struggle), and, to pursue the metaphor, his nerves and senses are frequently short-circuited"
Metaphor in Context
(a) A malfunction, a disorder of the senses and the brain which has become conscious and more or less normal (especially among intellectuals). The physiological functions of the ‘modern’ man’s nervous and cerebral systems seem to have fallen victim to an excessively demanding regime, to a kind of hypertension and exhaustion. He has not yet ‘adapted’ to the conditions of his life, to the speed of its sequences and rhythms, to the (momentarily) excessive abstraction of the frequently erroneous concepts he has so recently acquired. His nerves and senses have not yet been adequately trained by the urban and technical life he leads. Modern concepts are like a kind of electrical supercharge to his brain (a natural consequence of the extreme complexity of these concepts and of the situations in which we struggle), and, to pursue the metaphor, his nerves and senses are frequently short-circuited. And so the ‘modern’ intellectual, an extreme example and a complete product of this situation, is no longer able to abstract the concept or idea which is both within things and different from them, and to per“ceive it as on another stage or level of consciousness. In his perception the abstraction and the thing are mixed together, merged, the concept is like the thing’s double – distinct, ideal, ‘mysterious’. Furthermore, it is a second-rate abstraction, not a way of knowing, a rational element, but a ‘signifying’ of things, a symbol, a second thing, a façade. The elements of consciousness, its ‘functions’ or its ‘stages’, are at once separated and reunited in a false, confused unity in which their relations, their order and their hierarchy are lost. (pp. 294-5)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, trans. John Moore (Verso, 1991, 2014). First published as Critique de la vie quotidienne I: Introduction (Grasset, 1947). Second edition with new foreword: L’Arche Editeur, 1958.
Date of Entry
06/02/2022
