Situationism?

Joycey

Hi,

Could someone please give me a brief definition/description of what situationism is? Ive read the wikipedia article but didnt really enlighten me too much, though what I did read seemed interesting.

I think Debord was(is?) the main theorist of the movement but Im really really sketchy about what they did and how influencial they are etc.

This is copied and pasted from the wikipedia article: 'The first issue of the journal Internationale Situationiste defined a situationist as "having to do with the theory or practical activity of constructing situations. One who engages in the construction of situations. A member of the Situationist International"'

But this doesnt make any sense to me... Arent we all engaged in constructing situations every moment? Maybe its supposed to be toungue in cheek?



Theres two reasons im interested. First is that I have the film of "Society of the Spectacle", I think its directed by Debord himself, and Im wondering whether to go ahead and watch it or should I read/otherwise learn about the ideas first? IMDB says its pretty tough going as far as I remember...
Second is that I came across this article http://info.interactivist.net/node/5324 a while back, heres a quote:

"During the battle soldiers moved within the city across hundreds of metres of ‘overground tunnels’ carved out through a dense and contiguous urban structure. Although several thousand soldiers and Palestinian guerrillas were manoeuvring simultaneously in the city, they were so ‘saturated’ into the urban fabric that very few would have been visible from the air. Furthermore, they used none of the city’s streets, roads, alleys or courtyards, or any of the external doors, internal stairwells and windows, but moved horizontally through walls and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors. This form of movement, described by the military as ‘infestation’, seeks to redefine inside as outside, and domestic interiors as thoroughfares. The IDF’s strategy of ‘walking through walls’ involves a conception of the city as not just the site but also the very medium of warfare – a flexible, almost liquid medium that is forever contingent and in flux."

and when I went reading stuff about it afterwards I came across stuff about situationism influencing anarchist movements, and found this description of an anarchist protest/riot (whatever you want to call it):

"When we smash a window, we aim to destroy the thin veneer of legitimacy that surrounds private property rights. At the same time, we exorcise that set of violent and destructive social relationships which has been imbued in almost
everything around us. By “destroying” private property, we convert its limited exchange value into an expanded use value. A storefront window becomes a vent to let some fresh air into the oppressive atmosphere of a retail outlet (at least until the police decide to tear-gas a nearby road blockade). A newspaper box becomes a tool for creating such vents or a small blockade for the reclamation of public space or an object to improve one’s vantage point by standing on it. A dumpster becomes an obstruction to a phalanx of rioting cops and a source of heat and light. A building facade becomes a message board to record brainstorm ideas for a better world.
After N30, many people will never see a shop window or a hammer the
same way again. The potential uses of an entire cityscape have increased a
thousand-fold. The number of broken
windows pales in comparison to the number of broken spells--spells
cast by a corporate hegemony to lull us into forgetfulness of all the violence committed in the name of private property rights and of all the potential of a society without them.
Broken windows can be boarded up (with yet more waste of our forests) and eventually replaced, but the shattering of assumptions will hopefully persist for some time to come."


Very very similar to the whole IDF thing, I found it really interesting. How could the IDF be giving their troops these things to read, yet manage to stop them from absorbing anything other then the practical information they need to carry out whatever they were already doing? How did none of the Marxist/anarchist ideology seep in?

Apologies if all this is very basic stuff, I dont think ive ever so much as heard situationism mentioned in college, so Im assuming it couldnt be all that mainstream...

DadaKopf

Situationism is, I suppose, indescribable. But isn't kind of isn't, too. In general, it was a bunch of people trying to update marxism for the post-war, consumer boom generation. Theoretically, it was an important attempt to analyse new realities of late capitalism and to develop strategies to resist it.

Consumer culture had become all-encompassing, it had filtered into the minute aspects of daily life. Amid supposed infinite market choice, they argued patterns of life had actually become more controlled through invisible means. Take the common French phrase 'metro. bulot. dodo.' or in English, 'commute. work. sleep.' They contributed ideas of 'psychogeography', which precipitated later urban studies which looked into the manner in which spatial planning and urban development and psychological health is correlated with capitalist development processes. They were against negative elements of consumption and pop culture because it was anti-political, therefore anti-freedom. A common revolutionary slogan was 'boredom is counterrevolutionary'. Strategies to resist this included detournement and dérives - the former was the original 'culturejamming', the latter involved deliberately getting lost in cities in order to realise your freedom. They were critical of the old left, for ignoring too much, for being too dogmatic and doctrinaire. There needed to be a new praxis, a reflective praxis for a different era.

A situation is a constructed event which makes transparent the workings of the capitalist system and opens up space in which to transcend it and to transform it. The Hegelian/Marxian logic of thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Culturejamming would be an example of this. I would say Reclaim the Streets is, too.

Etc. Etc. It inspired the emergence of punk.

Most of their stuff is on the web. The major works are The Society of the Spectacle (Guy Debord) and The Revolution of Everyday Life (Raoul Vangiem).

An excellent book on the subject, which puts the SI in context with Saint Juste, Dadaism, Punk and Post-Punk is 'Lipstick Traces' by Greil Marcus. Also contemporary strains of it are in No Logo.

http://www.nothingness.org/SI/ has a good archive. There's another one somewhere, too. Can't see why you couldn't have googled this.

Joycey

Thx for the reply.

Heres a documentary about the situationist international:
http://www.ubu.com/film/si.html

Im half way through the Society of the Spectacle. Cant handle any more tonight

Heres the link to the film:

http://ubu.artmob.ca/video/Debord-Guy_Society-of-the-Spectacle_1973_Part-1.mpg
http://ubu.artmob.ca/video/Debord-Guy_Society-of-the-Spectacle_1973_Part-2.mpg


Pretty sure its not copyrighted, and it would go completely against the sentiment of the author were it to be taken down. At one point he says progress implies plagiarism so I think your OK mods, if necessary il find out for ye if anything bad can happen.

Last night I was looking through UBUweb (great resource BTW) and came across something else by Debord which I only realised was a defence (or refutation as he puts it ) against the arguments which have been raised against the Society of the Spectacle after beginning it. Its only 20 minutes long, got me motivated to read into situationism again and I found it a nice intro to ideas in the film would have been tougher again to grasp had I not watched this first:

http://www.ubu.com/film/debord_refutation.html


Itd be great to get some kind of discussion going about it but Im not going to reveal my near complete ignorance by going first


Edit: the subs in the film go pretty quick at some points and I had to pause it a few times (mostly in the first 10 mins) to catch it all but its worth the effort. If anyone can find a link to a decent dubbed version I would appreciate it

Joycey

I take it back, I do have a question.

He deals with the concept of truth near the beginning, but I didnt understand it as answering the following: does his use of terms such as real, fake, authentic etc, not presuppose that there is some reality which transcends, or is other than, the sum total of events or interactions with the world which are constituted in part by the instantiations of capitalism which he is critiqueing?

As far as I can see, the only way in which his critique of the defence of capitalism which takes the form of a representation of commodity, can be valid on the grounds of a move away from "reality", is if there exists a disjunct between this mode of representation and "reality", that is not equally present in all other forms of representation. If this disjunct does not exist, then I dont see a critique of the spectacle to be legitimate, simply on grounds of it being a spectacle. Perhaps it is only because the spectacle implies the moral subjugation of those engaged in the production of the commodity being represented that it warrents a critique being made of it?

Isnt any representation of the external world, at least in part, simply a presentation of what exists, and to the extent that it is a presentation of something other then what exists, isnt the spectacle (understood here in terms of the capitalist defence of itself through visual representation, if that is not always what is meant by the term) completely undiferenciated from any other form of representation? Thus requiring a distinction, and unjustified (unless specifically justified) preferencing to be made, with regard to each individual instance of representation.

Apologies if Im not being clear, trying to fumble around with ideas I dont really grasp