How the Situationist International became what it was Anthony Paul Hayes A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University. April, 2017 © Copyright by Anthony Paul Hayes, 2017 All Rights Reserved 1 2 Declaration I, Anthony Paul Hayes, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. 3 4 Acknowledgements To list all the influences of a work and a life would be exhausting and perhaps redundant. Nonetheless, it is the somewhat mysterious nature of these relations that constitute us from moment to moment, whether we judge such relations as high or low, sublime or ridiculous. Such is the real substance of any “work” declared finished. To the many people who have influenced my worldview over the years, and this work in particular, I owe a debt of which this work itself can be considered a (partial) down payment. First, I would like to thank my supervisor, Fiona Jenkins, for sticking by me and this project over the years — in particular her advice and encouragement that helped bring this work to a coherent conclusion. Thanks to Rick Kuhn and Maria Hynes for their strategic enthusiasm regarding the possibility of finishing. Thanks to Alastair Hemmens, for your help with an earlier draft, and your considerable insight into the Situationists — their strengths as much as their limits, and their continuing significance for the present. Thanks to Tom Bunyard for your work on Debord, the occasional email chat and access to your manuscripts. And a big thank you to Gerald Keaney for work on an earlier draft of this thesis, for your singular example of revolutionary practice, and for your friendship and your wealth of insights, DIY profundity and other assorted shenanigans over the years. Thanks also to the participants and makers of some of the reading groups that I was involved in during the time of this project: the Phenomenology of Spirit reading group in 2010, the Early Marx and Capital reading groups of 2011 and 2012; and The Society of the Spectacle reading group carried out mostly in pubs and cafes over 2013-2014. Of these comrades I would like to single out Nicolas Lema and Sean Munro for the many, many conversations and arguments that we had over the early years of the twenty tens — and the ongoing effects of these ruminations. To all my friends, comrades and various gangs over the years, thank you for your support, interest and care. And your disinterest, when it was required. A special thanks to my brother, Martin, for having that old copy of the Situationist International Anthology on his shelf, all those years ago (though maybe I should curse you…). Finally, I must thank the two people who have born the burden of this thesis more than most, and without whom I would never have finished. To Max, one of the guiding lights of my life. And to Miranda, my other beacon, without whom I would have long ago drifted off course and been lost. In closing these acknowledgements, I note that I have been directed to thank the Australian government for the provision of an Australian Postgraduate Award scholarship. Indeed, without this grant the work of my research and thesis would have been much more difficult and perhaps not even possible, at least under present conditions. However, and considering the anti-capitalist and anti-statist tenor of much of my research and work, I am loath to simply thank the government without noting my opposition to much of its policy, and what I consider its irreducibly capitalist and imperialistic nature. During the time of my thesis the Australian government was engaged in organising military adventures overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as at home — for instance the militarised “intervention” against indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, and the increasingly aggressive and sometimes murderous policy of so- called border “protection”. For these reasons (amongst others) it would be churlish of me to acknowledge the help of the Australian government, via the redistribution of some of the wealth extracted from us through the tax system, without mentioning those aspects of government policy, also carried out in our name, that I find reprehensible and beyond defence. This thesis is dedicated to my mother, Pamela Anne Tucker Hayes, who rightly refuses to die. 5 6 Abstract The Situationist International (1957-1972) was a small group of communist revolutionaries, originally organised out of the West European artistic avant-garde of the 1950s. The focus of my thesis is to explain how the Situationist International (SI) became a group able to exert a considerable influence on the ultra-left criticism that emerged during and in the wake of the May movement in France in 1968. My wager is that the pivotal period of the group is to be found between 1960 and 1963, a period marked by the split of 1962. Often this is described as the transition of the group from being more concerned with art to being more concerned with politics, but as I will argue this definitional shorthand elides the significance of the Situationist critique of art, philosophy and politics. The two axes of my thesis are as follows. First, that the significant minority in the group which carried out the break of 1962, identified a homology between the earlier Situationist critique of art — embodied in the Situationist ‘hypothesis of the construction of situations’ — and Marx’s critique and supersession of the radical milieu of philosophy from which he emerged in the mid- 1840s. This homology was summarised in the expression of the Situationist project as the ‘supersession of art’ (dépassement de l’art). Secondly, this homology was practically embodied in the resolution of the debates over the role of art in the elaboration of the Situationist hypothesis, which had been ongoing since 1957. However, it was the SI’s encounter with the ultra-left group Socialisme ou Barbarie that would prove decisive. Via Guy Debord’s membership, the group was exposed to both the idea of a more general revolutionary criticism, but also ultimately what was identified as the insufficiently criticised ‘political militancy’ of this group. Indeed, in the ‘political alienation’ found in Socialisme ou Barbarie, a further homology was established between the alienation of the political and artistic avant-gardes. This identity would prove crucial to the further elaboration of the concept of ‘spectacle’. By way of an examination of the peculiar and enigmatic ‘Hamburg Theses’ of 1961, and the relationship between these ‘Theses’ and the Situationist criticism of art and politics worked out over the first five years of the group, I will argue that the break in 1962 should be conceived as one against politics as much as art (rather than just the latter, as it is more often represented). Additionally, I will outline how the SI, through the paradoxical reassertion of their artistic origins, attempted to synthesise their criticism of art with the recovery of the work of Marx beyond its mutilation as Marxism. Indeed, it was the synthesis of these critiques that enabled the considerable development of the concept of ‘spectacle’, opening the way to the unique influence the SI exerted in the re-emergence of a revolutionary movement at the end of the 1960s. 7 8 Contents Introduction: Gambling on the passage of time ................................................................................ 13 An outline of the argument ........................................................................................................... 20 A question of methodology and focus .......................................................................................... 31 A summary of the chapters ........................................................................................................... 35 Chapter one: Now, the SI must realise philosophy ........................................................................... 41 How not to misunderstand the ‘Hamburg Theses’ ........................................................................ 50 Combatants caught between two worlds ....................................................................................... 54 From ‘pre-situationist’ activity to art as ‘anti-situationist’ ........................................................... 56 On the form of the Hamburg Theses ............................................................................................. 65 The ‘Hamburg Theses’ as content and as supersession ................................................................ 69 What remains of the ‘Hamburg Theses’ ....................................................................................... 79 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 80 Chapter two: Poetry necessarily without poems ............................................................................... 83 The impasse of Dada and Surrealism ............................................................................................ 86 The decomposition of culture ....................................................................................................... 91 The “détournement of prefabricated aesthetic elements” ........................................................... 100 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................