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This chapter pursues the question of everyday life as a frontier of curiosity. It considers the everyday of modernity as the untheorized and unquestioned domain of experience. The foci for this question are the experimental theoretical projects of Lukacs, Lefebvre, Heidegger, Althusser, Debord, and the Situationists. The relation between theory and practice is made evident in their influence in actualizing the French Events of May 1968. This chapter reviews the innovative departures from orthodox historical materialism in postwar Marxist theory. Particular attention is given to ways of accentuating the elements of contingency and chance in social structures and relations. Among the Situationists an unprecedented reinvention of the qualitative experience of urban life is formulated and put into practice. As projects of theoretical curiosity the work of Lefebvre, Debord, and Althusser posed critical interruptions and ruptures to everyday, quotidian experience in the "society of the Spectacle." The radical imagination of their theoretical practices expresses a utopian desire. The visual prism of theoretical inquiry is refocused here in favor of a cultural and aesthetic political activism premised on the notion of the augenblick, or "glance of the eye." The unexpected moments for intervention and reinvention are seized in the interest of a reconfiguration of experience. The role of chance and the contingent are discussed in the context of the political forays of postwar Marxist thought. This chapter encourages projects of critical theoretical curiosity as practices for rethinking and acting upon the transformative potentials of daily life.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-2117-3_4

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