Abstraction's modus operandi is devastation

Abstraction passes for an 'absence' – as distinct from the concrete 'presence' of objects, of things. Nothing could be more false. For abstraction's modus operandi is devastation, destruction (even if such destruction may sometimes herald creation). Signs have something lethal about them – not by virtue of 'latent' or so-called unconscious forces, but, on the contrary, by virtue of the forced introduction of abstraction into nature. The violence involved does not stem from some force intervening aside fro rationality, outside or beyond it. Rather, it manifests itself from the moment any action introduces the rational into the real, from the outside, by means of tools which strike, slice and cut – and keep doing so until the purpose of their aggression is achieved. For space is also instrumental – indeed it is the most general of tools. The space of the countryside, as contemplated by the walker in search of the natural, was the outcome of a first violation of nature. The violence of abstraction unfolds in parallel with what we call 'history'.

Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Blackwell Publishing, 1991) p. 289