Society Of The Spectacle

Society Of The Spectacle

Author: Guy Debord

Publisher: Bread and Circuses Publishing

Published: 2012-10-01

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 1617508306

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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.


Comments on the Society of the Spectacle

Comments on the Society of the Spectacle

Author: Guy Debord

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2011-01-10

Total Pages: 105

ISBN-13: 1844676722

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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.


Public Secrets

Public Secrets

Author: Ken Knabb

Publisher:

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13:

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The greatest hits, and a fine read for anyone interested in situationist ideas, anarchism, the 60s counterculture and beyond. Includes both two substantial new texts - 'The Joy Of Revolution' and 'Autobiography,' and reprints of all his old pamphlets, co-authored work, and translations of various situationist texts. A veritable treasure trove of pamphlets, texts, posters, comics, articles, leaflets and essays. Over 400 pages, and every one is a winner!


Artistic Utopias of Revolt

Artistic Utopias of Revolt

Author: Julia Ramírez Blanco

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-03-13

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 3319714228

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This book analyses the aesthetic and utopian dimensions of various activist social movements in Western Europe since 1989. Through a series of case studies, it demonstrates how dreams of a better society have manifested themselves in contexts of political confrontation, and how artistic forms have provided a language to express the collective desire for social change. The study begins with the 1993 occupation of Claremont Road in east London, an attempt to prevent the demolition of homes to make room for a new motorway. In a squatted row of houses, all available space was transformed and filled with elements that were both aesthetic and defensive – so when the authorities arrived to evict the protestors, sculptures were turned into barricades. At the end of the decade, this kind of performative celebration merged with the practices of the antiglobalisation movement, where activists staged spectacular parallel events alongside the global elite’s international meetings. As this book shows, social movements try to erase the distance that separates reality and political desire, turning ordinary people into creators of utopias. Squatted houses, carnivalesque street parties, counter-summits, and camps in central squares, all create a physical place of these utopian visions


Spectacular Capitalism

Spectacular Capitalism

Author: Richard Gilman-Opalsky

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781570272288

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Literary Nonfiction. Philosophy & Critical Theory. Despite recent crises in the financial system, uprisings in Greece; France; Tunisia; and Bolivia, worldwide decline of faith in neoliberal trade policies, deepening ecological catastrophes, and global deficits of realized democracy, we still live in an era of "spectacular capitalism." But what is "spectacular capitalism?" Spectacular capitalism is the dominant mythology of capitalism that disguises its internal logic and denies the macroeconomic reality of the actually existing capitalist world. Taking on this elusive mythology, and those who too easily accept it, Richard Gilman-Opalsky exposes the manipulative and self-serving narrative of spectacular capitalism. Drawing on the work of Guy Debord, Gilman-Opalsky argues that the theory of practice and practice of theory are superseded by upheavals that do the work of philosophy.


The Condition of Digitality

The Condition of Digitality

Author: Robert Hassan

Publisher: University of Westminster Press

Published: 2020-01-10

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 191265668X

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David Harvey’s The Condition of Postmodernity rationalised capitalism’s transformation during an extraordinary year: 1989. It gave theoretical expression to a material and cultural reality that was just then getting properly started – globalisation and postmodernity – whilst highlighting the geo-spatial limits to accumulation imposed by our planet. However this landmark publication, author Robert Hassan argues, did not address the arrival of digital technology, the quantum leap represented by the move from an analogue world to a digital economy and the rapid creation of a global networked society. Considering first the contexts of 1989 and Harvey’s work, then the idea of humans as analogue beings he argues this arising new human condition of digitality leads to alienation not only from technology but also the environment. This condition he suggests, is not an ideology of time and space but a reality stressing that Harvey’s time-space compression takes on new features including those of ‘outward’ and ‘inward’ globalisation and the commodification of all spheres of existence. Lastly the author considers culture’s role drawing on Rahel Jaeggi’s theories to make the case for a post-modern Marxism attuned to the most significant issue of our age. Stimulating and theoretically wide-ranging The Condition of Digitality recognises post-modernity’s radical new form as a reality and the urgent need to assert more democratic control over digitality.


Leaving the 20th Century

Leaving the 20th Century

Author: Christopher Gray

Publisher: Bread and Circuses Publishing

Published: 2014-09-09

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 1625174861

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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 Beach Beneath the Street

The Beach Beneath the Street

Author: McKenzie Wark

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2015-05-05

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 1781689407

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Over fifty years after the Situationist International appeared, its legacy continues to inspire activists, artists and theorists around the world. Such a legend has accrued to this movement that the story of the SI now demands to be told in a contemporary voice capable of putting it into the context of twenty-first-century struggles. McKenzie Wark delves into the Situationists’ unacknowledged diversity, revealing a world as rich in practice as it is in theory. Tracing the group’s development from the bohemian Paris of the ’50s to the explosive days of May ’68, Wark’s take on the Situationists is biographically and historically rich, presenting the group as an ensemble creation, rather than the brainchild and dominion of its most famous member, Guy Debord. Roaming through Europe and the lives of those who made up the movement – including Constant, Asger Jorn, Michèle Bernstein, Alex Trocchi and Jacqueline De Jong – Wark uncovers an international movement riven with conflicting passions. Accessible to those who have only just discovered the Situationists and filled with new insights, The Beach Beneath the Street rereads the group’s history in the light of our contemporary experience of communications, architecture, and everyday life. The Situationists tried to escape the world of twentieth-century spectacle and failed in the attempt. Wark argues that they may still help us to escape the twenty-first century, while we still can.


The Revolt of the Whip

The Revolt of the Whip

Author: Joseph Love

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2012-05-16

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 0804783691

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This short book brings to life a unique and spectacular set of events in Latin American history. In November 1910, shortly after the inauguration of Brazilian President Hermes da Fonseca, ordinary sailors killed several officers and seized control of major new combat vessels, including two of the most powerful battleships ever produced, and commenced bombing Rio de Janeiro. The mutineers, led by an Afro-Brazilian and mostly black themselves, demanded greater rights—above all the abolition of flogging in the Brazilian navy, the last Western navy to tolerate it. This form of torture was closely associated in the sailors' minds with slavery, which had only been prohibited in Brazil in 1888. These events and the scandals that followed initiated a sustained debate about the role of race and class in Brazilian society and the extent to which Brazil could claim to be a modern nation. The commemoration of the centenary of the mutiny in 2010 saw the country still divided about the meaning of the Revolt of the Whip.


An Essay on Liberation

An Essay on Liberation

Author: Herbert Marcuse

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 1971-06-01

Total Pages: 110

ISBN-13: 0807096873

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In this concise and startling book, the author of One-Dimensional Man argues that the time for utopian speculation has come. Marcuse argues that the traditional conceptions of human freedom have been rendered obsolete by the development of advanced industrial society. Social theory can no longer content itself with repeating the formula, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," but must now investigate the nature of human needs themselves. Marcuse's claim is that even if production were controlled and determined by the workers, society would still be repressive—unless the workers themselves had the needs and aspirations of free men. Ranging from philosophical anthropology to aesthetics An Essay on Liberation attempts to outline—in a highly speculative and tentative fashion—the new possibilities for human liberation. TheEssay contains the following chapters: A Biological Foundation for Socialism?, The New Sensibility, Subverting Forces—in Transition, and Solidarity.