Everyday Life as Critique: Revisiting the Everyday in IPE with Henri Lefebvre and Postcolonialism

Abstract

This article argues that critical International Political Economy (IPE) has used an undertheorized notion of everyday life and that Henri Lefebvre’s approach to everyday life, when augmented by attending to specifically colonial modes of domination, provides a necessary theoretical basis for IPE to engage with the everyday. It thus explores the connections between critical IPE, the critique of everyday life, and postcolonial thought. It begins by examining the “turn” to the everyday in IPE, examining the consequences of its reliance on an untheorized notion of the everyday. Lefebvre’s critique of everyday life is then examined to address these shortcomings. But Lefebvre’s provocation about the colonization of the everyday also requires greater conceptual clarity. Thus, the article goes on to examine the affinities between postcolonial thought and the critique of everyday life. This underscores the indispensability of Lefebvre’s critique in terms both of everyday life and of the international as constituted by colonization.