Patrick Gamsby - Böcker

Henri Lefebvre, Metaphilosophy, and Modernity provides a new interpretation of the work of Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991), reframing it as being above all a metaphilosophy of modernity.Henri Lefebvre is increasingly being recognized as one of the great twentieth-century thinkers. Nevertheless, the majority of scholarship on Lefebvre predominantly focuses on his theorizing of space, often taking Lefebvre’s The Production of Space as the point of departure, and/or on his theorizing of everyday life, with his multi-volume Critique of Everyday Life as the focal point. This book argues that it is Lefebvre’s concept of metaphilosophy that provides the connective tissues for these works, one that is chiefly concerned with deciphering the enigma of modernity.The book will appeal to a wide interdisciplinary and international audience from the fields of sociology, philosophy, cultural studies, geography, the history of ideas, and literary studies. This includes scholars and students interested in Henri Lefebvre’s writings, everyday life, modernity, space/time, leisure/work, continental thought, critical theory, Marxism, and technology.

Henri Lefebvre, Boredom, and Everyday Life culls together the scattered fragments of Henri Lefebvre’s (1901–1991) unrealized sociology of boredom. In assembling these fragments, sprinkled through Lefebvre’s vast oeuvre, Patrick Gamsby constructs the core elements of Lefebvre’s latent theory of boredom. Themes of time (modernity, everyday), space (urban, suburban), and mass culture (culture industry, industry culture) are explored throughout the book, unveiling a concealed dialectical movement at work with the experience of boredom. In analyzing the dialectic of boredom, Gamsby argues that Lefebvre’s project of a critique of everyday life is key for making sense of the linkages between boredom and everyday life in the modern world.

The Discourse of Scholarly Communication examines the place and purpose of modern scholarship and its dialectical relationship with the ethos of Enlightenment. Patrick Gamsby argues that while Enlightenment/enlightenment is often used in the mottos of numerous academic institutions, its historical, social, and philosophical elements are largely obscured. Using a theoretical lens, Gamsby revisits the ideals of the Enlightenment alongside the often-contradictory issues of disciplinary boundaries, access to research, academic labor in the production of scholarship (author, peer reviewer, editor, and translator), the interrelationship of form and content (lectures, textbooks, books, and essays), and the stewardship of scholarship in academic libraries and archives. It is ultimately argued that for the betterment of the scholarly communication ecosystem and the betterment of society, anti-Enlightenment rules of scholarship such as ‘publish or perish’ should be dispensed with in favor of the formulation of a New Enlightenment.