Through the Eyes of the Fantastic: Lefebvre, Rabelais and Intellectual History
In: Historical materialism: research in critical marxist theory, Band 10, Heft 4, S. 89-111
ISSN: 1465-4466
Henri Lefebvre's intellectual biographies, especially his (1947; 2001a [1955]) works on Rene Descartes & Francois Rabelais, are studied. Overviews of Lefebvre's involvement with the Parti Communiste Francais (PCF) during the 1940s & 1950s, & the PCF's motivations for expelling Lefebvre from the organization in 1958 are presented. An analysis of Lefebvre's various intellectual biographies of various French writers revealed an overwhelming concern with the historical & intellectual contexts within which these authors produced their works; indeed, it is noted that Lefebvre contented that a proper dialectical materialist approach to French philosophy & literature necessitated heavy consideration of the intellectual contexts surrounding these writers' works. After discussing Lefebvre's contention that the rise of the bourgeois class & Rabelais's association with the peasant class strongly affected Rabelais's writings, the appearance of "the fantastic" in Rabelais's & Cervantes's respective works is compared. In addition, differences between Lefebvre's & Mikhail Bakhtin's respective readings of the contexts that affected Rabelais' works are considered. The implications of adopting Lefebvre's "fantastical approach" to studying the everyday reality of the material world are also pondered. 61 References. J. W. Parker