Report on the class leaderships. In this way it has Construction of Situations succeeded in maintaining the old social and on the relations in the great majority of the highly International Situationist Tendency’s industrialized countries, thereby depriving Conditions of Organization and Action a socialist society of its indispensable by Guy Debord material base. In contrast, the underdeveloped or colonized countries, Revolution and Counterrevolution in which over the last decade have engaged in Modern Culture the most direct and massive battles against imperialism, have begun to win some very First of all, we think the world must be significant victories. These victories are changed. We want the most liberating aggravating the contradictions of the change of the society and life in which we capitalist economy and (particularly in the find ourselves confined. We know that such case of the Chinese revolution) could be a a change is possible through appropriate contributing factor toward a renewal of the actions. whole revolutionary movement. Such a renewal cannot limit itself to reforms Our specific concern is the use of certain within the capitalist or anticapitalist means of action and the discovery of new countries, but must develop conflicts ones, means which are more easily posing the question of power everywhere. recognizable in the domain of culture and customs, but which must be applied in The shattering of modern culture is the interrelation with all revolutionary result, on the plane of ideological struggle, changes. of the chaotic crisis of these antagonisms. The new desires that are taking shape are A society’s “culture” both reflects and presented in distorted form: present-day prefigures its possible ways of organizing resources could enable them to be fulfilled, life. Our era is characterized by the lagging but the anachronistic economic structure is of revolutionary political action behind the incapable of developing these resources to development of modern possibilities of such ends. Ruling-class ideology has production which call for a more advanced meanwhile lost all coherence because of the organization of the world. depreciation of its successive conceptions of the world (a depreciation which leads the We are going through a crucial historical ruling class to historical indecision and crisis in which each year poses more uncertainty); because of the coexistence of a acutely the global problem of rationally range of mutually contradictory reactionary mastering the new productive forces and ideologies (such as Christianity and social- creating a new civilization. Yet the democracy); and because of the mixing into international working-class movement, on contemporary Western culture of a number which depends the prerequisite overthrow of only recently appreciated features of of the economic infrastructure of several foreign civilizations. The main goal exploitation, has registered only a few of ruling-class ideology is therefore to partial local successes. Capitalism has maintain this confusion. invented new forms of struggle (state intervention in the economy, expansion of Within culture (it should be understood the consumer sector, fascist governments) that throughout this text we are ignoring while camouflaging class oppositions the scientific or educational aspects of through various reformist tactics and culture, even if the confusion we have exploiting the degenerations of working- noted is also visibly reflected at the level of general scientific theories and notions of individuals, on the condition that they education; we are using the term to refer to accept various renunciations: the essential a complex of aesthetics, sentiments and point is always the renunciation of a customs: the reaction of an era on everyday comprehensive opposition and the life) there are two parallel acceptance of fragmentary works counterrevolutionary confusionist tactics: susceptible to diverse interpretations. This the partial cooption of new values, and a is what gives the very term “avant-garde,” deliberately anticultural, industrially which in the final analysis is always facilitated production (novels, films), the defined and manipulated by the latter being a natural continuation of the bourgeoisie, a dubious and ridiculous imbecilization of young people begun in aspect. their schools and families. The ruling ideology sees to it that subversive The very notion of a collective avant-garde, discoveries are trivialized and sterilized, with the militant aspect it implies, is a after which they can be safely recent product of the historical conditions spectacularized. It even manages to make that are simultaneously giving rise to the use of subversive individuals — by necessity for a coherent revolutionary falsifying their works after their death, or, program in culture and to the necessity to while they are still alive, by taking struggle against the forces that impede the advantage of the general ideological development of such a program. Such confusion and drugging them with one or groups are led to transpose into their another of the many mystiques at their sphere of activity certain organizational disposal. methods originally created by revolutionary politics, and their action is One of the contradictions of the bourgeoisie henceforth inconceivable without some in its period of decline is that while it connection with a political critique. In this respects the abstract principle of intellectual regard there is a notable progression from and artistic creation, it resists actual Futurism through Dadaism and Surrealism creations when they first appear, then to the movements formed after 1945. At eventually exploits them. This is because it each of these stages, however, one needs to maintain a certain degree of discovers the same desire for total change; criticality and experimental research among and the same rapid disintegration when the a minority, but must take care to channel inability to change the real world this activity into narrowly profoundly enough leads to a defensive compartmentalized utilitarian disciplines withdrawal to the very doctrinal positions and avert any holistic critique and whose inadequacy had just been revealed. experimentation. In the domain of culture the bourgeoisie strives to divert the taste for Futurism, whose influence spread from innovation, which is dangerous for it in our Italy in the period preceding World War I, era, toward certain confused, degraded and adopted an attitude of revolutionizing innocuous forms of novelty. Through the literature and the arts which introduced a commercial mechanisms that control great number of formal innovations, but cultural activity, avant-garde tendencies are which was only based on an extremely cut off from the segments of society that simplistic application of the notion of could support them, segments already mechanical progress. Futurism’s puerile limited because of the general social technological optimism vanished with the conditions. The people within these period of bourgeois euphoria that had tendencies who become well known are sustained it. Italian Futurism collapsed, generally accepted as exceptional going from nationalism to fascism without ever attaining a more complete theoretical a halt soon after 1930, but its decay only vision of its time. became evident after World War II. Surrealism had by then spread to numerous Dadaism, initiated in Zurich and New York countries. It had also initiated a discipline by refugees and deserters from World whose rigor must not be overestimated and War I, expressed the rejection of all the which was often tempered by commercial values of a bourgeois society whose considerations, but which was nevertheless bankruptcy had just become so grossly an effective means of struggle against the evident. Its violent manifestations in confusionist mechanisms of the postwar Germany and France aimed bourgeoisie. mainly at the destruction of art and literature and to a lesser degree at certain The surrealist program, asserting the forms of behavior (deliberately imbecilic sovereignty of desire and surprise and spectacles, speeches and excursions). Its proposing a new way of life, is much richer historic role is to have delivered a mortal in constructive possibilities than is blow to the traditional conception of generally realized. The limited scope of culture. The almost immediate dissolution surrealism was in large part due to the lack of dadaism was an inevitable result of its of material means for fulfilling its aims. But purely negative definition. The dadaist the devolution of its original proponents spirit has nevertheless influenced all into spiritualism, and above all the subsequent movements; and any future mediocrity of its later members, obliges us constructive position must include a to search for the failed development of dadaist-type negative aspect as long as the surrealist theory in the very origin of that social conditions that impose the repetition theory. of rotten superstructures — conditions that have intellectually already been definitively The error that is at the root of surrealism is condemned — have not been wiped out by the idea of the infinite richness of the force. unconscious imagination. The cause of surrealism’s ideological failure was its The creators of surrealism, who had belief that the unconscious was the finally participated in the dadaist movement in discovered ultimate force of life; and the France, endeavored to define the terrain of fact that the surrealists revised the history a constructive action on the basis of the of ideas in accordance with that simplistic spirit of revolt and the extreme perspective and never went any further. We depreciation of traditional means of now know that the unconscious communication expressed by dadaism. imagination is poor, that automatic writing Setting out from a poetic application of is monotonous, and that the whole Freudian psychology, surrealism extended ostentatious genre of would-be “strange” the methods it had discovered to painting, and “shocking” surrealistic creations has to film, and to some aspects of everyday ceased to be very surprising. The formal life; and its influence, in more diffuse fidelity to this style of imagination forms, spread much further. Now, what is ultimately leads back to the polar opposite important in an enterprise of this nature is of the modern conditions of imagination: not whether it is completely or relatively back to traditional occultism. The extent to right, but whether it succeeds in catalyzing which surrealism has remained dependent for a certain time the desires of an era. on its hypothesis regarding the unconscious Surrealism’s period of progress, marked by can be seen in the theoretical investigations the liquidation of idealism and a moment of attempted by the second-generation rallying to dialectical materialism, came to surrealists: Calas and Mabille relate everything to the two successive aspects of Decomposition: The Ultimate Stage of the surrealist practice of the unconscious — Bourgeois Thought the former to psychoanalysis, the latter to cosmic influences. The discovery of the role The two main centers of “modern” culture of the unconscious was indeed a surprise are Paris and Moscow. The styles and an innovation; but it was not a law of originating in Paris (the majority of whose future surprises and innovations. Freud elaborators are not French) influence had also ended up discovering this when Europe, America and the other developed he wrote: “Whatever is conscious wears countries of the capitalist zone such as out. What is unconscious remains Japan. The styles imposed administratively unalterable. But once it is freed, it too falls by Moscow influence all the workers states to ruin.” and also have a slight effect on Paris and its European zone of influence. The Moscow Opposing an apparently irrational society influence is directly political. The in which the clash between reality and the persistence of the traditional influence of old but still vigorously proclaimed values Paris stems partly from its long-entrenched was pushed to the point of absurdity, position as professional cultural center. surrealism made use of the irrational to destroy that society’s superficially logical Because bourgeois thought is lost in values. The very success of surrealism has a systematic confusion and Marxist thought lot to do with the fact that the most modern has been profoundly distorted in the side of this society’s ideology has workers states, conservatism reigns both renounced a strict hierarchy of factitious East and West, especially in the domain of values and openly uses the irrational, culture and customs. This conservatism is including vestiges of surrealism. The overt in Moscow, which has revived the bourgeoisie must above all prevent a new typically petty-bourgeois attitudes of the beginning of revolutionary thought. It was nineteenth century. In Paris it is hidden, aware of the danger of surrealism. Now disguised as anarchism, cynicism or humor. that it has been able to coopt it into Although both of these ruling cultures are ordinary aesthetic commerce, it would like fundamentally incapable of dealing with people to believe that surrealism was the the real problems of our time, relevant most radical and disturbing movement experimentation has been carried further in possible. It thus cultivates a sort of the West. In the context of this sort of nostalgia for surrealism at the same time cultural production, the Moscow zone that it discredits any new venture by functions as a region of underdevelopment. automatically pigeonholing it as a rehash of surrealism, a rerun of a defeat which In the bourgeois zone, where an appearance according to it is definitive and can no of intellectual freedom has generally been longer be brought back into question by tolerated, the knowledge of the movement anyone. Reacting against the alienation of of ideas and the confused vision of the Christian society has led some people to multiple transformations of the social admire the completely irrational alienation environment tend to make people aware of of primitive societies. But we need to go an ongoing upheaval whose motivating forward, not backward. We need to make forces are out of control. The reigning the world more rational — the necessary sensibility tries to adapt itself to this first step in making it more exciting. situation while resisting new changes that present new dangers. The solutions offered by the retrograde currents ultimately come down to three main attitudes: prolonging the fashions produced by the dada- The complacent affirmation of total mental surrealism crisis (which crisis is simply the nullity is exemplified by the recent sophisticated cultural expression of a state neoliterary phenomenon of “cynical young of mind that spontaneously manifests itself right-wing novelists,” but is by no means wherever previously accepted meanings of limited to right-wingers, novelists, or semi- life crumble along with previous lifestyles); youth. settling into mental ruins; or returning to the distant past. Among the tendencies calling for a return to the past, the doctrine of Socialist Realism In the first case, a diluted form of has proven to be the most durable, because surrealism can be found everywhere. It has its indefensible position in the domain of all the tastes of the surrealist era and none cultural creation seems to be supported by of its ideas. Its aesthetic is based on its appeal to the conclusions of a repetition. The remnants of orthodox revolutionary movement. At the 1948 surrealism have arrived at the stage of conference of Soviet musicians, Andrei occultist senility, and are as incapable of Zhdanov (1) revealed the stake of theoretical articulating an ideological position as they repression: “Haven’t we done well to are of inventing anything whatsoever. They preserve the treasures of classic painting lend credence to increasingly crude and to suppress the liquidators of painting? charlatanisms and engender others. Wouldn’t the survival of such ‘schools’ have amounted to the liquidation of Setting up shop in nullity is the cultural painting?” Faced with this liquidation of solution that has been most visible in the painting and with many other liquidations, years following World War II. This solution and recognizing the crumbling of all its includes two possibilities, each of which systems of values, the advanced Western has been abundantly illustrated: bourgeoisie is banking on total ideological dissimulating nothingness by means of an decomposition, whether out of desperate appropriate vocabulary, or openly reaction or out of political opportunism. In flaunting it. contrast, Zhdanov — with the taste characteristic of the parvenu — recognizes The first of these options has become himself in the petty-bourgeoisie that particularly famous since the advent of opposes the decomposition of nineteenth- existentialist literature, which has century cultural values, and can see reproduced, under the cover of a borrowed nothing else to do than to undertake an philosophy, the most mediocre aspects of authoritarian restoration of those values. the cultural evolution of the preceding He is unrealistic enough to believe that three decades and augmented its mass- short-lived local political circumstances will media-based notoriety by doses of fake give him the power to evade the general Marxism and psychoanalysis and by problems of this era, if only he can force successive announcements of more or less people to return to the study of superseded arbitrary political engagements and problems after having repressed all the resignations. These tactics have generated a conclusions that history has previously very large number of followers, avowed or drawn from those problems. unacknowledged. The continuing proliferation of abstract painting and its The form (and even some aspects of the associated theories is another example of content) of this Socialist Realism is not very the same nature and scope. different from the traditional propaganda of religious organizations, particularly of Catholicism. By means of an invariable propaganda, Catholicism defends a unitary unpredictable effect of mechanisms with ideological structure that it alone, among all which they are unfamiliar, tend to attribute the forces of the past, still possesses. But at it to mere crude mass-media publicity. But the same time, in a parallel operation their profession nevertheless obliges them designed to recapture the increasingly to come up with bogus critiques of these numerous sectors that are escaping its bogus works. (Moreover, a work whose influence, the Catholic Church is interest is inexplicable constitutes the attempting to take over modern cultural richest subject for bourgeois confusionist forms, particularly those representing criticism.) They naturally remain unaware complicated theoretical nullity of the fact that the intellectual mechanisms (“spontaneous” painting, for example). The of criticism had already escaped them long Catholic reactionaries have the advantage before the external mechanisms arrived to over other bourgeois tendencies of being exploit this void. They avoid facing the fact able to rely on a permanent hierarchy of that Sagan is simply the ridiculous flip side values; this inalterable foundation enables of the change of means of expression into them all the more freely to push means of action on everyday life. This decomposition to the extreme in whatever process of supersession has caused the life discipline they engage in. of the author to become increasingly more important than her work. As the period of The crisis of modern culture has led to total important expressions arrives at its ultimate ideological decomposition. Nothing new reduction, nothing of any possible can be built on these ruins. Critical thought importance remains except the personality itself becomes impossible as each judgment of the author, who in turn is no longer clashes with others and each individual capable of possessing any notable quality invokes fragments of outmoded systems or beyond her age, or some fashionable vice, follows merely personal inclinations. or some picturesque old craft.

This decomposition can be seen The opposition that must now be united everywhere. It is no longer a matter of against this ideological decomposition must noting the increasingly massive use of not get caught up in criticizing the commercial publicity to influence buffooneries appearing in outmoded forms judgments about cultural creation. We have such as poems or novels. We have to arrived at a stage of ideological absence in criticize activities that are important for the which advertising has become the only future, activities that we need to make use active factor, overriding any preexisting of. One of the most serious signs of the critical judgment or transforming such present ideological decomposition is the judgment into a mere conditioned reflex. fact that the functionalist theory of The complex operation of sales techniques architecture is now based on the most has reached the point of surprising even the reactionary conceptions of society and ad professionals by automatically creating morality. That is, the temporarily and pseudosubjects of cultural debate. This is partially valid contributions of the original the sociological significance of the Bauhaus or of the school of Le Corbusier Françoise Sagan phenomenon (2) in France have been distorted so as to reinforce an over the last three years, an experience excessively backward notion of life and of whose repercussions have even penetrated the framework of life. beyond the cultural zone centered on Paris by provoking some interest in the workers Everything indicates, however, that since states. The professional judges of culture, 1956 we have been entering a new phase of seeing such a phenomenon as an the struggle, and that an upheaval of revolutionary forces, attacking the most At this point of dissolution, the social appalling obstacles on all fronts, is importance of the experimental avant-garde beginning to change the conditions of the is apparently less than that of the preceding period. Socialist Realism is pseudomodernist tendencies which don’t beginning to decline in the countries of the even bother to pretend to seek change, but anticapitalist camp, along with the which represent the modern, media- reactionary Stalinism that produced it, reinforced face of accepted culture. But while in the West the Sagan culture is those who have a role in the actual marking a depth of bourgeois decadence production of modern culture, and who are beyond which it is probably impossible to discovering their interests as producers of go, and there seems to be an increasing this culture (all the more acutely as they are awareness of the exhaustion of the cultural reduced to a purely negative position), are expedients that have served since the end developing a consciousness that is of World War II. In this context, the avant- inevitably lacking among the modernist garde minority may be able to rediscover a representatives of the declining society. The positive value. poverty of the accepted culture and its monopoly on the means of cultural production lead to a corresponding impoverishment of the theory and The Role of Minority Tendencies in the manifestations of the avant-garde. But it is Ebbing Period only within this avant-garde that a new revolutionary conception of culture is The ebbing of the international imperceptibly taking shape. Now that the revolutionary movement, which became dominant culture and the beginnings of apparent within a few years after 1920 and oppositional culture are arriving at the increasingly obvious over the next three extreme point of their separation and decades, was followed, with a time-lag of impotence, this new conception should five or six years, by an ebbing of the assert itself. movements that had tried to promote liberatory innovations in culture and The history of modern culture during the everyday life. The ideological and material period of revolutionary ebbing is thus also importance of such movements has the history of the theoretical and practical continually diminished, to the point that defeat of the movement of renewal, to the they have become totally isolated. Their point that the minority tendencies became action, which under more favorable completely isolated and decomposition conditions was able to lead to a sudden reigned everywhere. renewal of the climate of feeling, has weakened to the point that conservative Between 1930 and World War II surrealism tendencies have been able to exclude them continually declined as a revolutionary from any direct penetration into the rigged force at the same time that its influence was arena of official culture. Once these being extended beyond its control. The movements have been deprived of their postwar period led to the rapid destruction role in the production of new values, they of surrealism by the two factors that had end up serving as a reserve pool of already blocked its development around intellectual labor from which the 1930: the lack of possibilities for theoretical bourgeoisie can draw individuals capable renewal and the ebbing of revolution, of adding innovative nuances to its developments which were reflected in the propaganda. political and cultural reaction within the workers movement. The latter factor is directly determinant, for example, in the everyday life was pursued amidst sharp disappearance of the surrealist group of struggles among different tendencies. Rumania. On the other hand, it is above all the first of these factors that condemned the In Italy — with the exception of the Revolutionary Surrealism movement in antifunctionalist experimental group that in France and Belgium to a rapid collapse. 1955 formed the most solid section of the Except in Belgium, where a fraction issuing International Movement for an Imaginist from surrealism has maintained a valid Bauhaus — the efforts toward avant-garde experimental position [the Lèvres Nues formations have remained attached to the group], all the surrealist tendencies old artistic perspectives and have not even scattered around the world have joined the succeeded in expressing themselves camp of mystical idealism. theoretically.

Some of the Revolutionary Surrealists were During the same period the most innocuous among those who formed the and massified aspects of Western culture “Experimental Artists’ International” (1949- have been massively imitated all over the 1951), which included participants from world, from the United States to Japan. Denmark, Belgium, Holland, and (The US avant-garde, which tends to eventually also Germany, and which congregate in the American colony in Paris, published the journal Cobra (Copenhagen- lives there in the most tame, insipidly Brussels-Amsterdam). (3) The merit of these conformist manner, isolated ideologically, groups was to have understood that such socially and even ecologically from an organization is necessitated by the everything else going on.) As for the complexity and extent of present-day productions of peoples who are still subject problems. But their lack of ideological rigor, to cultural colonialism (often caused by the limitation of their pursuits to mainly political oppression), even though they may plastic experimentation, and above all the be progressive in their own countries, they absence of a comprehensive theory of the play a reactionary role in the advanced conditions and perspectives of their cultural centers. Critics who have based experience led to their breakup. their entire career on outdated systems of creation pretend to discover engaging new Lettrism, in France, had started off by developments in Greek films or totally opposing the entire known aesthetic Guatemalan novels — an exoticism of the movement, whose continual decaying it antiexotic, the revival of old forms long correctly analyzed. Striving for the since exploited and exhausted in other uninterrupted creation of new forms in all countries; an exoticism which does, domains, the Lettrist group carried on a however, serve the primary purpose of salutary agitation between 1946 and 1952. exoticism: escape from the real conditions But the group generally took it for granted of life and creation. that aesthetic disciplines should take a new departure within a general framework In the workers states only the similar to the former one, and this idealist experimentation carried out by Brecht in error limited its productions to a few paltry Berlin, insofar as it puts into question the experiments. In 1952 the Lettrist left wing classic spectacle notion, is close to the organized itself into a “Lettrist constructions that matter for us today. Only International” and expelled the backward Brecht has succeeded in resisting the fraction. (4) In the Lettrist International the stupidity of Socialist Realism in power. quest for new methods of intervention in Now that Socialist Realism is falling apart, that are going to destroy it, we have to find we can expect much from a revolutionary the first elements of a more advanced confrontation of the intellectuals in the construction of the environment and new workers states with the real problems of conditions of behavior — both as modern culture. If Zhdanovism has been experiences in themselves and as material the purest expression not only of the for propaganda. Everything else belongs to cultural degeneration of the workers the past, and serves it. movement but also of the conservative cultural position in the bourgeois world, We now have to undertake an organized those in the Eastern Bloc who are presently collective work aimed at a unitary use of all revolting against Zhdanovism cannot do so the means of revolutionizing everyday life. — whatever their subjective intentions — That is, we must first of all recognize the merely in the name of a greater creative interdependence of these means in the freedom à la Cocteau, for example. A perspective of increased freedom and an negation of Zhdanovism objectively means increased control of nature. We need to the negation of the Zhdanovist negation of construct new ambiences that will be both “liquidation.” Zhdanovism can be the products and the instruments of new superseded only through the real exercise forms of behavior. To do this, we must of freedom, which is consciousness of from the beginning make practical use of present necessity. the everyday processes and cultural forms that now exist, while refusing to Here, too, the recent years have at most acknowledge any inherent value they may been a period of confused resistance to the claim to have. The very criterion of formal confused reign of reactionary imbecility. invention or innovation has lost its sense There weren’t many of us really working within the traditional framework of the arts against it. But we should not linger over the — insufficient, fragmentary forms whose tastes or trivial findings of this period. The partial renovations are inevitably outdated problems of cultural creation can be and therefore impossible. resolved only in relation with a new advance of world revolution. We should not simply refuse modern culture; we must seize it in order to negate it. No one can claim to be a revolutionary intellectual who does not recognize the Platform for a Provisional Opposition cultural revolution we are now facing. An intellectual creator cannot be revolutionary A revolutionary action within culture must by merely supporting some party line, not aim to enlarge life, not merely to express or even if he does so with original methods, explain it. It must attack misery on every but only by working alongside the parties front. Revolution is not limited to toward the necessary transformation of all determining the level of industrial the cultural superstructures. What production, or even to determining who is ultimately determines whether or not to be the master of such production. It must someone is a bourgeois intellectual is abolish not only the exploitation of neither his social origin nor his knowledge humanity, but also the passions, of a culture (such knowledge may be the compensations and habits which that basis for a critique of that culture or for exploitation has engendered. We have to some creative work within it), but his role define new desires in relation to present in the production of the historically possibilities. In the thick of the battle bourgeois forms of culture. Authors of between the present society and the forces revolutionary political opinions who find themselves praised by bourgeois literary be the sole criterion on which we join with critics should ask themselves what they’ve or separate from comrades. Naturally this done wrong. does not mean that we should renounce breaks, as everyone urges us to do. On the The union of several experimental contrary, we think that it is necessary to go tendencies for a revolutionary front in still further in breaking with habits and culture, begun at the congress held at Alba, persons. Italy, at the end of 1956, presupposes that we not neglect three important factors. We should collectively define our program and realize it in a disciplined manner, using First of all, we must insist on a complete any means, even artistic ones. accord among the persons and groups that participate in this united action; and this accord must not be facilitated by allowing certain of its consequences to be Toward a Situationist International dissimulated. Jokers or careerists who are stupid enough to think they can advance Our central idea is the construction of their careers in this way must be rebuffed. situations, that is to say, the concrete construction of momentary ambiences of Next, we must recall that while any life and their transformation into a superior genuinely experimental attitude is usable, passional quality. We must develop a that word has very often been misused in systematic intervention based on the the attempt to justify artistic actions within complex factors of two components in an already-existing structure. The only perpetual interaction: the material valid experimental proceeding is based on environment of life and the behaviors the accurate critique of existing conditions which that environment gives rise to and and the deliberate supersession of them. It which radically transform it. must be understood once and for all that something that is only a personal Our perspectives of action on the expression within a framework created by environment ultimately lead us to the others cannot be termed a creation. notion of unitary urbanism. Unitary Creation is not the arrangement of objects urbanism is defined first of all as the use of and forms, it is the invention of new laws all arts and techniques as means on such arrangement. contributing to the composition of a unified milieu. Such an interrelated ensemble must Finally, we have to eliminate the be envisaged as incomparably more far- sectarianism among us that opposes unity reaching than the old domination of of action with possible allies for specific architecture over the traditional arts, or goals and prevents our infiltration of than the present sporadic application to parallel organizations. (5) From 1952 to 1955 anarchic urbanism of specialized the Lettrist International, after some technology or of scientific investigations necessary purges, continually moved such as ecology. Unitary urbanism must, toward a sort of absolutist rigor leading to for example, determine the acoustic an equally absolute isolation and environment as well as the distribution of ineffectuality, and ultimately to a certain different varieties of food and drink. It immobility, a degeneration of the spirit of must include both the creation of new critique and discovery. We must forms and the détournement of previous definitively supersede this sectarian forms of architecture, urbanism, poetry and conduct in favor of real actions. This should cinema. Integral art, which has been talked about so much, can be realized only at the material will lead to new, as yet unknown level of urbanism. But it can no longer forms. correspond to any of the traditional aesthetic categories. In each of its Psychogeographical research, “the study of experimental cities unitary urbanism will the exact laws and specific effects of act by way of a certain number of force geographical environments, whether fields, which we can temporarily designate consciously organized or not, on the by the classic term “district.” Each district emotions and behavior of individuals,” will tend toward a specific harmony thus takes on a double meaning: active distinct from neighboring harmonies; or observation of present-day urban else will play on a maximum breaking up agglomerations and development of of internal harmony. hypotheses on the structure of a situationist city. The progress of psychogeography Secondly, unitary urbanism is dynamic, in depends to a great extent on the statistical that it is directly related to styles of extension of its methods of observation, but behavior. The most elementary unit of above all on experimentation by means of unitary urbanism is not the house, but the concrete interventions in urbanism. Before architectural complex, which combines all this stage is attained we cannot be certain of the factors conditioning an ambience, or a the objective truth of our initial series of clashing ambiences, on the scale of psychogeographical findings. But even if the constructed situation. Spatial those findings should turn out to be false, development must take into account the they would still be false solutions to what is emotional effects that the experimental city nevertheless a real problem. is intended to produce. One of our comrades has advanced a theory of “states- Our action on behavior, linked with other of-mind” districts, according to which each desirable aspects of a revolution in mores, district of a city would be designed to can be briefly defined as the invention of provoke a specific basic sentiment to which games of an essentially new type. The most people would knowingly expose general goal must be to expand the themselves. It seems that such a project nonmediocre part of life, to reduce the draws appropriate conclusions from the empty moments of life as much as possible. current tendency to depreciate randomly One could thus speak of our enterprise as a encountered primary sentiments, and that project of quantitatively increasing human its realization could contribute to life, an enterprise more serious than the accelerating that depreciation. The biological methods currently being comrades who call for a new, free investigated, and one that automatically architecture must understand that this new implies a qualitative increase whose architecture will primarily be based not on developments are unpredictable. The free, poetic lines and forms — in the sense situationist game is distinguished from the that today’s “lyrical abstract” painting uses classic notion of games by its radical those terms — but rather on the negation of the element of competition and atmospheric effects of rooms, hallways, of separation from everyday life. On the streets — atmospheres linked to the other hand, it is not distinct from a moral activities they contain. Architecture must choice, since it implies taking a stand in advance by taking emotionally moving favor of what will bring about the future situations, rather than emotionally moving reign of freedom and play. forms, as the material it works with. And the experiments conducted with this This perspective is obviously linked to the continual and rapid increase of leisure time resulting from the level of productive forces relationships, so as to influence, for our era has attained. It is also linked to the example, the historical evolution of recognition of the fact that a battle of leisure sentiments like friendship and love. is taking place before our eyes, a battle Everything leads us to believe that the whose importance in the class struggle has essential elements of our research lie in our not been sufficiently analyzed. So far, the hypothesis of the construction of situations. ruling class has succeeded in using the leisure the revolutionary proletariat A person’s life is a succession of fortuitous wrested from it by developing a vast situations, and even if none of them is industrial sector of leisure activities that is exactly the same as another the immense an incomparable instrument for stupefying majority of them are so undifferentiated the proletariat with by-products of and so dull that they give a definite mystifying ideology and bourgeois tastes. impression of sameness. As a result, the The abundance of televised imbecilities is rare intensely engaging situations found in probably one of the reasons for the life only serve to strictly confine and limit American working class’s inability to that life. We must try to construct develop any political consciousness. By situations, that is to say, collective obtaining through collective pressure a ambiences, ensembles of impressions slight rise in the price of its labor above the determining the quality of a moment. If we minimum necessary for the production of take the simple example of a gathering of a that labor, the proletariat not only extends group of individuals for a given time, it its power of struggle, it also extends the would be desirable, while taking into terrain of the struggle. New forms of this account the knowledge and material means struggle then arise alongside directly we have at our disposal, to study what economic and political conflicts. It can be organization of the place, what selection of said that up till now revolutionary participants and what provocation of propaganda has been constantly overcome events are suitable for producing the within these new forms of struggle in all desired ambience. The powers of a situation the countries where advanced industrial will certainly expand considerably in both development has introduced them. That the time and space with the realizations of necessary changing of the infrastructure unitary urbanism or the education of a can be delayed by errors and weaknesses at situationist generation. the level of superstructures has unfortunately been demonstrated by The construction of situations begins several experiences of the twentieth beyond the ruins of the modern spectacle. It century. It is necessary to throw new forces is easy to see how much the very principle into the battle of leisure. We will take our of the spectacle — nonintervention — is position there. linked to the alienation of the old world. Conversely, the most pertinent A rough experimentation toward a new revolutionary experiments in culture have mode of behavior has already been made sought to break the spectators’ with what we have termed the dérive: the psychological identification with the hero practice of a passional journey out of the so as to draw them into activity by ordinary through a rapid changing of provoking their capacities to revolutionize ambiences, as well as a means of their own lives. The situation is thus psychogeographical study and of designed to be lived by its constructors. The situationist psychology. But the application role played by a passive or merely bit-part of this striving for playful creativity must playing “public” must constantly diminish, be extended to all known forms of human while that played by those who cannot be called actors, but rather, in a new sense of could be devoted to “current events” that the term, “livers,” must steadily increase. really are current and eventful by preserving (in situationist archives) the We have to multiply poetic subjects and most significant moments of a situation objects — which are now unfortunately so before the evolution of its elements has led rare that the slightest ones take on an to a different situation. Since the systematic exaggerated emotional importance — and construction of situations will give rise to we have to organize games for these poetic previously unknown sentiments, film will subjects to play with these poetic objects. find its greatest educational role in the This is our entire program, which is dissemination of these new passions. essentially transitory. Our situations will be ephemeral, without a future. Passageways. Situationist theory resolutely supports a Our only concern is real life; we care noncontinuous conception of life. The nothing about the permanence of art or of notion of unity must cease to be seen as anything else. Eternity is the grossest idea a applying to the whole of one’s life (where it person can conceive of in connection with serves as a reactionary mystification based his acts. on the belief in an immortal soul and, in the final analysis, on the division of labor); Situationist techniques have yet to be instead, it should apply to the construction invented. But we know that a task presents of each particular moment of life through itself only when the material conditions the unitary use of situationist methods. In a necessary to its realization already exist, or classless society there will no longer be at least are in the process of formation. We “painters,” but only situationists who, have to begin with a phase of small-scale among other things, sometimes paint. experimentation. It will probably be necessary to prepare plans or scenarios for The main emotional drama of life, aside the creation of situations, despite their from the perpetual conflict between desire inevitable inadequacy at the beginning. To and reality hostile to desire, seems to be the this end we must develop a system of sensation of the passage of time. In contrast notations, which will become more precise to the aesthetic modes that strive to fix and as we learn more from the experiences of eternalize some emotion, the situationist construction. We will also need to discover attitude consists in going with the flow of or verify certain laws, such as that time. In so doing, in pushing ever further according to which situationist emotions the game of creating new, emotionally depend on extreme concentration or provocative situations, the situationists are extreme dispersal of actions (classical gambling that change will usually be for tragedy giving a rough idea of the former, the better. In the short term the odds are dérives of the latter). In addition to the obviously against that bet. But even if we direct means that will be used for specific have to lose it a thousand times, we see no ends, the positive phase of the construction other choice for a progressive attitude. of situations will require a new application of reproductive technologies. One can The situationist minority first emerged as a envisage, for example, televised images of tendency in the Lettrist left wing, then in certain aspects of one situation being the Lettrist International which it ended up communicated live to people taking part in controlling. The same objective movement another situation somewhere else, thereby has led several recent avant-garde groups producing various modifications and to similar conclusions. Together we must interferences between the two. More eliminate all the relics of the recent past. We simply, a new style of documentary film now believe that an accord for a united action of the revolutionary avant-garde in doing, to take part in the critical culture must be carried out on the basis of development of its program, and to call for such a program. We have neither its support. guaranteed recipes nor definitive results. We only propose an experimental research to be collectively led in a few directions that we are presently defining and toward Our Immediate Tasks others that have yet to be defined. The very difficulty of succeeding in the first We must call attention, among the workers situationist projects is a proof of the parties or the extremist tendencies within newness of the domain we are penetrating. those parties, to the need to undertake an Something that changes our way of seeing effective ideological action in order to the streets is more important than combat the emotional influence of something that changes our way of seeing advanced capitalist methods of paintings. Our working hypotheses will be propaganda. On every occasion, by every reexamined at each future upheaval, hyper-political means, we must publicize wherever it comes from. desirable alternatives to the spectacle of the capitalist way of life, so as to destroy the Various people (particularly among the bourgeois idea of happiness. At the same revolutionary artists and intellectuals who time, taking into account the existence, have resigned themselves to a certain within the various ruling classes, of impotence) will respond that this elements that have always tended (out of “situationism” seems rather disagreeable; boredom and thirst for novelty) toward that we have not created any beautiful things that lead to the disappearance of works; that we would do better to talk their societies, we should incite the persons about André Gide; and that no one will see who control some of the vast resources that any clear reasons to be interested in us. we lack to provide us with the means to They will evade facing the issues we have carry out our experiments, out of the same raised by reproaching us for using motives of potential profit as they do with scandalous tactics in order to call attention scientific research. to ourselves, and will express their indignation at the procedures we have We must everywhere present a sometimes felt obliged to adopt in order to revolutionary alternative to the ruling dissociate ourselves from certain people. culture; coordinate all the researches which We answer: It’s not a matter of knowing are currently taking place but which lack a whether this interests you, but whether you comprehensive perspective; and incite, yourselves are capable of doing anything through critiques and propaganda, the interesting in the context of the new most advanced artists and intellectuals of conditions of cultural creation. Your role, all countries to contact us in view of a revolutionary artists and intellectuals, is not collective action. to complain that freedom is insulted when we refuse to march alongside the enemies We should declare ourselves ready to of freedom. Your role is not to imitate the renew discussion, on the basis of this bourgeois aesthetes who try to restrict program, with those who, having taken people to what has already been done part in an earlier phase of our action, are because what has already been done still capable of rejoining with us. doesn’t bother them. You know that creation is never pure. Your role is to find We must put forward the slogans of unitary out what the international avant-garde is urbanism, experimental behavior, hyper- political propaganda, and the construction lettrists, including Isou himself, only of ambiences. The passions have been reveals the constantly reengendered sufficiently interpreted; the point now is to communication gap between extremists discover new ones. and ex-extremists.” Lettrist International participants included Henry de Béarn, Serge Berna, GUY DEBORD Michèle Bernstein, Jean-Louis Brau, Ivan June 1957 Chtcheglov, Mohamed Dahou, Guy Debord, Abdelhafid Khatib, Jean-Michel Mension, Patrick Straram, Alexander Trocchi and Gil J Wolman. Those italicized were later among the original members of the SI. (Chtcheglov was never an SI member, though he is [TRANSLATOR’S NOTES] listed in Raspaud and Voyer’s book as a “membre de loin” — a fellow traveler — 1. Andrei Zhdanov: one of Stalin’s most and was perhaps considered a sort of powerful officials, responsible for purging honorary member due to his important the arts and imposing the doctrine of early contributions.) “Socialist Realism.” 5. The SI subsequently renounced any such 2. “Françoise Sagan phenonomon”: the way “infiltration” of other groups, considering that this teenage writer became a that simultaneous membership in two supercelebrity, every detail of her life being organizations tends to lead to considered newsworthy despite the manipulation. relatively mediocre quality of her work. Spectacularization of vacuous and talentless personalities is of course commonplace now, but in the 1950s it was “Rapport sur la construction des seen as astonishing and the conventional situations” was one of the preparatory texts culture critics were at a loss as to how to for the July 1957 conference at Cosio account for it. d’Arroscia, Italy, at which the Situationist International was founded. This translation 3. Cobra participants included future SI by Ken Knabb is from the Situationist members Constant and Asger Jorn. International Anthology (Revised and Expanded Edition, 2006). No copyright. 4. The final break was provoked when the radical tendency (including Debord and Wolman) disrupted a Charlie Chaplin press conference in October 1952. The aesthete lettrists, including the founder of lettrism, Isidore Isou, disavowed this action. The disrupters responded with an open letter: “We believe that the most imperative expression of freedom is the destruction of idols, especially when those idols present themselves in the name of freedom. The provocative tone of our leaflet was an attack against a unanimous servile adoration. The disavowal by certain