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A Genealogy and Critique of Guy Debord's Theory of Spectacle

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A Genealogy and Critique of Guy Debord's Theory of Spectacle A Genealogy and Critique of Guy Debord's Theory of Spectacle Tom Bunyard PhD Thesis, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London 1 The work presented in this thesis is the candidates own. Signed:...................... Date:.......................... 2 Abstract This thesis addresses Guy Debord's theory of spectacle through its primary philosophical and theoretical influences. Through doing so it highlights the importance of his largely overlooked concerns with time and history, and interprets the theory on that basis. The theory of spectacle is shown to be not simply a critique of the mass media, as is often assumed, but rather an account of a relationship with history; or more specifically, an alienated relation to the construction of history. This approach thus offers a means of addressing Debord’s Hegelian Marxism. The thesis connects the latter to Debord’s interests in strategy, chance and play by way of its existential elements, and uses these themes to investigate his own and the Situationist International’s (S.I.) concerns with praxis, political action and organisation. Addressing Debord and the S.I.’s work in this way also highlights the shortcomings of the theory of spectacle. The theory is based upon the separation of an acting subject from his or her own actions, and in viewing capitalist society under this rubric it tends towards replacing Marx's presentation of capital as an antagonistic social relation with an abstract opposition between an alienated consciousness and a homogenised world. Yet whilst the theory itself may be problematic, the conceptions of time, history and subjectivity that inform it may be of greater interest. Drawing attention to Debord's claims that theories should be understood as strategic interventions, and also to the S.I.'s calls for their own supersession, the thesis uses its observations on the nature of Debord's Hegelian Marxism to cast the theory of spectacle as a particular moment within a broader notion of historical agency. It thus contends that Debord's work can be seen to imply a model of collective political will, and offers initial suggestions as to how that interpretation might be developed. 3 Contents Acknowledgements…………………………………………..……………5 Preface…………………………………………………………..…………6 Introduction: Debord, Time and History…………………….………...13 Part One: Art and Negativity, 1952-1961 – Introduction……………..39 Chapter One: Negativity and the End of History……………………...46 Chapter Two: 'We are Artists only insofar as we are No Longer Artists'……………………………………………………………………63 Chapter Three: The Everyday and the Absolute……...……………....78 Conclusion to Part One………………………………………………….95 Part Two: Capital and Spectacle, 1962-1975 – Introduction…...…...104 Chapter Four: The Spectacle...……………………………..................111 Chapter Five: Fetish and Appearance………………………………...121 Chapter Six: Marxism and Spectacle…………………………………139 Conclusion to Part Two……...………………………………………...160 Postscript: May 1968 and the End of the S.I…………………………166 Part Three: 'The Theory of Historical Action', 1976-1994 – Introduction…………………………………………………………….169 Chapter Seven: The Integrated Spectacle ……………………………176 Chapter Eight: Strategy and Subjectivity…………………………….190 Chapter Nine: Freedom and Praxis…………………………………...204 Conclusion to Part Three………………………………………………218 Conclusion………………………………………………………………220 Bibliography…………………………………………………………….232 4 Acknowledgements This project was conducted at the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths under the supervision of Professor John Hutnyk, whose help and guidance were of enormous assistance throughout. Thanks are also due to all those who helped me to discuss and develop ideas over the last few years, whether in seminars, reading groups or the broader research environment in and around Goldsmiths. I owe much in this regard to Andy Christodoulou, Nick Grey, Mark Fisher, Jeff Kinkle, Rob Lucas, Sam Meaden, Ben Noys and Alberto Toscano. I’m very grateful to John McHale, who generously directed me towards a number of useful texts and helped me trace some missing references, and to Fiona Elvines, Alison Hulme and Amanda Johansson for their helpful comments on early drafts of this thesis. M.Beatrice Fazi offered excellent advice as to how to produce a final version, and I’m greatly indebted to her for the input and support that she provided during the course of this project. I should also thank Neil Griffiths and Anna Thomas for helping me work part time and for making that work feel less like a chore. Most importantly I should thank my parents and grandparents, without whose help this would not have been possible. 5 Preface In 1979, seven years after the Situationist International's (S.I.) dissolution, Guy Debord claimed that “the S.I. is like radioactivity: one speaks little of it, but one detects traces of it almost everywhere, and it lasts a long time.”1 Today however one might counter that the group and its practices are in fact spoken of a great deal, and perhaps to the detriment of their corruptive aspirations. The S.I.’s anti-art stance has been canonised into the pantheon of art history, 'psychogeography' and détournement have become tropes of popular culture, and Situationist material is now a staple of both the bookshop and the lecture hall. This popularity has led to a level of official acceptance that may once have seemed surprising: in 1966 the judge presiding over the closure of Strasbourg University's student union declared that Situationist ideas were “eminently noxious”, and held that their “diffusion in both student circles and among the general public” constituted a genuine “threat”;2 today, the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs actively supports the dissemination of Situationist texts as a means of promoting French culture overseas,3 and the French State has recently gone so far as to purchase Debord’s archives for the nation. This acquisition, which prevented the collection’s sale and relocation to Yale University, prompted Sarkozy’s minister of culture to describe Debord as a “great French intellectual”,4 and led the President of the National Library of France to deem his work a “national treasure”.5 The disparity between the group’s past notoriety and their contemporary endorsement is thus sharp, and perhaps raises questions pertaining to their theoretical legacy: it may, for example, lead the uncharitable to ask whether this material was ever quite as 'noxious' as was once supposed; conversely, one might also be led to consider whether the predominant interpretations of Debord and the S.I.’s oeuvre have omitted the latter’s purportedly ‘radioactive’ elements.6 This thesis will attempt to offer responses to such questions by focussing on Debord’s theory of ‘spectacle’, which is perhaps the most prominent and celebrated aspect of the Situationist corpus. My contention will be that its critique of capital's 1 Debord 1979 2 Quoted in Dark Star 2001, p.9 3 The most recent English translation of The Real Split in the International was “supported by the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs” and the Institut Français du Royaume Uni (S.I. 2003, p.v). 4 Gallix 2009 5 Rousell 2009 6 See Clark and Nicholson-Smith 2004 for a related critique of the S.I.’s incorporation into the canon of art history. 6 appearances is itself rooted within those appearances,7 and that this has perhaps facilitated its reduction – as predicted by its own author in 1967 – to the status of “just another empty formula of sociologico-political rhetoric”.8 However, I'll also show that a close and critical analysis of the theory can yield a set of ideas and themes that remain largely overlooked within the existing literature. Not only do these ideas serve to illuminate Debord’s work as a whole: in addition, I’ll suggest that they may be of greater contemporary interest than the theory of spectacle itself. In this latter respect, and in keeping with the essentially Hegelian content of my subject matter, I've tried to adopt the maxim that “the refutation” should “properly consist in the further development of the principle”.9 To that end, and as far as is possible, the thesis will take Debord and the S.I. on their own terms: their work will be read through the philosophical and theoretical influences that inform it, and through indicating these lines of development and influence I’ll attempt to provide a detailed reading able to identify the theory’s shortcomings and contradictions. I will not therefore be taking the S.I.'s work as a discrete, given corpus that can be measured against more recent theories of deconstruction, assemblage, event, etc. (although connections to contemporary debates will be signalled where relevant); instead, I’ll try to show the ways in which aspects of this material might be seen to point beyond their own extant formulations. The primary elements of Debord's oeuvre that I'll attempt to draw out in this respect are his Hegelian Marxist views on praxis, and I'll place particular emphasis on the connections between the latter and his interests in temporality and strategic agency. Admittedly, Debord's interest in strategy has received greater acknowledgement since the re-release of his Game of War (2006; 2007 in English), but I would argue that this interest remains largely unexplored. I would also suggest that this is due to a broader failure to address the primarily Hegelian notions of time, subjectivity and history that structure Debord’s work. These latter concerns have little to no place within what seems at times to be the popular understanding of the theory of spectacle, which is frequently depicted as a simple diatribe about society's saturation with visual media. It’s thus pertinent to recall that in The Society of the Spectacle itself (1967) Debord describes the “mass media” as the spectacle's “most stultifyingly superficial manifestation”,10 and 7 My claims are close to those of Dauvé here, according to whom Debord “made a study of the profound, through and by means of the superficial appearance” (Dauvé 1979).
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