Situationism

[MustCrushCapitalism]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International

I've tried to understand this, but Situationism just confuses the hell out of me. Any Situationists want to explain their beliefs as simply as possibly?

[Apoi_Viitor]

If you think you understand Situationism, you don't understand Situationism.

[MustCrushCapitalism]

If you think you understand Situationism, you don't understand Situationism.
:p lol.

But seriously, any Situationists here?

[Magón]

:p lol.

But seriously, any Situationists here?

No, they're all dead. Nobody calls them self a "Situationist" anymore, as far as I know. Maybe like a handful of idolizers, but really I think they're cool, but wouldn't consider myself one.

[Yuppie Grinder]

hipster commmies
petite-bourgeois art students who wanted to piss off mommy and daddy
the movement's long dead

[Theory&Action]

I just finished reading La Société du Spectacle yesterday (most consider it to be the defining tract of the movement), so I'll try to summarize what I got from it. Situationism is essentially a Left-Communist tendency that focuses on dialectical materialism to break the stranglehold of what Debord calls the Spectacle on Society.

He writes about how modern (modern being the sixties) commodity fetishism has completely denied the common people the ability to critically analyze their respective situations and therefore make a significant change to society. He goes on to a brief lesson on historical materialism, a breakdown of the power of culture to repress thought, and ends with a call to teach the populace how to look past what they have been told is "reality" and truly think for themselves.

I'm sure I glossed over many important facets since my knowledge is entirely based on the book, but it's a start.

[Bolt]

Well done, to the fact you got anything out of that book, you must have some sharp analytic tools at your disposal. i picked it up a few years ago, it was incoherent gibberish at best.

p.s to re affirm a previous post, the situationists were just petty bourgoise art students, which is why they are also categorised in libertarian socialism which is really ultra leftism and anarchism :)

[S.Artesian]

Ken Knabb runs a website called the Bureau of Public Secrets here (http://www.bopsecrets.org/) which has a lot of information.

[Homo Songun]

He writes about how modern (modern being the sixties) commodity fetishism has completely denied the common people the ability to critically analyze their respective situations and therefore make a significant change to society. He goes on to a brief lesson on historical materialism, a breakdown of the power of culture to repress thought, and ends with a call to teach the populace how to look past what they have been told is "reality" and truly think for themselves..

This is cute and all, but is it really meaty enough to make it an ism all to its own? Discuss.

[RED DAVE]

Society of the Spectacle (http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/)

Here's the ur-text available online.

RED DAVE

[The Douche]

Ken Knabb runs a website called the Bureau of Public Secrets here (http://www.bopsecrets.org/) which has a lot of information.

That and http://www.againstsleepandnightmare.net/ASAN/welcome.html is also a (somewhat more recent) work by a situationist in the US.

[black magick hustla]

oh boy, there is lots of things to say about the situationists.

there where a some positive things about them. for one, the situs where master propagandists. i don't think there was any other "marxist" group in the west capable of capturing the spirit of the time more powerfully than the situationists. the situationists captured the imagination of many people looking for an alternative to stalinism and social democracy, with their colorful slogans and their understanding of communism as a fight for the project of the "complete man" - a non-alienated man that comes out of the destruction of the "master-slave" dialectic? Who can forget the telegram they sent to the chinese central committee in 1968 that went along the lines of "Shake in your shoes bureaucrats - the international power of the workers' councils will soon wipe you out". The situationists were part of the reemergence of a new "communist movement" that came with the rise of the proletariat in the late 60s, and as a reaction to stalinists showing their true colors once again. "The Revolution of Everyday Life" by Raoul Vaneigem is my favorite book of all time, and I consider it the best piece of communist propaganda I have ever read. It hands down was the most important text that help radicalize me when I was a teenager.

Now, there are some negative aspects of the situs. For one, they were fundamentally wrong on some theoretical issues. Because of the post world war ii boom, many marxists increasingly went to reject crisis theory, and finally came to the conclusion that capital had resolved its economic contradictions. So all sorts of strange theories came out of the "marxist millieu". Herbert Marcuse argued that the proletariat was too accomodated to be revolutionary, and therefore he gave revolutionary agency to students, artists, etc which of course is bullshit. The situationists, thinking that capital had resolved its contradictions in the production process, came up with a theory that people will rebel out of alienation and boredom in the west, not because of economic pauperization. This made them increasingly obsessed with the consumption aspect of capitalism, conceptualizing all class struggle in the west as a fight against "mediation", "commodity", spectacle, order givers etc. Of course, this theory was kicked in the teeth in the 70s, where crisis showed its ugly face again. Second, the situationists, although they vigourously denounced the artistic, student and bohemian millieu, they were undoubtly products of that millieu and were never able to break off from it. The situs were notorious elitist assholes and had all sorts of splits because of probably really silly theoretical disagreements.

All in all, the situs had a more positive theoretical heritage than a negative one. However, today there are all sorts of weak ass groups that have recuperated the situ heritage and converted it into a sort of bohemian lifestylist bullshit - some of the "post -left" and "insurrectionary" anarchists have done so, although some insurrectionists are actually quite solid.

[black magick hustla]

petite-bourgeois art students who wanted to piss off mommy and daddy


just like "anti-imperialists" in the west lol

[Os Cangaceiros]

Who can forget the telegram they sent to the chinese central committee in 1968 that went along the lines of "Shake in your shoes bureaucrats - the international power of the workers' councils will soon wipe you out".

I liked that one.

Ken Knabb's site is good, and there are interesting pieces of writing on it, including ones that aren't plagued with the almost legendary verbal wankery of other situationist works. The situationists seemed to me (the lazy observer) to have been kind of art student bums...one of my favorite offshoots was the Black Mask/UATWMF "american situationist" group, which Debord reportedly hated and was, pretty much from the group's own admission, radicalized hippies/freaks who wanted to turn "Wall Street into War Street" (prophetic!)

Debord is bunking with Stalin in communist hell right now for helping inspire two of the worst offshoots of left-wing thought in the history of planet earth: primitivism and Tiqqunian neo-insurrectionist wank. He gets impaled by demons on a rusty spike everytime some hipster writes something like this:


Moments of rupture are defined by their temporal experience as crises magnified. Magnified onto the surfaces of our very subjectivities. These ephemeral moments are those glimmers of collective-becomings. Prefiguration is the death knell of collective-becoming. On the terrain of social hostis, this lecherous prefiguration takes the form of the political process.

[khlib]

Their critiques of late capitalism are super interesting. I might write a longer post later, but briefly, late capitalism operates "to each according to his or her artificial needs." The accumulation of images has become more important than the accumulation of commodities. Advertising creates products which fulfill needs that did not previously exist (gloves that peel potatoes, lint rollers for pets, face massagers that reduce wrinkles) and sell images instead of products (so what you're really buying is convenience, cleanliness, youth). Also, movements that have tried to critique the system have been instantly reincorporated into it and commodified (think about surrealist/dadaist art has become commonplace in advertising).

[The Douche]

Debord is bunking with Stalin in communist hell right now for helping inspire two of the worst offshoots of left-wing thought in the history of planet earth: primitivism and Tiqqunian neo-insurrectionist wank

These two currents probably have the greatest influence on my politics.:crying:


Black Mask/UATWMF "american situationist" group

Weren't they officially not situs because they identified as anarchists?

[Os Cangaceiros]

Yeah, that's why I put it in quotes. I think that they considered themselves to be part of the whole deal, buuuut...I don't think that the situationists in France felt the same. I read the pamphlet about Ben Morea and that group a long time ago, though.

[black magick hustla]

hipster writes something like this:

You know whats funny, a lot of that neo insurrectionist wank is actually pretty bad writing. its poetics are not even inspiring. It reminds me of how a lot of marxist groups who tried to emulate marx' style are actually pretty awful writers in themselves, when marx was a superb master of prose. Same with a lot of the post left anarchist wankery really, vaneigem and debord were good writers and much more clear communicators, their heirs have much to desire.

[promethean]

Every revolutionary period brings with it new forms of art. The post-1960s works of art inspired by situtionism in many ways continued the traditions of expressionism, surrealism, dada and other avant-garde movments inspired by the October revolution and the revolutionary wave of the 1910s and 1920s. The concpt of detournment was probably one of the best contributions of the situationist international. One of its best examples being Can Dialectics Break Bricks?. The misuse and abuse of detournment in the present day leaves a lot to be desired however.

Can Dialectics Break Bricks?is priceless.:laugh:
3wPCiyjtBfo

[ZeroNowhere]

These two currents probably have the greatest influence on my politics.:crying:
It shows.

[The Douche]

It shows.

Well one would expect my political influences to show in my political positions...

[spacemanmick]

Another important aspect of situationist philosophy was rethinking architecture and city design. I'm just starting to look into their philosophies but it seems as if they heavily focus on the idea of cultural revolution and stress the importance of subverting culture.

[manic expression]

Hmm, I hadn't heard that the situationists had a big effect on architecture or city design. I'm quite curious: how is it they did so? Just thinking about the chronology it seems feasible that they might have influenced the postmodernist theory that so strongly defined, for better or for worse (IMO, not for better haha), the architecture of the 70's and 80's. Still, I've never come across such a specific connection.

[bcbm]

i dont think they were saying the situs had an impact so much as it was somethingg they devoted some time and thought to, with things like the derive and psychogeography

[Dr Doom]

i dont see how the situationists appeal to people tbh. besides the cool aesthetics and rhetoric its a fuckin mystery to me. i always thought they were a bunch of middle class art school bellends with pretty poor politics and no connection to the working class. i mean their assumption that the boom of the sixties represented the stabilisation of capitalism is fucked.

[spacemanmick]

I'm not sure how much of an influence they actually had but if you read anthologies of their works you'll find a lot of writings relating to architecture and city design. Check out 'Formulary for a New Urbanism' in 'Situationist International Anthology'.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

'Situationism' doesn't exist. Raoul Vaneigem and Guy Debord both mention how ideology is repressive or constricting in their works. I can elaborate with my own interpretation:

Ideology is what channels thoughts into a lazy stream of ideas and ideology does not allow those ideas to change direction, to move against the flow in order to combat changes in society. Also, adopting an ideology is like choosing 6 pack of beer, you must take all of the cans (ideas) if you wish to affiliate yourself to that ideology.

[Diogenese]

my favorite thing to come out of the situationists is their social and political ideas of recuperation and détournement. Recuperation being the process by which radical ideas and symbols are reprocessed into the mainstream for mass consumption and détournement being the opposite, taking mainstream ideas or symbols and making them radical.