And the Society of the Spectacle

During the nineteenth century, under the influence of Marx, Engels, Bakunin and others, the traditional working class movements were established. They enjoyed a brief peak and were then defeated. Situationism is a revolutionary philosophy of the latter half of this century which begins where the original ideologies left off in an attempt to provide a suitable opposition to a new world order established by the relentless advance of technology and information media.

The first situationist work was published in French in 1967. The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord is to modern revolutionary theory what Das Kapital was to the original movements. The titular 'Spectacle' is the term Debord used to describe the social relation among people mediated by images. Unlike Marx he saw a society with a principle product of images not objects and every member of society devoting their lives to the accumulation of images. What this means in simple terms is that our lives are saturated at every turn with explicit depictions of how we ought to be. Every acceptable alleyway of human experience is explored for us and sold back to us by way of TV, film, Advertising, Political rhetoric, etc. So the development of the Human mind is prevented from development and every emotion we claim to feel is in fact the emotion provided by the commodity of images.

To clarify the above take as an example the process of rebellion. All dominating forces throughout history have needed to suppress rebellion, in the past this was achieved by tyranny and the rule of law. The Spectacle's suppression takes a different form. Instead of pushing rebellion away from the centre of power the spectacle embraces it, assimilates its core features into a socially acceptable context and then sells it back to the rebels. Thus, Environmentalism becomes the preserve of Blue Peter, Radical Feminism becomes Girl Power, Punk becomes the centrepiece of Rock memorabilia sales and Marxism is sold on T-Shirts in Covent Garden Market. Marx proclaimed religion to be 'the opiate of the masses', the narcotic of choice today is Marxism itself.

Once the idea of suppression by absorption had been fully explored It fell on the shoulders of another, Raoul Vaneigem to set forth the principles of Situationist revolution. In the face of a governing concept defined by its abstract nature he assumed that change could not be effected by traditional means. The revolutions of the past had all possessed definite causes. (Communism was committed to defeating the bourgeoisie, the October Revolution was a distinct attack on the Tsar) the situationist revolution could not define itself as to do so would be to leave itself open to assimilation. Instead, Vaneigem argued that 'Power must be totally destroyed means of fragmentary acts' or in other words that the spectacle can only be defeated by the near mindless destruction and sheer popular force of anarchic events such as the Watts riots of 1965 and The Early Rave scene. These brief moments of lawless abandon, or 'Situations' are the moments which provide the impetus for the final destruction of contemporary society. Only in this way, according to the situationists, will people become real.

1960s

The Society of the Spectacle published in Paris

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Situationist ideas provide the force behind the Paris Student Revolt. The following graffiti appears on a Paris wall: "everybody wants to breathe and nobody can breathe and a lot of people say: we'll be able to breathe later but most people don't because they are already dead"

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1970s

Society of the Spectacle translated into English

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Punk happens

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Larry Law begins to publish cheap booklets for a London Audience expanding the core of believers in the International Situationist movement

1980s

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Widespread rioting in 1981

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Factory Records, the label behind the Happy Mondays buys a club in Manchester and decides to name it after a chapter in Debord's book, The 'Hacienda'

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Poll tax riots

1990s

The Manic Street Preacher's early singles all refer to situationist ideas, most notably, 'Motown Junk' and 'New Art Riot'

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LA riots

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Debord commits suicide in 1994

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