Introducing Rhythmanalysis through the Work of Dawn Lyon

Lefebvre’s vast oeuvre has been widely recognized by housing scholars, many of whom were inspired by his ideas of the production of space, the critique of everyday life or the Right to the City. However, not unlike but clearly more than other disciplines, housing scholarship has failed to engage with Lefebvre’s and Régulier’s Rhythmanalysis project (Lefebvre 2004; Lefebvre and Régulier 1985). In two recent books, Dawn Lyon explains why this has been the case, what we may miss by ignoring and what we may gain by engaging with Rhythmanalysis. Across five chapters, the first book above, published in 2020, places Lefebvre and Régulier’s Rhythmanalysis among previous work on rhythms while also linking it to Lefebvre’s other theoretical contributions. Chapter 2 introduces the key temporal concept of rhythm as produced by any expenditure of energy in ways that are repetitive but where repetition is never fully identical but accommodates some difference (as the cycles of day and night, seasons, work and rest, growth and decline are repetitive but never identical). The further vocabulary of rhythmanalysis is succinctly presented: polyrhythmia (the fact that the world is composed of a multitude of rhythms of the alive and lifeless, human and non-human); linear and cyclical rhythm (the quantified time of the clock vs the cyclical time of nature); eurhythmia, isorhythmia and arrhythmia (when rhythms combine smoothly, in perfect harmony or in disagreement); the centrality of the body through which we grasp and are grasped by rhythms; and dressage (the process by which dominant rhythms are learnt or imposed on the body). The remainder of chapter 2, together with chapters 3 and 5 give interesting examples of doing rhythmanalysis by reviewing this emerging field of studies, e.g. in relation to history, mobility, place-making, working, trading, hospitality. Housing is notably missing. I found the critical reflections on the gains, limitations and future directions of the rhythmanalysis project (chapter 4) particularly useful in wrapping the discussion. The second book above, published in 2022, is an edited collection of 15 chapters. It had a dedicated symposium at the Royal Geographical Society – IBG Annual International Conference, 2022, Newcastle, UK, being well received by a large audience. Starting from the position that