Henri Lefebvre, Metaphilosophy, and Modernity provides a new interpretation of the work of Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991), reframing it as being above all a metaphilosophy of modernity.

Henri Lefebvre is increasingly being recognized as one of the great twentieth-century thinkers. Nevertheless, the majority of scholarship on Lefebvre predominantly focuses on his theorizing of space, often taking Lefebvre’s The Production of Space as the point of departure, and/or on his theorizing of everyday life, with his multi-volume Critique of Everyday Life as the focal point. This book argues that it is Lefebvre’s concept of metaphilosophy that provides the connective tissues for these works, one that is chiefly concerned with deciphering the enigma of modernity.

The book will appeal to a wide interdisciplinary and international audience from the fields of sociology, philosophy, cultural studies, geography, the history of ideas, and literary studies. This includes scholars and students interested in Henri Lefebvre’s writings, everyday life, modernity, space/time, leisure/work, continental thought, critical theory, Marxism, and technology.

Patrick Gamsby is Scholarly Communications Librarian and is Cross Appointed at the Department of Sociology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He is the author of three other books: Henri Lefebvre, Boredom, and Everyday Life (2022), The Discourse of Scholarly Communication (2023), and The Dialectic of Herbert Marcuse (2024).