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Working Thesis With and Against Guy Debordʼs Society of the Spectacle: A Case Study of Live Earth, its Politics, its Contradictions, and its Political Potential by Jasmine North B.A., University of Victoria, 2006 A Thesis submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of English with a Concentration in Cultural, Social, and Political Thought © Jasmine North, 2010 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. North ii With and Against Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle: A Case Study of Live Earth, its Politics, its Contradictions, and its Political Potential by Jasmine North B.A., University of Victoria, 2006 Supervisory Committee Dr. Arthur Kroker, Supervisor (Department of Political Science) Dr. Stephen Ross, Departmental Member (Department of English) Dr. Nicole Shukin, Departmental Member (Department of English) North iii Supervisory Committee Dr. Arthur Kroker, Supervisor (Department of Political Science) Dr. Stephen Ross, Departmental Member (Department of English) Dr. Nicole Shukin, Departmental Member (Department of English) ABSTRACT This thesis explores the environmental movement’s controversial use of spectacular media to incite socio-ecological change. An analysis of Al Gore’s 2007 Live Earth event forms the basis for an exploration, critique, and reformulation of spectacular theory within the context of the climate crisis. An exploration of Guy Debord’s influential theory of spectacular society, as articulated in his 1967 text The Society of the Spectacle, engages Live Earth’s spectacular environmentalism with the following theoretical problem: does the spectacle simply reiterate a discourse and mode of interaction that re-inscribes the destructive network of capital and consumption by existing as a consumable object, or are the effects of the spectacle less predetermined? Furthermore, if there exists within the contemporary spectacular event some recoverable political potential, does this potential outweigh the negative material waste created by the event? In the first part of this thesis, Debord’s understanding of spectacular organization provides a forceful critique of an event such as Live Earth; however, three limitations to an Debordian understanding of the contemporary spectacular commodity are identified: the suggestion that the spectacle, in the last instance, produces and reproduces a universal homogeneity that erases and negates its underlying difference; the elision of the particularly ecological question of the technology of the spectacle; and the failure to adequately theorize human agency. Given these limitations, a turn to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s 1987 North iv publication, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, as well as Anna Tsing’s 2005 text, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection, is initiated in the second part of this thesis in order to construct a more fluid understanding of the way in which spectacular forms might disassemble and reassemble in both form and content. While still acknowledging the destructive influences of corporatized spectacular logic within the contemporary context of late capitalism and post-modernity, this alternative understanding of spectacle favors a more indeterminant understanding of society and spectacle. A spectacular event, such as Live Earth, is reformulated as an assemblage that contains both territories of capture and lines of flight that escape dominant codings. Contrary to Debord’s claims, a spectacular environmental event is consequently identifiable as a site of domination and oppression, as well as a site of resistance and escape. North v Table of Contents Supervisory Page ii Abstract iii Table of Contents v List of Figures viii Acknowledgements ix Dedications x INTRODUCTION 1 The Spectacular Event: Live Earth 3 Chapter One: Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle 6 The Three Stages of History 6 The Influence of Hegel on Debord’s Thought 8 Debord and Hegel 10 Debord’s History of Society in Terms of Time 11 Alienation in Spectacular Society 14 Hegemony and Alienation in the Society of the Spectacle 15 Image Fetishism and the Spectacle 19 Spectacular Alienation 20 The Concentrated Spectacle 23 The Diffused Spectacle 24 The Integrated Spectacle 25 Debord’s Revolutionary Side: The Situationist Movement and Creative Emancipation 29 Avant-Garde Art Influences 30 Détournement and Dérive 32 The Revolutionary Class 35 Closing Down Revolutionary Potential 38 North vi Chapter Two: Live Earth as A Negative Force of Capture 40 Gore and Spectacular Media 41 Live Earth Under A Debordian Lens 43 Internal Separation of the Diffuse Spectacle 44 Situating Live Earth in the Green Movement 47 Economic Science and the Co-optation of Revolution 51 Live Earth as Concentrated Spectacle 55 Gore’s Lingering Ideological Affiliations 57 Economic Development and Environmental Sustainability 60 Live Earth as Integrated Spectacle 63 The Contradictions of Popular Music 69 Live Earth and Green Consumerism 72 Corporate Sponsorship and Live Earth 77 Conclusions 80 Chapter Three: The Impossible Revolution of Debord’s Society of the Spectacle 83 Chapter Four: Encounters and Connections Inbetween Universal Aspirations and Local Situations 95 Anna Tsing: The Friction of Encounter between Universal Aspirations and Local Situations 96 The Universal Aspirations of Capitalism 101 The Spread of Environmental Universals 102 The Universal Aspirations of Live Earth 106 Chapter Five: An Alternative Theoretical Foundation For the Spectacular 113 Rejection of The Unity of the Lost Object 113 Constructing A New Understanding of Difference 123 Virtual Rhizomatic Multiplicities and Numerical Arborescent Multiplicities 125 Assemblages and Abstract Machines 137 The Abstract Machine of Desire 152 The Eternal Return of the Process of Deterritorialization 158 North vii Becoming-revolutionary 164 Regimes of Signs and Lines of Flight 168 Chapter Six: Live Earth as a Spectacular Assemblage 181 The Rhizome of Music and Blue King Brown 187 Multiplicities of Musical and Spectacular Rhizomes 205 Live Earth as an Internet Rhizome 209 Disrupting Semiotic Regimes: The Live Earth Short Films 212 The Fragmented Transformations of Live Earth 216 Conclusions: The Live Earth Spectacle as Assemblages of Territories and Lines of Flight 218 Endnotes 223 Bibliography 230 North viii List of Figures Figure 1: The Constitution of an Assemblage 146 North ix Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Kroker, Dr. Ross, and Dr. Shukin for their mentorship and encouragement. I am very grateful for the time each of my committee members invested in my academic goals. I would also like to thank the many teachers and professors that have inspired me to continue to search for knowledge. In addition, I would like to thank Colleen for helping me with all the technical rules that accompany life as a grad student at UVic. I would also like to thank Maureen and Kara for their invaluable editorial comments, Charlotte, Gail, and Rylan for listening to me ramble, and Mark for his advice. Finally, would like to thank Rylan for cooking dinner and playing with Kendra while I slaved away at the computer, as well as Kendra and all her friends for respecting my workspace and being wonderful, joyful, and occasionally helpful children. North x Dedication This thesis is dedicated to my family for helping me survive and succeed. To my parents for showing me how to find my inner strength and teaching me to appreciate the earth. To my daughter for teaching me to love all sides of life. To my partner for teaching me that love and teamwork are stronger than hate and oppression. To the earth for showing me different ways of being and knowing. Introduction Ecological issues are increasingly commanding center stage in the political arena. Dominant economic and political systems, as well as everyday citizens, are consequently being compelled to consider the possibility that significant economic and cultural changes are necessary to eliminate the threat of an ecological crisis. This study intends to explore the possibilities of using media and music to elicit social change within the context of ecopolitics. In terms of a global communication system, television, radio, satellite, and internet technologies are currently positioned by dominant interests as the tools that offer the most efficient mediums of mass communication for a global audience. Music, existing in the twenty-first century within a complex structure of global production and distribution, is often written and performed to entice social change. In these instances, music is paradoxically imbued in creation and implicated in censorship with the power to change the consciousness of society. Al Gore’s 2007 Live Earth concerts, designed to launch a massive popular movement to combat climate change, provide an example of the use of music and image as spectacular commodities by an environmental movement in order to incite a massive change in public opinion and practice.1 This use of spectacle by environmentalists to initiate a global grassroots movement raises a theoretical question: does the spectacle simply reiterate a discourse and mode of interaction that re-inscribes the destructive network of capital and consumption by existing as a consumable object, or are the effects of the spectacle less predetermined? Furthermore, if there exists within the contemporary spectacular event some recoverable political potential,
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