Lefeb­vre dis­misses meter as an dis­ci­plin­ing, com­mod­i­fy­ing, and homog­e­niz­ing prin­ci­ple of mod­ern cap­i­tal­ism. Rhythm, on the other hand, is its organic anti­dote. To him, the most typ­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion is not music – since it is still con­nected to instru­ments – but the human body, which Lefeb­vre con­ceives as a bun­dle of rhythms. Each organ has its own rhythm, but these rhythms can only exist in rela­tion to those of the other organs: polyrhyth­mia. Eurhyth­mia is the term that Lefeb­vre intro­duces for a healthy bun­dle of rhythms. Arrhyth­mia is a state of cri­sis in which the syn­chro­niza­tion between the organs fails to occur. There is either har­mony or cri­sis, but noth­ing in between. Accord­ing to Lefeb­vre, rhythm can never be sin­gle, it is always a multiplicity.

Apart from the fact that the human body offers the best exam­ple of rhythm, Lefeb­vre also con­nects rhythm to the organic through the con­cept of cycli­cal­ity. He argues that the cycles of nature counter, and com­pen­sate for, the rigid, dis­ci­plin­ing meter of work, pol­i­tics, and tech­nol­ogy. Nature ver­sus cul­ture: an all-​too-​familiar con­flict. Lefeb­vre does not make much of an effort to hide his own preference:

”The study of every­day life has already demon­strated this banal and yet little-​known dif­fer­ence between the cycli­cal and the lin­ear, between rhythmed times and the times of bru­tal rep­e­ti­tions. The rep­e­ti­tion is tir­ing, exhaust­ing and tedious. while the return of a cycle has the appear­ance of an event and an advent. Its begin­ning, which after all is only a recom­mence­ment, always has the fresh­ness of a dis­cov­ery and an inven­tion.” (Lefeb­vre and Régulier 73)

While the con­stant change of lin­ear­ity is exhaust­ing, the peri­odic return of cycli­cal­ity is revi­tal­iz­ing. Despite the nor­ma­tive lan­guage that Lefeb­vre uses to describe these two con­cepts of time, he main­tains that they should not be under­stood as binary oppo­sites. Lin­ear­ity and cycli­cal­ity are inex­tri­ca­bly linked; they are two per­spec­tives that one can main­tain in rela­tion to one and the same process. While the moment of return pro­duces the effect of cycli­cal­ity, the peri­odic rep­e­ti­tion of the same moment pro­duces a series. Lin­ear­ity and cycli­cal­ity are not really oppo­sites, but come together in a third con­cept: rhythm. Rhyth­m­analy­sis dis­solves this age old dichotomy… and, accord­ing to Lefeb­vre, all other binary oppo­si­tions as well.

Com­ing from a Hegelian/​Marxist back­ground, it is no sur­prise that Lefeb­vre incor­po­rates rhythm into a dialec­tic schema. In this schema, rhythm is always posi­tioned in-​between polar oppo­sites, such as melody and har­mony, dif­fer­ence and rep­e­ti­tion, inter­nal and exter­nal mea­sure, space and time. Although Lefeb­vre does not men­tion this oppo­si­tion explic­itly, the com­bi­na­tion of change and return in cycli­cal motions, would eas­ily fit in this series of con­tra­dic­tions. In all of these cases, rhythm is seen as a third and equal ele­ment that forms a tri­adic con­stel­la­tion with the other two.

“Tri­adic analy­sis dis­tin­guishes itself from dual analy­sis just as much as from banal analy­sis. It does not lead to a syn­the­sis in accor­dance with the Hegelian schema. Thus the triad ‘time-​space-​energy’ links three terms that it leaves dis­tinct, with­out fus­ing them in a syn­the­sis” (Lefeb­vre 12)

Lefeb­vre crit­i­cizes the fact that Hegel stresses syn­the­sis over the­sis and antithe­sis, and tries to cor­rect this, by remov­ing the hier­ar­chy between the three terms. His mod­i­fi­ca­tion of dialec­tics – rhyth­m­analy­sis – is not dual but triadic.

In Lefebvre’s rhyth­m­analy­sis, the first two terms of the triad are vari­ables. Every binary oppo­si­tion can take their place. The third term, how­ever, is a con­stant: rhythm. Despite its mul­ti­ple man­i­fes­ta­tions – just to men­tion a few: secret rhythms, pub­lic rhythms, fic­tional rhythms, dominating-​dominated rhythms – this con­stant is pri­mar­ily defined neg­a­tively. Rhythm finds its deter­mi­na­tion in rela­tion to the other two terms. The triad schema of dialec­tics not only equal­izes but (pre­sum­ably unin­ten­tion­ally) also homog­e­nizes. All the dif­fer­ent forms of rhythm even­tu­ally have to fit in this straight­jacket. They are restricted by their func­tion as medi­a­tor, and there­fore not really all that dif­fer­ent from each other. In every man­i­fes­ta­tion think­able, this “con­crete uni­ver­sal” (45) has to oscil­late peri­od­i­cally – but not nec­es­sar­ily reg­u­larly – between two polar oppo­sites. In Lefebvre’s mod­i­fi­ca­tion of Hegel’s dialec­tics, rhythm replaces mat­ter – which is actu­ally spirit  – as the divid­ing and con­nect­ing force behind the phenomena.

“Every­where where there is inter­ac­tion between a place, a time and an expen­di­ture of energy, there is rhythm.” (15)

To Lefeb­vre, rhythm is much more than a musi­cal or esthetic phe­nom­e­non; it is a uni­ver­sal, orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple. Con­fronted with all these grand, total­iz­ing schemes and ges­tures, how­ever, it is easy to over­see that rhyth­m­analy­sis actu­ally erases its own point of depar­ture: syn­co­pa­tion. While Lefeb­vre starts from the irre­ducibil­ity of rhythm to a reg­u­lar pat­tern, it actu­ally ends up as the only con­stant in the triad. Rhyth­m­analy­sis can­not deal with syn­co­pa­tion. The struc­ture fully anni­hi­lates the (pos­si­bil­ity of an) event. Rhythm ends up as meter.

Rhyth­m­analy­sis proves to inca­pable of solv­ing the ques­tion that ignited it: What makes rhythm dif­fer­ent from meter? Rhythm itself is the solu­tion that rhyth­m­analy­sis pro­poses, but this is, of course, beg­ging the ques­tion. To be fair,the vicious cir­cle does not really bother Henri Lefeb­vre. To him, cycli­cal­ity and rhythm are inex­tri­ca­bly linked any­way. More­over, rhyth­m­analy­sis seems to be more con­cerned with the prob­lems of time, space, and every­day life than with rhythm itself. Rhythm is more a con­cept that explains, and less a prin­ci­ple that needs to be explained.

Nev­er­the­less, as a sci­ence that aspires to explain and describe rhythm, Lefebvre’s rhyth­m­analy­sis falls short. In my opin­ion, it suf­fers from the fol­low­ing two flaws:

1. Lefeb­vre makes rhythm into a uni­ver­sal prin­ci­ple. Rhythm thereby loses all its speci­ficity and it can­not be fur­ther explained. Rhyth­m­analy­sis can ana­lyze every­thing but rhythm itself.
2. Lefeb­vre declares con­ti­nu­ity as the desir­able state of rhythm. Con­se­quently all ele­ments that pre­sup­pose an ele­ment of dis­con­ti­nu­ity – nov­elty, inno­va­tion, dis­rup­tion, dis­place­ment – are treated as unwanted dan­gers. But pre­cisely these ele­ments dis­tin­guish rhythm from meter. By avoid­ing inter­rup­tions, rhyth­m­analy­sis trans­forms rhythm into meter.

Lefeb­vre turns rhythm into a uni­ver­sal “per­petuum mobile”. Syn­co­pa­tion would be the log­i­cal solu­tion to break this vicious cir­cle, but this is an answer that the philos­pher can­not accept. In that case, he would need to intro­duce at least one extra term into his tri­ads. Syn­co­pa­tion or dialec­tics: con­fronted with this dilemma the philoso­pher unfor­tu­nately opts for the lat­ter. As a result, rhyth­m­analy­sis can only define an abstract and gen­eral con­cept of rhythm. Mak­ing it plural and spe­cific would mean the end of his tri­adic schema. Lefeb­vre, fully aware of this prob­lem, tries to go around it as follows:

”Is the ori­gin of the pro­ce­dure that starts with gen­er­al­i­ties found in abstrac­tions? No! In the field of rhythm, cer­tain very broad con­cepts nonethe­less have speci­ficity: let us imme­di­ately cite rep­e­ti­tion. No rhythm with­out rep­e­ti­tion in time and in space, with­out reprises, with­out returns, in short with­out mea­sure. But there is no iden­ti­cal absolute rep­e­ti­tion, indef­i­nitely. Whence the rela­tion between rep­e­ti­tion and dif­fer­ence. When it con­cerns the every­day, rites, cer­e­monies, fêtes, rules, and laws, there is always some­thing new and unfore­seen that intro­duces itself into the repet­i­tive: dif­fer­ence.” (6)

While this expla­na­tion might seems plau­si­ble at first sight, it actu­ally repro­duces the same prob­lem with dif­fer­ent con­cepts. If absolute rep­e­ti­tion does not exist and every cycle intro­duces some­thing new, would not every occur­rence of meter inevitably also be a rhythm?