Guy Debord, the Situationist International, and the Revolutionary Spirit

Guy Debord, the Situationist International, and the Revolutionary Spirit PDF Author: James Trier
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004402012
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
Winner of the 2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award Guy Debord, the Situationist International, and the Revolutionary Spirit presents a history of the two avant-garde groups that French filmmaker and subversive strategist Guy Debord founded and led: the Lettrist International (1952–1957) and the Situationist International (1957–1972). Debord is popularly known for his classic book The Society of the Spectacle (1967), but his masterwork is the Situationist International (SI), which he fashioned into an international revolutionary avant-garde group that orchestrated student protests at the University of Strasbourg in 1966, contributed to student unrest at the University of Nanterre in 1967–1968, and played an important role in the occupations movement that brought French society to a standstill in May of 1968. The book begins with a brief history of the Lettrist International that explores the group’s conceptualization and practice of the critical anti-art practice of détournement, as well as the subversive spatial practices of the dérive, psychogeography, and unitary urbanism. These practices, which became central to the Situationist International, anticipated many contemporary cultural practices, including culture jamming, critical media literacy, and critical public pedagogy. This book follows up the edited book Détournement as Pedagogical Praxis (Sense Publishers, 2014), and together they offer readers, particularly those in the field of Education, an introduction to the history, concepts, and critical practices of a group whose revolutionary spirit permeates contemporary culture, as can be seen in the political actions of Pussy Riot in Russia, the “yellow vest” protesters in France, the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and the striking teachers and student protesters on campuses throughout the U.S. See inside the book.

Guy Debord, the Situationist International, and the Revolutionary Spirit

Guy Debord, the Situationist International, and the Revolutionary Spirit PDF Author: James Trier
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004402012
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
Winner of the 2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award Guy Debord, the Situationist International, and the Revolutionary Spirit presents a history of the two avant-garde groups that French filmmaker and subversive strategist Guy Debord founded and led: the Lettrist International (1952–1957) and the Situationist International (1957–1972). Debord is popularly known for his classic book The Society of the Spectacle (1967), but his masterwork is the Situationist International (SI), which he fashioned into an international revolutionary avant-garde group that orchestrated student protests at the University of Strasbourg in 1966, contributed to student unrest at the University of Nanterre in 1967–1968, and played an important role in the occupations movement that brought French society to a standstill in May of 1968. The book begins with a brief history of the Lettrist International that explores the group’s conceptualization and practice of the critical anti-art practice of détournement, as well as the subversive spatial practices of the dérive, psychogeography, and unitary urbanism. These practices, which became central to the Situationist International, anticipated many contemporary cultural practices, including culture jamming, critical media literacy, and critical public pedagogy. This book follows up the edited book Détournement as Pedagogical Praxis (Sense Publishers, 2014), and together they offer readers, particularly those in the field of Education, an introduction to the history, concepts, and critical practices of a group whose revolutionary spirit permeates contemporary culture, as can be seen in the political actions of Pussy Riot in Russia, the “yellow vest” protesters in France, the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and the striking teachers and student protesters on campuses throughout the U.S. See inside the book.

Society Of The Spectacle

Society Of The Spectacle PDF Author: Guy Debord
Publisher: Bread and Circuses Publishing
ISBN: 1617508306
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
The Das Kapital of the 20th century,Society of the Spectacle is an essential text, and the main theoretical work of the Situationists. Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960's, in particular the May 1968 uprisings in France, up to the present day, with global capitalism seemingly staggering around in it’s Zombie end-phase, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism, and everyday life in the late 20th century. This ‘Red and Black’ translation from 1977 is Introduced by Notting Hill armchair insurrectionary Tom Vague with a galloping time line and pop-situ verve, and given a more analytical over view by young upstart thinker Sam Cooper.

Rethinking the Spectacle

Rethinking the Spectacle PDF Author: Devin Penner
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774860537
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Spectacle is usually considered a superficial form of politics, which tries to distract and deceive a passive audience. It is difficult to see how this type of politics could be reconciled with the democratic requirement of active and informed agency. Rethinking the Spectacle re-examines the tension between spectacle and political agency in our hyper-mediated digital society. Devin Penner uses the theories and practices of Guy Debord and the Situationist International as a point of departure, offering both a critical review of Situationist ideas and a way to develop their radical democratic potential in the current political climate. Emphasizing the importance of thinking about the connection between spectacle and broader democratic processes, Rethinking the Spectacle also looks at various models of social and political organization and includes an in-depth assessment of the 2011 Occupy movement. Ultimately, Rethinking the Spectacle concludes that properly conceived spectacle can in fact mobilize the public for egalitarian purposes.

The Game of War

The Game of War PDF Author: Andrew Hussey
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
Since his death in 1994 (when he put a bullet through his heart in his lonely farmhouse) Guy Debord has been hailed as one of the key thinkers of the age. In Britain and the United States, his theories on the 'spectacle' of modern life were simultaneously hailed as deadly truths by underground subversives and accorded the highest academic prestige. In the same way, the Situationist International (SI), a volatile group of artists, revolutionaries and intellectuals which he led through the 1950s and 1960s, is considered to be the most important art movement since Dada and the Surrealists. Debord himself was a welter of contradictions, whose public life was entirely predicated upon the singlemindedness of his revolutionary intentions, but who privately sought oblivion in infamy, exile and alcoholism. Implicated in the events of May 1968, Italian terrorism and the murder of his friends, and under surveillance by the French secret police for over a decade, he mixed in elite art, business and political circles, and has had admirers and devotees of all political colours and ranks. This biography is an appraisal of a lone and defiant figure whose story follows and, at one historic moment in 1968, appears to lead the drift of art and politics in post-war Paris. 'It could almost be believed that I was the only person to have loved Paris,' Debord said. Then, almost with a shrug, 'but no one has twice raised Paris to revolt.'

The Situationist International

The Situationist International PDF Author: Alastair Hemmens
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
ISBN: 9780745338903
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Up-to-date collection on the Situationist International, rethinking their relevance for today

Comments on the Society of the Spectacle

Comments on the Society of the Spectacle PDF Author: Guy Debord
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1844676722
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 105

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Book Description
First published in 1967, Guy Debord’s stinging revolutionary critique ofcontemporary society, The Society of the Spectacle has since acquired acult status. Credited by many as being the inspiration for the ideasgenerated by the events of May 1968 in France, Debord’s pitiless attackon commodity fetishism and its incrustation in the practices of everydaylife continues to burn brightly in today’s age of satellite televisionand the soundbite. In Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, publishedtwenty years later, Debord returned to the themes of his previousanalysis and demonstrated how they were all the more relevant in aperiod when the “integrated spectacle” was dominant. Resolutely refusingto be reconciled to the system, Debord trenchantly slices through thedoxa and mystification offered tip by journalists and pundits to showhow aspects of reality as diverse as terrorism and the environment, theMafia and the media, were caught up in the logic of the spectacularsociety. Pointing the finger clearly at those who benefit from the logicof domination, Debord’s Comments convey the revolutionary impulse atthe heart of situationism.

Guy Debord and the Situationist International

Guy Debord and the Situationist International PDF Author: Tom McDonough
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262633000
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Book Description
Critical texts, translations, documents, and photographs on the work of the Situationist International. This volume is a revised and expanded version of a special issue of the journal October (Winter 1997) that was devoted to the work of the Situationist International (SI). The first section of the issue contained previously unpublished critical texts, and the second section contained translations of primary texts that had previously been unavailable in English. The emphasis was on the SI's profound engagement with the art and cultural politics of their time (1957-1972), with a strong argument for their primarily political and activist stance by two former members of the group, T. J. Clark and Donald Nicholson-Smith. Guy Debord and the Situationist International supplements both sections. It reprints important, hard to find essays by Giorgio Agamben, Libero Andreotti, Jonathan Crary, Thomas Y. Levin, Greil Marcus, and Tom McDonough and doubles the number of translations of primary texts, which now encompass a broader and more representative range of the SI's writings on culture and language. In a field still dominated by hagiography, the critical texts were selected for their willingness to confront critically the history and legacy of the SI. They examine the group within the broader framework of the historical and neo-avant-gardes and, beyond that, the postwar world in general. The translations trace the SI's reflections on the legacy of the avant-garde in art and architecture, particularly on the linguistic and spatial significance of montage aesthetics. Many of the translated works are by Guy Debord (1932-1994), the impresario of the SI, especially known for his book The Society of the Spectacle.

Leaving the 20th Century

Leaving the 20th Century PDF Author: Christopher Gray
Publisher: Bread and Circuses Publishing
ISBN: 1625174861
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
The first Situationist text to be published in the UK in 1974, ‘Leaving the 20th Century’ was Chris Gray and the English situationists’ attempt to capture and distil the vibrant anti-art, anti-capitalist energy of the original International Situationist texts (1957-74). With its loose translations and irreverent commentary, Gray and co. attempted to capture the “terrorism, wit and general megalomania” of the original publications, whilst faithfully reprinting the “photographs of girls, soldiers, bombings, comic-strip frames, maps of cities and diagrams of labyrinths, cathedrals and gardens.” From the art/anti-art beginnings, to the role of the Situationists in the worker-student insurrection of May 68’, ‘Leaving the 20th Century’ remains the definitive English pro-situ text.

The Spectacle of Disintegration

The Spectacle of Disintegration PDF Author: McKenzie Wark
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1844679578
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Following his acclaimed history of the Situationist International up until the late sixties, The Beach Beneath the Street, McKenzie Wark returns with a companion volume which puts the late work of the Situationists in a broader and deeper context, charting their contemporary relevance and their deep critique of modernity. Wark builds on their work to map the historical stages of the society of the spectacle, from the diffuse to the integrated to what he calls the disintegrating spectacle. The Spectacle of Disintegration takes the reader through the critique of political aesthetics of former Situationist T.J. Clark, the Fourierist utopia of Raoul Vaneigem, René Vienet’s earthy situationist cinema, Gianfranco Sangunetti’s pranking of the Italian ruling class, Alice-Becker Ho’s account of the anonymous language of the Romany, Guy Debord’s late films and his surprising work as a game designer. At once an extraordinary counter history of radical praxis and a call to arms in the age of financial crisis and the resurgence of the streets, The Spectacle of Disintegration recalls the hidden journeys taken in the attempt to leave the twentieth century, and plots an exit from the twenty first. The dustjacket unfolds to reveal a fold-out poster of the collaborative graphic essay combining text selected by McKenzie Wark with composition and drawings by Kevin C. Pyle.

Detournement as Pedagogical Praxis

Detournement as Pedagogical Praxis PDF Author: James Trier
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 946209800X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
The Situationist International (SI) was a Paris-based artistic and political avant-garde group that formed in 1957, went through three distinct phases during its existence, and dissolved in 1972. In 1967, SI leader Guy Debord published his book The Society of the Spectacle, which presents his theory of how “the Spectacle” (i.e., the Capitalist system in its totality) works endlessly (though not always successfully) to transform people into spectators whose sole purposes are to consume commodities and to live de-politicized, passive, isolated, and contemplative lives. To challenge and subvert “the Spectacle,” Debord and his SI associates theorized and practiced the anti-spectacular critical art they called “detournement,” which entails reusing existing artistic and mass-produced elements to create new combinations or ensembles. As Debord wrote in 1956, detournement has the potential to be “a powerful cultural weapon in the service of real class struggle.” In this edited book, the authors contribute chapters about how they created their own detournements and used them as central audio-visual texts in critical projects that they designed and carried out in a variety of pedagogical situations. Most of the projects involved preservice teachers in teacher education courses, and the anti-spectacular purposes include challenging Hollywood’s problematic representations of Native Americans, subverting the racist stereotypes of Latin@s in a popular children’s book, and critiquing the neoliberal agenda of the charter school movement. This book offers readers detailed accounts of pedagogical projects that can serve as examples of the critical possibilities of detournement.