Situationism

[Tommy4ever]

What is it and why, whenever it is mentioned on revleft (obviously I never hear of it beyond this site), do people always seem to be quite hostile to it?

All I could find out from Wikipedia is it was some sort of French Libertarian Marxist student movement?

[Broletariat]

It was an incredibly small movement, I think comprising roughly 13 people at its peak. The main text is The Society of the Spectacle. I've never read the whole thing, but the first couple of pieces seem to make sense.

[Sasha]

What is it and why, whenever it is mentioned on revleft (obviously I never hear of it beyond this site), do people always seem to be quite hostile to it?

because it evil revisionist heresy...

for an small movement they have been incredibly influential, admittedly more in the art and in cultural philosophy than in politics although debord has been essential (through post-modernism/foucault) in the development of neo-marxists thinkers like negri

[L.A.P.]

I don't know much about them and I'm actually curious to learn more about them. From what I've read, they believed capitalism prevented people from having certain experiences of life or something along those lines. A lot of it seems like a Marxist perspective on aesthetics, sounds like trippy shit that I should read next time I get high so I can get absolutely mind-fucked.

[Sasha]

the movie of society of the spectacle is actually a bit more easy to follow than the book:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g34XVscFkIs (part 1 of 9)

[Lyev]

"Situationism" is a myth. There are only situationists. From the situationist group here on revleft: Situationism is a "meaningless term improperly derived from the above. There is no such thing as situationism, which would mean a doctrine for interpreting existing conditions. The notion of situationism is obviously devised by antisituationists.
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/definitions.html

I think mai '68 and all that is quite important for situationist ideas, as well. Here is the group on revleft http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=301. A user in that group gives their reasons for why they were drawn to the situationists:



- Tearing down the false dichotomy between the political and the personal.
- Embracing the subjective aspects of communism
- Extending our critique and activity to everyday life -- as opposed to limiting ourselves to "politics" as an isolated sphere in the fragmented totality of capitalism.
- Restoring alienation's important role in our critique of capitalism. A lot of schools of communism -- especially of the Leninist variety -- have either glossed over the concept of alienation or ignored it entirely. But giving alienation central importance in our analysis relates to the above points and helps us distinguish forms of "communism" that advocate revolution without changing people's lives qualitatively.

I think that would go a long way towards figuring out how to engage in meaningful activity instead of specialized "revolutionary" passivity that mirrors life under capitalism.

[Manic Impressive]

I don't personally get it but this video was still interesting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SvdWk8zRrI

[black magick hustla]

there was "situationism" the whole situationist vs situationism is just wank from the parisian bohemian artist millieu.

i think a lot of people dislike them because they were essentially middle class wankers. although i have middle class wanker sensibilities and therefore i have a soft spot for them, they were essentially a creation of the parisian, artistic millieu and were barely related with working class millieus.

essentially what separates situationism from other approaches is their centrality on everyday life. the post world war ii boom made marxists conclude that crisis theory was flawed and capitalism had resolved its contradictions. therefore many people influenced by marx shifted the focus of their analysis not in economics but in the sphere of alienation. therefore you´d get slogans like "boredom is counterrevolutionary". another aspect ofthem is that they were exaggeratedly artsy, and made a huge deal ofthings like culture jamming.

[The Idler]

I've always considered turbulence (http://www.turbulence.org.uk/) to be the contemporary situationists.

[Old Mole]

Personally, as a communist, I rather like the situationists, I think the critique in society of the spectacle of post-war industrial society has many points (also weaknesses, and much of it is obsolete). There is a lot of myths surrounding the Situationist International, like them being only an artistic movement for example. There are many reasons why a big part of the left dislikes (and always have disliked) them. They harshly criticized the rest of the left and were really committed revolutionarys. They played a relatively big role in may '68, which others (mostly various leninists), of course deny. The most important situationist works (Society of the Spectacle, Revolution of Everyday Life) were released in a very good time to influence may 68. A good book about the situationists in 68 is Enrages and Situationists in the occupations movement by René Viénet, a former situationist himself.

[Lyev]

there was "situationism" the whole situationist vs situationism is just wank from the parisian bohemian artist millieu.Why is it wank? Previously, I had refered to the movement as "situationism", but other users called me out on it. My knowledge on the situationists is pretty limited, but like that quote says, the suffix '-ism' implies some kind of ideology so therefore a "doctrine for interpreting existing conditions". The user cenv seems to be getting at a similar theme with:
I think that would go a long way towards figuring out how to engage in meaningful activity instead of specialized "revolutionary" passivity that mirrors life under capitalism.The issue might be wank insofar as it might seem largely semantic, but the distinction to be made from previous Marxist approaches is quite important. Maybe you even alluded to this yourself slightly when you said that the situationists shifted from economic analysis to a much larger emphasis on alienation, as this takes our efforts away from the lofty, often isolated issues of politics etc., but to capitalism's reach into our daily lives. I don't know though, as I say, I am not so clued-up on Debord and co.