The notion of the everyday is at the heart of modern French cultural and Anglo-American cultural studies. Since the 1960s numerous writers, artists, philosophers, and social theorists have tried to home in on the patterns and rhythms of our daily activities. This book provides a detailed map of this territory, linking the pioneering work of such key figures as Georges Perec and Michel de Certeau, to currents in Surrealism, ethnography, fiction, film, andphotography. Intro -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. The Indeterminacy of the Everyday -- 'The Hardest Thing to Uncover': Blanchot with Lefebvre -- The Ambiguity of the Everyday -- Types of Ambiguity: Lukács, Heidegger, and Heller -- Genre and the Everyday: Resisting the Novel -- The Essay and the Everyday: Perec with Adorno -- 2. Surrealism and the Everyday -- From Baudelaire to Dada -- 'Plutôt la vie': Surrealist Vitalism -- In the City Streets: Experience and Experiment -- Everydayness and Self-Evidence -- The Photograph as Trigger and as Trace -- 3. Dissident Surrealism: The Quotidian Sacred and Profane -- Boiffard's Big Toes: The Challenge of Documents -- The Beneficence of Desire -- Michel Leiris and the Sacred in Everyday Life -- André Breton and the 'Magique-circonstancielle' -- Queneau and the quotidien -- Coda: Walter Benjamin and the Everyday Legacies of Surrealism -- 4. Henri Lefebvre: Alienation and Appropriation in Everyday Life -- The 1947 Critique de la vie quotidienne -- The 1958 'Avant-propos' -- The 1961 Critique: Fondements pour une sociologie de la quotidienneté -- The Freedom of the City: Lefebvre, Debord, and the Situationists -- 5. All that Falls: Barthes and the Everyday -- Beyond Mythologies -- Envisioning Fashion: Barthes, Benjamin, Baudrillard, and Others -- Changing Scale, Resisting Function -- Towards a new 'art de vivre' -- 'Comment vivre ensemble' -- 'Chronique' and Everyday Writing -- 6. Michel de Certeau: Reclaiming the Everyday -- Consumption as Production -- The Power of the Ruse -- Practical Memory -- The Logic of Everyday Practices: Walking, Talking, Reading -- Narrativity, Historicity, Subjectivity: Certeau, Wittgenstein, and Cavell -- The Conservatoire of Ritual: Certeau and Maffesoli -- L'Invention du quotidien II: Habiter, Cuisiner -- 7. Georges Perec: Uncovering the Infra-Ordinary.
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