Book Club: Guy Debord and the Situationist International

[Cain]

Agreed, especially the final point seems one of the central ones of the Situationists, the possibility that the avant-garde only feeds and strengthens "bourgeois" society, and how to avoid this fate.

Also, to expand on the point of the artists/SI and the police using the same techniques: it seems to me what the SI are saying is that, as things stood then, people were, at best, only half-integrated into the current system.  The police, or whatever, wanted to fully integrate them into the current system, and freeze that system forever, whereas the SI, in true Marxist form, wanted to transcend the current system.  There is something...unsettling in how the Situationists describe going about this, about how the "subject must cease to be an obstacle in the rational functioning of the machine, must become completely moldable by the new science of the construction of situations"....but then I guess it depends who is doing the moulding.  Self-moulding, for example, is quite different from having others do it for you.

I think though, the passage below puts it better, that "The path of complete police control over all human activities and the path of infinite free creation of all human activities is one:it is the same path of modern discoveries."

From a Discordian point of view, the SI seemed to view capitalist society as fundamentally neophobic: "The authentically new (as compared to mere "novelty") was understood as a threat to social order because each innovation only exacerbated that order's central contradiction between the immensity of productive forces and the stifling conditions of production, between the technological means unleashed by the bourgeoisie and its need as a class to preserve inequality."

I think their assessment of everyday life has a lot to be said for it too: everyday life was "organized within the limits of a scandalous poverty,"a poverty defined by the "scarcity of free time and scarcity of possible uses of this free time."  One of the things I hated about working full time was how little time was left to me to pursue my own interests and wants (admittedly, working a stupid shift did not help either).  I think the lack of free time leads to the lack of possible uses, since it is the ultimate limiting factor.

"Debord would extend this idea by further describing ordinary existence as "a colonized sector," as "a kind of reservation for the good savages who (without realizing it) make modern society, with the rapid increase in its technological powers and the forced expansion of its market, work." Everyday life, then, marked a border, the "frontier of the controlled and the uncontrolled sectors of life"—between, that is, the planned sector of production and the as yet unplanned sector of lived experience, consumption, leisure."  If we accept this, is it fair to say that everyday life has failed to become a frontier or border, that it has also been colonized?  The commodification and systemization of leisure and entertainment since the the 1950s and 60s has been extraordinary.  Where then is the border now?

[LMNO]

That Capitalistic society is considered neophobic is an interesting twist, in that most capitalists would say that the system thrives on innovation and new ideas; the point being that those innovations must take place inside the capitalistic system.  A new cereal isn't really a new idea, it's a variation on an existing idea.

Also, of course, that pure capitalism creates monopolies if unchecked.  But for the layperson, the concept of capitalism as a reactionary force might seem odd.

One thing that I forsee about the CI is that they seem to truly separate themselves from the "masses".  They sound like they consider themselves superior to the rest of society, and elevate themselves to a position of overseer.  Like you said, they seek to control the masses... but for good reasons and ends.  Uh huh.

As far as viewing capitalist society as a means of forcing people away from free time, and trapping them in jobs that prevent them from using any free time, I think you have to take a step back.  From what I remember, western industrialization and capitalism created more free time than existed in ye olde days.  Or, at least, the democratic politics that arose within capitalistic society.  A worker in this century had more free time than in the last... although, the rich had plenty of leisure time in whatever century you choose.

Perhaps they'll get into this more later (just starting the Greil Marcus piece today), but it seems that your job might tie up your time and your body (as in, having to be in a certain place at a certain time), but it is up to the individual to decide if their job dictates their lives.  Everyday Life can still be a frontier, but it is up to the individual to treat it as such.  Do you want to be a Cowboy, living life on the range, or do you want to be the whore in the saloon?

Anyway, got my kindle issues fixed, so I'll try to catch up on my reading.

[LMNO]

Well, damn.  Check out this anti-Pineal rant:

"If we are not surrealists it is because we don't want to be bored. . . . Decrepit surrealism, raging and ill-informed youth, well-off adolescent rebels lacking perspective but far from lacking a cause—boredom is what they all have in common. The situationists will execute the judgment contemporary leisure is pronouncing against itself."

[Cain]

Well, I'm not so sure I agree about the free time thing...as far as I know, factory work frequently involved 12+ hour shifts in the UK, which was far more labour intensive than farming.  In the 20th century, things did get better, but that was mainly through the intervention of trade unions, which were influenced (at least in the UK) mostly by idealistic socialism of some kind or another (ie; pre-Marxist theories).  Interestingly, Marx himself posited capitalism as a revolutionary force...but only revolutionary against the pre-existing feudal society it supplanted.  Progression of history and all that.

In addition to the anti-"pinealism", the bit about the Beatniks was similarly cutting:

The rotten egg smell exuded by the idea of God envelops the mystical cretins of the American "Beat Generation,"and is not even en-
tirely absent from the declarations of the Angry Young Men....They have simply come to change their opinions about a few social conventions without even noticing the whole change of terrain of all cultural activity so evident in every avant-garde tendency of this century. The Angry Young Men are in fact particularly reactionary in their attribution of a privileged, redemptive value to the practice of literature:they are defending a mystification that was denounced in Europe around 1920 and whose survival today is of greater counter-revolutionary significance than that of the British Crown.

The Situationists did not like religion, to put it mildly.  They wrote in support of Iraqis who protested in the streets by burning Korans, for example.  The pseudo-Zen undertones to some Beat writings would not have impressed them, and probably because this infused their writings, led to their condemnation for being "counter-revolutionary" (though, to be fair, the Situationists applied this term to everyone from the Soviet Union to most of their own members, at one point or another).

[LMNO]

The Greil Marcus piece is full of tasty quotes.

the situationists were bent on discovering the absolute ability to criticize
anyone, anywhere—without restraint, without the pull of alliances, and without
self-satisfaction.

[Cramulus]

                                           Did you say "grail", Marcus?
                                                             \




sorry, I've had to get that out of my system for about six months

[The Johnny]

I want to participate on the discussion...

But this fuck at the printer messed up the first batch of 30 pages, i told him to fix them, and he said even do he wrecked them, he would have to charge me for them.

I properly told him to shove them.

So now i have to wait until monday, when the efficient and cheap printers by my school open.

[LMNO]

Ok, finished the Marcus piece.  I think I have a grasp at what the SI was trying to do... Capitalism has become consumerism, the goal of comfort has been replaced by the goal of consumption. 

The goal of the SI was to argue against both Art and State, as each feeds the other. 

Or something like that.  Yes?


Next chapter is the man himself, Guy Debord.

[Cramulus]

Basically, yes.

The Situationists were very well aware that any legitimate threat to the system becomes (for lack of a better word) "cool", and "cool" is something the system can make into a commodity. Debord knew that if the Situationists turned Paris on its ear (which they did in May 1969), it would take exactly six months before all the teenagers became Situationists to follow the hip train. The System would take the movement's power and repackage it in safe, consumable forms.

This is a symbiotic system. Whatever exists outside of "the system" has a certain power.. a power which the system craves. People immersed in the system are BORED; they only get a charge out of novelty. The system cannot generate novelty -- It can generate an iphone in 256 different colors, but it can't come up with fresh ideas. Only repetitions of existing ones. So the input for the next wave of products always comes from outside the system.

EDIT TO ADD: and meanwhile, the counterculture needs the system. Coolness cannot be generated without a norm to escape. One cannot exist without the other. That's why Deboard didn't want to cast his lot in with the avant-garde, he knew they serve the system just like Milton's Lucifer serves God through his rebellion.

Look at the hippies, punk, grunge, MTV, skateboarding, whatever. Whenever kids start to find novelty outside of the system, that novelty will become a product. And the system is getting better at doing this - the turnaround time gets quicker every year. In the end, all resistance to the Machine^TM feeds the Machine^TM.

The Situationists knew they had to remain something that couldn't be easily absorbed and integrated. That's why they used non-sequitur as a form of resistance - nonsense is not easily explained, repackaged, or sold. They wanted to exist outside of reason AND outside of art. This fear of inevitable absorption was also a contributing factor to their dissolution - they'd rather disappear than see their movement detourned by the forces of commercialism.

They developed a few techniques (such as Detournment and the Derive) which they thought would subvert the system in new ways. I think they wanted people to reclaim Everyday life, and the spirit of play. So their techniques are aimed at teaching people how to make new meaning out of existing structures. They wanted to build a new society in the cracks of the one that already exists. If enough people reclaim their own lives, there'll be no need for revolution.

[Cain]

More or less, yes.  Also, a reminder for me to find where I put the file and continue reading.

[LMNO]

So, the Guy Debord piece is short and to the point.  Two quotes:

The contempt these aging discoverers then profess for the very values from which
they make a living—that is, from productions contemporary with the decay of
their arts—becomes such a tainted position, requiring submission to the indefinite
prolongation of an aesthetic death composed merely of formal repetitions
that win over no more than a backward part of college-aged youth.

That is to say, Punk is dead the moment it makes a profit.

...attachment to those creative forms permitted
and valued in the economic milieu of the moment is difficult to justify.
Voluntary blindness before the true prohibitions confining them leads the
"revolutionaries of the mind" to formulate strange defenses: the accusation
of bolshevism is the most typical of their indictments, which succeeds every
time in placing their opponent outside the law in the eyes of civilized elites.

Accusations of "socialism" are hardly new. 

Basically, I take away another reiteration of the SI purpose: Transgressive Art plays into the hands of the System it Transgresses.  Transgressive Artists find themselves playing within the System they are trying to Transgress.  This makes them Dummies.


I think it's been said before, but they use very high-falutin' language.

[Cain]

In particular, I like this aspect of the SI's mission:

The role of the Situationist International, its members wrote, was not to act as any sort of vanguard party. ("The task of any avant-garde,"they wrote, "is to keep abreast of reality.") The situationists "had to know how to wait,"and to be ready to disappear in a common festival of revolt. Their job was not to "build"the SI, as the job of a Trotskyist or Bolshevik militant is to build his or her organization, trimming all thoughts and all pronouncements to that goal, careful not to offend anyone who might be seduced or recruited. Their job was to think and speak as clearly as possible—not to get people to listen to speeches, they said, but to get people to think for themselves.

That's a program I can get behind.  Help initiate the conditions for revolt, but keep oneself free of "party politics", of the cult of vanguardism and the need to become a mass movement, while at the same time trying to provoke people to think for themselves.

[LMNO]

Yeah.  I liked how they talked of the "spark of revolution" that was powerful enough to bring groups of people together for action; but that spark soon faded into heirarchy and politics.  So (if I have this right), the thing to do was to keep looking and developing those sparks, and move on to the next thing once it's gone.

[Cain]

This from the Debord piece seems to speak to the destruction-creation dialectic

The generation of Freud and the dada movement contributed to the collapse of a psychiatry and a morality doomed by the contradictions of the time. They left nothing in their wake, other than forms that some nevertheless insist on believing absolute. To tell the truth, all worthwhile works of this generation and its predecessors lead us to think that the next revolution in sensibility can no longer be conceived of as a novel expression of known facts, but rather as the conscious construction of new emotional states.

The Dadaists destroyed everything before them, with their exuberant nihilism and the only task left to do now was to create more and new ideas, states and emotions.

Certain comprehensive systems always seem to incur the anathema of individualists armed with their fragmentary theories, whether psychoanalytic or merely literary. These same Olympians, however, are happy to align their entire lives with other systems whose reign, and whose perishable nature, become more difficult to ignore by the day.

The selective nature of certain "individualists" who consistently rail against this particular system or that, while ignoring other (equally influential and powerful) systems entirely, is something that has consistently irked me, as well.

Yeah.  I liked how they talked of the "spark of revolution" that was powerful enough to bring groups of people together for action; but that spark soon faded into heirarchy and politics.  So (if I have this right), the thing to do was to keep looking and developing those sparks, and move on to the next thing once it's gone.

Thats how I understood it, too.  Though remember, the SI concieved itself as responding to the trends and needs of a particular period only.  However, for others who wish to loot the works of the SI for own ends (ie some people on this forum) it certainly seems to be a good method to use.

[LMNO]

I'm getting pretty annoyed at the guy's writing style.  Sure, he's French; sure, he's part of the Intellectualista; but damn.  He's boring me to tears.