Marxism Research Network
Unofficial English Translation

Zhang Yibing: Social Spatial Practice, Representations of Space, and Spaces of Representation

Marxism Abroad

Lefebvre is a legendary figure in the history of Western Marxist thought. Over the course of his life, he authored nearly 70 volumes and a vast corpus of articles. His early, original formulation of the "critique of everyday life" achieved a transition in alienation theory from macro-level politico-economic relations to micro-level social life. Furthermore, on his path toward historical materialism, he realized a shift from observing the temporal threads of history to the logic of the production of space; the latter constitutes the main theme of The Production of Space (1974), which we are researching here. In Lefebvre’s theory of social space, the production and reproduction of social relations are realized through daily spatial practice. However, both the spatial practical activities that produce social relations and their relational "field-contexts" [1] occur in the present and vanish at any moment. Therefore, just as general material production requires the reactivation of tool templates for labor activity, the production of space requires the reactivation of spatial implements and templates such as the buildings and roads of spatial practice. Yet, the specificity of spatial production lies in the fact that, unlike the objective production process of physical objects, the production of the spatial relational field-context remains inseparable from the representations of space as subjective conceptions, as well as the representational space experienced firsthand by the subject. This presents a trialectic of spatial dialectics within the complex subjective relational field-context of spatial production. This is the most profound part of the relational field-context and "spatial situational construction" [2] within the "Lutheran Revolution" [3] of Lefebvre’s social space theory. Of course, here, Lefebvre also encounters logical blind spots within his own metaphilosophical construction.

I. Spatial Practice: The Reproduction of Modes of Production and Social Relations

As Lefebvre sees it, regarding the cognitive problem of social space, we must never remain trapped within the realist empirical common sense of social life, merely viewing space as a physical space in the sense of visible buildings and some kind of substantial gathering site for people. For example, if we learn of the spatial existence of an ancient Greek city from a book, we "cannot understand the ancient city as a collection of people and things in space":

For the ancient city had its own spatial practice (pratique spatiale): it forged for itself an appropriated space. Hence the need to study that space, through which the ancient city itself can be understood—its origins and forms, its specific time or times (the rhythms of everyday life), and its particular centers and poly-centers (agora, temple, stadium, etc.).

The cognitive ordering logic here is as follows: unlike the intuition of physical spatial realism, the spatial existence of an ancient city distant from us in time is not merely the meeting of visible physical architecture and an imaginary crowd in an empty place. According to Lefebvre, the space of this ancient city refers primarily to the pratique spatiale (spatial practice) composed of the daily life relations of a certain people within the city—that is, the social activities of people generated by a certain spatial syntax and the everyday life relational field-context constructed to realize such activities. We can see that Lefebvre did not intentionally use the concept of praxis (humanized practice), which he had demarcated from pratique (physical practice) in his Metaphilosophical [4] writings; rather, he specifically used the expression pratique spatiale (spatial practice). Yet we can sense from the discursive field-context here that pratique spatiale does not refer to the production of material objects in general, but to the production and reproduction of the field-context of human life relations. This is precisely the logical vanishing point of praxis (humanized practice) within humanist discourse. It is precisely because of this specific, constantly occurring and vanishing relational spatial practice of life that we have specific spatial implements: temples (churches) for worship within a specific spatial syntax, squares for public activities (such as the burning of witches), stadia for duels, and the domestic houses and streets of that era. We can perceive that the ordering focus of Lefebvre’s thinking on the problem of space begins with the rhythmic life activities that recur in everyday life. In his view, these life activities are the spatial practices that allow physical buildings and facilities to realize their efficacy as spatial implements. While these spatial practical activities occur in the present and vanish in an instant, this constantly repeated spatial practice in everyday life is the reproduction of social life itself. It should be said that the continuous occurrence of spatial practice within everyday life is the core of Lefebvre’s social spatial ordering. It is not difficult to see that Lefebvre is here internally integrating the theory of the critique of everyday life—which he had proposed since the 1940s—with the theory of the production of space. If we reflect carefully, we find that when Lefebvre touches upon the practice of everyday life here, the humanist discourse of "humanized practice—poetic creation" quietly recedes, replaced by the realistic observation of historical materialism. What Lefebvre omits here are the aspects he already discussed in The Urban Revolution concerning the historical process of urban space: that is, the "0 to 100" spatial evolution of urban space from its "degree zero" starting point (where natural physical space predominates), through the political city, the industrial and commercial city, to the modern urban space. This also means that social space itself is historically generated. Lefebvre elucidates this point again in subsequent discussions.

Regarding Lefebvre's social spatial existence, the first foundational layer of construction we obtain is spatial practice. This totalizing spatial practice is not merely the production of objective spatial implements, but even more so the production and reproduction of the spatial relational field-context. From the perspective of macro-ordering logic, Lefebvre’s deconstruction of the problem of space actually follows the first aspect of the "double perspective of phenomena" [5] that Marx established in the Theses on Feuerbach: where people see intuitive buildings and substantial sites, he discovers the spatial practical activity originating from the subject that animates these physical existences. This is because it is precisely this non-intuitive, presently occurring and vanishing spatial practical activity that is the realization of the realistic spatial syntax embedded within spatial implements. This spatial syntax is not merely the form or rigid structure directly shaped and ordered within physical architecture; it is, more importantly, a functional guidance of subjective "ready-to-hand-ness" [6] for us generated by the physical structure. For instance, we can enter the Forbidden City of the Qing Dynasty today, but the spatial syntax of the operation of royal political power and the daily life of that time has vanished without a trace; the guiding constructions of these buildings have now become guides for tourist sightseeing routes. That non-intuitive spatial syntax activates the specific spatial practice that occurs and vanishes in the present is the difficulty in the cognition of space.

In my understanding, this is precisely the extension into the spatial construction of what we identify as the "Lutheran Revolution" realized by Marx in ontology. Of course, Lefebvre’s spatial practice differs from the macro-perspective of social practice emphasized by Marx regarding the transformation of material objects and politico-economic systems; it is much more micro-level, as it is the concrete implementation process of subjective social practice within the space of everyday life. This implementation is itself the continuous construction and deconstruction of social space. So, what does social space implement? This is the second important question. For Lefebvre, social spatial practice is the "landing" [7] of that material mode of production which Marx focused on in historical materialism as determining the quality of a given social being. This is the second layer of construction for understanding Lefebvre’s concept of social space, and it is also a major logical leap. Lefebvre says:

(Social) space is a (social) product... every society—and hence every mode of production (mode de production) with its subvariants (i.e. all those societies which exemplify the general concept)—produces a space, its own space... "Each society" can be more precisely called each mode of production along with its specific relations of production (mode de production incluant certains rapports de production); any such mode of production may contain significant variants.

We can see directly that when discussing the problem of social space in The Production of Space, Lefebvre almost constantly places his analysis under the basic principles of historical materialism—that is, grasping the social relational essence of his original "spatial existence" from the social mode of production. Meanwhile, that humanist logic filled with ethical value presuppositions loses its status as the master discourse. It is also in this sense that I believe Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space is the true realization of his "metaphilosophy." This seems to be a layer of logical construction that is difficult to enter. How does spatial practice in the production of space suddenly jump to the mode of production in historical materialism? Returning to the level of urban space exemplified above to perceive this: the everyday life practices (the construction of social space) occurring in ancient Greek cities were precisely the micro-realization of the specific social mode of production of ancient Greek society in Europe. In this historical city-state space, the modeling of the individual’s everyday life space in the Greek polis was precisely the production and reproduction of "certain relations of production" (certains rapports de production) within the social mode of production. This is exactly the second aspect of the "double perspective of phenomena" in Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach: seeing the reality of the "sum of social relations" behind the substantial existence of man. Social space is not a site for the piling up of things outside of man or visible physical architectural facilities; rather, it is the "sum" of the subjective spatial relational field-contexts constructed by human spatial practice. Two theoretical ordering intentions can be perceived here: first, in the context of the historical materialist mode of production, Lefebvre does not highlight the active relationship of man to nature or the horizontal productive forces; instead, he directly emphasizes the shaping of relations of production between people. Or rather, in Lefebvre’s theory of production of space, the production of the social relational field-context is the essence of spatial production. In subsequent discussions, he identifies this as the transition from the production of things in space to the production of subjective space (relations) itself. This should also be our correct entry point for further understanding the "Lutheran Revolution" in Lefebvre's view of space. Second, neither the mode of production nor the relations of production can be reduced to the physical facilities like buildings, roads, and squares in the spatial reality still remaining in the Greek city-states; they are the non-intuitive ways of how spatial practice is implemented—the spatial syntax and the presently shaped and ordered spatial relational field-context. All of this has long since vanished today. This is the even greater difficulty in the cognition of spatial production. Having said this, Lefebvre also kindly tells us that the ancient Greek urban space discussed here must be different from the urban space of other regions in the world, because the spatial practice of people’s lives in different regions will be different. The social mode of production and certain relations of production governing this spatial practice determine the heterogeneity of this spatial production in its spatial syntax. This is, of course, also a historical materialist viewpoint. He specifically mentions: "How much do we really know... of the 'Asiatic' mode of production, of its space, of its towns, or of the relation it entails between town and country—a relation said to be expressed figuratively or ideographically by the Chinese characters?" This is correct; it is more or less the application of the concrete historical analysis method of historical materialism to the problem of social space. Asian cities, distinct from Western ones—such as the towns of ancient China—clearly constructed a certain social spatial relational field-context and its physical crystalline facilities through the spatial practices of Chinese people during certain historical periods according to their own unique everyday life. For example, unlike Western churches and religious squares which are always the center of a town, the temples where ancient Chinese people burned incense and prayed to Buddha were usually not adjacent to where the common people lived, and there were very few places for public activities, and so on. Lefebvre's mention of the ideographic relationship of towns in Chinese characters is generally correct. For example, in Chinese characters, the word cheng (城, city/wall) also has a process of historical evolution:

In the earliest "bronze inscriptions" [8], the circle in the middle of the left side represents a city enclosure, with two city gates standing opposite each other at the top and bottom; on the right is a large axe (a weapon) with its blade facing left, meaning the use of weapons to defend the city. The pictographic construction (象形构境) in Chinese characters differs from the complete disappearance of the realistic relational field-context found in Western alphabetic languages. The cheng (city), which represents the physical facilities of people’s living space, is precisely the representational sublimation after the realistic abstraction of specific spatial practical relations.

Of course, the third and most important level of configuration in Lefebvre’s social spatial practice is the production and reproduction of social relations as the concrete practical structure of a given mode of production. This is the subjective field-contextual [9] level of the historical mode of production highlighted by Lefebvre, and the core logical link in his "Lutheran Revolution" of spatial perspectives. In his view, the social relational configuration—the concrete form through which everyday spatial practice occurs—is usually composed of two types of relations based on the development of specific material productive forces (the relation between man and nature): first, the relations of human reproduction, and second, the relations of material labor production. These constitute the concrete referent of the "totality" of the field-context of social spatial relations:

Social space involves—and (more or less) apportions appropriate locations to—(1) social relations of reproduction (rapports sociaux de reproduction), namely the bio-psychological relations between gender groups and age groups, and the specific organization of the family; (2) relations of production (rapports de production), namely the division of labor and its social functional (fonctions sociales) organization in hierarchical forms. These two series of relations, namely relations of production and relations of reproduction, are inseparable from one another.

The production of these two types of social relations seems to correspond to the two types of production Marx discovered in historical materialism: the production of human beings and material production. Since the division of labor has appeared, Lefebvre is clearly not discussing the perspective of historical materialism in a broad, general sense here. First, and specifically here, Lefebvre regards the production of human "bio-psychological" relations and family relations as the foundational reproduction of the field-context of social life-space relations. This differs from the definition of the reproduction of the general material production process in broad historical materialism provided by Marx and Engels in The German Ideology. Lefebvre’s use of "reproduction" here clearly does not refer to the simple or expanded reproduction of material production occurring to satisfy new vital needs, but specifically refers to the repetitive occurrence of social spatial life at the level of everyday familial relations. Social space is precisely constructed at the level of the reproduction of this micro-habituated life-relation field-context. Second, in Lefebvre’s view, the essence of social spatial construction is the production and reproduction of specific social relations of production. In the spatial practice of modernity, this essence is determined by the complex procedural skills of the division of labor that emerged historically during the industrial production process, as well as the functional structure of the monetary hierarchy spontaneously generated by overall socio-economic activities. Furthermore, these macro-social relations of production must micro-objectify and reproduce social being within the operation of people's daily spatial lives. This direction of logical ordering is not entirely identical to the macro-socio-political-economic level of concern for Marx and Engels.

Naturally, on the scale of historical epistemology, the occurrence and interconnection of these two types of production—as the basis for the production and reproduction of social relations in spatial practice—are complex and varied. First, Lefebvre believes that "in pre-capitalist societies, the reproduction of life and socio-economic production—these two intertwined levels together constituted social reproduction (reproduction sociale)—which is to say, despite the existence of conflicts, feuds, strife, crises, and wars, social reproduction continued generation after generation." This means that in the production of social space prior to the emergence of the capitalist mode of production, the reproduction of life and socio-economic production together formed general social reproduction. We can see that "reproduction" is actually the keyword in the construction of Lefebvre's social space theory. Lefebvre’s expression here is not precise: in the development of pre-capitalist societies, there were periods without socio-economic production in the modern sense, such as primitive tribal life. Moreover, inspired by Morgan’s research in Ancient Society, Marx and Engels later argued that in social life where relations of human dependence predominate, the production of human beings occupies a decisive position; there, natural physical space is still dominated by land and kinship as the primary conditions of reproduction. Here, Lefebvre did not delineate or attend to these important viewpoints as meticulously as he did in The Urban Revolution.

Second, following the emergence of the capitalist mode of production, the reproductive basis of social spatial practice became much more complex.

The arrival of capitalism, and especially "modern" (moderne) neo-capitalism (néo-capitalisme), has greatly deepened the complexity of the state of affairs. There are three related levels to consider: (1) the reproduction of life (the family); (2) the reproduction of labor power (regarding the working class itself); (3) the reproduction of the social relations of production (reproduction des rapports sociaux de production), namely the reproduction of those specific social relations that constitute capitalism, as well as the reproduction of those relations that are constantly sought and exploited (and which constantly exert influence). Within the order constituted by these triple relations, the role of space needs to be examined concretely.

The focus of the discussion here is the reproduction of capitalist material production and social relations, which is seen as the core of the construction of capitalism as a specific social space. Within this, the production and reproduction of social relations in spatial practice begins to become the dominant force. This is ordered by a triple reproduction of spatial relations: first, the reproduction of life composed of daily family life—this was the kinship-based foundation of spatial production in traditional society, but it is no longer the dominant production of relations in the shaping and ordering of spatial practice. Second, relative to the capitalist mode of production, the core of this daily life is no longer a patriarchal, Master-Slave dialectical spatial syntax [10], but rather the reproduction of free labor power to be exploited and absorbed by capital; this is also the generation of the propertyless working class. This reproduction is built upon the transformation of the aforementioned reproduction of life in daily existence. However, the reproduction of corporeal labor power—as the living labor appropriated by capital without compensation—is the fundamental condition for the entirety of bourgeois spatial practice. Third, the various reproduction des rapports sociaux de production (reproduction of the social relations of production) maintained by the bourgeoisie to ensure the survival of the entire capitalist mode of production. This, of course, primarily refers to the reproduction of the exploitative relation of capital over wage labor within the space of economic reification [11]. Its core spatial syntax is the alienated labor construct of the commodity-market economy, where labor exchange relations are "actually abstracted" [12] and reified into money and capital. In Lefebvre’s view, this is precisely the essence of capitalist spatial production practice, and this bourgeois reproduction of capital relations increasingly relies on specific representations of space and systems of representational spatial codes.

II. The Place of Representation: The Complex Configuration of Social Spatial Ordering

In Lefebvre's view, once we transcend the old spatial cognitive constructs of natural physical space and pure mental space, we enter a completely new configuration of social space; this is an extremely important step in the revolution of spatial perspectives. However, the social space constructed by human existential activities is not merely a simple interlacing of multiple life relations, production relations, and social relations within spatial practice. Nor does it only consist of spatial tools that serve as the "reverse-objectified" [13] crystallization of the objective, abstract spatial syntax of these spatial relations. Simultaneously, there exists a fusion of conceptual representations of spatial relations and spatial imaginary relations that participate in the construction of the subjective field-context of relations. That is to say, unlike the simple objective material transformation and shaping of material production that Marx had already focused on, the social space constructed by the field-context of human life relations is primarily an objective relational interaction configuration directly activated by the material facilities of spatial tools such as buildings, roads, and squares. The activation and reproduction of this spatial relational field-context cannot be separated from the symbolic conceptual representations and subjective spatial experiences of the spatial syntax of real-world abstractions in spatial practice, nor from the complex encoding of social relations achieved through spatial representations and codes.

This is where spatial production differs from the shaping and ordering of general material production. Although in the production of material instruments of production (machines), there also exists a special reification where labor skill relations are objectively abstracted (represented) and reverse-objectified into production templates, the laborer does not experience conceptual representations or subjective experiences concerning spatial existence when the tool re-activates the labor. Conversely, in the production of the intersubjective field-context of relations—which is the core of social spatial production—people consistently activate invisible field-contexts of relations from material spatial tools like buildings during social interaction and daily life. This is always accompanied by conceptual representations and spatial imaginings of complex spatial syntax. These spatial representations and experiences are not an independent mental space detached from objective spatial practice; they are the ordering factors of the socio-historical negative entropy created by spatial practice itself. No spatial relational field-context can exist apart from the representation and experience of spatial syntax. This was a vital discovery in Lefebvre’s "Lutheran Revolution" of spatial perspectives—his theory of the production of space. It is also here that we see traditional perspectives of natural physical space and mental space are not simply discarded, but are scientifically sublated (aufgehoben) as necessary internal links in the production of space. This is an aspect we need to consider seriously.

From the perspective of intellectual genealogy, we can also see a contrast of heterogeneity within a "discursive Gestalt." In the humanistic context of Metaphilosophie, the symbolic myths and later systems of knowledge-discourse appearing in the historical-logical chart were often manifestations of possessive power, while human poetic "creative-making" (poiesis) situations became ontological "remnants." In Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space, however, spatial representations and experiences are internal ordering factors of spatial production; here, all Romanticist imaginings have vanished.

First, the conceptual representations of space and subjective experiences identified by Lefebvre are not merely abstract consciousness opposed to matter. At the starting point of Marx and Engels' founding of historical materialism, they only mentioned that "unfortunate consciousness" after explaining the production and reproduction of socio-historical being, the dual relational construct, and the principle of the mode of production. There, consciousness moved away from the illusion of directly reflecting objects and returned to the scientific configuration of: "My relation to my surroundings is my consciousness" (Mein Verhältniß zu meiner Umgebung ist mein Bewußtsein). The essence of consciousness is no longer an abstract reflection of matter, but the subjective presentation of a real relation. We see that Lefebvre, in his theory of the production of space, directly applies this historical materialist view of consciousness to the field-contextual construction of spatial relations. Only here, consciousness is no longer an independent mental world outside of social life, but is the internal ordering factor of the production of social relations within social space itself. It is simply realized more concretely as conceptual representations of spatial syntax, ordering and encoding systems of symbolic codes, and the imaginary configuration of spatial experiential relations.

Second, Lefebvre tells us that a more complex situation in the production of space is that the reproduction of social relations occurring in a given social life happens precisely through a mode of inverted self-concealment. For example, in the capitalist mode of production, people take the reproduction of the reified, inverted field-context of economic relations as the natural spatial reality itself, which generates a fetishistic pseudo-environment of spatial representations and experiences. The spatial syntax of architectural design and planning in the Kingdom of Money is a trick to defraud people of their wealth; the window displays on commercial streets that make people linger, and the escalators positioned among multi-level clusters of shops in shopping malls, are all concrete realizations of the spatial syntax of commodity sales. This spatial syntax within the space of bourgeois economic reification is the result of the "real abstraction" and "reverse objectification" of the field-context of actual commodity exchange relations. The laws of its architectural shaping and ordering are not simple spatial utility; the representations and spatial experiences of this spatial syntax exist precisely to conceal its profit-driven essence. Therefore, Lefebvre proposes that the construction of social space is always a complex configuration (complexes les situations).

Social space also includes various specific representations (représentations) of the double or triple interaction between the social relations of production and the social relations of reproduction. Symbolic representations (représentations symboliques) serve to maintain those social relations that exist in a state of coexistence and cohesion (de coexistence et de cohésion). While exhibiting (exhibe) these social relations, representations transpose (transposant) them—and thus mask (dissimulant) them in a symbolic manner—against the backdrop of Nature with a capital N.

Lefebvre's formulation here is extremely important yet difficult to access because he writes in an almost metaphorical style, concealing many constitutive presuppositions. As I understand it: First, the representations of space permeated by spatial practice are not merely subjective consciousness, but a relational qualitative endowment of objective spatial existence. In a certain sense, this specific representation is an important logical sequencing link in Lefebvre's theory of social space. Symbolic representations differ from the direct occurrence of social spatial practice; they anchor the endowment of various relational "field-contexts" (changjing) [14] occurring in spatial practice through the spatial syntax [15] of relational qualities. Social relations between people are non-substantial "field-contextual" existences; relational field-contexts emerge and vanish in an instant, and thus lack direct visibility. However, the production of social space cannot occur apart from these relations that are being constructed and deconstructed in the present. Therefore, relations always represent their own coexisting or cohesive field-contextual existence through symbolic conceptual representations. For example, the "father" or "children" in the relations of family life: "father" here is not an average male in a physiological sense, but an adult male situated in a relational field-context of having sired children. In the case of the CEO, teacher, or worker in social interaction relations, each personal conceptual representation does not refer to a person’s physical body, but anchors a specific spatial field-context of social relations. Similarly, with the US dollar, commodities, and exchange rates in the economic market, every material representation appearing in the economic social space refers not to a simple material entity, but to a relational field-contextual existence of an economic reified [16] space presented after multiple inversions.

Second, these relational representations are not merely a subjectivized symbolic coding of ideas; in the production of space, they must conceive of the design of spatial tools and the spatial syntax of planning through the practice of real abstract space. This is then reversely objectified into the shaping and ordering of material facilities such as buildings, roads, and squares. The qualitative nature of the subject-relation representation occurs precisely within the specific spatial practices activated by different spatial tools—such as daily life in the home, productive labor in workshops and factories, commodity exchange in commercial centers, and transportation on roads or activities in squares. These heterogeneous spatial practices occurring within material spatial tools also embed the representational coding and subjective spatial experiences of different spatial syntaxes. Lefebvre himself carefully analyzed the different experiences of living space generated in detached houses versus apartments; as representations of space in architectural design, the conceived spatial syntax of a detached house and an apartment would be fundamentally different.

Third, while spatial representations of relations anchor and exhibit the field-contextual existence of relations in social space, they often quietly convert or substitute the existence of real relations. Particularly regarding the representation and spatial experience of social relations, representations under the dominance of ideology will shroud the social relations actually occurring and passed off as "Nature" or a natural existence. Examples include the zoological "Son of Heaven" [17] in the feudal imperial power context, or the bourgeoisie dressing up the market economy as the eternal system most consistent with human nature. In such a "pseudo-context" of spatial representation, people are bathed in the experience of "vast imperial grace" or "happy, equal transactions." The representation of space appearing as spatial syntax is not itself ideology, but it is an important tool that may become the ideological fiction of the production of spatial relations.

It is also within this specific intentional context that Lefebvre identifies how, in the production of space, the relations of reproduction are divided into "on the one hand, frontal (frontales), public, and overt—and thus coded—relations; and on the other hand, hidden, secret, and repressed (clandestins réprimées et définissant) relations." This "frontal" aspect is profound, originating from Husserl’s phenomenology where objects always present themselves in a way that faces us (für mich). Husserl once noted that we can only see the front side of a table; even when we walk to the back of the table to observe it, we still obtain a "front" facing the subject. In this specific process of spatial production, what is presented publicly is the spatial representation of the coded existence of relations, while what is hidden are the real dominant relations that ideology does not want people to see. This is precisely the "cunning" of spatial representation within spatial syntax. Similar to the "Son of Heaven acting on behalf of Heaven" or the "Three Fundamental Bonds and Five Constant Virtues" [18] (ruler-subject, father-son) structure in the frontal representational context of feudal social space, what was obscured was the patriarchal dependence and rule established upon blood relations. Behind the frontal banner of Enlightenment freedom and equality in the bourgeois economic reified space, the exploitation of surplus value and the relations of slavery without a visible whip are hidden. Here, Lefebvre reminds us that false representations participate in the production of social space, and sometimes the production of these false representations becomes the protagonist of spatial production. Therefore, "space can be said to contain numerous intersections (entrecroisements), each of which has its designated place. As for the representations of the relations of production, they include various power relations, and these power relations also occur in space." Please note that in the production of social space, the representation of power relations is not merely a subjective situation of ideological forms; in the process of spatial production, its relational quality will also be solidified by being reversely objectified into concrete material facilities. For instance, "space incorporates power relations in the form of buildings, monuments, and works of art." Obviously, unlike general ideological criticism, Lefebvre’s critique of social space theory delves directly into the concrete analysis of the material existence of real-world spatial tools. The appearance of power relations in spatial existence is not just the political and legal institutional constraints focused on by traditional political science; rather, it is repeatedly practiced through the spatial tools encountered by people in their daily lives—buildings, monuments, and works of art. The spatial syntax here is itself embedded with the deployment of power. Think of the majestic Roman columns as symbols of power on the facades of ancient Roman architecture; the ancient Chinese palaces where one had to stoop while ascending the steps; the triumphal arches and sky-piercing obelisks commemorating war heroes throughout Europe and America; or the religious themes of Western medieval art. It is not difficult to see how the spatial practices of daily life at those times occurred through the representations of spatial syntax and were permeated by relations of dominance.

III. The "Trialectics" of the Production of Space

Lefebvre states that, based on the above, a brand-new "trinity" (triplicité) of spatial relational field-contextual structures can be obtained in his theory of social space: namely, spatial practice, representations of space, and representational space. Some also refer to this view of Lefebvre as the trialectics of the production of space. This seems to exceed Marx’s original dual framework of social life and consciousness. In my view, this is also the most important result of the "Lutheran Revolution" achieved by Lefebvre in his conception of space.

First is spatial practice, the most important element in the production of social space. This is the primary concept in the context of Lefebvre’s social space theory with which we are already very familiar.

Spatial practice (La pratique spatiale). It consists of production and reproduction, and the specific locations and sets of spatial characteristics of each social formation (formation sociale). Spatial practice ensures continuity and a certain degree of cohesion. Regarding social space and the relationship of each given social member to space, this cohesion implies competency (compètence) at a guaranteed level and performance (performance) at a specific level.

According to the ordering intentions we have fully discussed above, spatial practice as the production of spatial relational field-contexts differs from general material production and labor-shaping, which directly gives material reality its visible external form. The formation (formation) of relations in the production of social space gives spatial existence an internal form. In the past, when Marx used the concept of "social formation" (formation sociale), he always had in mind the social construction of macro economic and political structures. In Lefebvre’s spatial theoretical context, formation sociale (social formation/endowment) primarily refers to the spatial practice of the production relations between people and the reproduction of other complex social relations occurring in daily life. One aspect Lefebvre does not emphasize is that this social spatial relation formation can only be the result of the development of material productive forces under certain social-historical conditions. Historical materialism emphasizes the decisive role of material production’s shaping and ordering in the generation of social-historical negentropy; on this point, the social relational field-context in spatial practice can only be the result of this development of productive forces. Lefebvre believes it is precisely the historical construction of these daily relational field-contexts, occurring and repeating every moment, that realizes the determination of the specific positions and social spatial sets of the historical existence of people and things. For example, the dominant position of natural existence in early human social life and the patriarchal aggregations established by people based on blood relations; or later, in the capitalist mode of production, the economic reification/thingification (wuxianghua) inversion and the personified aggregation of economic relations based on the relational endowment of commodity exchange. In Lefebvre’s view, spatial practice based on daily life relational field-contexts is precisely what guarantees the structural cohesion and continuity of the social relational field-context.

Second is the representation of space that participates in spatial practice. As previously mentioned, the production of space differs from the shaping and ordering in the production of objects; its subject is the production of spatial relational field-contexts. Since social relations are non-substantial constructions and disappearances in the present, the way space is present in relations is usually represented and substituted by the spatial syntax representations of abstract spatial relational field-contexts. This issue of representations of space is the most difficult logical link to access in Lefebvre’s spatial theory. This is because it aims to break the dual cognitive model of matter-consciousness and objective-subjective in traditional philosophy, addressing the complex problem of the reproduction of relational field-contexts unique to the production of space in real-world relational field-contexts. Spatial representations can be intellectual conceptual constructs for designing material facilities like buildings, or they can be the spatial syntax carriers embodied in buildings and other material facilities. It is not merely a conscious presentation of objective relational field-contexts; it is the "blueprint" for the occurrence of the relational field-context and the ordering template for reconstruction. The "blueprint" here refers to the problem of the precedence of architectural representation that Marx touched upon in Capital. There, Marx distinguished between a spider weaving a web or a bee building a hive and an architect building a house: the latter has a representational "blueprint" in mind before implementing the concrete construction work. I cannot be certain whether Lefebvre’s concept of the representation of space originated from this important view of Marx.

Representations of space (Les reprèsentations de l'espace). They are linked to the relations of production and to the "order" (ordre) which those relations impose, and hence to knowledge (connalssances), to signs, codes, and to "frontal" (frontales) relations.

It can be seen that what Lefebvre identifies here as the representational space is directly connected to the situational field [19] of spatial practice relations. It can be both a pre-existing conceptual guide and a "blueprint" construction of spatial syntax that allows a certain situational field of spatial practice relations to occur, or it can be the reification [20] of such a conception into a template of physical spatial tools to activate the daily operation of spatial practice and the reconstruction of spatial relational situational fields. He strongly emphasizes that the essence of representations of space is the ordre (ordering) of relations of production; this relational ordering is often linked to knowledge. In my view, the knowledge-form construction occurring within the ordering of representations of space should be considered a characteristic of modern representations of space. This is because, in the representations of space within early social life, the relational ordering was embedded within objective spatial practice. Representations of space existing as designs and plans in the form of pure knowledge—especially today’s computer-aided 3D spatial modeling and ordering—are consistent with the real abstraction and independent operation of modern science and technology. As previously mentioned, within Husserl’s phenomenological Goujing (construal of situational structures) [21], all cognition is "positive"; therefore, a representation of space is always an intentional representation of a certain quality. Furthermore, setting aside the spatial situational fields directly perceived by people in spatial practice, the modes of representation for its relational situational fields are complex and diverse. They can be abstract knowledge constructions expressing specific spatial syntax, symbolic signs, or specific conceptual "design" modelings and "planning" encodings; they can also be the physical architectures (such as spatial tools like churches, palaces, and monuments) resulting from the inverse objectification of spatial syntax. In any case, representations of space must contain an ordering imposed upon spatial practice by certain relations of production, much like the ideology embedded in architectural design and urban planning. In already formed domestic "apartments" or commercial "supermarkets," the spatial syntax solidified within their representations of space also generates certain regulations of spatial relations. Moreover, since reified representations of space often participate in the repetitive occurrence and reconstruction of the production and reproduction of social relations in spatial practice through a previously present relational quality, this representation of space—which replaces the emergence of situational relations—lays the groundwork for "relational misrecognition." This makes it possible for relations of production characterized by coercive ordering to be represented as non-coercive spatial arrangements.

Precisely here, we shall point out a logical blind spot in Lefebvre's problem of representations of space. We could follow Lefebvre's logic of ordering: representations of space are spatial conceptions related to "knowledge" and "codes" that are distinct from spatial practice, and they activate the occurrence and maintenance of spatial relational situational fields through the spatial syntax embedded in physical spatial tools. This seems to be an unproblematic claim. However, if we carefully reflect on the historical realization of the "representations of space"—the second moment of Lefebvre’s original spatial dialectic—we discover a massive internal fracture and self-contradiction. If we were in the primordial era of the initial creation of social space, the human conception of spatial relational situational fields and spatial syntax would be embedded in spatial practice as the laborer’s own creative, autonomous activity. When a person in a primitive tribe builds a hut, his spatial syntax (the "blueprint" pre-existing in the mind identified by Marx), or when a group of shepherds or hunters treads a country path through the grass on a hillside, this is the direct ordering of their creative autonomous activity. This means that Lefebvre’s distinction between spatial practice and conceptual representations of space holds true here. Yet, in most cases of actual socio-historical development—especially in all spatial production processes within class societies—the actual events break this logical hypothesis. In the spatial production truly existing within slave, feudal, and capitalist modes of production, those who can possess the autonomous creative activity of spatial representation are not the laborers situated within spatial production, but rather the masters, emperors, bishops, and today’s bourgeoisie who serve as the ruling class or hold the power over spatial production! This also means that the representations of space truly occurring in most spatial production characterized by situational fields of servitude are not a conceptual premise for everyone entering into spatial practice. The creative autonomous activity contained within representations of space is fractured from, or even opposed to, the reification process of such spatial conceptions in real-world spatial production. The oppressed classes and ordinary laborers simply do not possess the right to representations of space within spatial production. Just as when thousands of slaves built the magnificent pyramids, the conceptual representation of space only originated from the rulers of that time; the planning of today’s Wall Street districts and the architectural design of skyscrapers cannot possibly originate from the construction workers participating in spatial production, but must be completed by capitalists through the employment of professional architects and planners. That is to say, representations of space are not a universal component of spatial dialectics, but a specific phenomenon of spatial production under the particular historical conditions of human social spatial production. It should also be noted that this important view is not my invention, but a perspective already proposed and discussed by Marx and Engels in The German Ideology. There, they jointly focused on "autonomous activity" (Selbstbethätigung) which holds a central position in the ordering of productive forces. This concept of autonomous activity is no longer the "labor" serving as the authentic species-essence within the humanist context of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, but rather the creative ordering factor within real productive forces. However, they discovered that in the process of human socio-historical development, initially this autonomous activity in production was embedded within the material production process, whereas after entering class society, "autonomous activity and the production of material life are separated, because they are carried out by different people." The autonomous ordering that originally belonged to the laborer’s activity now belongs to the slave owners and feudal rulers, while the laborer’s production becomes a physical activity devoid of any autonomy.

Third is the representational space within the Goujing of imagination. This is perhaps the most unique aspect among Lefebvre’s triad of spatial production components. Representational space is not equivalent to a space of consciousness, nor is it merely "my relation to my environment" as identified by Marx and Engels; it specifically refers to the uniquely human subjective situational construal (Goujing) of spatial sense. This is because, for Lefebvre, social space is not a neutral, empty locus, but a spatial relational situational field constructed by human spatial practice. Unlike the positions of naturally existing objects or the physical space in which animals exist, the most important aspect of the basis of human existence—aside from the conditions of material production—is a certain intersubjective relational dependency, or what Marx called the "surrounding world" (Umwelt) and Heidegger called "worldliness" (Weltlichkeit). It is in this sense that both Heidegger and Derrida once remarked that "animals have no world." Lefebvre discovered that the situational fields of relational dependency in human social life—aside from the emergent-vanishing relational situational fields in spatial practice and physical spatial tools—also depend on the subject’s lived experience of the spatial relational situational field. This unique worldly bodily-mental spatial experience is a significant ordering factor in the production of human social space. What we commonly refer to in life as the "cramped space" of a home, the "oppressive space" of a courtroom, or the "bright, upward-reaching space" of Gothic architecture all represent subjective experiences within relational situational fields reified by different spatial syntaxes; these are different situational construals of representational space. The existence of a certain social space is often a spatial relational situational field generated by the encoding of an intentional, representational, and subjective symbolic system. Therefore, unlike the utility experience in using a product of labor, spatial production highlights a special lived experience of the situational field, which is representational space. Objective spatial relational situational fields are inseparable from this imaginative Goujing within the special subjective experience of space. My understanding is that this is Lefebvre’s logical reconstruction of the simple problem of "mental space" in traditional spatial theory; it shifts directly from the conceptual construction of space to the subject’s own lived experience of space. Experience is not merely a mental, rational identification, but also includes the complex sensory situations of the body.

Representational spaces (Les espaces de représentation). These manifest as diverse symbolic systems (symbolismes/symbolisms), sometimes encoded, sometimes unencoded, linked to the hidden or secret aspects of social life, as well as to art (which might ultimately be defined more as a code of representational space than as a code of space itself).

What Lefebvre fails to notice here is similar to the logical blind spot in representations of space that we identified above: although everyone gains a sense of space through their own existence, within the production of space in class society, the ability to discuss the encoding of space according to symbolic systems or to attend to the secret aspects of living space on an artistic level is likely something only a small minority within the ruling class can achieve. The spatial representations generated by emperors and aristocrats in palaces and manorial castles must differ from the sense of space held by the "lower orders" who serve as domestic slaves within these physical spatial installations. We can see that when Lefebvre uses the phrases Les espaces de représentation (representational spaces, which can also be translated as spaces of representation) and Les représentations de l'espace (representations of space), their starting points in discursive ordering are distinctly different. Representations of space refer to the direct conceptual schemes (spatial syntax) of spatial practice relations and the physical reproduction of these schemes (architectural installations). Conversely, the inversion of the word order in "representational space" (space of representation) emphasizes the subject's own imagination and experiential situation regarding the field-context of spatial relations. Furthermore, in Les représentations de l'espace, Lefebvre uses the plural for "representations," while in Les espaces de représentation, he uses the plural for "spaces." Distinguishing it from objective spatial practical activities and from the representational modeling and anchoring of relational qualities within the social relation field-context itself, representational space is a subjective imaginary space constructed by the encoding and decoding systems of spatial codes in specific social lives. It is precisely this particular subjective representational space of experience that, through different abstract symbolic systems, guarantees the production and reproduction mechanisms of the dominant mode of production. Typical representational spaces include symbolic code systems such as the space of lived experience, the space of love, geometric space, divine space, musical space, artistic space, theatrical space, and speculative space. In the relational field-contexts of everyday life, these manifest as experiential and imaginary situational spaces [22] attained by every individual and group within spatial implements [23] through different symbolic encodings. In this book, Lefebvre does not elaborate on encoding and decoding. In The Sociology of Marx, he once described encoding as follows: "All codes construct a horizon around a text (a message), unfolding it, and then surrounding and closing it off, thereby defining a centered (centré) space," and added that this encoding is "practico-sensory (pratico-sensible) and social." In Lefebvre’s view, all encoding involves the "production of meaning." The codes Lefebvre refers to here are not necessarily subjective knowledge; different series of buildings that realize spatial syntax—urban sculptures, monuments, streets, and city walls—can all generate specific spatial representations. Through the abstraction and crystallization of spatial practice, and through the encoding and decoding of different forms of spatial syntax, they construct a daily life experience of varying qualities. Naturally, the sense of space gained by the rulers who conceive and build these spatial implements through autonomous activity is fundamentally different from that gained by the ruled masses; this is a field-context of enslavement characterized by the relationship between the encoder and the encoded. Through the shaping of figurative sculptures, the mythical space of the eternal City of God, the situational construction of immortal classical music, the dreamlike poetic narrative space of cinema, and the abyss-like ordering of thought, people acquire diverse spatial experiences. These special representational symbolic systems may not appear to be direct reflections of the field-context of spatial practice relations, but they are fundamentally dependent on the historical qualitative nature of specific modes of production. Lefebvre believes it is precisely within these complex representational spaces that it becomes possible to partition the secret and luminous parts of life and social fixity. For instance, what people evoke in musical space is often an exclusive personal experience and feeling unknown to others—a secret space of experience. In the fetishistic economic space of bourgeois modernity, people generate a pseudo-situational space that obscures relations of enslavement and exploitation beneath an illusion of seemingly luminous concepts of equal exchange. In Lefebvre’s view, artistic symbolic codes play a vital role in representational space because art is both a specific form of representational space and an important means of creating "defamiliarization" within the field-context of spatial relations. The "art" here is clearly not art in the narrow sense, but rather Lefebvre’s famous revolutionary field-context of "letting everyday life become art."

IV. Man, Historicality, and the Primacy of Practice: The Micro-Texture of Social Spatial Construction

Regarding the basic cognitive principles for understanding social space, Lefebvre specifically identifies three important aspects. First, he informs us that the production and reproduction of social spatial relation field-contexts, which are distinct from natural physical space, is not a subject-less process; it is constructed by the concrete spatial practices of individual and collective actions under certain historical conditions. This is the theoretical boundary he draws with Althusser, and it constitutes the essence of the "Lutheran Revolution" within his conception of space. It is not that humans act within a physical spatial site; rather, human existential activity is the existence of the realistic relational field-context of social space. The aforementioned spatial practice, representations of space, and representational space are not physical entities external to humans or oppositions of concepts and symbolic codes; they are the spatial presence of human social life and everyday experience itself. Another aspect worthy of our attention is that Lefebvre’s emphasis on the subject-existence of man no longer remains merely on the individual Dasein within a neo-humanist situational construction, but rather aligns more with Marx’s "co-presence" [24] of the collective of real individuals. Thus, Lefebvre says:

In reality, social space incorporates social acts (actes sociaux), the acts of subjects (sujets). These subjects include both individuals and collectives; these subjects are born, they die, they suffer, and they act. From the perspective of these subjects, their (ils) spatial behavior is both full of vitality and fraught with the danger of death: they develop within it, express themselves, and encounter prohibitions; then they grow old and die, and this same space also includes their graves (tombe).

Here, Lefebvre deliberately uses the plural ils (they) to express the co-present essence of society. Where Heidegger highlighted that "Aristotle was born, lived, and died," Lefebvre emphasizes being born, doing, suffering, and dying within human co-presence. This co-presence is clearly not the abstract "falling" (Verfallen) of the "They" (das Man), but the historical construction of the social space relational field-context itself. Heidegger failed to realize that the servile "They" within feudal autocratic relations is fundamentally heterogeneous from the fashionable "They" within bourgeois monetary relations. Because an independent Dasein cannot construct social space; the production of space is always the convergence of the socio-historical existence and everyday life of different individual subjects. The essence of social space is always the production and reproduction of the co-present relational field-context between people and things, and between people and people. The spatial existence and death of people that Lefebvre identifies here is not the birth and death of their physical bodies in a physiological sense, but the existence of entering the relational field-context and the death of losing spatial existence within social space. The tombe (grave) that buries them here is not the actual earth, but an invisible spatial field-context. At the end of the Japanese film Mellow, Kiho, a girl who inherits her father’s ramen shop, suddenly realizes that people do not come to the shop just to eat, but treat the shop as a "place of convergence." Consequently, she decides to go to Italy to study architecture to build better places for human convergence.

Second, in Lefebvre’s view, there is no invariant point-to-point "correspondence model" between "social acts and social locations (les actes et les lieux sociaux), or between spatial functions and spatial forms (les fonctions et les formes spatiales)." This means that the situational existence of spatial practice and such actions in the construction of spatial relations—the functional occurrence of the relational field-context and its form of spatial representation—are not a frozen, one-to-one simple correspondence. This is because social space is not something immutable; it is not simply equivalent to physical reality or empty locations. As a currently constructed social spatial relation field-context, it is the cradle of a new society as well as its graveyard; non-substantial social space undergoes historical transformation along with changes in social life. This again demonstrates that the existence of social space is historical. Lefebvre gives the example that in pre-capitalist societies, our perspective for observing social space would not be the political economy used to face the social space of bourgeois modernity today, but would often be anthropology, ethnology, and sociology, because the social space appearing there had spatial practices of a specific historical quality:

These locations were needed for symbolic copulation and murder—places where the laws of (maternal) procreation might undergo renewal, and where fathers, chiefs, kings, priests, and sometimes gods might be put to death. Space thus appeared as a theater of sacrifice—while at the same time it escaped the influence of the forces of good and evil: it retained that side of its power which promoted social continuity, but left no trace of the dangerous side.

This is correct. In social life where blood relations were dominant, because the level of material productive forces for transforming nature was low, natural physical space remained the foundational dependence of social life. Therefore, social spatial practice, representations, and representational space were not the conceptual knowledge-based schemes and imaginations about space seen today in industrial production, science, technology, and economic reification [25] through the lens of economics. Instead, they were necessarily filled with "human production" and primitive symbolic worship of interest to anthropologists. If places for early collective human activity existed, they would be sacrificial sites where fathers, kings, and priests were deified. Returning to the relationship between spatial practice and symbolic representations (representational space) mentioned above, we see that spatial representations and representational spaces at that time often participated in the construction of space (everyday life) through an artistic, mythical ordering. All of this is clearly no longer the primary mode of reproduction in today’s social spatial representations, because modern industrial production, science and technology, and economic activities have profoundly changed the relational field-context of spatial practice. Simultaneously, conceptual symbolic systems centered on knowledge have become the main body of spatial representation and experience.

Third, the complex relationship between spatial practice and symbolic representations of space (or representational space). At this constitutional point, Lefebvre argues that within the construction of social space, we can discover a particular illusion—namely, the priority of certain symbolic concepts in the production of space. It appears as though these concepts dominate the occurrence of spatial practice through a mode even more important than lived reality—as a "higher reality" ("réalité" supérieure). This is where idealism gains the upper hand within the experience of everyday life. Because all spatial implements such as buildings, roads, and squares are the objectified results of specific conceptual designs ("blueprints"), and because subjective representations of space and representational spatial experiences are inseparable from the encoding of abstract sign systems, conceptual ordering seems to become the prerequisite for spatial practice. This constitutes the essence of all past idealist views of mental space. In my view, this is precisely where Lefebvre's social theory enriches generalized historical materialism in its details. In the works of Marx and Engels, they primarily offered a perspective on the problems of historical idealism, re-establishing the general principles of historical materialism through the principle that social being determines consciousness; however, the relationship between ideas and actual social life was never truly subjected to such a "thick description" [26] there. Lefebvre does not shy away from the false priority that ideas take over reality in the production of social space and everyday life, but he provides a scientific explanation of the hidden mechanisms through which this false priority occurs.

To this end, Lefebvre cites the mythical metaphor of light. He says: "For example, to be occupied by Light (Lumière)—sunlight, moonlight, or starlight—as opposed to shadow, night, and thus death; light is seen as Truth (Vrai), as Life, and therefore as thought and cognition (savoir), and eventually, through a medium that is not immediately obvious, light is seen as established authority." This is correct. From "God said, Let there be light" in the Bible to Plato's Allegory of the Cave [27], light has always symbolized that which illuminates the space of life. Light allows people to see; brightness is the prerequisite that guides the way. Conversely, dark spaces symbolize suffering and death. In fact, by the time of the later bourgeois Enlightenment, it was still the metaphor of light that prevailed, only the light of God was replaced by the disenchanted light of Reason. Here, light is a symbolic representation of space. The light of God originated from the vertical transcendental relationship of medieval divinity, while the light of Enlightenment is the realistic dominant relationship of instrumental reason [28] championed by the bourgeoisie. Although this is not a concrete objective spatial practice, it guides our actions and lives within social space under the slogan of spiritual calling and in the contemplation of the pursuit of truth. If we were to simply dismiss it by falsifying it as "idealism," we would not truly attain the dignity of materialism. Lefebvre wants to clarify how this phenomenon—where symbolic conceptual representations take priority over spatial practice—occurs within spatial construction.

In reality, the priority of symbolic representations and concepts in everyday life is not a simple idealist error, but rather an epistemological distortion [29] that occurs when representations of space, facing the field-context of spatial relations in the production of space, transcend empirical realism. This is what Lenin described as the result of turning a "justified curve" into a "straight line" [30]. We can take the Eleatic School’s abstraction of "the One" of Being as an example. As the starting point of ancient Greek philosophical contemplation, moving from the many "down-to-earth" phenomena of sensory experience toward the metaphysical essence of Being ("the One") is like the idea of the "tree" as an essence. It is a conceptual symbol of a genus relationship abstracted from the existence of numerous sensory, real trees such as hollies, poplars, willows, and camphor trees. Moving from the "many" to the "one" is itself the logical beginning of culture. To grasp this symbolic "One" (the essence of the tree) in the representational position of a "higher reality" that guides the "many" (concrete trees) in actual spatial practice is, of course, not a simple mistake. It is only when Plato transforms this "One"—which is based on objective abstraction within practice—into an "Ideal One" that the representation replaces the actual relations; only then does the logical inversion of idealism occur. Therefore, Lefebvre says:

Like all social practice (pratique sociale), spatial practice is a lived and direct reality before it is conceptualized (concevoir); but the order in which the speculative is superior to the conceived, and the conceived is superior to lived experience, leads to the disappearance (disparaitre) of practice along with life; likewise, the "unconscious" dimension (inconscient) of lived experience itself is rarely done justice.

Non-intuitive spatial practice is a living reality, but in the specific process of the production of space, its foundational role is often masked beneath the shaping and ordering of active speculative ideas and symbolic code concepts that are heterogeneous to physical objects. Even at the level of the unconscious, it has become the "norm" for rational reflection to take priority over, and be deeper than, sensory everyday life. Thus, for Lefebvre, the fact that representations of relations and imagined spatial relations participate in spatial practice—replacing or obscuring practice and life—is not a simple error, but a complex, realistic field-context of existence that must be taken seriously. This is precisely the significance of his insightful proposal of the concepts of representations of space and representational space.

Lefebvre believes that while acknowledging the foundational status of spatial practice, one should also note that the relationship between spatial practice, representations of space, and imagined spatial relations is not equivalent to the relationship between matter and consciousness or objective and subjective in the "context-construction" [31] of traditional old philosophy. Nor is it a simple relationship of determination. Rather, it is a complex relationship of interaction built upon the foundational nature of spatial practice. On the one hand, he first emphasizes the fundamental status of spatial practice in the construction of space: "Man does not live by words alone (L'homme ne vit pas que de mots)"! The field-context of spatial relations established by spatial practice is the essence of objectively occurring social life. This is the materialist bottom line maintained in the "Lutheran Revolution" [32] of Lefebvre's view of space. However, to transform the essence of social space from external physical reality to human subjective existence does not mean—as theories of mental space do—identifying conceptual representations and subjective experience directly as the essence of space. Instead, it means understanding the existence of social space as the human subjective-objective activity of spatial practice and the construction of relational field-contexts.

On the other hand, Lefebvre also discerns that unlike animal survival, which remains in a natural physical spatial state of sensory biological existence, humans possess subjective consciousness. It is only through consciousness that it becomes possible to realize the subjectivity and the spatial relational field-context established through practice. In spatial practice, "all 'subjects' are situated in a space in which they either recognize themselves or lose themselves; they can both enjoy this space and modify it." Please note: space here does not refer to an empty place into which people enter, but to a complex relational field-context constructed by the production and reproduction of social relations. All real individuals and groups can only live within a social space under specific historical conditions. Humans identify their own relational positions within this spatial construction and can also work to change this spatial structure. Furthermore, the objective construction and representation of the spatial relational field-context itself can only be realized through the combination of specific representations of space and representational imagined space. Conceptual consciousness is merely one of the subjective forms of these representations of space.

(The author is a Senior Professor in the Liberal Arts at Nanjing University, a researcher at the Center for Studies of Marxist Social Theory at Nanjing University, and a professor in the Department of Philosophy.) Source: Journal of Wuhan University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), 2025, Issue 3. Web Editor: Ma Jingren.