102: Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space

Lefebvre was one of the very first orals books I read.  My notes from a year ago: 

Henri Lefebvre’s vast, multifaceted The Production of Space could probably be said to advance any number of arguments, but I think his most compelling argument is the one that brings space and knowledge into a classical Marxist framework: capitalist Western society is moving from the production of things in space to the production of space itself, which means that capitalist powers are increasing their hold and surveillance on ordinary people (aka space is now shaping the working class).  However, all is not lost: no matter how much they try, the people who build and shape “dominant” space and employ the working class can’t squeeze the working class out of existence or keep them from “appropriating” and shaping space to suit their own needs, nor can they make the world a completely visual, timeless, ideological construct.  Regular people have bodies, and we live in specific places at specific historical moments, and we shape those places (yeah, I said places, not spaces) into unique, historical “works of art” that contrast with the partially commodified built environment constructed by the ruling class.  To say that capitalism has moved beyond the product to space itself is to argue for both an increasing attempt at totalizing control of society through space AND increased resistance from the people who live in, experience, and shape that space – with the potential for a socialist revolution where appropriated spaces based on the human body/lived experience and use-value take precedence over dominant, visual spaces and exchange-value.

68: Elizabeth Engelhardt's Tangled Roots of Feminism

In The Tangled Roots of Feminism, Environmentalism, and Appalachian Literature, Elizabeth Engelhardt situates close readings of the writings of turn-of-the-century Appalachian women within their social, political, cultural, and geographical context.  While this project does work to recover these writings, many of which live in regional college archives and have never been published, it also shows  how Appalachia's women writers and activists at the turn of the last century "defined a philosophy of living that can help address social and environmental justice issues" that may be applicable today.  The book thus examines the "tangled roots" of women's writing, the environments in which they lived, and their connection to place in terms of "ecological feminism."

 The basic premise of ecological feminism is that there is no separation between humans and nature.  Humans and non-humans have a reciprocal relationship, where "self-Other" is replaced with "self-another" and both parties must take care of one another and help preserve the total ecology.  As the least-empowered in society, women can and must look out for the least-empowered in the total ecological system.  Therefore, all feminist activism must lead to long-term community stability, both environmentally and socially.  Ecological feminism in Appalachian women's writing thus led to critiques of capitalism and American corporations, as well as of any social structures that used hierarchies (race, gender, class, species, etc) to oppress, silence, or damage community members.  In defining ecological feminism, Engelhardt is careful to note that this is not an essentialist project; feminism and turn-of-the-century womanhood were not the same for all women, and activism took many historically specific forms.