Theory Land, Part II

So a few weeks ago I wrote a blog about a book I was reading by  Henri Lefebvre, called Critique of Everyday Life. It was interesting and there were parts of it I really enjoyed but other things I took offense to. Like Lefebvre saying man doesn't understand his own life. I was pissed by this statement, but, after discussing him some in class, I feel I might have misconstrued his statement.

1) He personally may not have meant this the way I took it. He could have been stating another position of a form of thinking he later critiques, namely Heidegger phenomenology. Often authors of this sort of theoretical writing state opinions of other thinkers and, when you read as much as I must for class, sometimes it gets a bit confusing if they are stating their own views or someone else's.

2) He doesn't mean what I think he means. It could be he's not saying people don't pay attention to their own lives but that they don't pay attention to everything in their lives. Cultural studies is known for closely studying things that other fields of study don't think of as super important at times (which I tend to forget, constantly immersed in CSCL and surrounded by people who find it interesting as well). I mean, you don't see too many books analyzing alienation in the social sciences - it's hard to put in terms of an experiment. Difficult, but not impossible (sticking up for the psychologists too, man!) Also, studying what's right in front of your nose is hard to do. Especially when you're trying to juggle work and family and everything else in your everyday life. Then it gets a bit difficult to look at your everyday life.

3) Maybe we don't know our own lives. We can't know everything about ourselves, after all. However, this may not be such a bad thing. Mystery and unanswerable questions are huge parts of Cultural studies - and life itself. Lefebvre sticks up for naivete in life and that it's an important part of living in everyday life. He sticks up for ingenuous individuals in order to keep pretentiousness out of intellectualism.

So, there's that. However, I still disagree with parts of Lefebvre's argument against things like Surrealism. Yes, sarcasm and cynicism all the time is unhealthy. However, don't make me feel bad for wanting escapism sometimes. Yes, I want to work for Torchwood. That's because I'm not avoiding modern life but because I need a different outlook every once in a while. And I would argue that Torchwood and Doctor Who, while being sci-fi, don't ignore everyday life but rather view it in a different form. But that's an argument for another time.

Hey, maybe the real reason I'm obsessed with watching sci-fi shows is to escape from the cultural theory that's invading my mind. And because Torchwood/Who are just flipping amazing shows. What a convenient way to end this post - with another Torchwood/Who reference. Win :D

I think I make this exact expression after reading too much about base/superstructure.