Rethinking Everyday Life: And Then Nothing Turns Itself Inside Out

Author: Gregory J. Seigworth & Michael E. Gardiner
Year: 2004
Source type: article (introduction to a special issue of Cultural Studies, vol. 18, no. 2/3)
Raw file: raw/articles/seigworth-gardiner-2004-rethinking-everyday-life.md

Summary

The introduction to a special issue of Cultural Studies on everyday life. Seigworth & Gardiner argue that the everyday is "the groundless ground of lived/living concatenation" — an "open totality" that reconstitutes itself in each moment rather than a closed, assimilative whole. They read Lefebvre's theory of moments and rhythmanalysis through Leibniz's vinculum substantiale (the "substantial link" between monads), treating the monad as the "moment" and the everyday as a rhythmic, more-than-human process of mattering. They connect this to the biopolitical turn (Rose, Agamben's "bare life") and to a critique of cultural studies' concept of "articulation," which they charge with capturing only the "bony" skeleton of the social rather than its "soft tissue" — the immanent, affective, substantial bond of life itself.

Key Claims

• The everyday as open totality: the everyday is not a whole that "sucks up and seals off" all that occurs, but "a whole that reconstitutes itself in each moment as... one additional part alongside any and all of the other parts." "Everything is in everything and everything is total — and yet nothing that is, is in anything other than itself." (Lefebvre, quoted)
• Lefebvre's theory of moments and Leibniz's monad: Lefebvre's "theory of moments" is "linked to an interpretation of Leibniz"; "the 'substantial link' (vinculum substantiale) between monads is itself a monad." The monad becomes "the moment" — "the undissolvable seed-grain of experience surpassing the possibility of consciousness" — and the substantial linkage of these everyday monadic moments is knotted with "the rhythmic foldings or becomings of matter and passion."
• Rhythmanalysis and the more-than-human: the everyday retains "the rhythmic, transitional flip itself... as on-going part of the process." Lefebvre's theory of moments "calls up, by necessity, his procedure of 'rhythmanalysis.'" The everyday is "always more-than-human," including the inorganic, incorporeal, impersonal, nonhuman, and affective.
• The everyday as residual but not lack: Lefebvre's founding definition — the everyday as "what is left over" after specialized activities are singled out — is not a fall into lack or nullity. "Nothing, in the everyday, ever truly falls away, gets lost, goes lacking, turns to zero." The residual is "its own kind of differential," an "immanent bleed-up rather than fall-off."
• Biopolitics and the "life" of everyday life: the accent in "everyday life" falls on "life." Lefebvre wanted to bring "life" to the vocabulary of Marx, rethinking the everyday in a new dialectic of becoming. The theory of moments and rhythmanalysis "go beyond classical ontology... beyond existentialism... and beyond phenomenology," and "might have much to offer the increasingly frequent invocation of the biopolitical" (Rose's "politics of life itself," Agamben's "bare life").
• Critique of cultural studies' "articulation": Jameson notes that "articulation" designates "the bony parts and the connections of the skeleton, rather than the soft organic organs." Seigworth & Gardiner argue cultural studies' theory of articulation captures only the skeletal, "bony" connections of the social, missing the "soft tissue" — the immanent, vital, substantial bond. Against Felski's account of articulation as detotalizing, they insist the everyday approach "superadds the immanence of 'life' as connective (soft) tissue, as substantial and saturative bond: affectively over-determined and permeable to the contingent."

Connections

Concepts: Everyday Life · Dwelling · Noopolitics
Authors: Henri Lefebvre · Michel de Certeau · Rita Felski · Fredric Jameson
Debates: Theories of the Everyday
Related source notes: Critique of Everyday Life (Lefebvre) · Everyday Life in the Modern World (Lefebvre) · The Politics and Potential of Everyday Life (Colebrook)

Direct Quotes

"Everything is in everything and everything is total — and yet nothing that is, is in anything other than itself. Within oneness, there are differences and disjunctions; both actively and potentially, there is multiplicity." (Lefebvre, quoted)

"Everyday life, in a sense residual, defined by 'what is left over' after all distinct, superior, specialised, structured activities have been singled out by analysis, must be defined as a totality." (Lefebvre, quoted)

"Nothing, in the everyday, ever truly falls away, gets lost, goes lacking, turns to zero, is rendered null and void." (Seigworth & Gardiner)

Open Questions

• Seigworth & Gardiner's Leibnizian reading of Lefebvre (the monad as moment, the vinculum substantiale as the everyday's bond) is a distinctive interpretive claim — does it hold, or does it over-idealize Lefebvre's materialism (cf. Harvey's uncharitable reading of Leibniz, which they contest)?
• The "soft tissue" critique of cultural studies' articulation is a methodological challenge — does it offer a usable alternative, or does the appeal to "life" risk the very normative "life"-norm that Colebrook's metacritique targets?