The Situationist International is an international social revolutionary organization composed of leading avant-garde artists, intellectuals and political theorists in Europe since its formation in 1957 until its dissolution at year 1972.
The intellectual foundations of Situationist International come mainly from anti-authoritarian Marxism and avant-garde art movements in the early twentieth century, particularly Dada and Surrealism. Overall, the situation theory represents an attempt to synthesize this diverse field of theoretical discipline into a modern and comprehensive critique of advanced capitalism of the 20th century. Situationalists admit that capitalism has changed since Marx's formative writings, but maintains that his analysis of the capitalist mode of production remains essentially correct; they are articulated and extended to some classical Marxist concepts, such as the theory of alienation. In their expanded interpretation of Marxist theory, the situationists argue that the suffering of social alienation and commodity fetishism is no longer limited to the fundamental components of capitalist society, but now in advanced capitalism it spreads to every aspect of life and culture. They reject the idea that the real success of capitalism - such as technological advances, income generation, and increased leisure - can outweigh the social dysfunction and degradation of everyday life brought about simultaneously.
Essential for the theory of situations is the concept of spectacle, an integrated critique of advanced capitalism whose primary concern is an ever-increasing tendency towards the expression and mediation of social relations through objects. Situational observers believe that the shift from individual expression through direct experience, or the early fulfillment of authentic desire, to individual expression through proxy through commodity exchange or consumption, or passive second-hand passive, has significant and far-reaching implications. damage to the quality of human life both for individuals and society. Another important concept of situational theory is the primary means of counteracting spectacle; the construction of situations, life moments deliberately built for the purpose of reviving and pursuing true desires, experiencing feelings of life and adventure, and the liberation of everyday life.
When Situationist International was first established, it had a very artistic focus; emphasis is placed on concepts such as unified urbanism and psychogeography. However, gradually, the focus shifts more towards revolutionary and political theory. The Situationist International reached its peak of output and creative influence in 1967 and 1968, with the first marking the publication of the two most significant texts of the situational movement, The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord and the Revolution of One Day Life -day by Raoul Vaneigem. The expressed writing and political theory of the two texts mentioned above, along with other publications of the situation, proved very influential in shaping the ideas behind the May 1968 uprising in France; quotes, phrases, and slogans from situational texts and publications were everywhere in posters and graffiti throughout France during the uprising.
Video Situationist International
Etymology and usage
The term "situationist" refers to the construction of the situation, one of the earliest central concepts of Situationist International; the term also refers to any individual involved in the construction of the situation, or, more narrowly, to members of Situationist International. Situationalist theory sees the situation as a tool for the liberation of everyday life, a method that negates the pervasive alienation that accompanies spectacle. The founding manifesto of Situationist International, Situation Construction Report (1957), defines the construction of the situation as "the concrete construction of the momentary ambiance of life and their transformation into superior passional quality." Internationale Situationniste # 1 (June 1958) defines a situation constructed as "a life moment concretely and purposefully built by a collective organization of an atmosphere of unity and game of events". Situationalists argue that advanced capitalism produces false desires; literally in the sense of ubiquitous advertising and the accumulation of capital accumulation, and more extensively in abstraction and reification from shorter authentic life experiences into commodities. The experimental direction of a situation activity consists of a favorable temporary environment setting for the fulfillment of true and authentic human desire in response.
The Situationist International strongly rejects the use of the term "situationism", which Debord calls a "meaningless term", adding "[t] here there is no such thing as a situation, which means doctrine for interpreting existing conditions". Situationists maintain a philosophical opposition to all ideologies, regarding it as an abstract superstructure that ultimately serves only to justify the economic basis of a particular society; therefore, they reject "situationism" as an absurd and self-contradictory concept. In The Society of the Specters Debord insists that ideology is "the abstract will to universality and illusion thereof" which is "legitimized in modern society by universal abstraction and by an effective illusion dictatorship."
Maps Situationist International
History
Origins (1945-1955)
The situationist movement has its origins as a left-wing tendency in Lettrism, an artistic and literary movement led by French-born French poet and visual artist Isidore Isou, originally from Paris in the 1940s. This group is strongly influenced by the avant-garde movements of Dadaism and Surrealism, which attempt to apply critical theories based on these concepts to all fields of art and culture, especially in poetry, film, painting, and political theory. Among the several concepts and artistic innovations developed by Lettrists are lettrie , a poem that reflects pure form but lacks all the semantic content, synthesis of writing and new visual art that is identified as metagraphic and hypergraphics, as well as a technique new creative in filmmaking. Future situationist Guy Debord, who at the time was an important figure in the Lettrist movement, helped develop these new film techniques, using them in his Lettrist Howls for Sade (1952) and later in his book. film situationist Society of the Spectacle (1972).
In 1950, the much younger and more wing left wing of the Lettrist movement began to emerge. The group continues to be very active in public outrage such as the Notre-Dame Event, where at the High Passover Mass at Notre Dame de Paris, in front of ten thousand people and broadcast on national TV, their former and Dominican member Michel Mourre serves as a monk, "standing in front of the altar and reading a pamphlet stating that God is dead". Andrà ©  © Breton stands out in solidarity with the action in the letter that spawned a great debate in the battle newspaper.
In 1952, the left wing of the Lettrist movement, which included Debord, broke away from the Isou group and formed Letterist International, a collection of new avant-garde artists and Paris-based theorists. The schism finally erupted when members of the future radical Lettrik disrupted Charlie Chaplin's press conference for Limelight in HÃÆ'Â'tel Ritz Paris. They spread the polemic entitled "No More Flat Feet!", Which concluded: "The footlights have melted the brunette mime makeup that is supposedly brilliant.All we can see now is an innocent old man and paid. Isou is annoyed by this, his own attitude is that Chaplin deserves to be honored as one of the great creators of cinematic art. The breakaway group feels that his work is no longer relevant, while appreciating it "in its own time," and affirming their belief "that the most pressing expression of freedom is the destruction of idols, especially when they claim to represent freedom," in this case, filmmaker Charlie Chaplin.
During this Letterist International period, many important concepts and ideas will become integral in the developed situation theory. Individuals in the group collaboratively build a new field of psychogeography, which they define as "the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment (whether consciously or not) on individual emotions and behavior." Debord further extends this psychogeographic concept with his theory of dÃÆ' Â © rive, an unplanned tour through an urban landscape that is directed solely by feelings awakened in the individual by his environment, serves as the primary means of mapping and investigating these different psychogeographies. area. During this period, Letterist International also developed the situational tactics of the tournament, which by reworking or recontextualising existing artwork or literature, attempted to radically transform its meaning into one with a revolutionary meaning.
Formation (1956-1957)
In 1956, Guy Debord, a member of Lettrist International, and Asger Jorn of the International Movement for Bauhaus Imaginist, assembled a group of artistic collections for the First World Congress of Free Artists in Alba, Italy. The meeting set the foundation for the development of Situationist International, which was formally established in July 1957 at a meeting at Cosio. The resulting international is a composite of these very small avant-garde groups: Lettrist International, the International Movement for Bauhaus Imaginist (COBRA branch), and the London Psychogeographical Association (though, Anselm Jappe argues that the group revolves around Jorn and Debord for the first four years). Later, Situationist International drew ideas from other groups such as Socialisme ou Barbarie .
The most prominent group member, Guy Debord, is generally considered the de facto leader of the most prominent organization and theorist. Other members include theoretician Raoul Vaneigem, Dutch painter Constant Nieuwenhuys, Italo-Scottish writer Alexander Trocchi, British artist Ralph Rumney (sole member of the London Psychogeographical Association, Rumney experiencing relative eviction immediately after formation), Danish artist Asger Jorn (who after parting with SI also founded Scandinavian Scandinavian Vandalism Scandal), Hungarian Rebel Architects and veteran Attila Kotanyi, and French writer Michele Bernstein. Debord and Bernstein later married.
In June 1957, Debord wrote the Situationist International manifesto, titled Report on Situation Construction . This manifesto planned a systematic rereading of Karl Marx's Artistic Period (1958-1962)
During the first few years of SI's founders, avant-garde artistic groups began collaborating with SI and joining organizations. Gruppe SPUR, German artistic collective, collaborated with Situationist International on projects that began in 1959, continued until the group officially joined the SI in 1961. The role of artists in the SI is very important, especially Asger Jorn, Constant Nieuwenhuys and Pinot Gallizio.
Asger Jorn, who found Situgraphy and Situlogy, had a social role as a catalyst and team leader among SI members between 1957 and 1961. Jorn's role in the situational movement (as in COBRA) was the catalyst and team leader. Guy Debord himself has no personal warmth and will to draw people from different nationalities and talents into active work partnerships. As a Marxist prototype, Debord's intellectuals need an ally that can patch up small egos and members quarrels. When Jorn's leadership was withdrawn in 1961, many disputes that heated up between different parts of the SI heated up, which led to many exceptions.
The first major split was the exception of Gruppe SPUR, part of Germany, of SI on 10 February 1962. Many different disagreements led to fractures, for example; while at the Fourth SI Conference in London in December 1960, in a discussion of the political nature of SI, the members of Gruppe SPUR disagreed with the central attitude of the counting situation to the revolutionary proletariat; allegations that their activities are based on "systematic misunderstanding of the situation thesis"; understanding that at least one member of Gruppe SPUR, the sculptor Lothar Fischer, and perhaps other group members, did not really understand and/or approve the situation ideas, but only used the SI to achieve success in the art market. betrayal, in the matter of Spur # 7 , of a collective agreement on the publication of Gruppe SPUR and SI.
An exception is the recognition that Gruppe SPUR's "principles, methods and objectives" are significantly different from those in SI. But this split is not a hostile statement, as in other cases of SI exclusion. A few months after the exclusion, in the context of prosecution of a group by the German state, Debord expressed his pride to Gruppe SPUR, calling it the only significant group of artists in Germany since World War II, and considering it at the level of avant-gardes in other countries.
The next major split was in 1962, in which the "Nashists," a Scandinavian part of the SI led by JÃÆ'¸rgen Nash, was expelled from the organization due to the lack of theoretical precision demanded by the Belgian French-Belgian section led by Guy Debord.. This excluded group would then declare itself to be the 2nd International Situationist, which based its organization out of Sweden. Journalist Stewart Home, who likes the "Nashis" and considers Debord a "mystic, idealist, dogmatic, and a liar" writes that while 2nd Situationist International seeks to challenge the separation of art and politics from everyday life, Debord and so "Specto-situationist "sought to concentrate solely on theoretical political objectives.
Political Period (1963-1968)
At this point Situationist International is almost exclusively composed of the French-Belgian section, led by Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem. These members have more tendency towards political theory over the more artistic aspects of SI. The shift in intellectual priorities within the SI resulted in more theoretical focus, such as the theory of spectacle and critical Marxist analysis, spending less time on more artistic and tangible concepts such as unified urbanism, games, and situgrafi.
During this period SI began to have more influence on local university students in France. Taking advantage of the apathy of their colleagues, the five "Pro-sites", students who influenced the situation, infiltrated the University of Strasbourg student unions in November 1966 and began to scandalize the authorities. Their first act was to form an "anarchist appreciation society" called the Society for Rehabilitation for Karl Marx and Ravachol; then they allocate union funds for the flypost "Return of the Durruti Column", comedy strip of Andre Bertrand's dÃÆ' Â © tourned . They then invited the situationists to contribute criticism from the University of Strasbourg, and On Poverty of Student Life , written by Tunisian situationapis Mustapha/Omar Khayati is the result. The students immediately proceeded to print 10,000 copies of pamphlets using university funds and distribute them during ceremonies marking the beginning of the academic year. This provoked direct protests in local, national and international media.
May Events (1968)
Situationists played a greater role in the May 1968 uprising, and to some extent their perspectives and political ideas triggered such a crisis, providing a central theoretical foundation. While the number of SI members has steadily declined over the past few years, the remaining people have been able to fill the revolutionary roles they have anticipated and prepared patiently. The active ideologues ("enragÃÆ'Â © s" and Situationists) behind the revolutionary events in Strasbourg, Nanterre and Paris, number only about one or two dozen people.
This has now been widely acknowledged as fact by the studies of that period, what is still wide open for interpretation is "how and why" is happening. Charles de Gaulle, after a televised address on June 7, acknowledged that "this explosion is triggered by rebel groups against modern consumer and technical society, whether it is Eastern communism or Western capitalism."
They also became the majority in the Sorbonne Occupation Committee. Significant events leading up to May 1968 were a scandal in Strasbourg in December 1966. The Nationale des ÃÆ'â € tudiants de France claimed to support the SI thesis, and managed to use public funds to publish Mustapha Khayati's pamphlet On Poverty of Student Life >. Thousands of copies of the pamphlets are printed and circulated and help make the Situasionist famous throughout the non-left left.
Excerpts from the two main books of the situation, Debord's The Society of the Spectacle (1967) and Khayati's
On Student Life Poverty (1966), were written on the walls of Paris and several provincial cities. This is documented in a photo collection published in 1968 by Walter Lewino, L'imagination au pouvoir .
Those who follow the "artistic" view of SI may see the evolution of SI as producing a more boring or dogmatic organization. Those who follow political views will see the May 1968 uprising as a logical outcome of the dialectical approach of the SI: while the people living today, they seek a revolutionary society that will embody a positive tendency of capitalist development. "Realization and artistic oppression" is the most developed of the many dialectical superstitions that SI sought for many years. For the International Situationist of 1968, the triumph of the workers' council will produce all this supersession.
Although SI is a very small group, they are self-propagandists, and their slogans appear on the walls all over Paris at the time of the uprising. The book of members of the SI Renà © à © Vià © à © © 1968 The Enragà © s and Situationists in the Occupations Movement, France, May'68 provides an explanation of SI's involvement with Enragà © student groups and the Sorbonne occupation.
The 1968 occupation began at the University of Nanterre and spread to the Sorbonne. Police are trying to recapture the Sorbonne and there is rioting. After this general strike was announced with up to 10 million workers participating. SI originally participated in the Sorbonne job and defended the barricades in the riots. The SI distributes calls for factory occupations and the establishment of workers councils, but, disillusioned with the students, leaves the university to establish a Council for Maintenance Works (CMDO) that distributes SI demands on a much wider range. scale. After the end of movement, CMDO is dissolved.
Aftermath (1968-1972)
In 1972, Gianfranco Sanguinetti and Guy Debord were the two remaining members of the SI. Working with Debord, in August 1975, Sanguinetti wrote a pamphlet titled Rapporto veridico sulle ultime opurtunitÃÆ' at salvare il capitalismo in Italy (English: Real-Time Reports on Last Opportunities for Save Capitalism in Italy ), which (inspired by Bruno Bauer) is recognized as a cynical "Censor", a powerful industrialist. The pamphlet argued that the Italian ruling class supported the bombing of Piazza Fontana and the massacre of other false flags for a higher purpose in defending the capitalist status quo from communist influence. The pamphlet was sent to the 520 most powerful men in Italy. It is accepted as a politician, industrialist and journalist who sincerely and strongly praised its contents. After reprinting the treaty as a booklet, Sanguinetti reveals himself as a true writer. In the protests that took place and under pressure from the Italian authorities Sanguinetti left Italy in February 1976, and was denied entry to France.
After publishing the final issue of this magazine analysis of the May 1968 uprising, and a strategy that needs to be adopted in the future revolution, SI was dissolved in 1972.
Main concept
Landscape and community
The Spectacle is the central idea in situational theory, developed by Guy Debord in his 1967 book The Society of the Spectacle. In a limited sense, spectacle means the mass media, which is "the most striking superficial manifestation." Debord said that the spectacle society appeared in the late 1920s.
Criticism of the spectacle is the development and application of the concept of fetishism from commodities, reification and alienation of Karl Marx, and the way he was replicated by GyÃÆ'¶rgy LukÃÆ'¨cs in 1923. In a spectacle society, commodities command workers and consumers rather than being ruled by them. Consumers are passive subjects who contemplate the revised spectacle.
In early 1958, in the situationist manifesto, Debord described the official culture as a "fraudulent game", in which conservative forces forbade the idea of ​​subversive to have direct access to public discourse. Such ideas are first underestimated and sterilized, and then they are safely reinserted into mainstream society, where they can be exploited to add new tastes to the dominant old ideas. This spectacle technique is sometimes called healing , and the counter technique is dÃÆ' Â © tournement .
DÃÆ' Â © tournement
A dÃÆ' Â © tournement is a technique developed in the 1950s by Letterist International, and consists of "changing the expression of the capitalist system on itself," such as changing the slogan and logo against advertisers or the status quo politics. DÃÆ' Â © tournement is clearly used to govern subversive political pranks, influential tactics called the joke of a situation replicated by the punk movement in the late 1970s and inspired the cultural jamming movement of the late 1980s.
Anti-capitalism
The Situationist International, in the 15 years since its formation in 1957 and its dissolution in 1972, is characterized by Marxist and surrealist perspectives on aesthetics and politics, with no separation between the two: art and politics confronted and revolutionarily. The SI analyzes the modern world from the point of view of everyday life. The core argument of Situationist International is the attack on the capitalist degradation of people's lives and the false models advertised by the mass media, which the Situasionist responds with an alternative life experience. Alternative life experiences explored by situations are the development of situations, unity urbanism, psychogeography, and the unification of games, freedom and critical thinking.
SI's main attitude is to rely on the power of the revolutionary proletariat. This attitude was reaffirmed very clearly in a discussion about "The extent of SI as a political movement?", During the Fourth SI Conference in London. The SI states that this is the core principle of the Situationists, and that those who do not understand it and agree it are not situationalists.
Art and politics
SI rejects all art that separates itself from politics, 20th century art concepts separate from topical political events. The SI believes that the idea of ​​artistic expression separate from current politics and events is one that is reproduced by reactionary considerations to create artwork that expresses the comprehensive criticism of impotent societies. They acknowledge that there is a precise mechanism followed by reactionaries to defuse the role of subversive artists and intellectuals, that is, reframing them as separate from the most topical events, and diverting from them a sense of for a new one that might harmfully attract the masses; after such a separation, such artwork is sterilized, prohibited, degraded, and securely integrated into official culture and public discourse, where they can add new flavors to the dominant old ideas and play the role of the gears in the mechanism spectacle society.
According to this theory, artists and intellectuals who receive such compromises are valued by art dealers and praised by dominant cultures. SI received many offers to sponsor "creations" that would only have the "situation" label but the attenuated political content, which would bring everything back in order and SI back to the ancient fold of artistic praxis. The majority of SI continues to reject offers and involvement in the conventional avant-garde artistic field. This principle has been asserted since the establishment of SI in 1957, but the qualitative step to resolve all contradictions has a situation that makes concessions to the cultural market, created by the exclusion of Gruppe SPUR in 1962.
The SI notes how the reactionary forces forbid the subversive ideas of artists and intellectuals to achieve public discourse, and how they attack artwork expressing comprehensive criticism of society, saying that art should not engage in politics.
Construction situation
The first edition of Internationale Situationniste defines a situation constructed as "a life moment concretely and deliberately built by a collective organization of an atmosphere of unity and game of events."
When the SI embraces dialectical Marxism, the situation becomes less referring to certain avant-garde practices than to the more common dialectical and artistic unification of life. Beyond this theoretical definition, the situation as a practical manifestation then slips between a series of proposals. So the SI first leads to distinguish the situation from the artistic practice of the event, and then identifies it in historical events like the Paris Commune in which it exhibits itself as a revolutionary moment. The interest of SI in the Paris Commune was expressed in 1962 in their fourteen "Theses on the Paris Commune".
Psychogeography
The first edition of Internationale Situationniste defines psychogeography as "the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment (whether consciously or not) on individual emotions and behavior." The term was first recognized in 1955 by Guy Debord while still with Letterist International:
The word psychogeography, suggested by illiterate Kabyle as the general term for the phenomenon that some of us are investigating around the summer of 1953, is not particularly improper. It does not contradict the materialist perspective of conditioning life and mind by objective nature. Geography, for example, relates to the action of determinants of common natural forces, such as soil composition or climatic conditions, to the economic structure of society, and thus to the corresponding conceptions that such societies can have in the world. Psychogeography can set itself the study of appropriate laws and the specific effects of the geographical environment, whether consciously organized or not, on individual emotions and behavior. Psogogographic vague and slick adjectives can be applied to findings obtained by this type of investigation, to their influence on human feelings, and more generally in any situation or behavior that seems to reflect the spirit of the same discovery.
DÃÆ' Â © rive
By definition, psychogeography combines knowledge and subjective and objective studies. Debord fought to establish the key points of this theoretical paradox, which eventually resulted in the "Theory of the DÃ © Ã © rive" in 1958, a document that essentially serves as a manual instruction for psychogeographic procedures, executed through action dÃÆ' Â © rive ("drift").
In one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relationships, their work and recreational activities, and allow themselves to be drawn by the terrain attractions and encounters they find there. But that limit includes releasing this and the necessary contradictions: the dominance of psychogeographic variations by their knowledge and possible calculations.
SI is involved in the form of a game that is also practiced by its predecessor organization, Lettrist International, the art of wandering through urban space, which they call dÃÆ' Â © rive, whose unique mood is conveyed in romantic romantic meaning of Debord's palindrome. The two visits hosted by Andre Breton serve as the closest cultural precedent to dÃÆ' Â © rive. The first in 1921, was an excursion to the Church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre with the Paris Dadais; the second trip was on May 1, 1923, when a small group of surrealists walked towards the countryside outside Blois. But Debord is careful to distinguish between such precedents and precedents. He emphasized his active character as a "mode of experimental behavior" that reached Romanticism, Baroque, and the age of knighthood, with his long adventure travel tradition. As urban roaming is characteristic of the Left Bank's bohemianism in Paris.
In the 6th edition of SI, Raoul Vaneigem writes in a unifying urbanism manifesto, "All the space is occupied by the enemy, we live under a permanent curfew, not just police - geometry". DÃÆ' Â © rive, as a tactic drafted earlier in the French military, is "a calculated action determined by the absence of a larger locus", and "maneuver in the field of enemy vision". To the SI, who are interested in occupying the space, the ambassadors carry an attraction in the sense of "fighting" into the streets and actually engaging in determined operations. The dÃÆ' Â © rive is a program of preparation, reconnaissance, the means to form the psychology of the situation among the city explorers for possible city situations.
Work, relax and play
Observers of the situation observed that the workers of advanced capitalism still only functioned in order to survive. In a world where technological efficiency has increased production exponentially, tenfold, community workers still dedicate their entire lives to survival, by means of production. The goal of organized, advanced capitalism is not luxury, happiness, or freedom, but production. Commodity production is the end of itself; and production by means of survival.
Theorists from Situationist International consider the current working paradigm in advanced capitalist society increasingly unreasonable. As technology advances, and jobs become exponentially efficient, the work itself becomes more exponential. The social function of spectacle is the creation of concrete alienation. The economic expansion consists primarily of the expansion of this particular industrial sector. The "growth" generated by the developing economy for its own sake is none other than the growth of the alienation that it came from.
Political theory
Primary works
The twelve editions of the main edition of the French journal Internationalization Situation are published, each edition edited by different individuals or groups, including: Guy Debord, Mohamed Dahoiu, Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio, Maurice Wyckaert, Constant Nieuwenhuys, Asger Jorn, Helmut Sturm, Attila Kotanyi, Nash JÃÆ'¸rgen, Uwe Lausen, Raoul Vaneigem, MichÃÆ'¨le Bernstein, Jeppesen Victor Martin, Jan Stijbosch, Alexander Trocchi, ThÃÆ'  © o Frey, Mustapha Khayati, Donald Nicholson-Smith, Renà © © Riesel, and Renà © à © ViÃÆ' © net.
Classical Situationist texts include: About Student Life's Poverty , Public from Watches by Guy Debord, and Daily Life Revolution by Raoul Vaneigem.
The first English collection of SI, though translated poorly and freely, is Leaving the 20th Century edited by Christopher Gray. The Situationist International Anthology edited and translated by Ken Knabb, collects many SI documents that were not previously seen in English.
Relationship with Marxism
Strongly rooted in the Marxist tradition, Situationist International criticizes Trotskyism, Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism from a position that they believe will be abandoned and more precisely Marxist. Situationists have strong anti-authoritarian currents, which usually make fun of the centralized bureaucracy of China and the Soviet Union in the same breath as capitalism.
The work of Debord The Society of the Spectacle (1967) sets the situation analysis as a Marxist critical theory. The Society of the Spectacle is widely recognized as the main and most influential Situationist essay.
The concept of the revolution created by Situationist International is anti-capitalist, Marxist, Young Hegelian, and from the early 50s, very different from the Left, anti-Stalinist and against all repressive regimes.
Debord began work 1967 with a revisited version of the first sentence that Marx began his criticism of classical political economy, Das Kapital . In the next essay, Debord will argue that his work is the most important social critique since Marx's work. Drawing from Marx, who argues that under capitalist society, wealth is degraded into a large accumulation of commodities, Debord argues that in advanced capitalism, life is reduced to a large accumulation of glasses, victory only Appearance where "all that ever live life has become a mere representation ". The spectacle, which Debord says is a core feature of advanced capitalist society, has "the most striking superficial manifestation" in complex mass-marketing advertising.
Describing Marx's argument that under living capitalism and our constantly exhausted environment, Debord adds that the Spectacle is a system in which capitalism seeks to conceal such depletion. Debord adds that, further away from impoverishment in the quality of life, our psychic functioning changes, we experience the degradation of the mind and also the degradation of knowledge. In spectacular societies, knowledge is no longer used to question, analyze, or resolve contradictions, but to assuage reality. Such an argument on the Spectacle as a mask of degrading reality has been described by many Situasionist artists, which resulted in advertising games in which instead of a shining life, rugged reality is represented.
The Situasionist theorists advocate a method of operation that includes the workers 'democratic councils and workers' self-management, who are interested in empowering individuals, unlike the bureaucratic state that is considered corrupt in the Eastern bloc. Their anti-authoritarian interpretation of Marxist theory can be identified with the communist movement and the wider communist Marxist movement, broadly referred to as left communism.
The last edition (1972) of the journal Situationist International, featuring an editorial that analyzed the events of May 1968. Editorial, written by Guy Debord, entitled Early Era, may be a reference to the detention of Nachalo ( The Beginning ), the Russian monthly Marxist magazine.
According to Greil Marcus, some found similarities between Situasionis and Yippies.
Former situationists Clark and Nicholson-Smith (part of England), argue that the portion of the moderate Left which is the "prescribed Left", and "Left opinion makers", is usually intended to insult the SI as "Hegelian-despairing".
Relationship with anarchism
Situationist International is distinguished from anarchists and Marxists. Nevertheless, they are often associated with anarchism. Debord made a critical assessment of the anarchists in his 1967 The Society of the Spectacle. In the final, 12th edition of the journal, the situations reject spontaneism and "mystique mystique", labeling them as "sub-anarchism" forms:
The only people to be excluded from this debate are... those who on behalf of some of the sub-anarchists of spontaneism express their opposition to all forms of organization, and which only reproduce the flaws and confusion of the old-mystical movement of the nonorganisation, the workers are not eager having been mixed with Trotskyist sects for too long, students who were imprisoned in their impoverishment who were unable to escape from the bolshevik organization scheme. Situationists are clearly partisan organizations - the existence of the organization of the situation testifies to it. Those who announce their approval with our thesis while credits SI with spontaneous vague not know how to read.
According to Ken Knabb's situation, Debord shows the flaws and benefits of both Marxism and anarchism. He argues that "the division between Marxism and anarchism cripples both sides, the anarchists appropriately criticize their narrow authoritarian and economic tendencies in Marxism, but they generally do so in irrational, moralistic, ahistorical ways... and leave Marx and some more radical Marxists with virtual monopolies on coherent dialectical analysis - until the situation experts finally bring the libertarian and dialectical aspects back together. "
Relationship to the left set
SI poses a challenge to a model of political action partly from the left, the "established Left" and "Left opinion makers". The first challenging aspect is the role of refueling SI possessed in the turbulent political and social movements of the 1960s, the many upheavals still at stake and which many predicted will recur in the 21st century. The second challenging aspect is the comparison between the Marxist Situationist theory of the Society of the Spectacle, which is still very topical 30 years later, and the current status of the theory is supported by leftist positions in the same period, such as Althusserianism, Maoism, workersism, Freudo-Marxism, and others.
The response to this challenge is an attempt to silence and misinterpret, to "transform SI safely into an art movement, thereby minimizing its role in the political and social movements of the sixties."
The core aspect of the revolutionary perspective, and the political theory, of Situationist International, has been ignored by some commentators, limiting themselves to apolitical readings of situational avant-garde art, or rejecting the Situasionist political theory. Examples are Simon Sadler The Situationist City , and accounts on the SI published by New Left Review .
The concept of the revolution created by Situationist International is anti-capitalist, Marxist, Young Hegelian, and from the early 1950s, very different from the Left, anti-Stalinist and against all repressive regimes. SI called in May 1968 for the establishment of the Workers' council, and one held that they were equal to the council communism.
There is no separation between artistic and political perspectives. For example, Asger Jorn never believed in the conception of Situasionist ideas as exclusively artistic and separate from political engagement. He is at the root and core of the Situationist International project, fully sharing his revolutionary intentions with Debord.
Reception
Criticism
Critics of Situasionists often claim that their ideas are in fact incompetent and elusive, but the best simple ideas are expressed in a language that is deliberately difficult, and the worst is absurd. For example, anarchist Chaz Bufe asserts in Listening to Anarchists! that "the jargon of an unclear situation" is a major problem in the anarchist movement. Andrea Gibbons argues that the Parisist situationists failed to take practically or theoretically their African embezzlement experience, as demonstrated by Abdelhafid Khattib's experience of police abuse while conducting psychogeographic research in les Halles in 1958. He commented how little oppression the Algerian Population in Paris had their activities and thoughts - Bernstein and Debord co-signed the "Declaration of the Right to Expulsion in the Algerian War" in 1961, which led them to be questioned by the police. He quoted a letter written by Jacqueline de Jong, Jorgen Nash, and Ansgar Elde protesting against the expulsion of the Spur group in 1962 that highlighted political oppression in Paris at the time. Gibbons also criticized the lack of mention of the Algerian situation in either Debord or Vaneigem memoirs.
Influence
The debord analysis of spectacle has influenced people working on television, especially in France and Italy; in Italy, TV programs produced by situational intellectuals, such as Antonio Ricci Striscia la notizia, or Carlo Freccero's programming schedule for Italian 1 in the early 1990s.
In the 1960s and 1970s, anarchists, communists, and other leftists offered various interpretations of the Situasionist concept in combination with other perspectives. Examples of these groups include: in Amsterdam, Provo; in the UK, King Mob, producer of Heatwave magazine (including Charles Radcliffe who briefly joined the English section of Situationist International), and Angry Brigade. In the US, groups such as Black Mask (then Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers), The Weathermen, and the Rebel Workers group also explicitly use their ideas.
Anarchist theorists such as Fredy Perlman, Bob Black, Judge Bey, and John Zerzan, have developed SI ideas in different directions from Marxism. These theorists are mostly associated with the Fifth Estate magazine, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed
The situationalist urban theory, originally defined by members of Lettrist International as "Unified Urbanism," was developed widely through the behavioral and performance structures of the Non-Linear Architectural Workshop during the 1990s. The reappearance of the London Psychogeographical Association also inspired many new psychogeographic groups including the Manchester Area Psychogeographic. LPA and the Neoist Alliance together with Project Luther Blissett join forces to form Lettrist International New with a special communist perspective. Around this time, Unpopular Books and LPA released several key texts including a new translation by Asger Jorn.
Around this time too, groups like Reclaim the Streets and Adbusters, respectively, see themselves as "creating a situation" or practicing detournement on advertising.
In terms of culture, the influence of SI is arguably larger, if more dispersed. The list of cultural practices that claim debt to SI is very broad, but there are some outstanding examples:
- Organizational ideas had a strong influence on the design language of the punk rock phenomenon of the 1970s. To some extent, this is due to the adoption of style and aesthetics and sometimes the slogan used by SI. This is often a second hand, through pro-Situ British groups such as King Mob whose partners include Malcolm McLaren and Jamie Reid. Factory Recording Owner Tony Wilson is influenced by Situasionist urbanism and the Factory Recording group The Durutti Column takes its name from the collage of Andre Bertrand Le Retour de la Colonne Durutti . (Bertrand, in turn, took his title from the eponymous anarchist army during the Spanish Civil War). The US punk group The Feederz has been recognized as showing a more direct and conscious influence. Formed in the late 1970s, they became famous for their extensive use of detours and their intentions to provoke their audience through the exposition of the Situasionist theme. Other musical artists whose lyrics and artwork have been referenced by the Situasionist concept include: David Bowie, Sea Horse Liberation Army, Karty Love Theory, Chumbawamba, Manic Way Preacher, Nation of Ulysses, Huggy Bear, Joan of Arc, The Spectacle, International Noise Conspiracy, and Denied. The Situationalist Theory experienced a change in the hardcore punk scene of the 90s, referred to by Orchids, Heroes of the Lost, and Crime.
- One can also trace the situational ideas in the development of other avant-garde threads such as Neoism, as well as artists such as Mark Divo.
- Some hacked e-zines, which, like samizdat, are distributed via email and FTP via the initial Internet link and BBS cite and develop ideas derived from SI. Some of them are N0 Way, N0 Route, UHF, in France; and early Phrack, cDc in the US. More recently, writers such as Thomas de Zengotita have echoed the Situasionist theory of contemporary society.
See also
- Anti-art
- Bernadette Corporation
- Golden Fleet
- King Mob
- Right to Being Greedy: Theses On The Practical Necessity Of Demanding Everything
Note
References
Further reading
- Balsebre, Gianluigi. Della critica radicale. Bibliografia ragionata sull'Internazionale situazionista. Con documenti inediti di italiano Grafton edizioni, Bologna, 1995.
- Cooper, Sam. The Situationist International in England: Modernism, Surrealism, and Avant-Gardes . Routledge, New York, 2016. ISBNÃ, 9781138680456
- Ford, Simon. The Situationist International: User Guide (Black Dog, London, 2004) ISBN 978-1-904772-05-7
- Sadler, Simon. City Situationists . MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1998. ISBNÃ, 978-0-262-69225-0
- Vachon, Marc. L'arpenteur de la ville: L'utopie situationniste and Patrick Straram . Les ÃÆ' â € ° ditions Triptyque, Montreal, 2003 ISBN: 978-2-89031-476-4.
- Wark, McKenzie. 50 Years of Endorsement by Situationist International (Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2008) ISBN 978-1-56898-789-7
- Wark, McKenzie. The Beach Beneath the Street: Everyday Life and The Tribulation of International Situation Verso, New York, 2011) ISBN 978-1-84467-720-7
- The Rise and Fall of The Green Mountain Anarchist Collective , 2015.
- The Situationist international (1957-1972) In imus nocte et consumimur igni girum . JRP Ringier, Zurich, 2007 ISBN: 978-3-905770-14-8
External links
- International Online Situationists
- International Text Library Situationist
- Cinema Situasionis at 0xDB
- Translation of all twelve issues of Internationale Situationniste
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments