Henri Lefebvre: Debates and controversies

Aided with French and German scholarship, this paper takes stock of Henri Lefebvre's relevance in contemporary English-speaking urban research on social movements, postcolonial situations, the state, scale, gender, urban political ecology, regulation, and the right to the city. What becomes clear from this survey is that Lefebvre's capacity to contribute to cutting-edge urban research requires a selective translation of his work. While the modalities of translating Lefebvre vary depending on the subject matter, transfiguring Lefebvre for today is most plausible when taking into account the dialectical nature of his urbanism and the open-ended and integral character of his marxism.