Henri Lefebvre : la rivoluzione come festa

Henri Lefebvre has always affirmed that "existence is a fact with which we must confront ourselves, because life is an adventure that must be lived in full". This statement serves to un-derstand both the sensual and polyrhythmic life of the French philosopher and the importance he recognized to play, extroversion and festivals as fundamental (and, in their way, revolutionaries) ingredients for the criticism of everyday life. Here we will consider how Lefebvre understood the notion of festival as a practice of "aesthetic counter-valuation" of culture by social movements and developed it in three precise directions and "moments" of his life. First, along the critique of everyday life, which was for Lefebvre the main research interest, on which he wrote six books. Then, the concept of festival is present in the philosophical historiography of Lefebvre in the volume dedicated to the French friar and humanist François Rabelais, who lived in the sixteenth century.

Finally, in the revolutionary romanticism - which Lefebvre theorized with the group of the International Situationist - developing the notion of "revolution as a festival" and situating the invention of modern spontaneity in the events of the uprisings of the Commune de Paris of 1871. In the conclusions we will illustrate how the festival represents for Lefebvre a key "moment" in the path of self-management for the realization of the total man: disalienate, playful and master of his own subjectivity. [Publisher's text].