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87-502: The council implemented a policy of equal representation for its participants. It was described by Situationist René Viénet as "essentially an uninterrupted general assembly, deliberating day and night. No faction or private meetings ever existed outside the common debate." It was formed on the evening of May 17, by supporters of the Sorbonne Occupation Committee . This French history –related article

174-601: A "systematic misunderstanding of situationist theses"; the understanding that at least one Gruppe SPUR member, sculptor Lothar Fischer , and possibly the rest of the group, were not actually understanding and/or agreeing with the situationist ideas, but were just using the SI to achieve success in the art market ; and the betrayal, in the Spur #7 issue, of a common agreement on the Gruppe SPUR and SI publications. The exclusion

261-407: A critical analysis of the works of three American sociologists. Debord discusses at length Daniel J. Boorstin 's The Image (1961), arguing that Boorstin missed the concept of Spectacle. In thesis 192, Debord mentions some American sociologists who have described the general project of developed capitalism which "aims to recapture the fragmented worker as a personality well integrated in the group;"

348-410: A document which essentially serves as an instruction manual for the psychogeographic procedure, executed through the act of dérive ("drift"). In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there... But

435-595: A general strike was declared with up to 10 million workers participating. The SI originally participated in the Sorbonne occupations and defended barricades in the riots. The SI distributed calls for the occupation of factories and the formation of workers' councils , but, disillusioned with the students, left the university to set up The Council for the Maintenance of the Occupations (CMDO) which distributed

522-576: A left wing tendency within Lettrism , an artistic and literary movement led by the Romanian-born French poet and visual artist Isidore Isou , originating in 1940s Paris. The group was heavily influenced by the preceding avant-garde movements of Dadaism and Surrealism , seeking to apply critical theories based on these concepts to all areas of art and culture, most notably in poetry, film, painting and political theory . Among some of

609-890: A member of the Lettrist International , and Asger Jorn of the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus , brought together a group of artistic collectives for the First World Congress of Free Artists in Alba , Italy. The meeting established the foundation for the development of the Situationist International, which was officially formed in July 1957 at a meeting in Cosio di Arroscia , Italy. The resulting International

696-418: A rereading of Karl Marx 's Das Kapital and advocates a cultural revolution in western countries . During the first few years of the SI's founding, avant-garde artistic groups began collaborating with the SI and joining the organization. Gruppe SPUR , a German artistic collective, collaborated with the Situationist International on projects beginning in 1959, continuing until the group officially joined

783-551: A tendency towards political theory over the more artistic aspects of the SI. The shift in the intellectual priorities within the SI resulted in more focus on the theoretical, such as the theory of the spectacle and Marxist critical analysis, spending much less time on the more artistic and tangible concepts like unitary urbanism , détournement , and situgraphy . During this period the SI began having more and more influence on local university students in France. Taking advantage of

870-412: A world which really is topsy-turvy, the true is a moment of the false." Debord also draws an equivalence between the role of mass media marketing in the present and the role of religions in the past. The spread of commodity-images by the mass media, produces "waves of enthusiasm for a given product" resulting in "moments of fervent exaltation similar to the ecstasies of the convulsions and miracles of

957-536: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about critical theory is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Situationist International The Situationist International ( SI ) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists . It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution in 1972. The intellectual foundations of

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1044-534: Is a central notion in situationist theory, developed by Guy Debord in his 1967 book, The Society of the Spectacle . In its limited sense, spectacle means the mass media, which are "its most glaring superficial manifestation." Debord said that the society of the spectacle came to existence in the late 1920s. The critique of the spectacle is a development and application of Karl Marx's concept of fetishism of commodities , reification and alienation , and

1131-410: Is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images." In a consumer society, social life is not about living, but about having; the spectacle uses the image to convey what people need and must have. Consequently, social life moves further, leaving a state of "having" and proceeding into a state of "appearing"; namely the appearance of the image. "In

1218-460: Is the "historical moment at which the commodity completes its colonization of social life." The spectacle is the inverted image of society in which relations between commodities have supplanted relations between people, in which "passive identification with the spectacle supplants genuine activity". "The spectacle is not a collection of images," Debord writes, "rather, it is a social relation among people, mediated by images." In his analysis of

1305-585: Is the "how and why" that happened. Charles de Gaulle , in the aftermath televised speech of 7 June, acknowledged that "This explosion was provoked by groups in revolt against modern consumer and technical society, whether it be the communism of the East or the capitalism of the West." They also made up the majority in the Occupation Committee of the Sorbonne . An important event leading up to May 1968

1392-534: The Paramount Theatre , the premiere screening of the film Bwana Devil by Arch Oboler took place as the first full-length, color 3-D (aka 'Natural Vision') motion picture. Eyerman took a series of photographs of the audience wearing 3-D glasses . Life magazine used one of the photographs as the cover of a brochure about the 1946-1955 decade. The photograph employed in the Black and Red edition shows

1479-561: The Paris Commune in which it exhibited itself as the revolutionary moment. The SI's interest in the Paris Commune was expressed in 1962 in their fourteen "Theses on the Paris Commune" . The first edition of Internationale Situationniste defined psychogeography as "the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment (whether consciously organized or not) on the emotions and behavior of individuals." The term

1566-609: The dérive , an unplanned tour through an urban landscape directed entirely by the feelings evoked in the individual by their surroundings, serving as the primary means for mapping and investigating the psychogeography of these different areas. During this period the Letterist International also developed the situationist tactic of détournement , which by reworking or re-contextualizing an existing work of art or literature sought to radically shift its meaning to one with revolutionary significance. In 1956, Guy Debord,

1653-421: The economic base of a given society; accordingly, they rejected "situationism" as an absurd and self-contradictory concept. In The Society of the Spectacle , Debord asserted that ideology was "the abstract will to universality and the illusion thereof" which was "legitimated in modern society by universal abstraction and by the effective dictatorship of illusion". The situationist movement had its origins as

1740-433: The public discourse , and how they attack the artworks that express comprehensive critique of society, by saying that art should not involve itself into politics. The first edition of Internationale Situationniste defines the constructed situation as "a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and a game of events." As the SI embraced dialectical Marxism,

1827-544: The public discourse . Such ideas get first trivialized and sterilized, and then they are safely incorporated back within mainstream society, where they can be exploited to add new flavors to old dominant ideas. This technique of the spectacle is sometimes called recuperation , and its counter-technique is the détournement . A détournement is a technique developed in the 1950s by the Letterist International , and consist in "turning expressions of

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1914-410: The 15 years from its formation in 1957 and its dissolution in 1972, is characterized by a Marxist and surrealist perspective on aesthetics and politics, without separation between the two: art and politics are faced together and in revolutionary terms. The SI analyzed the modern world from the point of view of everyday life. The core arguments of the Situationist International were an attack on

2001-510: The Baroque, and the age of chivalry, with its tradition of long adventures voyages. Such urban roaming was characteristic of Left Bank bohemianism in Paris. In the SI's 6th issue, Raoul Vaneigem writes in a manifesto of unitary urbanism, "All space is occupied by the enemy. We are living under a permanent curfew. Not just the cops—the geometry". Dérive, as a previously conceptualized tactic in

2088-595: The Durruti Column ", Andre Bertrand 's détourned comic strip. They then invited the situationists to contribute a critique of the University of Strasbourg, and On the Poverty of Student Life , written by Tunisian situationist Mustapha/Omar Khayati was the result. The students promptly proceeded to print 10,000 copies of the pamphlet using university funds and distributed them during a ceremony marking

2175-496: The French military, was "a calculated action determined by the absence of a greater locus", and "a maneuver within the enemy's field of vision". To the SI, whose interest was inhabiting space, the dérive brought appeal in this sense of taking the "fight" to the streets and truly indulging in a determined operation. The dérive was a course of preparation, reconnaissance, a means of shaping situationist psychology among urban explorers for

2262-531: The Poverty of Student Life , Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord, and The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem. The first English-language collection of SI writings, although poorly and freely translated, was Leaving The 20th century edited by Christopher Gray. The Situationist International Anthology edited and translated by Ken Knabb , collected numerous SI documents which had previously never been seen in English. The Society of

2349-523: The SI back into the old fold of artistic praxis. The majority of SI continued to refuse such offers and any involvement on the conventional avant-garde artistic plane. This principle was affirmed since the founding of the SI in 1957, but the qualitative step of resolving all the contradictions of having situationists that make concessions to the cultural market, was made with the exclusion of Gruppe SPUR in 1962. The SI noted how reactionary forces forbid subversive ideas from artists and intellectuals to reach

2436-483: The SI in 1961. The role of the artists in the SI was of great significance, particularly Asger Jorn , Constant Nieuwenhuys and Pinot Gallizio . Asger Jorn, who invented Situgraphy and Situlogy , had the social role of catalyst and team leader among the members of the SI between 1957 and 1961. Jorn's role in the situationist movement (as in COBRA ) was that of a catalyst and team leader. Guy Debord on his own lacked

2523-732: The SI's demands on a much wider scale. After the end of the movement, the CMDO disbanded. By 1972, Gianfranco Sanguinetti and Guy Debord were the only two remaining members of the SI. Working with Debord, in August 1975, Sanguinetti wrote a pamphlet titled Rapporto veridico sulle ultime opportunità di salvare il capitalismo in Italia ( The Real Report on the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy ), which (inspired by Bruno Bauer ) purported to be

2610-414: The Situationist International were derived primarily from libertarian Marxism and the avant-garde art movements of the early 20th century, particularly Dada and Surrealism . Overall, situationist theory represented an attempt to synthesize this diverse field of theoretical disciplines into a modern and comprehensive critique of mid-20th century advanced capitalism . Essential to situationist theory

2697-676: The Spectacle The Society of the Spectacle ( French : La société du spectacle ) is a 1967 work of philosophy and Marxist critical theory by Guy Debord where he develops and presents the concept of the Spectacle . The book is considered a seminal text for the Situationist movement. Debord published a follow-up book Comments on the Society of the Spectacle in 1988. The work is a series of 221 short theses in

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2784-405: The Spectacle (1967) and Khayati's On the Poverty of Student Life (1966), were written on the walls of Paris and several provincial cities. This was documented in the collection of photographs published in 1968 by Walter Lewino , L'imagination au pouvoir . Though the SI were a very small group, they were expert self-propagandists, and their slogans appeared daubed on walls throughout Paris at

2871-602: The Spectacle (1972). By 1950, a much younger and more left-wing part of the Lettrist movement began to emerge. This group kept very active in perpetrating public outrages such as the Notre-Dame Affair , where at the Easter High Mass at Notre Dame de Paris , in front of ten thousand people and broadcast on national TV, their member and former Dominican Michel Mourre posed as a monk , "stood in front of

2958-508: The altar and read a pamphlet proclaiming that God was dead". André Breton prominently came out in support of the action in a letter that spawned a large debate in the newspaper Combat . In 1952, this left wing of the Lettrist movement, which included Debord, broke off from Isou's group and formed the Letterist International , a new Paris-based collective of avant-garde artists and political theorists. The schism finally erupted when

3045-583: The apathy of their colleagues, five "Pro-situs", situationist-influenced students, infiltrated the University of Strasbourg 's student union in November 1966 and began scandalising the authorities. Their first action was to form an " anarchist appreciation society" called The Society for the Rehabilitation for Karl Marx and Ravachol ; next they appropriated union funds to flypost "Return of

3132-457: The audience in "a virtually trance-like state of absorption, their faces grim, their lips pursed;" however, in the one chosen by Life , "the spectators are laughing, their expressions of hilarity conveying the pleasure of an uproarious, active spectatorship." The Black and Red version also is flipped left to right, and cropped. Despite widespread association among English-speaking readers, Debord had nothing to do with this cover illustration, which

3219-455: The beginning of the academic year . This provoked an immediate outcry in the local, national and international media. The Situationists played a preponderant role in the May 1968 uprisings, and to some extent their political perspective and ideas fueled such crisis, providing a central theoretic foundation. While SI's member count had been steadily falling for the preceding several years,

3306-538: The capitalist degradation of the life of people and the fake models advertised by the mass media, to which the Situationist responded with alternative life experiences. The alternative life experiences explored by the Situationists were the construction of situations, unitary urbanism , psychogeography , and the union of play, freedom and critical thinking . A major stance of the SI was to count on

3393-410: The capitalist system against itself," like turning slogans and logos against the advertisers or the political status quo. Détournement was prominently used to set up subversive political pranks, an influential tactic called situationist prank that was reprised by the punk movement in the late 1970s and inspired the culture jamming movement in the late 1980s. The Situationist International, in

3480-592: The closest cultural precedents to the dérive . The first in 1921, was an excursion to the Church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre with the Parisian Dadaists ; the second excursion was on 1 May 1923, when a small group of Surrealists walked toward the countryside outside of Blois . Debord was cautious however to differentiate between the derive and such precedents. He emphasized its active character as "a mode of experimental behavior" that reached to Romanticism ,

3567-494: The collective organization of a unitary ambiance and a game of events". The situationists argued that advanced capitalism manufactured false desires; literally in the sense of ubiquitous advertising and the glorification of accumulated capital , and more broadly in the abstraction and reification of the more ephemeral experiences of authentic life into commodities . The experimental direction of situationist activity consisted of setting up temporary environments favorable to

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3654-399: The concept of 20th-century art that is separated from topical political events. The SI believed that the notion of artistic expression being separated from politics and current events is one proliferated by reactionary considerations to render artwork that expresses comprehensive critiques of society impotent. They recognized there was a precise mechanism followed by reactionaries to defuse

3741-605: The concepts and artistic innovations developed by the Lettrists were the lettrie , a poem reflecting pure form yet devoid of all semantic content, new syntheses of writing and visual art identified as metagraphics and hypergraphics , as well as new creative techniques in filmmaking. Future situationist Guy Debord , who was at that time a significant figure in the Lettrist movement, helped develop these new film techniques, using them in his Lettrist film Howlings for Sade (1952) as well as later in his situationist film Society of

3828-533: The cynical writing of "Censor", a powerful industrialist. The pamphlet argued that the ruling class of Italy supported the Piazza Fontana bombing and other covert, false flag mass slaughter for the higher goal of defending the capitalist status quo from communist influence. The pamphlet was mailed to 520 of Italy's most powerful individuals. It was received as genuine and powerful politicians, industrialists and journalists praised its content. After reprinting

3915-495: The determinant action of general natural forces, such as soil composition or climatic conditions, on the economic structures of a society, and thus on the corresponding conception that such a society can have of the world. Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, whether consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals. The charmingly vague adjective psychogeographical can be applied to

4002-546: The dérive includes both this letting go and its necessary contradiction: the domination of psychogeographical variations by the knowledge and calculation of their possibilities. SI engaged in a play-form that was also practiced by its predecessor organization, the Lettrist International , the art of wandering through urban space, which they termed dérive , whose unique mood is conveyed in Debord's darkly romantic meaning of palindrome. Two excursions organized by Andre Breton serve as

4089-645: The eventuality of the situationist city. Defunct Twelve issues of the main French edition of journal Internationale Situationniste were published, each issue edited by a different individual or group, including: Guy Debord , Hadj Mohamed Dahou , Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio , Maurice Wyckaert , Constant Nieuwenhuys , Asger Jorn , Helmut Sturm , Attila Kotanyi , Jørgen Nash , Uwe Lausen , Raoul Vaneigem , Michèle Bernstein , Jeppesen Victor Martin , Jan Strijbosch , Alexander Trocchi , Théo Frey , Mustapha Khayati , Donald Nicholson-Smith , René Riesel , and René Viénet . Classic Situationist texts include: On

4176-400: The examples mentioned by Debord are David Riesman , author of The Lonely Crowd (1950), and William H. Whyte , author of the 1956 bestseller The Organization Man . Among the 1950s sociologists who are usually compared to Riesman and Whyte, is C. Wright Mills , the author of White Collar: The American Middle Classes . Riesman's "Lonely Crowd" term is also used in thesis 28. Because

4263-444: The exchange or consumption of commodities , or passive second-hand alienation, inflicted significant and far-reaching damage to the quality of human life for both individuals and society. Another important concept of situationist theory was the primary means of counteracting the spectacle; the construction of situations, moments of life deliberately constructed for the purpose of reawakening and pursuing authentic desires, experiencing

4350-442: The feeling of life and adventure, and the liberation of everyday life. The situationists recognized that capitalism had changed since Karl Marx 's formative writings, but maintained that his analysis of the capitalist mode of production remained fundamentally correct; they rearticulated and expanded upon several classical Marxist concepts, such as his theory of alienation . In their expanded interpretation of Marxist theory ,

4437-463: The findings arrived at by this type of investigation, to their influence on human feelings, and more generally to any situation or conduct that seems to reflect the same spirit of discovery. By definition, psychogeography combines subjective and objective knowledge and studies. Debord struggled to stipulate the finer points of this theoretical paradox, ultimately producing "Theory of the Dérive" in 1958,

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4524-509: The flow of the spectacle." The Society of the Spectacle is a critique of contemporary consumer culture and commodity fetishism , dealing with issues such as class alienation , cultural homogenization , and mass media . When Debord says that "all that was once directly lived has become mere representation," he is referring to the central importance of the image in contemporary society. Images, Debord says, have supplanted genuine human interaction. Thus, Debord's fourth thesis is: "The spectacle

4611-525: The force of a revolutionary proletariat . This stance was reaffirmed very clearly in a discussion on "To what extent is the SI a political movement?", during the Fourth SI Conference in London. The SI remarked that this is a core Situationist principle, and that those that don't understand it and agree with it, are not Situationist. The SI rejected all art that separated itself from politics,

4698-441: The form of aphorisms . Each thesis contains one paragraph. Debord traces the development of a modern society in which authentic social life has been replaced with its representation: "All that once was directly lived has become mere representation." Debord argues that the history of social life can be understood as "the decline of being into having , and having into merely appearing ." This condition, according to Debord,

4785-727: The formation), the Danish artist Asger Jorn (who after parting with the SI also founded the Scandinavian Institute of Comparative Vandalism ), the architect and veteran of the Hungarian Uprising Attila Kotanyi , and the French writer Michele Bernstein . Debord and Bernstein later married. In June 1957, Debord wrote the manifesto of the Situationist International, titled Report on the Construction of Situations . This manifesto plans

4872-606: The former marking the publication of the two most significant texts of the situationist movement, The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord and The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem . The expressed writing and political theory of the two aforementioned texts, along with other situationist publications, proved greatly influential in shaping the ideas behind the May 1968 insurrections in France ; quotes, phrases, and slogans from situationist texts and publications were ubiquitous on posters and graffiti throughout France during

4959-469: The fulfillment of true and authentic human desires in response. The Situationist International strongly resisted use of the term "situationism", which Debord called a "meaningless term", adding "[t]here is no such thing as situationism, which would mean a doctrine for interpreting existing conditions". The situationists maintained a philosophical opposition to all ideologies , conceiving of them as abstract superstructures ultimately serving only to justify

5046-525: The future members of the radical Lettrists disrupted a Charlie Chaplin press conference for Limelight at the Hôtel Ritz Paris . They distributed a polemic entitled "No More Flat Feet!", which concluded: "The footlights have melted the make-up of the supposedly brilliant mime. All we can see now is a lugubrious and mercenary old man. Go home Mister Chaplin." Isou was upset with this, his own attitude being that Chaplin deserved respect as one of

5133-404: The great creators of the cinematic art. The breakaway group felt that his work was no longer relevant, while having appreciated it "in its own time," and asserted their belief "that the most urgent expression of freedom is the destruction of idols, especially when they claim to represent freedom," in this case, filmmaker Charlie Chaplin. During this period of the Letterist International , many of

5220-611: The group, Guy Debord , generally became considered the organization's de facto leader and most distinguished theorist. Other members included theorist Raoul Vaneigem , the Dutch painter Constant Nieuwenhuys , the Italo-Scottish writer Alexander Trocchi , the English artist Ralph Rumney (sole member of the London Psychogeographical Association, Rumney suffered expulsion relatively soon after

5307-442: The important concepts and ideas that would later be integral in situationist theory were developed. Individuals in the group collaboratively constructed the new field of psychogeography , which they defined as "the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment (whether consciously organized or not) on the emotions and behavior of individuals." Debord further expanded this concept of psychogeography with his theory of

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5394-496: The improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author's phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea." This passage concerning plagiarism is itself directly lifted from Poésies by French-Uruguayan author Isidore Lucien Ducasse, better known as the Comte de Lautréamont . In particular, the original French text for both Debord and Lautréamont's versions of

5481-575: The level of the avant-gardes in other countries. The next significant split was in 1962, wherein the "Nashists," the Scandinavian section of the SI led by Jørgen Nash , were excluded from the organization. Nash created the 2nd Situationist International . By this point the Situationist International consisted almost exclusively of the Franco-Belgian section, led by Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem . These members possessed much more of

5568-621: The notion of the spectacle involves real life being replaced by representations of life, Society of the Spectacle is also concerned with the notion of authenticity versus inauthenticity, a theme which is revisited in Chapter 8, "Negation and Consumption within Culture". In Debord's treatment, modern society forces culture to constantly re-appropriate or re-invent itself, copying and re-packaging old ideas. Thesis 207 makes this point, rhetorically: "Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in

5655-425: The old religious fetishism". Debord contends further that "the remains of religion and of the family (the principal relic of the heritage of class power) and the moral repression they assure, merge whenever the enjoyment of this world is affirmed–this world being nothing other than repressive pseudo-enjoyment." "The monotheistic religions were a compromise between myth and history, ... These religions arose on

5742-465: The ones that remained were able to fill revolutionary roles for which they had patiently anticipated and prepared. The active ideologists ("enragés" and Situationists) behind the revolutionary events in Strasbourg, Nanterre and Paris, numbered only about one or two dozen persons. This has now been widely acknowledged as a fact by studies of the period, what is still wide open to interpretation

5829-452: The passage are identical: "Les idées s'améliorent. Le sens des mots y participe. Le plagiat est nécessaire. Le progrès l'implique. Il serre de près la phrase d'un auteur, se sert de ses expressions, efface une idée fausse, la remplace par l'idée juste." The book cover of the 1983 edition is derived from a photograph by the Life magazine photographer, J. R. Eyerman . On November 26, 1952, at

5916-427: The personal warmth and persuasiveness to draw people of different nationalities and talents into an active working partnership. As a prototype Marxist intellectual Debord needed an ally who could patch up the petty egoisms and squabbles of the members. When Jorn's leadership was withdrawn in 1961, many simmering quarrels among different sections of the SI flared up, leading to multiple exclusions. The first major split

6003-483: The pervasive alienation that accompanied the spectacle . The founding manifesto of the Situationist International, Report on the Construction of Situations (1957), defined the construction of situations as "the concrete construction of momentary ambiances of life and their transformation into a superior passional quality." Internationale Situationniste No. 1 (June 1958) defined the constructed situation as "a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by

6090-407: The role of a gear wheel in the mechanism of the society of the spectacle. According to this theory, artists and intellectuals that accept such compromises are rewarded by the art dealers and praised by the dominant culture. The SI received many offers to sponsor "creations" that would just have a "situationist" label but a diluted political content, that would have brought things back to order and

6177-419: The role of subversive artists and intellectuals, that is, to reframe them as separated from the most topical events, and divert from them the taste for the new that may dangerously appeal the masses; after such separation, such artworks are sterilized, banalized, degraded, and can be safely integrated into the official culture and the public discourse, where they can add new flavors to old dominant ideas and play

6264-419: The situation came to refer less to a specific avant-garde practice than to the dialectical unification of art and life more generally. Beyond this theoretical definition, the situation as a practical manifestation thus slipped between a series of proposals. The SI thus were first led to distinguish the situation from the mere artistic practice of the happening , and later identified it in historical events such as

6351-503: The situationists asserted that the misery of social alienation and commodity fetishism were no longer limited to the fundamental components of capitalist society, but had now in advanced capitalism spread themselves to every aspect of life and culture. They rejected the idea that advanced capitalism's apparent successes—such as technological advancement, increased productive capacity, and a raised general quality of life when compared to previous systems, such as feudalism—could ever outweigh

6438-462: The social dysfunction and degradation of everyday life that it simultaneously inflicted. When the Situationist International was first formed, it had a predominantly artistic focus; emphasis was placed on concepts like unitary urbanism and psychogeography . Gradually, however, that focus shifted more towards revolutionary and political theory. The Situationist International reached the apex of its creative output and influence in 1967 and 1968, with

6525-462: The soil of history, and established themselves there. But there they still preserve themselves in radical opposition to history." Debord defines them as Semi-historical religions . "The growth of knowledge about society, which includes the understanding of history as the heart of culture, derives from itself an irreversible knowledge, which is expressed by the destruction of God." In Chapter 8, "Negation and Consumption Within Culture", Debord includes

6612-445: The spectacle prevents individuals from realizing that the society of spectacle is only a moment in history, one that can be overturned through revolution. In the Situationist view, situations are actively constructed and characterized by "a sense of self-consciousness of existence within a particular environment or ambience". Debord encouraged the use of détournement , "which involves using spectacular images and language to disrupt

6699-437: The spectacular society, Debord notes that the quality of life is impoverished, with such a lack of authenticity that human perceptions are affected; and an attendant degradation of knowledge, which in turn hinders critical thought . Debord analyzes the use of knowledge to assuage reality: the spectacle obfuscates the past, imploding it with the future into an undifferentiated mass, a type of never-ending present. In this way,

6786-550: The time of the revolt. SI member René Viénet 's 1968 book Enragés and Situationists in the Occupations Movement, France, May '68 gives an account of the involvement of the SI with the student group of Enragés and the occupation of the Sorbonne . The occupations of 1968 started at the University of Nanterre and spread to the Sorbonne. The police tried to take back the Sorbonne and a riot ensued. Following this

6873-489: The tract as a small book, Sanguinetti revealed himself to be the true author. In the outcry that ensued and under pressure from Italian authorities Sanguinetti left Italy in February 1976, and was denied entry to France. After publishing in the last issue of the magazine, an analysis of the May 1968 revolts and the strategies that will need to be adopted in future revolutions, the SI was dissolved in 1972. The Spectacle

6960-408: The uprisings. The term "situationist" refers to the construction of situations, one of the early central concepts of the Situationist International; the term also refers to any individuals engaged in the construction of situations, or, more narrowly, to members of the Situationist International. Situationist theory sees the situation as a tool for the liberation of everyday life, a method of negating

7047-428: The way it was reprised by György Lukács in 1923. In the society of the spectacle, the commodities rule the workers and the consumers instead of being ruled by them. The consumers are passive subjects that contemplate the reified spectacle. As early as 1958, in the situationist manifesto , Debord described official culture as a "rigged game", where conservative powers forbid subversive ideas to have direct access to

7134-558: Was a fusion of these extremely small avant-garde collectives: the Lettrist International , the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (an offshoot of COBRA ), and the London Psychogeographical Association (though, Anselm Jappe has argued that the group pivoted around Jorn and Debord for the first four years). Later, the Situationist International drew ideas from other groups such as Socialisme ou Barbarie . The most prominent member of

7221-527: Was a recognition that Gruppe SPUR 's "principles, methods and goals" were significantly in contrast with those of the SI. This split however was not a declaration of hostilities, as in other cases of SI exclusions. A few months after the exclusion, in the context of judicial prosecution against the group by the German state, Debord expressed his esteem to Gruppe SPUR, calling it the only significant artist group in (Germany) since World War II , and regarding it at

7308-501: Was first recognized in 1955 by Guy Debord while still with the Letterist International: The word psychogeography, suggested by an illiterate Kabyle as a general term for the phenomena a few of us were investigating around the summer of 1953, is not too inappropriate. It does not contradict the materialist perspective of the conditioning of life and thought by objective nature. Geography, for example, deals with

7395-424: Was the concept of the spectacle , a unified critique of advanced capitalism of which a primary concern was the progressively increasing tendency towards the expression and mediation of social relations through images . The situationists believed that the shift from individual expression through directly lived experiences, or the first-hand fulfillment of authentic desires, to individual expression by proxy through

7482-488: Was the exclusion of Gruppe SPUR, the German section, from the SI on 10 February 1962. Many different disagreements led to the fracture, for example; while at the Fourth SI Conference in London in December 1960, in a discussion about the political nature of the SI, the Gruppe SPUR members disagreed with the core situationist stance of counting on a revolutionary proletariat ; the accusation that their activities were based on

7569-467: Was the scandal in Strasbourg in December 1966. The Union Nationale des Étudiants de France declared itself in favor of the SI's theses, and managed to use public funds to publish Mustapha Khayati 's pamphlet On the Poverty of Student Life . Thousands of copies of the pamphlet were printed and circulated and helped to make the Situationists well known throughout the nonstalinist left. Quotations from two key situationist books, Debord's The Society of

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