Transcript what is … rhythmanalysis? Tom Hall what is … rhythmanalysis?  introduction to rhythmanalysis Henri Lefebvre key terms and concepts  rhythm and the everyday 

what is … rhythmanalysis?
Tom Hall
what is … rhythmanalysis?
 introduction to rhythmanalysis
Henri Lefebvre
key terms and concepts
 rhythm and the everyday
 rhythm and mobility
 rhythm and the city
case study
 rhythmanalysis as research method
 conclusion
introduction to rhythmanalysis
 Henri Lefebvre (1901-91)
Éléments de rythmanalyse: introduction à la connaissance
des rythmes (1992)
Rhythmanalysis: space, time and everyday life (2004)
This little book does not conceal its ambition. It proposes
nothing less than to found a new science, a new field of
knowledge: the analysis of rhythms
(Lefebvre 2004: 3)
Thought strengthens itself only if it enters into practice:
into use
(Lefebvre 2004: 69)
introduction to rhythmanalysis
 key terms and concepts
rhythmanalyst
a psychoanalyst
a poet
… not a statistician
rhythms
introduction to rhythmanalysis
 Rhythms
Everywhere where there is interaction between a place, a
time and an expenditure of energy, there is rhythm
(Lefebvre 2004: 15)
introduction to rhythmanalysis
 key terms and concepts
rhythmanalyst
a psychoanalyst:
a poet
… not a statistician
rhythms
repetition (and difference)
introduction to rhythmanalysis
 Repetition (and difference)
No rhythm without repetition in time and space, without
reprises, without returns … But there is no identical
absolute repetition, indefinitely. Whence the relation
between repetition and difference … Not only does
repetition not exclude differences, it also gives birth to
them; it produces them
(Lefebvre 2004: 6-7)
the metronomic and the rhythmic
introduction to rhythmanalysis
 key terms and concepts
rhythmanalyst
a psychoanalyst:
a poet
… not a statistician
rhythms
repetition (and difference)
cyclical and linear repetition
introduction to rhythmanalysis
introduction to rhythmanalysis
 cyclical and linear repetition
At any rate, spring is here, even in London N. 1, and they
can't stop you enjoying it … So long as you are not actually
ill, hungry, frightened or immured in a prison or a holiday
camp, spring is still spring. The atom bombs are piling up in
the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the
lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is
still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the
bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are
able to prevent it
(George Orwell, Thoughts on the Common Toad)
introduction to rhythmanalysis
 key terms and concepts
rhythmanalyst
a psychoanalyst:
a poet
… not a statistician
rhythms
repetition (and difference)
cyclical and linear repetition
polyrhythmia; eurhythmia; isorhythmia; arrhythmia
what is … rhythmanalysis?
 introduction to rhythmanalysis
Henri Lefebvre
key terms and concepts
 rhythm and the everyday
 rhythm and mobility
 rhythm and the city
case study
rhythm and the everyday
 taken-for-granted and overlooked; an elusive object; the
quotidian
 “what is left over” after all distinct, superior, specialized,
structured activities have been singled out by analysis
 the body (and rhythm) and the everyday
 Normally we only grasp the relations between rhythms, which interfere with
them. However, they all have a distinct existence. Normally, none of them
classifies itself; on the contrary, in suffering, in confusion, a particular
rhythm surges up and imposes itself: palpitation, breathlessness, pains in
the place of satiety
(Lefebvre 2004: 21)
rhythm and mobility
 The trap of the present; the immobility of things; a moving but
determinate complexity
 Repetition, difference and the passage of time; Cartesian
geometry, changing places and phenomenological space
 The body (and rhythm) and mobility
 Where does it start? Muscles tense. One leg a pillar, holding the body
upright between the earth and sky. The other a pendulum, swinging from
behind. Heel touches down. The whole weight of the body rolls forward onto
the ball of the foot … The legs reverse position. It starts with a step and
then another step and then another that add up like taps on a drum to a
rhythm, the rhythm of walking. The most obvious and the most obscure
thing in the world
(Solnit 2002: 3)
rhythm and mobility
 Gordon Cullen’s Townscape
rhythm and the city
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space, time and the city; urban polyrythmia
seen from the window
a contemporary everyday urbanism
manifold practices across hundreds of spaces … an everyday
order and flexibility partly owing to the repetitions and
regularities that become the tracks to negotiate urban life …
routine practices of care, repair and maintenance
 The low soothing hum of air-conditioners … winding up and winding down,
long breaths layered upon each other , a lullaby … The rush of traffic still
cutting across flyovers, even in the dark hours a constant crush of sound,
tyres rolling across tarmac and engines rumbling, loose drains and manhole
covers clack-clacking … Road menders mending, choosing the hours of
least interruption, rupturing the cold night air with drills and jack-hammers
… hard-sweating beneath the fizzing hiss of floodlights, shouting to each
other like drummers in rock bands calling out rhythms …
(McGregor 2003: 1)
case study
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Cardiff city centre
the mundane, repetitious work of outreach
mobile practices and a crepuscular geography
urban regeneration and arrythmia
rhythmanalysis as research method
 a mode of analysis; not a new object but a new way of
approaching familiar objects
 difficult to distil as a methodology for the social sciences;
more a (re)orientation than a method
 Rhythmanalysis is an attitude, an orientation, a proclivity: it is not ‘analytic’
in any positivistic or scientific sense of the term. It falls on the side of
impressionism and description, rather than systematic data collecting
(Highmore 2005: 150)
 the rhythmanalyst as the principal registering device
 In order to grasp and analyse rhythms, it is necessary to get outside them,
but not completely … to grasp a rhythm it is necessary to have been
grasped by it; one must let oneself go
(Lefebvre 2004: 27)
 new research technologies
conclusion
 Rhythmanalysis: space, time and everyday life
 Everywhere where there is interaction between a place, a time
and an expenditure of energy, there is rhythm
(Lefebvre 2004: 15)
 Thought strengthens itself only if it enters into practice: into
use
(Lefebvre 2004: 69)
 Dr. Tom Hall, Cardiff University School of Social Sciences
 [email protected]
 http://www.sensescapes.co.uk/