L'Internationale Situationniste, Socialisme ou Barbarie, and the Crisis of the Marxist Imaginary Author(s): Stephen Hastings-King Source: SubStance, Vol. 28, No. 3, Issue 90: Special Issue: Guy Debord (1999), pp. 26-54 Published by: University of Wisconsin Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3685432 . Accessed: 21/09/2013 14:33

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This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 14:33:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions L'InternationaleSituationniste, Socialismeou Barbarie,and theCrisis ofthe Marxist Imaginary

StephenHastings-King

The SituationnisteInternationale was a small transnationalgroup of artist-revolutionariesthat came outof the neo-Dadaist Lettriste movement.' In Paris,Guy Debord and a small,changing cast of friendsand supporting characters2tracked through the Parisian cultural and politicalunderground alongthe path laid earlierby the Surrealists.3 Skilled as provocateurs,anxious to abandon theconstraints of artisticproduction and to acquire legitimacy as revolutionaries,Debord and hisfriends almost immediately began to look to thejournal Socialismeou Barbarie,edited by thegroup of the same name led by CorneliusCastoriadis.4 SB is a crucial,though little discussed, referent in theevolution of Guy Debord. The relationshipwas centralfor Debord, and worked on several levels.After months of discussion with SB militants,Debord joined the group for a few monthsduring 1960-1961.The mergerwas inconclusive and strained.However, in thepages ofthe journal L'Internationale Situationniste, SB played an importantrole as the symbol of the "new revolutionary movement"with which Debord increasinglyidentified. Initially, SB was simplypart of the political landscape. However, once Debord became more involved,SB became muchmore central, and the"Situ" journal much more deferentialtoward the older group.Debord was a sympatheticobserver of SB, and his accountsform one ofthe few views ofthe group from an outside perspective.SB functionsas an Archimedeanpoint around whichthe Situs triedto pivotfrom art and culturaldissent into revolutionary politics. When SB explodedin 1963and Castoriadisbegan to publish his long text "Marxisme et la th6orier6volutionnaire"-in which he arguesthat "it has come to the pointwhere one can eitherbe Marxistor a revolutionary"-Debord began a sustainedattempt to excludeSB fromthe revolutionary movement and to usurp its role in a new revolutionary vanguard. Elements of SB's

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This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 14:33:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Crisisof the Marxist Imaginary 27 revolutionaryproject were central components in Debord's collageapproach toMarxism and culturalcritique as deployedin the1967 Society of the Spectacle and as dismantledin the1975 film of the same name. Debord's use ofSB is curiousfor its external viewpoint. He maps SB's notionsof the history of the workers' movement,bureaucratic capitalism and socialism as direct democracyonto a Marxistframework closer to Lukacs and Althusserin its abstractrelation to theworking class and revolution.In thispaper, I argue thatDebord's reversionto dialecticalMarxism is a responseto theimplosion of SB. Debord's collage approach to revolutionarypolitics makes him interestingas an actor withinand symptomof the crisis of the Marxist Imaginary.

SB and the MarxistImaginary

When the SituationisteInternationale began to publish its journal in 1958and to positionitself on thefringes of the Parisian cultural and political underground,Socialisme ou Barbariewas regardedas themost "proletarian" and sophisticatedof revolutionaryMarxist organizations. The groupwas founded by Castoriadis,Claude Lefortand a circle of less well-known militantsas an oppositionaltendency within the Trotskyist Parti Communiste Internationaliste(PCI) in1946.The Chaulieu-MontalTendency, as it was known,broke with the PCI in 1948 over the problemof interpretingthe Soviet Union. Between1948 and 1956,SB developed a variantof Marxist revolutionarytheory notable for its sweep and attentionto the situationof the working class, then undergoing radical change through the implementationof Fordism and the crisis of Stalinism. By 1958, SB's revolutionaryproject had becomea primaryreference-point for new radical organizationsthat were emerging in thespace createdby theintensification ofthe Algerian War and theretreat into self-isolation of the Parti Communiste Franqais.SB's projectwas builtaround extended interpretations ofworking- class actionssince 1953 and seemedconfirmed by theHungarian Revolution of October-November,1956. SB defined the termsin which these new organizationsunderstood their situation. The followingis a cursoryoverview ofthe notion of theMarxist Imaginary, the social-imaginary formation that shaped how SB articulateditself and its object,its entryinto a protracted crisisand therole played in thisby theHungarian Revolution. The centralelements of revolutionary theory, or ofany vision of society (and in this,revolutionary theory is no moreor less a fantasythan any other), arewhat Cornelius Castoriadis has called "social-imaginarysignifications." These are the productof intellectuallabor expended upon social spaces, Substance# 90, 1999

This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 14:33:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 28 StephenHastings-King shapingdefinitions of theworld, its history, the possibilities of change and modes available forpolitical entities to shape or participatein thatchange. Social-imaginarysignifications structure representational, intentional and affectiverelations to thesocial-historical.5 The post-warFrench Left was dominatedby the Parti Communiste Frangaisand its trade-unionally, the Conf6deration G6nerale du Travail.It and was, in turn,shaped by it.The PCF-CGTsystem agitated with primary referenceto a working-classconstituency: it also exertedan enormouspull overthe para-academic urban culture within which circulated most dissident Parisian studentsand intellectualworkers (Badie, 1977). The systemwas opposed to itsLeft by a seriesof small militant organizations that operated in a nebulous culturalenvironment that PierreBourdieu has called the "delimited field of ideological production."6 These organizationswere comprisedof "specialists in ideological production" who, lacking the material resourcesof the PCF-CGT system, worked to fashionpositions with specific referenceto thetextual tradition at thecore of the Marxist Imaginary. All hereticalprojects had to work throughMarxist significations as shaped by the dominantPCF-CGT position. They also had to position themselveshorizontally-with respect to each other-and vertically-with respectto an imaginedversion of the revolutionary working class. In postwar Marxism,the paradigm for such heresy was Trotsky,who arguedthat Stalin representedthe bureaucratizationof the Russian Revolution and was thereforenot Lenin's legitimate heir. For Trotsky, the ultimate demonstration ofhis claimswould come witha second proletarianrevolution. Led by the "real" revolutionaryvanguard and mobilizingthe "real" proletariat,the second revolutionwould sweep away Stalinismand institutein itsplace a more radical socialism.Most revolutionarygroups appropriated versions of thisnarrative to emplotthemselves and theirvision of the Imaginary. Centralto all versionswas a relationto theworking class. The construction of a representationof the "real" proletariatwas a fundamentalelement in collectiveself-fashioning for revolutionary organizations: this representation gave coherenceto intentionalrelations-to-the-world, which in turnenabled individualmilitants and workersto map affectonto a visionof revolutionary social change.7 PCF-CGTdominance over the delimited field and itsimagined working class made itselfevident in the fashioningof historiesof the workers' movementin general.The PCF-CGT system legitimated itself and itspolitical actionsin the presentwith reference to a narrativeof the past. Therefore, any counter-claimnecessarily involved the production of a counter-history. These counter-historieswere oftenfashioned through the lens of dogmatic Substance# 90, 1999

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Marxism,which caused themto reproducethe same self-referential,self- legitimatingcharacter as could be seen in the PCF-CGT.The effectwas to rendertranscendent Marx's historical-materialistcategories, which in turn led to conceptualand politicalclosure and stasis. By the mid-1950s,this conceptualstasis was generalizedamong the fragments of the revolutionary opposition. Socialismeou Barbariewas an exception.Turning the same heretical patternon the hereticsthemselves, SB announced itselfin 1948 with the slogan: "Withoutdevelopment of revolutionarytheory, [there can be] no developmentof revolutionary action." The groupbet thaticonoclasm with respect to institutedMarxism could be justified by their analysis of contemporarycapitalism. From 1948 to 1957,this gamble paid offin isolation. SB's situationchanged quickly and dramaticallyas a resultof the Hungarian Revolution.In a mediacontext dominated by paralysis, SB publishedClaude Lefort'spamphlet "L'insurrection hongroise" within weeks of the events. Writtenquickly and publishedalong witha highlypolemical attack on the PCF, it was thefirst coherent reading to appear on theParisian scene.' The pamphlet'sgeneral line is thatHungary experienced a real social revolution.This revolution already required a totalsocial crisis.Such a crisis was simplerto thinkabout in the Easterncontext than it was in the West, because thestates in each werequite different. Lefort argued the central and mostrevolutionary feature of the revolt was therole of the factory workers, who began almost immediatelyto set up direct-democraticcouncils to administereveryday life. Hungary became a direct-democraticsociety for a couple ofweeks: this was, forSB, proof that its vision of socialism was viable and an occasionto extendand refinethinking about thatvision. Lefort'sanalysis drew upon SB's broaderanalytic framework. The group developed its revolutionarytheory along negative/critical and positive/ revolutionaryaxes. The formerwas built around a sweeping critiqueof contemporarysocial, economic and politicalorganizations and ideologies. Modern capitalism,SB argued, should be seen as a new type of socio- economicformation, the defining features of which could be seen in industry in the separation of ownershipfrom management and the rise of mass production.This new formwas bureaucraticcapitalism, which was instituted in "centralized" and "fragmented" forms in the East and the West respectively.Following the "string of bureaucracy," SB extendedtheir critique to encompassmost aspects of Fordist culture.' SB saw the HungarianRevolution as the culminationof a mounting wave ofautonomous worker actions that had begunsoon afterStalin's death

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in 1953.In the monthsfollowing Hungary, building off of Lefort'sreading ofthe revolt, Castoriadis tried to formalizethe implications of this revolution by an extendedconsideration of direct-democratic society ("Sur le contenu du socialismeII") and itslinks to everydayconflict in thefactories ("Sur le contenudu socialismeIII"). This optimisticnarrative was central to the pamphlet and to the theorizingabout revolutionin thepages ofSB during1957-1958. It was not, however,the only way thatthe journal narrated events in Hungary.Daniel Moth6'sautobiographical accounts told a ratherdifferent story of the crisis as it played out at Renault's Billancourtfactory. Rather than a period of increasedrevolutionary possibilities, Mothe described a collapseof Marxism as social-imaginarysignification that had enabled individual workersto articulatethemselves, but as partof a class witha revolutionarytelos, and to act upon thatidentification.10 The doublenarrative mirrored both the political situation and thenature ofthe SB readership.SB constructeditself and itsjournal around an ongoing (thoughlargely imaginary /problematic) dialogue withthe worker avant- garde. The journalis a kind of textualcollage. At its centerwere textslike thoseby Moth6,written by workersabout theirown experience.Around this image was constructedanother, of the workeravant-garde in action throughstrike reports and analyses. Situatingthese was a broad critical theorypredicated on a close engagementwith Marxism and with the conditionsparticular to bureaucraticcapitalism. These ringsof textwere supplemented with more self-criticalwritings about the nature of revolutionaryorganization and theory.Very little information appeared about the actual lifeof SB as a group.Readers were invitedto engage with the elementsof this collage, which resolved through the process of reading into a compleximage ofthe revolutionary working class. The relationof the signifiers that made up thiscollage to theirempirical referentwas problematic.SB collectivelymisrecognized the specificity and complexityof thenarrative viewpoint around which they hoped would be elaborated accounts of worker experience." SB readershipwas, more logically,a reflectionof the group itself: educated, urban and Marxist,whose relationto the workingclass was a combinationof fascination(following fromthe axioms of Marxist revolutionary theory) and distance(as a function ofthe nature of French social geography).SB's workingclass was therefore a text-generatedsignified and the centralsocial-imaginary signification aroundwhich SB and itsjournal were ordered. Definitions of political action and roles were predicatedon a relationto this signifiedand its practical

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activity.Broader oppositional attitudes were structured and legitimatedwith referenceto it.The imageof proletariat was thecentral material upon which the revolutionarymovement expended intellectuallabor. If Moth'-the "Worker"in SB's internalworld-described a situationnot particularto Billancourt,but one thatcould be generalizedto the working class as a whole, thenthe crisis of theMarxist Imaginary had alreadyentered its first phase. In the period after1956, the pages of SB were dominated by the optimistic reading of Hungary and the possibilities for revolution it presented. This reading was important for the newly constituted revolutionaryLeft because it enabled themto extractthe centralMarxist categoriesout fromunder Stalinism,and use themto constructa general orientationfor their anti-war activities. The politicalsituation grew more ambiguousafter May 1958.Charles de Gaulle effectivelystaged a coupd'etat in May 1958to end a near-civilwar in Francethat was drivenby a cadreof ultra-right-wingparatroopers in Algeria. According to theTrotskyist theory ofhow revolutionshappen, social crisisresulted in dual powerthat became civilwar and thenrevolution (if political conditions were ripe,of course.) The eventsof May shouldhave been the signalfor working-class action. But the workers did not act: they even supported the FifthRepublic Constitutionwhen it was placed beforethe electorate in September.At this point,various people in theLeft Opposition began to ask whetherthere had been some kindof basic changein thesituation of the working class, and if thischange required a reconsiderationof traditional Marxist categories and politics.In thepast, this kind of issue had oftenled militantsto thinktheir way out ofpolitics- whichleft the general situation unchanged. This time, however,the questionwould not go away and the debate around it is the firstround in a longseries that mark the history of the collapse of the Marxist Imaginaryat thelevel ofpolitical organization. Thiscrisis of the Marxist Imaginary should not be understoodin overly teleological terms.Because of the intensityand complexityof affective investments,it was confrontedonly gradually. When the crisis was engaged directly,the result was usuallytraumatic. SB was amongthe few groups to tryto confrontit directly, but not until 1963. During 1957 and 1958,the group had feverishlytried to publishthe journal on a regularbasis in orderto take advantage of theirnewfound visibility. These effortsexacerbated long- runningfinancial and organizationalproblems. By thesummer of 1958,SB collapsed intoitself, as a disputeover how to reorganizethe group in order to rationalizethe productionof thejournal became a fightover the role of bureaucracyin the revolutionarymovement. This dispute promptedthe

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departureof the more anarchistmembers of SB, includingClaude Lefort and Henri Simon. It was clear to all, however,that this dispute coincided withthe emergence of questions about the political role of the working class. As a result,everybody involved understoodthemselves in symptomatic termsas indicativeof the need fora new typeof revolutionary politics and a new typeof revolutionary organization.

PublicationWars: IS and SB

During the fall of 1959,Debord and his comrades were filmingthe "psychogeographicalexperiments" in Les Halles thatbecame thebasis for "Sur le passage de quelques personnesa traversune assez courteunitd de temps"(Debord 1978).The thirdissue of L'InternationaleSituationniste had just appeared; a copy of it reachedDaniel Blanchard,a universitystudent and memberof SB since 1957:

Thereare moments in one'sexistence that stand out, as ifof a moresolid texture,drawn in strongerlines [that] contrast with the fuzziness and [...] ambiguityof therest of life. And theyreally are chargedwith objective meaning,imparted by a movementof a sortof historic overdetermination. Often,that special quality only reveals itself retrospectively, butsometimes, too,it is perceivedimmediately. That is whatI experiencedon theday, in theautumn 1959, when I firstglanced through an issue-number3, I think-ofthe IS. At thetime, I participatedin the Socialismeou Barbarie group[...] That day, as a fewof us weregoing through the weekly mail, myeye was attractedby that sleek, elegant publication, with its scintillating coverand incredible title. I took hold of it and immediately began to explore whatI graduallycame to see as a newfoundland ofmodernity, bizarre butfascinating.12

Blanchard'srelationship with Debord holds a particularplace in the former'saffective world, as a kindof sustained brush with stardom. Moments in the relationshipseem etchedon his mind: the packagingof the IS, for example,and theimpression it made on him.Everything about thejournal markedit as differentfrom most revolutionary publications. The cover,title, typesetand paper were all unusual. The layoutwas brokenup by untitled photographsof people, clipped advertisementsfor automobiles or fall-out shelters,examples of ditournement done on "Terryand thePirates" and other comics.The journalpresented itself as a kindof politicized Pop Artartifact. Socialismeou Barbarieopted fora verytraditional printed self-presentation. Tractsand PouvoirOuvrier were designed to reach a working-classaudience, and retainedthe traditionallook of militantpublications: cheap paper, typescripttext reproduced on mimeographor roneotype, primitive or hand-

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drawngraphics, when any were used. Themain journal, SB, was also austere, withits red, white and blackcovers, simple typesets, moderate-grade paper, and lack ofillustrations. Two differentnotions of how to presentthe avant- garde: one as proletarian,"authentic," tied to workertraditions; the other self-consciouslybreaking with these same audiencesand traditions. WhileIS looked likenothing else, mostof the articles were attemptsto work throughways of framingproblems of culture,art and revolution inherited fromSurrealism. Situationistpolitics were, and remained, predicated on subjectiveexperience elevated to a trans-subjectivelevel through variations on the traditional notion of the Artist. This was complicatedby Debord's suspicionof representation and itsfunction in the contextof the spectacle,which promptedhim to fashionfor himself an inversionof thisartist role. Subjectivism was consistentwith Debord's use ofeveryday experience as a pointof departure for thinking about alienation. This approach both opened up and limitedhis access to the terrainof revolutionarypolitics. In 1959,however, the journal's packaging and concerns suggested that the IS was "new" and "radical," and convinced Daniel Blanchardthat it was developingin parallelto SB. In principle,SB and Debord/ISwere kindred groups, and thetiming of theirencounter fortuitous. However, the timingwas off.As the IS was workingto articulatea positionfor itself at theedge of a new culturaland politicalavant-garde, SB was grapplingwith a majorinternal challenge to the premisesupon which its revolutionaryproject had been constructed. Castoriadis'stext "Modern Capitalismand Revolution"'3argued thatthe Gaullisttransformation of Franceinto a Fordiststate had eliminatedmost non-manageablestructural contradictions. The changesin theorganization of the State and its relationto European financialstructures built on the effectsfor the working class of theFordist assimilation of the trade-unions intothe industrial status quo, theweight of Stalinism on Marxistdiscourse, and theimportation of mass-consumer culture. Implying that there had been a suddenextension of assembly-line production techniques into semi-skilled industrialsectors (which is notempirically the case) Castoriadischaracterized the outcomeof thiscombination of factorsas a politicaldestructuration of theproletariat. In Marxistterminology, the working class had regressedfrom being a class foritself to a class in itself.As such, it was not capable of producingthe patternsof socializationupon whichrested SB's notionsof revolutionand socialism, and theirself-conception as a revolutionary organization.

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Castoriadis argued thatthe crisis of theproletariat did not mean that all possibilitieshad beeneliminated for revolutionary action. Fordist attempts to disempower politics in general and manage the population through consumption norms, paradoxically generalized the struggle between dirigeantsand exdcutants,which had been most evident at the point of production. The result was a multiplicationof sources for potentially significantconflict. This combinationof argumentsenabled SB to continue to use schematadeveloped throughthe analysis of the workingclass to comprehendthese conflicts.However, the challengeto thismost basic of signifiersmade thegroup's relationship to it morerigid. Destructurationposed moreproblems for SB. They had to be able to theorizesocial conflictsoriginating from any numberof potentialsources, and devise ways forthe revolutionarymovement to assume a role in the productionof significations (types of hierarchy, modes ofself-organization, ways of thinkingabout thesepatterns in a self-consciousmanner)-a role SB had assigned to the workeravant-garde. It was not clear exactlywhat thiswould entail.At thelevel oftheory, however, this position should have opened the way forsocial critique.Revolutionary theory could no longer simplydismiss the dominantculture as radicallyfalse; instead,it had to work out linksto social,political and artisticmovements and actionsthat originatedfrom within, and in oppositionto, the dominantculture.14 This was alreadythe Situationist bailiwick. In practice,however, most SB militants continuedto act as before.Most stillconsidered revolutionary politics to centeron interactionwith the working class.'5

SB-IS Liaison: "Preliminariesto Define the Unityof the RevolutionaryAgenda"

In principle,therefore, the interaction of SB and theSituationists could have been usefulfor both groups. Blanchard had long talkswith Debord in bistros,and duringendless roamingthrough the city. The main resultwas Blanchard'sparticipation in the filmingof On thePassage of a Few People througha RatherBrief Unit of Time,and a jointly-writtentract entitled "Preliminaire pour une d6finitionde l'unite du programme r6volu- tionnaire."16This documentis interestingin thedevelopment of thenotion of the spectacle as the translationinto culturalterms of the division of intellectuallabor characteristic of bureaucratic capitalism (between dirigeants and exdcutants).The dominant culture is also racked by the central contradictionof that system:

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The mechanismof culturalconstitution thus relies upon a reificationof human activities, which assures the fixing of the living and itstransmission along the model of the transmission of merchandise,and whichenforces the domination of the past over the future. Such a culturalfunctioning enters into contradiction with the constantimperative of capitalism,which is to obtainthe adherence of peopleand to constantlysolicit their creative activity within the narrow confinesin whichthey are imprisoned.In sum,the capitalist order only liveson thecondition that it ceaselesslyprojects before itself a newpast. ("Prenliminaires"? 2).17

The firstparagraph outlines a definitionof the spectacle as a systemof socialorganization rooted in a generalizedcommodity fetishism. The second connectsthis to a generalizationof the dirigeant/executantdistinction. The effectis a disempowermentof desire, crucial to the maintenance and reinforcementofthe spectacle: "Capitalist consumption imposes a movement of thereduction of desiresby theregularity with which artificial needs are satisfied,which remain needs withoutever having been desires;authentic desires are constrained to remain at the level of non-realization (or compensatedin theform of spectacles)."("Preliminaires" ? 6) "Prdliminaires..."is in twoparts. The first,"Le capitalisme:socidtd sans culture"appears to have been writtenby Debord; thesecond, "La politique rdvolutionnaireet la culture,"by Blanchard.In such a documentproduced throughdialogue, one would expectsome migrationof rhetoric.Debord's sectionreveals a tentativeassimilation of key SB concepts,particularly in thereworking of the notion of the spectacle. That of Blanchard, on theother hand, is more closed-off,and is a resumeof SB's pre-1959position.'8 The juxtaposition indicates the complementarityof the projects, and the incommensurability of their respective theoretical languages and assumptions. Debord assumed controlover thetract's layout and the expenseof its publication.After it appeared on July20,1960, it circulated around SB without arousingmuch interest.By thispoint, Blanchard had leftto do volunteer serviceas a teacherin Guinea.19The taskof liaison with Debord fellto Pierre Guillaume,a 19-year-oldprotge' of Jean-FranqoisLyotard at the Sorbonne and in SB. In 1995,he publisheda problematicaccount of his relationship withDebord. The texttries to establisha parallelbetween the revolutionary Debord ofthe 1960s and therevisionist Guillaume of the 1990s. This general projectis recapitulatedin his accountof Debord's relationshipwith SB: just as Debord became an objectof scandal and rumorupon leavingSB simply by tellingthe truth and beingpolite, so Guillaume-the-revisionistimagines

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Debord in SB

Debord joined SB sometimein the fall of 1960. He attendedregular meetingsas well as those of thejournal's editorialcommittee and thatof PouvoirOuvrier. He traveledto Belgiumin February,1961 as partof an SB "team" thatwent to surveythe situation that had resultedfrom the recent (December-January)general strike.21While in Belgium,the "team" met RobertDehoux, who became the core-or the onlymember-of "Pouvoir OuvrierBelge," which put out Alternatif,a journal that had an SB/PO line and a Situ graphicssensibility. An assemblageof politicaltraces make the tripsound quite important:Guillaume describes it as havingbeen "quite loony" and "disappointing."22 Debord made one attemptto influenceSB's generalframework. Using a reviewof Godard's A boutde soufflewritten by SB memberSebastien de Diesbach (Chatel) and publishedin SB no. 31, Debord triedto outlinea "revolutionaryjudgment of art."The limitationsof SB's engagementwith the dominantor popular cultureswere evidentfrom the start.Reviews of books and filmswere usually written by thestudents who joined SB starting in 1957(Blanchard, Chatel). The filmpieces in particularrelied on a reductive versionof the theoryof artarticulated in "Hamlet." Film was treatedas a mirror.Films that might serve the purposes of revolutionary theory provide an image of lifein comparisonto whichthat of the spectatormight seem impoverished(Come Back Africa), or revealthe impoverished nature of the everydayby performingit (A boutde souffle). Debord attackedthis relation to filmat several levels. It accepted as naturalthe division between spectator and workby usinga traditionalform of critique,which Debord definedas:

An interpretationamong others of a workover which one has no hold. One claimsthat one knows better than the author what he is tryingto say. Thisapparent pride is in facta radicalhumility, because one completely acceptsthe separateness of the specialist in question,one despairsof ever actingupon himor withhim (modalities that would obviouslyrequire thatone concern oneself with what he was explicitlytrying to do.) ("Pour un jugement"? 4)

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The role of the critictherefore places art outside his or her purview, beyondhis reachand in so doingproduces a critiquethat is littlemore than a "second-orderspectacle."

Critiqueis thatwhich writes into spectacle its state of spectatorship. [The] specializedspectator, and therefore the ideal spectator, elaborates his ideas beforea workin which he has no real participation. He rehearses,re-situates (remeten scene)his own non-intervention in the spectacle. The weakness offragmentary judgments, haphazard and largelyarbitrary, on spectacles thatdo notconcern us is ourfate in many banal discussions in private life. Butthe critique of artmakes a showof suchweakness, made exemplary. ("Pourun jugement"? 5)

The role of the criticin thiscase is like thatof a design engineerwho worksat patternsof culturalpassivity and transmitsthem to thegeneralist spectator.The criticis unlikea Fordistdirigeant in thatthis role is rehearsed in a moreor less unconsciousmanner. The critichas no positionoutside the spectacle, but possesses specialized instruments(training, ability to manipulatewords) thatenable him to articulatehis own passivity.One is invitedto participatein the spectacle-to watchand be inspiredby a film, say-but such engagementmust come with a manual. This notion of spectatorshipis built around alienation in everyday experience. The exemplary instance for thinking the phenomenon of alienation is consumption.This scenariodetermines the possibilities for thinking about how to overcomeit, and thecultural division of labor upon whichit is built. For Debord,what is requiredis a new "revolutionaryart." The elucidation ofthis idea is a centraltask for theory: "we need a revolutionarycritique of all art,not a critiqueof revolutionaryart":

The revolutionarymodification of formspresented by culturecan be nothingother than the overcoming/transcendence (dipassement) of all aspectsof aesthetic and technical instrumentalities that together constitute thespectacle as separatedfrom life. It is notin thesurface significations thatone must seek the relation of the spectacle to the problems of society, but at a deeperlevel, at thelevel of itsfunction as spectacle.("Pour un jugement ..", ? 4)

Revolutionaryart would be producedthrough the deployment of free creativeactivity in a contextwhere the separationof performer/artistand spectatorhad been brokendown. WhileDebord offersno idea ofwhat this mightentail, he is clearabout its goal, which is: "notto show people how to live,but to make themlive." Whatis curiousabout thisformulation is how itbacks away fromthe more imbricated position occupied by thecritic, who

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is socializedinto patterns of interaction with culture in ways thatonly permit theirrecapitulation. Here, Debord makes a cleardistinction between spectacle and "life,"but the latter category seems empty, like a purelyformal negation of the former. This proposal would expand the purview of the revolutionary movement,particularly with respectto the dominantculture and to the definitionof who were militantsand what militantsdid. A new kind of politicalorganization would seek "somethingpositive in modernculture, which appears in its self-liquidation,its movementof disappearance,its testimonyagainst itself" ("Pour un jugement ..." ? 2). Militantsin existing revolutionaryorganizations would have to overcomethe tendency

...tooppose all intervention incultural questions for fear of not appearing tobe serious.On thecontrary, the revolutionary movement should accord a centralplace to thecritiques of culture and everydaylife. But it is first necessarythat all visionof these facts be disabusedand notrespectful of givenmodes of communication. The very bases of existing cultural relations mustbe challengedby the critique that the revolutionary movement must bringto bear on all aspectsof human life and relations. ("Pour un jugement ..."? 8)

Debord's piece failed as an attemptto shape basic aspects of SB's revolutionary program. Three reasons might explain this: the incommensurabilityof theories;Debord's underestimationof what was impliedin a switchingof the premises of social critique;the extent to which SB was articulatedas a group throughfairly rigid internalhierarchies developed aroundMarxist analytic categories. The most visible incommensurabilityis thatDebord and SB did not elaboratethe problem of alienationin thesame way.From this divergence, however, emerged fundamentallydifferent notions of social change, revolutionand socialism.For Debord, the paradigm situation through which one imaginedthe problem was therelation of spectator to spectacle.Radical changeentails a changein the relationof spectatorto event,which in turn requiresa redefinitionof artand how it is createdand consumed.An art- event,and any politicsrooted in such,would necessarilybe performative. Debord's relativeoptimism offorded him a broadercanvas forthinking about theperformative dimension at thecore of revolutionaryart through experimentsin "drift"and/or "unitaryurbanism." Following Lefebvre, Debord used the cityas a way to generalizethe subversionof situation relationsthat Dada had explored in more restrictedand traditionalart contexts.Psychogeography was an Art-eventwithin which he triedto blur

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theline between organizers and participants,artists and spectators,simply by callingall actors"situationists." The appropriationof urban space that Debord considered central to unitary urbanism-the paradigmatic contructedsituation-was subjectivelyordered. Subjectivity was therefusal ofrepresentation, a space offreedom for Debord, as itwas forVirginia Woolf in ThreeGuineas and would be laterfor Roland Barthesin CameraLucida. Wherefor Woolf and Barthes,this position could be outlinedor hinted at,for Debord theproblem was makingthis subjectivity public and thereby politicallyuseful. Resolution of this problem ran in two directions:making and refusingto show filmslike "Sur le passage.. " and the transferinto revolutionarypolitics. Film was an unsatisfactoryoption: even in heavily mediated, self-consciousand montage-filledform, it still presentedthe viewer a reassuring(and thereforefalse) image. Translatingperformative strategiesonto revolutionarypolitics resultedin a position that placed extraordinaryemphasis on affect,and thatused the traditionalnotions of artand artiststo give significanceto isolatedacts of unauthorized activity. It also underestimatedthe regionalityof culture:once a situationist-based performativepolitics gets confinedto a particularsubculture, it can offer some people limitlesspotential for performance-doubtless full of irony and skill-while relationsin thelarger society continue unchanged. Situationistcritical theory was based on a desire forrevolution, but was boxed in by its strengths.Because it took culturalconsumption as paradigmatic-especially the division of spectator/spectacle-it foregroundedsubjective experience as shaped by the social and cognitive parametersof the dominantorder. The furthestthis type of critiquecould go is the inversionof the dominantorder. Debord mapped negationonto thesurrealist notion of shock, to arguethat the experience of demystification was fundamentalfor any revoltagainst the dominantculture. At its most consistent,this could be linked by analogyto a broader notion of social revolution.When Debord tried to assume forhimself the whole of the revolutionaryproject, these same assumptionsabout the centrality of shock as negationplaced theorigin of revolution outside existing social relations. Thisin turnset up Debord's reversionto Lukacsian transcendental Marxism in TheSociety of the Spectacle. Situ revolution would be cataclysmic,its model thereturn of themessiah. This withpredictable results on Debord's notion of theVanguard Party. Despitethe outcome of this broader juxtaposition, affinities nevertheless existed between the projects.Debord's theorizingof culturalrevolution supplemented SB's productivism.If one were to assign a theoretical

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This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 14:33:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 40 StephenHastings-King explanationto SB's awkwardnesswith respect to matterscultural, it would be the lingeringeffect of the Marxist base-superstructuredistinction. Debord's main virtuewould be in breakingit down and in forcingto the foreconsiderations about culturalcomportment left implicit in SB thinking about social crisisand itsrelation to revolutionand socialism. Thequestion of "fit" between these theoretical approaches was notraised as a functionof more mundane problems.An indicationof these can be foundin transcriptsof SB meetings.Debord was generallyquiet at these sessions.23The one exceptionwas themorning session of SB's "International Meeting"of May 22,1961.24During the morning session, which was devoted to yetanother installment of SB's interminableinternal discussion about the "workerbase," Debord began to talkas ifhe had been watchingthe same televisiontuned to a differentchannel:

Moth&:In thepresent situation and in thatwhich will present itself in the future,worker struggles will advance demands that the unions will not be able todefend because they go againsttheir existence as unions-anti- hierarchical[demands] and conflict against the organization of production.

Guy:We are unrealisticbecause, not being part of the working class, we comeup withsolutions for working with the workers as ifthe problem was resolved.The revue (SB) is good,but the organization should exist in accordwith the principles that it expresses,which is notthe case.

Mothe:How to recruitthe workers? Practically continue as in thepast whilesimply modifying certain elements of our work (...)25

Guillaume[after outlining the political situation at theGare St. Lazaire, wherehe had takena job as a mail-handler],Proposition: during vacation, thestudents can workfor a monthas mail-handlersat thePTT.

Guy:The ideas of SB aremisunderstood. I have had more than 200 students withwhom I have directeddiscussions. They want to breakeverything and succeedat nothing.We do notcarry the workers' movement. Pouvoir Ouvrieris inaccessibleand indirect.Concrete actions are what are needed. In conclusion:crisis.

[Thecell from]Lyon is forimplanting the organization in theworking- class milieu. (...)25

Debord was rehearsingthe grounds for his resignationspeech by insertingfragments of a critiquesof SB's basic modusoperandi between statementsmade by some of the group's centralactors 26 He brokeinto interventionsby people who representedthe two main axes of thegroup's history: their relation to the working class and to the traditions of

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This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 14:33:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Crisisof theMarxist Imaginary 41 revolutionaryMarxism. The lack of responseindicates the older group's internalhierarchy. Morebroadly, SB operatedwith general agreement as to thelegitimacy of theiranalytic premises and definitionsof politics.27This crossingof structureand affectwas heldtogether by the central signifiers that SB retained fromits journey through the instituted Marxist Imaginary and indicatesthe group'svulnerability should any real question arise about this underpinning. Debord's positionrepresented a basic challengeto thesehierarchies and to the notionsof politicsaround which theywere built.The resultwas that, when thecategory of "the everyday" came up in debate,it was understood thatthe everydayexperience that mattered was thatof the workingclass. Debord was expectedto submit. Debord's interruptionsleveled some basic chargesat the group. He arguedthat the organization's actual life, with its fixed internal hierarchies, did notcorrespond to SB's ideas in generalor to theimage elaborated in the textsthat had appeared on revolutionaryorganization in thejournal. This was linkedto anotherproblem of self-conception:SB did not have a clear idea ofhow theirpublications circulated. SB journalwas fine,Debord argued, but it did not address itspurported (working-class) audience. Ratherthan reachingworkers, SB presentedan image of the group thatframed and mediated an interiorimage of "the workers"to an audience of students, whose relationshipto theseimages, and to the ideas thatexpressed them, was informedby theirdesire to "breakeverything." They did not really understandSB. The group had a blind spot: it dealt with the problemof self-reflexivityonly in the abstract.The othertack developed in Debord's remarkscriticized SB's intellectualizednotion of revolutionary politics: the groupoffered no feedbackfor anyone beyond its limits, no affector sense of identificationor involvement.This combinedwith what Debord described as thewholesale misapprehension of SB's ideas, to raise thepossibility that thegroup was talkingto itself.However, he onlyproposed "directactions" thatwere themselvesabstract, and theirtiming bizarre. Debord resignedfrom SB thatnight. According to PierreGuillaume:

Then,in theend, he announcedcalmly and firmlyto Castoriadis,then to Lyotard,and then to all, his intention to resign. All attempts by Castoriadis to make him reconsiderhis decision,that evening and the nextday, remainedin vain.Castoriadis displayed all thetreasures of seduction he could:he outlinedgreat perspectives: "if only the group's bureaucratic and retrogradedefects were transformed etc. etc." Debord was listening withouta word.When Castoriadis had finished,he onlysaid "Yes...but...I don'tfeel up tothe task," and also "Itmust be veryexhausting [to build a

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revolutionaryorganization]." And Debord came to thenext meeting at le TambourcafM, gave his official resignation, paid his dues for the earlier monthand thecurrent, and said in a fewwords that he appreciatedthat thegroup existed, but that, for himself, he had no willto be involvedin it. He thankedus forall he had learned.And disappeared. (Guillaume 3)

The scene is centralfor the author: Debord was politeand did nothing provocative,which itselfcaused a scandal because it violated "the small- group ethos of departureas divorce." (Guillaume 3). Given the overall objectiveof this text, it is difficultto know if this description reflects anything accuratelyapart fromPierre Guillaume's sense of his own martyrdom.In otheraccounts, Debord is supposed to have triedto starta revoltwithin SB and/or to have led away some of the youngerstudents, only to abandon themlater.28 Blanchard mentions this as a rumorheard fromGuinea, the finalodd note of Debord's relationshipwith SB, whichhe had foundodd fromthe outset:"[H]is membership,I felt,exceeded the closenesswe had actuallyachieved: above all itseemed useless, and in fact,in our discussions Debord expressedthe opinion that each groupshould continue,in practice, to followits own path" (Blanchard2).

Retracingthe Trajectory:From Art to Politics

If SB was silentabout theIS, thingswere quite otherwisein Debord's journalL'Internationale Situationniste. Here, SB signifiedthe new revolutionary movement,and was the pivot around which Debord tried to effecthis transitionfrom artist to revolutionary, and thatof the Situationists from post- Surrealistart-gang to conspiracyon the leading edge of a vast negationof the dominantorder. The writersof IS were consistentand sympathetic observersof SB until1963-1964, when thelatter began to straybeyond the confinesof Marxism.The relationshipbetween the two groups had three phases. The firstthree issues ofIS mentionSB in thecontext of the journal's attemptto defineits own contexts.The secondphase occurredbetween 1960 and 1963.In IS numbers4 through8, SB was the embodimentof the new revolutionarymovement to which the Situationists linked and subordinated themselves.In thefirst phase, thesituationist critique of everydaylife was moreor less freestanding:in the second phase, Debord repeatedlyargued thatthe critique of the everyday was legitimatedand made coherentbecause itwas elaboratedwith reference to the more revolutionary frame of reference. Therewas also a migrationof rhetoric from SB intoIS positions,particularly in the writingsof Debord and Vaneigem. If the relation to SB can be

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This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 14:33:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Crisisof the Marxist Imaginary 43 understoodas abject,then the third period is itsinverse. Once SB began to breakout of its Marxist frame of reference, Debord considered them excluded fromthe Left and beganto both heap ridiculeon SB (Castoriadisin particular) and to take over largeparts of SB's earliertheoretical framework. Debord triedto transformhimself into the inheritor of the "good" SB. He wantedto be Castoriadis. The firstthree issues of IS can be understoodas the organization's attemptto fashionits own contextsand anticipate/shapeits reception. This strategicoperation was carriedout on two fronts:relative to theart contexts fromwhich the Situationists emerged, and relativeto thesocial space from which theyhoped to speak or act. Linkingthe two was the repertoireof properlysituationist concepts and tactics. The art referentswere Dada and Surrealism.Debord and the other writerswho contributedto theseearly issues wereinformed by theseearlier avant-gardemovements, even as theytried to distinguishthemselves from them on generationaland tacticalgrounds. In the generationalconflict, Debord's "Les souvenirs au-dessous de tout," a shortpolemic against BenjaminPeret, played an importantrole.29 Of the Surrealistswho made the slide fromart to politics,Peret alone remainedcommitted to a revolutionaryposition. He had been among the foundersof the surrealist movement who earlyon had runafoul of Breton. Like many of the Catalans who emigratedto Paris afterthe massacresat Barcelonain 1937,Peret was a fierceopponent of Stalinism. Until his death in 1959,Peret was activein (orat leastin closecontact with) Trotskyist political organizations, along with his close friendGrandizo Munis, and was inevitablyintroduced on radio or in the newspapers as the authentic revolutionaryamong the Surrealists.30 This gave himthe chance to operate in two public registers-artistand militant-thatwould oftenconverge in pieces like his 1945book Le Dishonneurdes poedtes. In it,Peret mapped Vico ontoMarx to argue (a) thatcreative activity was by itsnature revolutionary, and (b) thatpoetry was creationin an ontologicalsense. Fromthis position, Peret proceeded to attackthose Surrealist poets who joined the PCF, remainedin it and used poetryto furtherthe ends of the Party:Louis Aragon,Elsa Triolet,Paul Eluard,Tristan Tzara. The structure of the argumentis essentiallyTrotskyist. The StalinistParty represented in itselfthe corruption of the revolution and thecreative energy released through it. Real creation(real poetry)is stillpossible, but onlyif it firsttakes aim at those who evoke its language and practices in a false context.Peret's argumentagainst the Situationists was essentiallythe same. Ironically,Peret

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was also associatedwith SB throughhis friendshipwith V6ga (AlbertoMaso) and Munis. The intentand strategiesused in thispiece were the same as thoseDebord would lateruse to excludeSB fromthe Left."3 At the level of symbolicconflict, some accounthad to be settledwith Peret. Little separates Peret's notions of praxis and poetry fromthe generalizednotions of free creative activity that were to be releasedthrough the construction of situations. Debord thereforeattacked Peret on generationalgrounds: Peret was old, the Surrealismto which he was committedwas largelya cliche. The Situationistswere unknown; their worldviewnot yet hardened into formalized terms. They also claimedto go beyond Surrealism,though their efforts to do so-like Peret's--wereand remaineddeeply markedby theirorigin in artisticpractice. Situationist positionswent beyond Surrealism on twocounts, and used thesame strategy in each. Surrealistpainting was theorizedas subversivein thesense thatit disrupted the authorityof the rational subject by presenting it with "unconsciousmaterial." The viewerwould recognizethis material indirectly. To thematizethis moment of recognition, Surrealists substituted a notionof shockfor the Freudian "unheimlich." Situationists generalized this notion of "shock."This generalization presupposed a similarexpansion of the Dadaist critiqueof traditional, essentialist definitions of art developed primarilyby Duchamp and made explicitthrough his exhibitionof "ready-mades."If meaningswere context-dependentin the specificcase of an artwork,then meaningsin generalcould be so viewed. Earlysituationist practices were aimed at shiftingthese tactics out into the domain of the cityas a space withinwhich coexisted the pre-arranged spectacle and spaces of play. They conceived of themselves as art- revolutionarieswho driftedabout cities engaging in "experimental" reappropriationof urban space and operating in public to "construct situations"that would disruptthe "normal"flow of experience.This flow was thematizedas context-dependent,and therelevant contexts were objects and eventsconstituted through socially conditioned affect and expectations. Disruptionof these frames of reference through the creation of constructed situationsdemonstrated directly the contingent nature of the "normal" order. This demonstrationwas itselfframed as a negationof thatorder. Withoutthe creationof a social space fromwhich to operate, the fashioningof a tacticalrepertoire and relationto Surrealismwould have been useless. Therefore,many articles that appeared in the firstthree issue of IS are littlemore than extended lists of what Situationistswere not:not Surrealist,not Dada, notmodernist, not Arguments, not Henri Lefebvre. The

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This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 14:33:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Crisisof the Marxist Imaginary 45 combinationof referencesadduced in these articlesgives a good idea of wherethe Situs hoped to end up: in thecomplex intersection of academic, public-intellectual,political and artcontexts that had been shakenup by the passivityof theworking class and intensificationof theAlgerian War.

DiscreditingSB

SB appearsinlS no.2's surveyof Leftist organizations. Debord imagined SB as paralyzed beforethe rapidlychanging situation. He analyzed the situation:"The principallesson thatmust be drawn is thatrevolutionary thoughtmust develop a critique of everyday life," requiring a "new revolutionaryorganization" capable of locating,thinking, theorizing and empoweringnew centers/typesof social conflict.(IS 2, 10-11)SB was one of theolder organizationsincapable of measuring up to thetask:

Socialismeou Barbarie,for which the proletariat is a sortof Hidden God ofHistory, congratulates itself with closed eyes for its own disarmament, whichcan onlycorrespond to a pinnacleof class consciousness, to a too- lateliberation from the nefarious influence of parties and tradeunions. (IS 2, 10)32

This is a well-informed dig. It makes indirect referenceto the organizationaldispute that split the group during the summer of 1958,and ridiculesSB's attemptsto positionthemselves at the forefrontof the new revolutionarymovement. The relationshipchanged quite abruptlyonce Blanchardand Debord began to meetand talk.The lead articlein IS no.4,"Sur l'emploi du temps libre,"begins by takingover theposition that Daniel Blanchard(Canjeurs) had developed in his critiqueof Alain Tourainein SB no. 27. The referent was Touraine'sarticle "Situation du mouvementouvrier" in Argumentsno. 12-13,early in 1959.33The journal had invitedsociologists and political militantsto address the futureof the revolutionarymovement and the meaningof May 1958.Touraine stated that the underlying thesis shared by the sociologistswho contributedto the journal34was thatthe traditional workingclass had ceased toexist Touraine advanced an "embourgeoisement" thesis,according to which the workingclass only occupied its traditional social place while in the factories:outside, they had been assimilatedinto the bourgeoisie throughconsumption. This thesis was attackedby the politicalmilitants who publishedin theissue35 and again in SB no. 27. The thrustof Blanchard'sargument was thatMallet and Tourainewere wrong, because theirframes of reference were tied to bourgeois formalism/science.

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Theyhad no realcontact with working people; theyneeded go to a working- class quartierand look around.36 Debord's position in "Sur l'emploi..." begins as a variation on Blanchard's,and thenslides to a theoreticalposition close to thatarticulated by the American worker newspaper Correspondence,one of SB's most consistentinterlocutors through the 1950s.For Debord, the workingclass continuesto functionas a class for-itselfin a negativemanner, through its rejectionof the spectacle. Sociologists, invested by theirprofessional nature in thepositive/extant as normative,could not be expectedto recognize modes of being thatthreatened the existingorder with negation.By positinga negativeclass consciousnessthat manifested itself through the wholesale rejectionof the dominant culture, Debord was able to superimposesome of his main concerns/categories.Debord argues that,if the workerssimply rejectthe spectacle, then the problem for radical politics is "freetime, empty time."Presumably, the workers experience only culturaldead air because theyreject the patternsof acceptablesocial interaction,without fashioning culturalor political instrumentsto give contentto a differenttime. The problemwould be resolvedthrough revolutionary art:

Thereis no freedomin the usage of time without possession of the modem instrumentsfor the constructionof everydaylife. The use of such instrumentswill markthe leap froma utopianrevolutionary art to an experimentalrevolutionary art. ("Sur l'emploi..." IS No. 4)

In thisposition, one can see theoutline of what will follow. The transition froma vision of revolutionaryart to its actualizationwould resultfrom its "fulfillment"by the revolutionaryworking class. In this,Debord follows Lukacs,whose Historyand Class Consciousness had onlyappeared in French translationin 1960 (over the strenuousobjections of Lukacs himself).In strategicterms, Lukacs had the advantageof treatingthe phenomenonof alienation, and of providing an extended gloss on Marxist historical materialismthat paradoxically ended up by recastingas transcendentthe centralcategories in Marx's analysisof capitalistpolitical economy. Just as forLukacs, orthodox Marxism is an attitudetoward history that would be unchangedeven if all the thesesassociated with Marx should be proven wrong,so the workingclass is an epiphenomenonof the working-outof objectivehistorical laws.37 It is thereforea kind of eternally present deus-ex- machinathat will swing onto the stage of historywhen the hapless hero capitalismis done in by dialecticalforces. Lukacs becomes,for Debord, a fundamentaltext in his rejectionof SB's claim thatthere was a crisisof the

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MarxistImaginary, in favorof conceptualclosure. Debord uses Lukacs to combinehis theoriesabout revolutionaryart with a rigid Marxism.This was a positionin theinternal debates within SB aboutthe status of Marxism, should the positions outlined in Castoriadis's "Modern Capitalism and Revolution"prove correct.

Precedingavant-gardes have introducedthemselves by affirmingthe excellenceof their methods and principles, on the basis of which one should pass immediatejudgment on the works.TheI.S. is the firstartistic organizationto founditself on theradical inadequacy of all permitted works,the signification, the success or failure of which will only be judged withthe revolutionary practice of its time.

The patternremains the same throughIS no. 8. The lead articlefor IS no. 5, "L'aventure,"is a more extensivemapping the SB version of the revolutionaryproject onto instruments of Situationist cultural warfare. One can also see themore gradual importation of the notion of socialism as direct democracy--whichwould be reducedby May,1968 to a simplecall forthe establishmentof councils-in thejuxtaposition of a quote fromCastoriadis's texton directdemocracy, "Sur le contenu du socialisme II" and a Jorn painting."A fairsummary of the relationship appears in IS no. 6. Debord's "Instructions pour une prise d'armes" writes IS into SB's umbrella organizationfor a new,international revolutionary movement, counting itself alongwith the UK Solidaritygroup, theAmerican Correspondence collective and theItalian Proletarian Unity. A fewpages later,one findsspelled out the relationbetween Situationistand revolutionarymodes of critique.The revolutionarymovement provides a necessarycounter-perspective, relative to whicha radicalizedcritique of the everyday is possible.(IS 6, 26-27)The Situationistswere thereforethe inadequate art organization whose projects were at once subordinatedto and made coherentby the "revolutionary practiceof our time"channeled through SB. This relationshipchanged again in 1964. During 1963, SB had been consumedby an internalconflict triggered mostly by Castoriadis'sattempt to push to theirlogical conclusionthe implications of his 1959-1961text. If the workingclass reallyhad been destructuredas a class foritself, and if one plottedthis development onto the extended critique of Marxism (politics, economics,theory of history)that SB had pursued since 1946,then there reallywas notmuch reason to continueto hold ontoMarxism as a frameof referencefor thinking about revolution.Revolutionary theory would have to be rethoughtfrom the most basic assumptionsoutward. One would have to work out a core normativetheory that was sufficientlyabstract to be

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This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 14:33:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 48 StephenHastings-King applicable to social conflictsemerging from various directions. One would also need to multiplythe analyses of social conflicts: the working class could no longerprovide militants with a templatethat they could use as a sortof overlayto break a new socialmovement into its component stages. And one would have to rethinkthe whole notionof themilitant as a functionof the definitions of the political arrived at through the reconstructionof revolutionarytheory. The debateabout these issues split SB down themiddle. It revealed the affectwith which many SB membersinvested the idea of being-Marxist,and theirreliance on proletarianstruggles as a kindof magic key for understandingall social conflict.It also revealed the material limitationsfor a small group like SB, which founditself confronted with what musthave seemed like thecall fora 1:1 map ofthe social world.39 ForDebord, this was heresy.With the lead articleinlS no.9, "Maintenant L'I.S." Debord announcedthat the SituationistInternational had assumed SB's mantleas therevolutionary vanguard (despite SB's sustainedcritique of the notionof a "VanguardParty"). He coupled thiswith a campaignto throw SB out of the Left.From the outset, Debord had surveyed and resurveyedthe Parisian scene, drawing lines that separated what he thought acceptablefrom what was not.The journalArguments had longbeen Debord's preferredexample of emptyrevisionism: special ridiculewas reservedfor Edgar Morin and Kostas Axelos. "Argumentiste"was a epithethurled at formerMarxists who gave in to the lure of incoherenceonce theypassed beyond theborders of the Imaginary,patrolled by Guy Debord. In posing the alternative-onecan either"be Marxistor be revolutionary"-SB slid fromleader of the revolutionary movement into "Argumentiste" revisionism. Despite thisbanishment, Debord continuedhis close observationof the group.The IS reproduced(with near-audible glee) an editorialdisclaimer thataccompanied a reviewof Christianismeet revolution by Maximillienne Gautrat,as proofof SB's slide intodilettantism:40

Editorialnote: It is perhapsuseful to notethat, for the vast majority of Socialismeou Barbariemembers, the Kingdomof God is essentially meaningless,and also thatthey do notsee anyreason why someone who thinksotherwise should be preventedfrom self-expression.

Debord's fiercersarcasms were directedspecifically at Castoriadis:

The revolutionarycritique of all existingconditions certainly does not havea monopolyon intelligence,but does on itsuse. In thepresent crisis ofculture and ofsociety, those who do nothave this usage do not,in fact, have any discernibleintelligence. Stop talkingto us aboutintelligence

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without[correct] usage, it wouldmake us happy.Poor Heidegger! Poor Lukacs! Poor Sartre! Poor Barthes! Poor Lefebvre!Poor Cardan [Castoriadis]!Tic, tic and tic.Without the proper use ofintelligence, one has onlythe caricatural fragments of innovative ideas, those that could understandthe totality of our time and themovement that contests it as well.It is noteven clear how to plagiarizethese ideas in a harmonious way whenone encountersthem where they already are. (...)Theformer specialist of ultra-leftpolitics is dazzled to discover,along with structuralismand psychosociology, an ethnological ideology [that is] entirely new tohim: the fact that the Zuni Indians do nothave a historyseems to hima luminousexplanation for his own incapacityto acton ourhistory (go laughat thefirst 25 pages of no. 36 of Socialismeou Barbarie).The specialistsof thoughtcan onlybe thinkersof specialization.We do not pretendto have a monopolyon the dialectic that everyone is talkingabout; we onlyclaim to havea provisionalmonopoly on its usage.

The changein theintellectual scene that Debord outlineshas a complex conjecturalexplanation: the end ofthe Algerian War and thecollapse ofthe radical scene thathad developed withinthe oppositionalmovement, the returnto "normal"everyday life combined with Althusser'sintertwining of structuralismand the dialecticalto give theimpression that there was a "refreeze"in the Cold War.Debord's polemicalresponse to thissituation, and SB's rolein it,is in parta power play: he was tryingto supplantSartre as thecultural arbiter of theLeft. Thisculture-broker role was secondaryto his desire to personally salvage revolutionarypolitics. This intention was signaledby direct pronouncement. The strategyamounted to a wholesale incorporationof older SB positions into those of the IS. At the graphicslevel, IS took the formatof SB's "Le Monde en Question,"which surveyed the press forindications of conflict and/orincoherence within the dominant order ("echoes" as thegroup called them).From the contentsof SB Debord took the call forthe formationof councils.If this was thegoal-Debord's politicswere, as I have argued,rooted in a subjectivistposition-then to salvage revolutionarypolitics would be to fullyexternalize the textual collage through which he (Debord) imagined revolution.In tryingto become Castoriadis and therevolutionary vanguard, and in his effortto excludeSB fromthe Left as ifthe group had been partof the IS, Debord blurredthe organizationaldistinction between inside and outside and the individualdistinction between psyche and social world. Debord himselfwas theoppositional movement: he was whatthe bourgeois orderfeared. He was thespecter haunting Europe. This setsup a readingof his 1967book, Societyof the Spectacle, as Debord's attemptto stage,through collage,his subjectiveorganization of the textualmaterial that circulated withinthe MarxistImaginary. The book is Debord's refusalof the crisisof

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This content downloaded from 132.235.61.22 on Sat, 21 Sep 2013 14:33:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 50 StephenHastings-King theImaginary through a retreatinto narcissism and a positingof traditional revolutionaryMarxism as transcendental.The recourseto the authorized sources of theorywas a traditionalheretical move withinthis instituted Imaginary,which presupposed it stilloperational and capable of renewal. By fashioningthis text-collage, Debord triesto map his voice onto thatof the RevolutionaryProphet, and in so doing,to mime thatrole. Withthis, Debordbegan his period of "megalomaniac" ambition to be the revolutionary vanguard,which he would laterattribute to the Situationistsas a group, and whichwas thebasis, in 1972, forhis dissolvingthe organization.41

Conclusion

Socialismeou Barbarieplayed a fundamentalrole in Debord's evolution fromartist to revolutionaryto defenderof Marxistorthodoxy from heresy. Thisrelationship unfolded at twolevels: through direct personal relationship and throughthe positions SB occupiedin thepages of theIS. We have seen thepoints of compatibility and ofdissonance between the two groups,and how Debord's and SB's notionsof alienationas a conflictbetween analytic premisesled to verydifferent notions of revolution and socialism.Debord's consumption-basedradicalism is similarto argumentsmade by people in culturalstudies today. In mappingthe relationship of SB to IS ontoa broader crisisof the Marxist Imaginary, I have attemptedto show how Debordbecame a monitorof conceptual closure,unable and unwilling to consider the implicationsof Fordism and Stalinismin thedestruction of thetraditional workers'movement. When SB disintegratedover the problemsraised by anyeffort to cross out of the Marxist Imaginary, Debord reacted by consigning SB to thetrash-heap of "Argumentisme" and by makingSB categoriesover intoa transcendenttheory of history in theimage of Lukacs. In the1975 film versionof Society of the Spectacle, Debord cut up thetext and his own narrative voiceand interspersedfootage of battles. He couldonly deal withthe collapse of theImaginary as a strategicdefeat. StanfordUniversity

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NOTES

1. Thereis an extensivebibliography on theSituationists and Guy Debord.Berreby's Documentsis fullof reproductionsof material(paintings, installations, journals, ephemera)produced by theLettristes in theirvarious combinations and guises.The standardEnglish-language references include Marcus, 1989, which builds on earlier worklike Hebdige, 1995 in itslinkage of Situationist practices to punk.See also Sadie Plant,1992. This article relies primarily on thejournal L'Internationale Situationniste and on otherworks by Debordincluding Oeuvres Cinimatographiques Completes 1952-1978, Commentairessurla Societddu Spectacle,Pandgyrique, Society of the Spectacle. 2. TheSituationiste Internationale was involvedin severaldifferent political contexts and itsreception was differentin each ofthem: it was notexclusively Parisian group, nor synonymouswith Guy Debord. 3. See "Interviewwith Henri Lefebvre" on NOT BORED!website. The bibliographyon Surrealistpolitics in the1920s-1930s is extensive:see Thirion,1975. 4. The organizationwas nota unitarybloc ofpeople: one of themain divisions among themwas thebreak with art. From Asger Jorn to Constantto the"evil Nashites," most who leftdid so becausethey wanted to continueproducing some kind of art. Debord abandonedfilmmaking from 1961 to 1975. 5. Thanksto David AmesCurtis for this formulation. 6. Foran explanationof this term, see myIntroduction to Hastings-King1998. 7. The termsrepresentation, intention and affectare taken from Castoriadis, Philosophy, 33- 46. 8. See thesurvey article by PierreBrou6 in Arguments.Sartre's "Le fant6mede Staline" appearedin theJanuary, 1957 issue of Les Temps Modernes and arguedthat Poland, not Hungary,revealed the "essentialnature" of the crisistriggered by the XXthParty Congressbecause Poland, and Gomulkismin particular,represented the possibility of reformfrom within the Party. Sartre's political position of the time would not allow for anyradical challenge to thenotion of the Party itself, which was one dimensionof SB's readingof the HungarianRevolt. Much ink was spentin the "progressiste"press (L'Express,France Observateur, Les Temps Modernes) during 1957-1958 searching for the reformistfactions within the PCF. 9. Castoriadis'snotion that SB simply "followed the bureaucratic string" is citedin Howard 1988. 10. Moth6was thepseudonym for Jacques Gautrat, a machinistat theRenault factory at Billancourt,an importantwriter for SB, and of enormoussymbolic and political importancefor the group in his role as TheWorker. See my "Reading Moth"," in Hastings- King1998. 11.These tensions are explored at lengthin Hastings-King,1998, ch. 2-5. 12. Blanchard,forthcoming. Unpaginated email printout, cited with permission. In SB, Blanchardacted and wroteunder the pseudonym Canjuers, which was a placenot far fromwhere he grewup. He was partof SB from1957 until its dissolution in 1966and struggledto come to terms with what SB meantwhen he was init and afterward.Of the SB membersI interviewedin 1991-1992,he was probablythe most deeply affected by the group'sdissolution. Blanchard's article is interestingboth for its personaldetail aboutboth himself and Debord and for what the author has constructed between himself inthe present and his past. The sense of distance is indicatedby the persistent underwater imagery,which reads as thoughthe whole scene were now somekind of drowned city orAtlantis, or as ifthe clandestine world of revolutionary politics were like the deepest trenchesof the ocean where the intense water pressures enable bizarre creates to survive thatcould not do so undermore normal circumstances. The scene is also regardedwith

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greatfondness, and rememberedwith precision. ("The strangeness was notuncanny, butrather attractive, incredibly enticing.") 13. This texthas a complexgenealogy. The finalversion is publishedin Englishin Castoriadis,1988, vol. 2. 14. Justas SB would tryto do withthe American Civil Rights and studentmovements duringthe early 1960s. 15.When Castoriadis presented the implications of his position explicitly to thegroup in 1963,this precipitated the breakdown of SB as a group.See "Pour une nouvelle orientation"and "R6commencerla revolution."The formercirculated internally; the latterwas publishedin SB no. 35,1-36. Both are translated in Castoriadis,vol. 3, 1993.I willreturn to thispoint below. 16.Originally published in an expensiveand striking-looking version designed by Debord inJuly, 1960. Its publication was announcedin IS no.5 (decembre,1960) p. 11.Reprinted by "Notes et Critiques,"a grouploosely associated with SB in Bordeauxas "Le capitalisme:societe sans culture,"along withan unpublished2/61 text"Pour un jugementrevolutionnaire de l'art" (an extendedcritique on a reviewof Godard's A bout desouffle that appeared in SB no. 31. It appearswith a noteas to origin.)My thanksto Daniel Blanchardfor a copyof theoriginal tract, and to Alain Guillerm(by way of David AmesCurtis) for the "Notes et Critiques"version. 17.The translationof this quote and thefollowing are mine. 18. Blanchardwas not alone in nottaking Castoriadis's arguments immediately as the basis forhis politicsat thistime. In 1963,he sidedwith Castoriadis in thesplit with Lyotard,Souyri and Maso overthe centrality of Marxism to revolutionarytheory, and stayedin SB untilthe end. 19.As an alternativeto mandatorymilitary service, which would have meant Algeria. 20.Pierre Guillaume, "Debord" on NOT BORED!website. Translation ofan articleoriginally publishedin Guillaume'sjournal La VieilleTaupe no. 1 (Spring1995). He provides informationon Debord'sresignation from SB not available from other sources. However, hisgloss on theinformation is highly particular, conditioned by his analysis of his own experience.It shouldbe notedthat any use Guillaume'stext is complicatedby his revisionism(denial of the Holocaust). He turnshis relationship to Debordto its service: he appropriatesthe "public enemy number one" personaand uses it to legitimatehis politics,and spendsmuch of the latter part of the article intimating that at least some of theold Situationistsapprove of this appropriation, as if to say that such approval makes Guillaumea legitimateheir to Debord. 21. Summaryof Castoriadis,"Rapport d'activite de l'organisation"in Socialismeou Barbarie,Bulletin Intdrieur no. 25 (avril-mai,1961), 16. The reportnotes two new organizations,in Brusselsand Liege.BI no.24 containsa verybrief note of who went to Belgium.Guillaume stresses the importance that Debord's connection to Raoul Vaneigem playedin providingSB withinformation. 22. See Guillaume,"Debord" and Alternatiffrom Castoriadis papers, SB 16:10. 23. In theinternal documents that I have gatheredfrom SB, Debordonly speaks two or threetimes, most of them at the"Nationale Meeting" just before he resigned. 24. "A bigname for a littlething" according to Guillaume. 25. BI no. 25,12. See Hastings-King,1998 Ch. 4 and 5. Guyis Debord. 26. On Moth6see note8. PhilippeGuillaume was CyrilleRousseau de Beauplan,who joinedwhile the group was stillan oppositionaltendency in thePCI. A veteranmilitant witha complexfamily history, Guillaume had decidedafter May 1958 to quit his post as an economistat theOECD and to takefactory jobs in orderto be "withthe workers." Forthese and otherreasons, he was consideredby manyto be thegroup's heart and conscience

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27. On thisand otherquestions of definition with respect to Marxism,see "Marxismand RevolutionaryTheory" Part I, in Castoriadis1998, and, especially, "On theQuestion of theHistory of the Workers' Movement," in Castoriadis1993, 181ff. 28. Thisfrom David AmesCurtis as a paraphraseof Philippe Gottraux. 29. Pdretwrote a dismissivearticle in thesmall surrealist periodical Bief that prompted an equallydismissive response. He was in failinghealth by thispoint, but his symbolic positionwas stillcentral. Debord's "Les souvenirsau-dessous de tout"is in IS no.2,3- 4 (1997,34-35). 30. Forinterviews see P ret,1995, vol. 7,206-271. 31. It is interestingin thisregard to note thatwhen Peretdied, SB published"Le dishonneur"with an introductionby Jean-Jacques Lebel. 32. Thereference is to theCastoriadis-Lefort/ILO split over the question of organization in September1958. 33. See thesection, "Qu'est-ce que la classeouvrie're franqaise?" in Argumentsno. 12-13 (Janvier-Mars,1959). Complete re-edition of thejournal was done by Privatin 1983 underthe supervision of Olivier Corpet and MariateresaPadova. Touraine's "Situation de la classeouvriere" is on pages5-15. 34. Thesewere Serge Mallet and MichelCrozier. 35. IncludingSB's DanielMoth6 and thesyndicalist Michel Collinet. 36. See Canjuers,P., "Sociologie fiction pour gauche fiction (a proposde SergeMallet)" in SB no.27(avril-mai, 1959) pp. 13-32and Delvaux, J.: "Les classes sociales et M. Touraine," 33-52. 37. See "Whatis OrthodoxMarxism" and "Class Consciousness"in Lukacs,1968. 38. See bottomof IS no. 5, 47. 39. See VWgaand Lyotardresponses to CC. 40.Jacques, Maximillienne: review of Gerbe, J: Christianisme etrivolution in SB 36 p.84. 41. "L'IntemationaleSituationniste est constitute nominalement, mais cela ne signifierien que le debutd'une tentative pour construire au-dela de la d6composition,dans laquelle noussommes entierement compris, comme tout le monde[...]. Ce n'estpas grand-chose d'etreactuel: on n'estque plus ou moinsd6compose. La nouveaut6est maintenant entierementdependante d'un saut a un niveau superieur[...].Nos ambitionssont nettementmegalomanes, mais peut- tre pas misurablesaux criteresdominants de la reussite."From "Encore un effortsi vousvoulez tresituationnistes-L'I.S. dans et contre la d6composition"inPotlach 29 (November5,1957), quoted in "En guise d'introduction" to the1997 re-edition of IS., ix. WORKSCITED

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-. Politicaland Social Writings.Vols. 1-3.Trans. David Ames Curtis.Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, 1988-93. . TheImaginary Institution ofSociety. Trans. Kathleen Blamey. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998. Debord,Guy. Oeuvres Cinematographiques Completes, 1952-78. Paris: Champs Libre, 1978. Commentairessurla Socidtgdu Spectacle.Paris: Ed. GerardLebovici, 1988. Panegyrique.Paris: Ed. GerardLebovici, 1989. . Societyof the Spectacle. New York:Zone Books,1994. Guillaume, Pierre. "Debord" on NOT BORED! website: www.thorn.net/~rose/ guillaume.html Hastings-King,Stephen, Fordism and the Marxist Revolutionary Project. Ph.D. dissertation, CornellUniversity, 1998. Hebdige,Dick. Subculture.London:Routledge, 1997. Lefebvre,Henri, with Michelle Ross. "Interview with Henri Lefebvre" on NOT BORED! website,www.thorn.net/~rose/lefebvre.html Lukacs,Georg. History and Class Consciousness. Cambridge: MIT, 1971. Marcus,Greil: Lipstick Traces. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1989. Peret,Benjamin. Oeuvres Completes. Vol 7. Paris:Les Amisde BenjaminPeret, 1995. Plant,Sadie. TheMost Radical Gesture. London: Routledge, 1992. Socialismeou Barbarieno. 1-40(1948-1966). Woolf,Virginia. Three Guineas. New York:Harcourt, 1966.

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