Residues of the Dialectic: Lefebvre, Hegel, and Spatial Sedimentation

Abstract

This paper examines the problem of spatial sedimentation in The Production of Space and the possibilities it affords for reclaiming the urgency of Lefebvre’s text for our moment. Though hardly a dominant feature of the work, Lefebvre’s analysis of the persistence of older forms of social space – their “sedimentary” or “residual” survival within the present – offers a promising avenue for deprovincializing Lefebvre’s often Eurocentric and unilinear history of space insofar as it highlights the constitutive and enduring role of precapitalist, rural, and “regressive” social forms in the production of capitalist abstract space. The analysis of sedimentation also provides a timely means of reconstructing the dialectic along spatial lines. As Fredric Jameson has argued, the legitimacy of a spatial dialectic hinges not only on its contemporary relevance with regard to globalization but also on its capacity to transpose the older temporal categories of Hegelian and Marxist dialectics onto a new spatial terrain. Pursuing this direction, the paper situates Lefebvre’s account of spatial sedimentation alongside his broader concept of residue, a core element of his rehabilitation of Marxism in his early work on the critique of everyday life and his underappreciated 1965 volume Metaphilosophy. Building on the recent work of geographers engaging with spatial sedimentation in relation to uneven development, race, and colonial violence, I make the case that Lefebvre’s “method of residues” provides vital tools for grasping the survival of capitalism today and the revolutionary possibilities embedded in what has survived.