Survivals of the Absolute: Lefebvre on Sedimentation and Abstraction

In this chapter, I seek to reconstruct the lineaments of a theory of sedimentation in Lefebvre’s The Production of Space. Hardly a dominant feature of the work, Lefebvre’s references to sedimentation are relatively brief, fragmented and – as he often says of Marx’s own account of primitive accumulation and the state – incomplete. My contention, however, is that the problem of sediments offers a productive site for reevaluating Lefebvre’s Marxist project in our own moment of global crisis, particularly his conceptualisation of space as a concrete abstraction. Challenging more urban-focused readings of his oeuvre, Lefebvre’s account of sedimentation foregrounds the enduring role of precapitalist, rural and ‘regressive’ social forms within the continued reproduction of the capitalist relations of production.