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Buildings on Fire: the Situationist International and the Red Army Faction Author(S): Charity Scribner Reviewed Work(S): Source: Grey Room, No

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Buildings on Fire: the Situationist International and the Red Army Faction Author(S): Charity Scribner Reviewed Work(S): Source: Grey Room, No Grey Room, Inc. Buildings on Fire: The Situationist International and the Red Army Faction Author(s): Charity Scribner Reviewed work(s): Source: Grey Room, No. 26 (Winter, 2007), pp. 30-55 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20442749 . Accessed: 08/02/2013 22:26 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The MIT Press and Grey Room, Inc. are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Grey Room. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded on Fri, 8 Feb 2013 22:26:52 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INTERNATIONALE SITUATIONNISTE CRITIQUE DE L'URBANISME (Supermarket A Los Angeles, aofit 1965). aton1t10" (Mrc 96) 30~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy:' Intemnationale situ This content downloaded on Fri, 8 Feb 2013 22:26:52 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Buildngs on Fre: Te Stuation ist International and the Red Armyacton CHARITY SCRIBNER In Guy Debord's late film In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978), a correspondence between the Situationist International (SI) and the Red Army Faction (RAF) comes into view. In themiddle of the film, the camera rests on two photographs: the exterior of the Stuttgart-Stammheim maximum-security facility, where the RAF's first generation committed suicide in 1976 and 1977 and an earlier press shot of the leftistmilitants Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin on trial in 1968.1 "La plus belle jeunesse meurt en prison," reads the narrator.' The flower of youth dies in prison. From these two documents of theRAF, Debord looks back over thewould-be revolution that rocked Europe in the late sixties and the consequences itproduced. The sequence calculates a melancholy sum ofwhat the situationists hoped to effect by "putting an end to art," as Debord described it,by "iannouncing right in themiddle of the cathedral that God was dead," by "plotting to blow up the Eiffel Tower."3 This recollection of 1968 prompts the narrator to ask a series of questions why certain struggles failed, whether the proletariat still existed, and if so, what itmight be. Images of a lost Paris flicker across the screen-girls at the thresholds of forgotten caf6s, night shots of the Les Halles markets before their condemna tion by Pompidou planners-while Debord reminds the viewer of the fate of the 1968-ers: "Suicide carried offmany."14 But then the voice translates the film's obscure title:we turn in the night, consumed by fire.Debord awakens desire for a turning, a return-out of the ruins, back to the impulses that propelled the SI, the RAF, and other aesthetic and social movements of the time. Debord wasn't alone in linking the RAF to the situationists. Especially in recent years, several cultural historians and artists have associated Debord's "csituations" with Baader-Meinhof strikes, although no study has yet explored the relationship between the two groups. Thomas Elsaesser was one of the first scholars to align the movements. In an essay on the mediation of the RAF in teleTvzisin and fiM, heP idePntifies thePcofMMon grou1nd ofccupnied byXartists a-nd This content downloaded on Fri, 8 Feb 2013 22:26:52 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions tionistsand theRAF worked todisrupt the complacencies of liberaldemocracy, sometimes takingsimilar approaches. They drew fromthe arsenals of anar chism andMarxism and testedtheir powers in themodern cityscapes thatpost war plannersbrought to life.The SI wanted to screen theiraesthetic imagination ontomodern Paris; theRAF tookrefuge in thehigh-rises of Frankfurt and Hamburg toplot theirterror on theGerman public.Members ofboth groupswere alert to thepolitics of the image.They worked bothwith and against thepopular press and broadcast television.But whereas Debord critiqued thesociety of thespec tacle-the condition inwhich capital accumulates and "becomes image"-the leadersof theRAF became fodderfor the media machine, leavinga legacyheavy on stylebut lighton political analysis. An adequate comparison of theRAF and theSI must discern thecorrespon dences between theirconceptual and tacticalprograms; itmust also establish thetension between militarization and theradical thoughtof "ethicalmilitance" thatEmily Apter has recentlyelaborated.6 To thisend, thisessay exploreshow the SI and theRAF's differentdefinitions of autonomyproduced divergent modes of resistance.Debord articulatedan institutionalcritique of theculture industryand reactivatedthe modernist critical impulse.The RAF,meanwhile, rejected theoretical reflection in favor of direct action; their intellectual backlash threatenedto inflamefascism.7 The Germanmilitants tookwhat they considered to be a concrete and practical approach to revolution, but their attemptsto gain autonomyended, paradoxically, in the spectacle thatDebord had alreadyanalyzed. The Situation As Europe recoveredfrom World War II, itencountered challenges to itsimperial powers, altered itsmodes of statecraft,and rushed into technologicalmodern ization.The situationistsand theRAF both respondedto thishistorical moment, but theirinitial impulses and dispositions contrasted.Taking an early interest in the ideas ofHenri Lefebvre,the SI used his analysis ofalienation in everyday life to sharpen theircritiques of thebuilt environment.Debord and Raoul Vaneigem, in particular,saw thecity as a prime locus of social transformation and envisioned alternativepsychogeographies. Condemning thearchitecture of Le Corbusierand othermodernists, they raged against theapartment blocks that were rapidly standardizingFrench cities and denounced theautoroutes that seemed engineeredto levelall culturaland historicaldifference. Debord pitched the program of detournement, or artful diversion, to skew both the Cartesian grids that formatted French cities and the lives thatwere led in them. Against theconventions of urban planning,the situationists sought to undo designwith 32 Grev Rcoom 2 This content downloaded on Fri, 8 Feb 2013 22:26:52 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions the forcesof desire. Like theSI, who wanted torework and subvertthe prefab city and itsexpanding periphery,the RAF operatedwithin themodern metropolis, calling themselves Stadtguerillas or "urban guerrillas."8Breaking away fromthe protests of the studentmovement, theymoved stealthily between Frankfurt,Stuttgart, Hamburg, and Berlin, rentingout high-riseflats and convertingthem into hold ingcells fortheir hostages, as ifto detourne the logicof postwar planners. Both theSI and theRAF located thegerm of fascismin theprocesses and productsof modernization. As theRAF understood it,the regulationof German metropo lisesbecame ametaphor forthe homogenization of lifein factoriesand concen trationcamps. The shopping arcades and housing blocs ofWest Germany's Wirtschaftswunderwere an extensionof thispredicament. Exploiting thiscul turewould disruptauthoritarian structures of politics and society.As theRAF leaderGudrun Ensslin saw it,well-executed acts of insurgencywould provoke theGerman state to clamp down and thusbetray itswill towarddomination. Beneath the tenuous institutionsof postwar democracy, theRAF sensed the unquelled fervorthat drove theNazi military-industrialcomplex. RAF attacks would work a homeopathic effecton thebody politic, theyimagined, strategi cally conjuring the virus of fascism and inciting Germans to finally kill it off with theirown hands. Vaneigem plotted themain points of the situationist critique of postwar European cities, identifyinga concentrationaryorder in everyday life. In his "Comments against Urbanism," he surmised that "if the Nazis had known con temporaryurbanists, theywould have transformedtheir concentration camps intolow-income housing."9 The SI's perspectiveon Auschwitz exemplifiestheir analysis of the spectacle. Vaneigem saw urban planning, advertising, and ideologyas interlinkedcogs in an "immenseconditioning machine."10 Debord's Society of theSpectacle illustratesthis with cinematicmeans, focusingon the "mass character" and "formal poverty" of the new city.11A key sequence of the filmilluminates the situationist concern with German cultural politics, juxta posing images ofHitler's concentration camps with several shots of Paris, includingone of thebarricades of 1968. Edited into thisprogression are lines that present situationism as a response to the traumas of European totalitarian ism: "Social peace, reestablishedwith such greatdifficulty, had only lasted a few years when, to herald its end, there appeared those who will enter the annals of crime under the name 'situationists.'''12 Of the images that appear in thismontage, twocome forthwith particular intensity.Marking theflashpoints of situationist history, they show buildings on fire: the Reichstag in 1933 and the Watts districtof Los Angeles in 1965.13 C o v ogtt}n E Ct.e .S S gtuoetK|On E>tgn4ernati SW R ed + ':m ~ on 33 This content downloaded on Fri, 8 Feb 2013 22:26:52 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions IncendiaryLogic The trajectoriesof theSI and theRAF parted and convergedat severalpoints,
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