Space (or something like that)

At first when I read Lefebvre, this is what I hear... (Well the first 2 and half mins anyway). A lot of words and not really saying a lot.

Eventually after ploughing my way through the text, and further discussion, common themes were letting themselves be known...
WORK, PRODUCTION, LABOUR, WORK VS PRODUCTION, PRODUCTION VS WORK, LABOUR, NATURE and so on.

Though the above may have similar connotations and lumped in the same category, Lebebvre argues differences. Work is described in a creative process, production or product is seen as something less noble, more commercial and mass distribution. Labour is seen as a tedious, repetitive state. Nature is described as something that does not produce (definitely not) but creates.

Venice is the example offered up to be a work of all these factors.

"Take Venice, for instance. If we define works as u n i q u e , original

and primordial, as occupying a space yet associated with a particular

time, a time of maturity between rise and decline, then Venice can only be

described as a work"

but then goes on to say that parts of Venice can only be a product through its repetition. I can't help but think, that of a lot of things, whether it a specific city, song, company, photograph etc. They can be described as such and again it leads me to the point made in a previous post that the world can't simply be divided into black and white. Labels that (some) Marxist writers seem so keen to use.

Venice is what can be used to link back to the chapter title, "Social Space". Lefebvre describes the physical space of the city's canal's and streets. The materiality of the stone against the water and social happenings that co-exist in these areas and that these areas where put together for social and political means.

In limited terms I understood what Lefebvre was saying (though it was a constant struggle, was he on a word limit that he had to meet or something?) but I simply don't get why, some of it being so blindingly obvious and others being such sweeping statements.