The study of everyday life is a significant focus within critical theory and various academic disciplines, aiming to understand the pervasive routines, practices, and ways of living that constitute our daily existence. It is described as a highly contested term, reflecting the effects on individuals of their regular habits, thoughts, and actions. At its core, the study seeks to uncover what is extraordinary within the seemingly ordinary. Everyday life is paradoxical; it is simultaneously that which we are keenly aware of and that which we often ignore or overlook. This tension between noticing and failing to see is a central interest for thinkers like Henri Lefebvre. Despite its apparent banality or platitude, everyday life is considered profoundly important, bringing us back to existence as it is actually lived, in moments that escape easy theoretical formulation. It serves as the crucial foundation upon which all human thoughts and activities, including so-called "higher" pursuits like abstract cognition and practical endeavors, are necessarily built. Within this realm, individuals develop their manifold capacities, both individually and collectively, and become fully integrated, truly human persons. Understanding everyday life is crucial because it is the primary medium through which humans engage with the natural and social worlds, learn about relationships like comradeship and love, acquire communication skills, formulate and realize practical norms, experience a wide range of emotions, and ultimately, exist and expire. Essential human desires, powers, and potentialities are initially formulated, developed, and concretely realized within this space. It is also where individuals confront the concrete 'other' most immediately and directly, and where a coherent identity or selfhood is acquired. However, the study of everyday life presents challenges. Some sources note that its research object is, by definition, difficult to grasp. Due to its very pervasiveness, it often remains one of the most overlooked and misunderstood aspects of social existence. Lefebvre believed there would always be something fundamentally mysterious and obscure about its workings. It can be difficult to conceptualize or describe theoretically because it is profoundly lived and experienced as ceaseless recurrence. Its very presence is not always registered by systems of power. Different theoretical traditions have approached the study of everyday life with varying goals and methods. - **Critical Theory:** This approach, central to the book "Critiques of Everyday Life," seeks not merely to describe but to transform everyday life. It exhibits hostility towards abstract social theorizing and emphasizes the quotidian, non-formalized aspects of social interaction, including human affect, emotions, bodily experience, practical knowledges, and "lived" time and space. The critical approach aims to elevate lived experience to the status of a critical concept. It strives to overcome traditional social science dichotomies and treats the everyday as potentially extraordinary. It goes beyond surface description to relate everyday life to wider sociohistorical developments and analyzes asymmetrical power relations. Critical reason and structural analysis are seen as crucial for exposing ideological influences on everyday consciousness. This perspective often adopts an explicit ethico-political stance, stressing the potential for agency and transformation. It views everyday life as having a history intimately bound up with modernity and acknowledges its contradictory, complex, and dynamic nature, including its unconscious elements. A primary goal is to problematize everyday life, expose its contradictions, tease out hidden potentialities, and raise understanding to critical knowledge. It employs a dialectical-critical method, incorporating both rigorous analysis and creative speculation ("warm stream"), and is attuned to all facets of human existence – poetic, irrational, corporeal, ethical, and affective. The critical study of everyday life is interdisciplinary, drawing inspiration from various fields. It represents a "utopian humanism" that celebrates the inherent possibilities in ordinary human beings while recognizing current limitations and striving for transformation. - **Mainstream Microsociology:** Approaches like ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism, the phenomenology of Alfred Schütz, and Erving Goffman's 'dramaturgy' have contributed significantly to the study of everyday life. However, the critical approach finds them deficient because they tend to operate within traditional academic assumptions of objectivity and detachment. They often reinforce the dichotomy between specialized and non-specialized knowledge and generally perceive everyday life as a homogeneous, undifferentiated, stable reality – a "paramount reality" that is taken for granted and provides "ontological security". In this view, the concept of everyday life remains purely descriptive or analytical, without prominent focus on ethics or ideological structuring. These approaches are often characterized as ethnographic, empiricist, and covertly positivist, not viewing the everyday as a "deep" or complex phenomenon, but rather as an eternal, unproblematical feature. - **Phenomenology:** This philosophical tradition takes the "fine grain" of everyday life seriously as a starting point. The phenomenological attitude is distinct from the "natural attitude" of naive everyday consciousness and positivist scientism; it constantly reflects on presuppositions and seeks to suspend the natural attitude through processes like _epoché_ or bracketing. Some phenomenological views, however, can be criticized for privileging immediate experience and potentially overlooking how the everyday is colonized by power structures. Heidegger's philosophy begins by considering human existence (Dasein) in its "average everydayness," although his philosophical inquiry seeks to go beyond this state. He suggested that everyday life itself contains the beginnings from which philosophical attitudes can emerge. However, Heidegger also viewed the everyday world as "fallen," lacking authenticity. - **Existentialism and Existential Psychology:** These fields foreground the perplexing condition of human existence and often find relevance in navigating the anxieties and search for meaning that can arise from everyday life. Spranger's psychological method, influencing existential psychology, focused on everyday people to understand their behavior in relation to their life as a whole. Daseinsanalysis suggests that "existence" is what becomes visible of Dasein in everyday life, representing a mode or small part of Dasein. Existential-phenomenological therapy draws deeply on these philosophical foundations to understand the "dimensions of human existence" in practical application. The resurgence of existential psychology is seen by some as a response to the increasing chaos and dehumanization experienced in contemporary daily life. - **Marxism:** Critical Marxist perspectives, particularly that of Henri Lefebvre, have extensively studied the everyday, often highlighting its transformation under capitalism. Lefebvre analyzed the impact of commodities and saw the introduction of new goods as a "colonization of the unconscious". Marxist critiques often describe everyday life under modernity as managed, administered, repetitive, and susceptible to commodification and bureaucratic structuring. Reification, the transformation of human relations into static connections between things, is seen as a consequence. The everyday can become the primary site for the reproduction of capitalist social relations. Ideological critique is seen as necessary to demystify bourgeois ideology and expose how everyday consciousness can be shaped by dominant social forces. However, some Marxist-inspired thinkers also see everyday life as a potential site of resistance and a source of "redemptive" possibilities. - **Situationism:** Theorists like Raoul Vaneigem, associated with the Situationist International, critiqued the effects of the "spectacle" (passive consumption of images and objects) on subjectivity and consciousness in daily life. They argued that everyday life had become trivialized and neutralized, with creative potentialities suppressed. Consumerism is seen as a powerful and insidious form of social control, ingrained in everyday consciousness. Like some Marxist views, they saw everyday life under late capitalism as irredeemably corrupted, advocating for radical transformation. - **Non-Representational Theory:** This movement in human geography seeks to illuminate the routine and often unnoticed aspects of daily life, such as bodily sensations and practical knowledge used in everyday activities. It is interested in affects and bodily engagements that are pre-personal and not fully present to consciousness. - **Zen Buddhism:** This tradition offers a perspective where "Everyday life is the path". This path cannot be studied in the conventional sense; trying to study it takes one away from it. It transcends conceptual categories like perception or non-perception. Practices within Zen, such as observing discomfort and pain in ordinary activities and cultivating mindfulness in simple routines, are ways to engage with and understand this "path" in daily life. Cultivating reverence for simple wonders is framed as an act of resistance against societal conditioning. Several key thinkers have shaped the study of everyday life. **Henri Lefebvre** is widely credited with bringing the concept to the attention of critical theory, particularly through his _Critique of Everyday Life_ trilogy. He analyzed the impact of commodities, the colonization of the unconscious, and the tension between the monotony of the quotidian and vivid moments of interruption. Lefebvre saw everyday life as a totality and common ground, advocated for its decolonization and transformation, and believed in looking for signs of resistance and "disalienation" efforts within it. He viewed the human body as a focal point of resistance. **Michel de Certeau**, author of _The Practice of Everyday Life_, is another influential figure, noted for his focus on the micro-level "tactics" and practices of individuals in navigating daily life, often contrasting them with the "strategies" of institutions. His work is seen as standing between a sole interest in and indifference to everyday life. **Agnes Heller**, following Lukács, views the everyday as a potential site of redemptive politics. She argues that everyday life has rarely been a serious subject of study until the 20th century. Her central goal is the "humanization" and democratization of the everyday, aiming for the full development of the "total" human being. Heller conceptualizes everyday life not as a thing or system, but as an ensemble of historically constituted practices and subjectivities mediated by social structures. She distinguishes between "objectivation-in-itself" (basic skills, language, customs taken for granted in daily life) and "objectivation-for-itself" (higher pursuits like philosophy and art that provide meanings), arguing that while the everyday is often dominated by the former and susceptible to ideological influence and rationalization, it also contains inherent valid knowledge and suppressed potentialities. **Mikhail Bakhtin**'s ideas, particularly his concept of "prosaics" and his focus on the dialogical properties of language in everyday life, offer valuable insights for critical theory. He believed that the values and meanings shaping our lives emerge from the existential demands of daily living and interpersonal relationships. Bakhtin, like Lefebvre, is seen as adopting an optimistic and populist stance regarding the potential of the everyday. Other thinkers who have contributed to this field include **Sigmund Freud**, whose concept of the unconscious is linked to his interest in everyday life; **Erving Goffman**, who viewed everyday life as a performance; **Fernand Braudel**, whose work plumbed the historical depths of the everyday; **Maurice Blanchot**, for whom the everyday is the ineffable; **Roland Barthes**, whose _Mythologies_ provides examples of analyzing commonplace phenomena to reveal cultural values; **Carl Jung**, whose concept of synchronicity and its relation to consciousness and spiritual awareness can be seen as linking events at the level of meaning within daily experience; and **Charles S. Peirce**, who suggested philosophy begins with the attentive scrutiny of the facts of everyday life. The study highlights various facets of everyday life, including its relationship to the extraordinary, its potential for resistance and social change, its role in shaping identity, and its connection to fundamental questions of meaning. Moments that interrupt the monotony of the quotidian can be particularly insightful. The everyday is seen as a site of potential transgression and redemption, where the ordinary can become extraordinary by fully realizing the possibilities hidden within it. Its "messiness" and unpredictable quality can help it resist formal systems. Daily life is also viewed as an "obstinate channel" for the emergence of resistance and the perception of possibilities. People experiment in their daily lives, challenging the status quo, and even large-scale social transformations rely on the "low-key scheming" of everyday individuals. The human body's desires and impulses are seen by some as resisting rationalized systems. Furthermore, the study of everyday life engages with profound questions about meaning; the weariness and amazement arising from the rhythm of daily life can prompt existential inquiry, and some perspectives suggest that living an authentic, chosen, and committed life within the everyday can help address the modern problem of meaninglessness. Conversely, aspects of daily life that seem normal may be precisely those that warrant critical scrutiny because they might not be healthy or natural.