Leisure Seeking

Leisure Seeking

This weeks reading, “Work and Leisure in Everyday Life” by Henri Lefebvre, explores the nature of leisure in everyday living. Lefebvre discusses how everyday life can be critiqued by looking at leisure activities. Prior to the bourgeois society, Lefebvre states, “individuality, or rather personality could only really develop outside productive labour" furthermore in peasant life, “work is not separate from the everyday life of the family” (30). Lefebvre discusses how the global structure has developed pertaining to work and leisure, and identifies the “work-leisure unity” as the time associated with work and leisure time outside of work hours. This is a social function of how people are living day-to-day. Lefebvre further states, “Leisure must break with the everyday...and not only as far as work is concerned, but also for day-to-day family life” (33), the goal of leisure being relaxation, stress and obligation free. 

Lefebvre discusses how leisure has become a global activity and something we buy into. He discusses leisure machines, such as radio and television, and how attitudes toward leisure are exploited commercially. Lefebvre further discusses how we are now in the “illusory reverse image” domain, explaining this is “a false world... because it is not a world, it presents itself as true, and it mimics real life closely to replace the real by the opposite, by replacing real unhappiness with fictions of happiness” (35). Lefebvre further states this is the world of most leisure activities such as movies, media, music and theater. These leisure activities are tied to our societal structure, in how leisure is seen as freedom, and work is seen as necessary, and how we seek out that freedom of leisure outside of our necessary constraints.