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1. the Introduction to Detournement As Pedagogical Praxis

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1. the Introduction to Detournement As Pedagogical Praxis JAMES TRIER 1. THE INTRODUCTION TO DETOURNEMENT AS PEDAGOGICAL PRAXIS In the broadest sense, Debord’s whole conception of society is founded on detournement . — Anselm Jappe, 1999 While preparing to write this introduction to Detournement as Pedagogical Praxis , I read a great deal about the Paris-based avant-garde group called the Situationist International (SI) because the theory and critical practice of detournement is most often associated in academic writing with the SI. I eventually realized that what I was writing based on the research I was doing about the SI was actually material that went far beyond the purposes of this book, and so I conceptualized another book that will follow this one, a book provisionally titled Situationist Theory and Education . In that book, I will discuss the Situationist International’s origins, main figures, creative works, writings, history, and post-demise afterlife in academic scholarship and popular culture. Doing that will entail discussing dada, surrealism, the Lettrists, the Lettrist International, psychogeography, the dérive, unitary urbanism, detournement, architecture, painting, cinema, “scandals,” the Spectacle, May’68, and more. I will also explain how the concepts and critical artistic practices of the Situationists have shaped my thinking, teaching, research, and scholarship as an academic in the field of Education. “Detournement” will figure importantly in that book, too, but it won’t be the central focus like it is in this book. But enough about “that book.” What is this book about? Obviously, it is about detournement. Not so immediately obvious is what “detournement” means.1 For now I want to provide the most frequently cited— and partial—definition of detournement given by Guy Debord, the leader of the Situationist International. Debord (1959) stated generally that detournement entails “the reuse of preexisting artistic elements in a new ensemble” (p. 55). Though Debord used the word “artistic” in this general definition, three years earlier he and his friend, Gil Wolman, had defined detournement without such a qualifier, stating, “Any elements, no matter where they are taken from, can be used to make new combinations” (Debord & Wolman, 1956, p. 9). These two definitional statements about detournement—partial and general as they are—enable me to state that each of the authors in this book has written a chapter about how he or she incorporated J. Trier (Ed.), Detournement as Pedagogical Praxis, 1–37. © 2014 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. J. TRIER detournement into one or another kind of pedagogical situation. So that is what this book is about—the roles that detournement played in pedagogical projects. To set up the chapters in this book, I will discuss a graduate course that I teach called “Cultural Studies and Education,” which is offered in the Culture, Curriculum and Change (CCC) strand of the Ph.D. program in our School of Education. This is a course that all of the contributing authors took at one time or another over a span of several years. It is through this course that I introduced the contributing authors to Guy Debord’s theories of the Spectacle and detournement, and the detournements that the authors discuss were conceptualized and created as part of this course. By discussing the main elements of my course, I will be attempting to convey to readers the main ideas that the authors were working with when they designed and created their detournements. Also, by describing how I incorporated detournement into my own teaching practice, I am writing the kind of chapter that all the contributing authors have written.2 So, first I will describe what I call the “mosh pit,” which had the purpose of creating a situation that enables the co-construction of knowledge by everyone in the course. Then I will explain the “short circuit” pedagogical approach I took to achieve one of the course’s main purposes, which was to involve students in reading a selection of critical social theory texts. Next, I will discuss the important role that Stuart Hall’s work played in the course, particularly his analysis of “transcoding” as a strategy for interrogating and challenging stereotypes. Then I will discuss Guy Debord’s analysis of “the Spectacle,” which will set up the main section in this chapter about the anti-spectacular tactic of detournement. I will then briefly explain the role that Naomi Klein’s (2001) book No Logo played in the remainder of the course. In the last part of the chapter, I will introduce the contributing authors’ chapters by highlighting the kind of detournements they made and the pedagogical projects they designed and taught around their detournements. Finally, I will explain what I consider to be the “cultural studies” aspect of my course.3 THE “MOSH PIT” To set the stage for a participatory seminar, I introduced students to what I call “mosh pit” pedagogy. I explained that a mosh pit, associated with punk and grunge live gigs, is a space that typically forms close to the stage where a band plays and where people engage in a spontaneous, performative act that, looking at it from the margins, seems to be a whirl of seemingly chaotic yet spontaneously patterned movement in which people are basically moving into one another, brushing by one another, sometimes slamming into one another, stumbling and falling and getting up, careening into and off of one another again, all in a sort of circling, crisscrossing, suddenly about-face fashion—all taking place, of course, during some loud, sped- up, short song (say, the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen”). I further explained that in the analogy, the “song” would be composed of the print readings and film(s) assigned for the week, the “mosh pit” would be formed by our gathering in the 2.
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