Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle" 40 years later
NOT BORED! - 01.11.2007 19:31
Reiteration and extension of Guy Debord's theory of the spectacle, forty years after its first expression.
The Society of the Virtual Spectacle
"The destiny of the theory of the spectacle belongs to those (...)
who will individually and collectively retrieve the ideas of
anti-hierarchy, coherence [and] global contestation." -- Jean-Francois
Martos.[1]
"May we succeed in lending a hand to those who in our dear native
land are called upon to speak with authority on these matters, that we
may be their guide into this field of inquiry, and excite them to make
a candid examination of the subject." -- Carl von Clausewitz.[2]
Part One
To begin at the roots: capitalism cannot be depended on to
"correct" its own defects or fix the damage and destruction it has
caused, nor can it be depended upon to collapse, on its own, due to
its own internal contradictions and then leave a tabula rasa
upon which one could build a new and truly human society. Capitalism
cannot be fixed by piecemeal reforms, nor can revolution "fix"
capitalism if that revolution is limited to the political, economic,
technological, moral or indeed any particular sector. Only
social revolution, which is total revolution, can both save
humanity from capitalism's evils (war, pollution, poverty, ignorance
and intolerance) and instaurate the kind of society in which humanity
can truly flourish (peaceful co-existence, physical and mental health,
self-fulfillment and pleasure).
Social revolutionaries must have a "working theory" of capitalist
society: that is to say, what it really is, how it continues to exist
despite its nearly fatal defects, and how it defends itself against
both reformist and revolutionary actions. Here we distinguish
ourselves from all those who do not believe that a theory of any kind
is necessary, who believe that theory only keeps revolutionaries from
acting, that "radical" action is the only theory that is needed, etc.,
and who form "organizations," and "federations" among these
"organizations," most of which have programmatic statements that
declare that their members are against a list of bad things
(abstractions such as militarism, religious fundamentalism,
patriarchy, racism, sexism, et al) and that they are in favor of a
list of good things (abstractions such as self-organization, voluntary
association, mutual aid, freedom, justice, et al).
We believe that only theory allows our actions to be strategic
rather than tactical, to be effective rather than ineffective, to be
precise rather than approximate. "The first business of every theory
is to clear up conceptions and ideas which have been jumbled together,
and, we may say, entangled and confused; and only when a right
understanding is established, as to names and conceptions, can we hope
to progress with clearness and facility, and be certain that author
and reader will always see things from the same point of view"
(Clausewitz, On War). But we have no illusions about the
completeness of theory. As Clausewitz notes, "nothing more than a
limited theory can be obtained, which only suits circumstances such as
they are presented in history. But this incompleteness is unavoidable,
because in any case theory must either have deduced from, or have
compared with, history what it advances with respect to things.
Besides, this incompleteness in every case is more theoretical than
real" (On War).
There are, of course, many theories of "modern" society:
psychoanalytic (institutions are created by repressive sublimation);
sociological (power is held by large groups, small elites or complex
networks); etc. But none of these theories were conceived or
elaborated so as to overthrow "modern" society. Many were in fact
intended to justify that society's existence. As a result, they are
not perceived as scandalous or unacceptable to it; such perceptions
are among the hallmarks of a truly revolutionary theory.
There are at least two major sources of truly revolutionary theory:
Marxism and anarchism. Both try to explain who (or what) holds power
in society, and why or how they hold it: for the Marxists, the
bourgeoisie holds power because it owns and controls the means of
production; for the anarchists, the State holds power due to its
monopoly over coercive force (the military and the police). Each
theory is revolutionary because it envisions an end to this kind of
society and its replacement by another, truly humane one: Marxism
envisions proletarian revolution, which abolishes all class power; and
anarchism envisions a political revolution after which voluntary
association will replace coercion.
But both Marxism and anarchism have degenerated a great deal over
the course of the last century. Some Marxists now prefer to call
themselves "libertarian communists" and have completely abandoned the
idea of revolution: "Our primary focus," say the people who run libcom.org, "is always on how best
to act in the here and now to better our circumstances and protect the
planet." Other Marxists (such as those who produce the journal called
Aufheben) retain the
idea and goal of revolution, but -- despite their announced intention
to move with the times -- remain trapped in the worst aspects of
"classical" Marxist theory, in particular, a fetishism of the
proletariat and "proletarian theory." There are still handfuls of
Leninist, Trotskyist and Maoist sects in existence; not surprisingly,
all of them are hierarchically organized, rigid and terribly dull.
Though some of these groups are "behind" several large organizations
(including the A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition), these "front groups" are not
explicitly revolutionary and indeed simply channel revolutionary
impulses back into the electoral system (typically, support for the
Democratic Party).[3]
There are many small contemporary groups and movements that
subscribe to "anarchism" and "anti-authoritarianism," but few of them
are sources (or even readers) of revolutionary theory; mostly they
eschew theory in favor of "radical" or "direct" action. For too many
of them, "action" is taken against particular aspects of capitalist
society: police brutality, the treatment of animals, biotechnology,
racism, pollution, environmental degradation, the war on drugs, sexual
violence against women, homophobia, neo-liberalism, etc etc. Very
rarely is "action" taken against capitalist society or the State as a
whole. The very idea of such action seems utopian, millenarian and
even impossible. And, of course, some of these "anarchists" aren't
anarchists at all, but Leftists or "citizenists" who have simply
adopted the label because, in the aftermath of the Seattle 1999 riots,
it became fashionable and won several people TV coverage and book
contracts.[4]
There are exceptions: the "insurrectionary" anarchists, the green
anarchists, the "primitivists," those who describe themselves as
anti-technology and anti-civilization, etc. (there can be a great deal
of overlap between these various currents of thought). Most of these
folks certainly speak about revolution, but -- because they have come
after a wave of extremism exemplified by the Situationist
International (SI), but do not want to follow in its "Marxist"
footsteps -- they feel themselves compelled to be even more extreme
than those extremists. And so, while Marx and Engels were opposed to
the bourgeoisie and capital's domination of labor, and while the
Situationist International was opposed to work and the spectacle's
domination of everyday life, the revolutionary anarchists declare
themselves to be against virtually everything: "technology,"
industrial society, "progress," rationality, and civilization itself.
Some of these hyper-extremists are even against revolution, because --
to them -- it is the ultimate manifestation of the ideology of
progress.
At least in France, there is a great deal of friction between the
anti-progress ("technophobic") anarchists and the
situationist-inspired revolutionaries. (There is also some conflict
between these two currents in America: see issue #24 of Green
Anarchy,[5] as well
as the exchange between John Filiss
and Ken
Knabb.) At issue in this conflict is determining the fundamental
nature of the enemy: is it industrial society or is it capitalism?
Which contains the toxic element: industrial production or the
commodity? Because he was a member of the SI, Rene Riesel's opinion on
these questions carries some weight, at least in France. In his
"Preface" to On the progress of domestication (2000), Riesel
claims that, among "the most backwards scoffers at anti-progressivist
positions" are those who claim "the heritage and exclusive use that no
one disputes them, this or that radical doxa" (the "orthodoxy"
of situationist theory). Riesel refers to the "arguments to which
diverse living fossils, issued from situationism [sic] or the
ultra-Left, have recourse to refute the idea that one can find more
advantage in designating this society as industrial society. They find
it sufficient to continue to speak of capitalist society, of
capitalized society, of the society of the spectacle." These "wax
figures," Riesel says, "each being free to communicate as he
understands," "have indeed found their adequate form: they
expect their public on the Internet, the great libertarian media in
which capital works hard to spoil the creativity of the masses."
Riesel has been answered, among others, by Les Amis de Nemesis: "But
if one conserves a minimal amount of seriousness, one must admit that
those who are opposed to the notion of 'industrial society' never
defend the reality that the technophobes have labeled in this way, and
that their opposition to certain terms and to a certain analysis,
which appear impoverished, only aim at maintaining a more fundamental
opposition to the dominant society."[6]
We believe that Guy Debord's theory of the spectacle, which is a
total theory that attempts to blend or at least reconcile the best
aspects of Marxism and anarchism, is the most relevant and useful
revolutionary theory available to us today. As Anselm Jappe remarked
in 1998, "thirty years [after May 1968], now that Althusserianism,
Maoism, workerism, and Freudo-Marxism have all disappeared into
historical oblivion, it is clear that the Situationists were the only
people at that time to develop a theory, and to a lesser extent a
practice, whose interest is not merely historiographical but retains a
potential relevance today."[7] But, unlike Jappe, who was content to reiterate and
critique the theory of the spectacle (he did both quite well), we wish
to go even further and bring this theory up to date. After "biding its
time" for so long, perhaps this theory is finally ready to surpass the
spectacle.
Given our personal autonomy with respect to all of the existing
groups and movements, we might be asked: "Why not simply start from
scratch, with your own theory?" Clausewitz provides a good answer:
"Theory is instituted so that each person in succession may not have
to go through the same labor of clearing the ground and toiling
through his subject, but may find the thing in order, and light
admitted on it. It should educate the mind of the future leader (...),
or rather guide him in his self-instruction, but not accompany him to
the field of battle" (On War).
Part Two
"For it is hard to speak properly upon a subject where it is even
difficult to convince your hearers that you are speaking the truth. On
the one hand, the friend who is familiar with every fact of the story,
may think that some point has not been set forth with that fulness
which he wishes and knows it to deserve; on the other, he who is a
stranger to the matter may be led by envy to suspect exaggeration if
he hears anything above his own nature [...] Although I shall perhaps
be no better believed than others have been when I speak upon the
reality of the expedition, and although I know that those who either
make or repeat statements thought not worthy of belief not only gain
no converts, but are thought fools for their pains, I shall certainly
not be frightened into holding my tongue when the state is in danger,
and when I am persuaded that I can speak with more authority on the
matter than other persons." -- Thucydides, The History of the
Peloponnesian War.
Everyone, even the capitalists and their apologists, agree that
spectacles are increasingly central to and typical of this
society. (Note that we do not refer to "images": spectacles --
unusual, strange, remarkable or memorable sensory phenomena,
especially visual phenomena -- are more compelling and attractive than
mere images.) Spectacles fill up and dominate all aspects of
capitalist society: war ("shock and awe"), politics (photo
opportunities, televised conventions and debates, and TV commercials),
culture (tabloid journalism, "breaking news"), sports ("extreme"
competitions), consumerism ("spectacular" sales and events), art
(body-centered "performance" art), architecture (especially of the
"post-modern" type) and, of course, entire cities.
And so we must be clear that the concept of "spectacle" is
not the same thing as the critical or revolutionary theory of
"the spectacle." Unlike the theory, the concept of "spectacle" simply
describes superficial phenomena, especially the omnipresence and
"invasiveness" of television and the other "mass media." Typically,
for those who elaborate the concept of "spectacle," it is something
that has long or even always existed, and thus they give it no precise
or localized historical existence, and no possible end. Nor do their
denunciations of spectacularization (which are chiefly of a
moralizing nature) displease or unnerve existing society:
contemporary capitalist society has officially recognized itself as
"spectacular," and "situationism" (everyone can or should play a role
in the show) has become its official ideology. "That modern society is
a society of spectacle now goes without saying," Le Monde said
on 19 September 1987.[8]
The preface to Fran Shor's Bush-League Spectacles: Empire,
Politics and Culture in Bush-Whacked America (2005) offers a more
contemporary example. After quoting "Guy Debord, The Society of the
Spectacle" -- who/which says "The spectacle cannot be understood
as a mere visual deception produced by mass-media technologies. It is
a worldview that has actually been materialized" -- the author
proclaims,
Spectacles have played a significant part of empires and public life
throughout history. From the circuses of Rome to the Nuremberg rallies
of Nazi Germany, the staging of public events for mass mobilization
has served the interests of the ruling elite. However, in this era of
the society of the spectacle where images dominate beyond just the
media environment, the spectacle is even more integral to the
functioning of society. While there are obviously efforts to
manipulate spectacles for partisan purposes, spectacles become the
primary vehicle through which popular discourse and opinion are
channeled.
By contrast, the central thesis of Debord's theory of the spectacle
-- first enunciated in book form exactly forty years ago today, in the
short but very thorough and dense book entitled La Societe du
Spectacle[9] -- is
that "the spectacle" is a stage in the history of capitalism or,
rather, the freezing of history itself at a particular moment. That
moment can be dated sometime between 1917 and 1939, and can be
described as a two-fold development: 1) capitalist abundance (the
abundance of mass-produced commodities and material wealth) crossed a
certain threshold and entered superabundance, and 2) because
superabundance made social revolution both desirable and
possible, the ruling classes and bureaucracies of the world found it
necessary to have this superabundance systematically dissimulated or
denied outright. Instead of consuming its surpluses in what Georges
Bataille has called "unproductive expenditures"[10] (feasts, festivals and games),
modern society -- claiming that scarcity still existed -- reinvested
them in new cycles of production. And so, "the economy" became
autonomous from the rest of society, and developed for itself only.
And so a one sentence definition of the spectacle would thus be this:
the spectacle is a form by and in which social revolution is deferred.
It is not simply a form of hyper-visibility (as in the concept of
"spectacle"), but a form of invisibility, dissimulation or hiding: to
the extent that the spectacle is organized, it is a conspiracy to
hide, dissimulate and deny the reality of capitalism's
obsolescence.
A handful of revolutionaries were able to detect these changes in
society as they were happening. Some of their names are well-known:
Bataille, Breton, Artaud, Benjamin, Korsch, and Lukacs. But precisely
because of the continuing development of the capitalist economy since
1939, these changes -- as well as the desirability and possibility of
social revolution -- have become both even more serious and easier to
discern in the last few decades. Let us address them in the form of
four questions.
1) What is obsolete and can be dispensed with? First and foremost,
work, that is to say, the necessity of having to work for a living.
There is in fact so much accumulated wealth that, if it were evenly
distributed, no one would ever need to work ever again (a
certain amount of labor might be socially necessary, but the
institution of work could be abolished.) By the same token, poverty,
hunger and homelessness could be eradicated all over the world. And
since the institution of work under capitalism involves or is limited
to the production, distribution and sales of commodities, there is in
fact no more need for the market, advertising and the commodity
itself. Yes, people still need to eat, shelter and clothe themselves,
but these needs do not have to be met through the production of
commodities.
2) What can be destroyed and reinvented in complete freedom? Above
all, everything that used to be done while not "at work": leisure
activities, vacations, and entertainment. Rather than being pursued as
ways of resting or refreshing oneself so to be able to return to work,
all these activities -- indeed, the very time in which they were
accomplished -- could be enjoyed freely and independently. People need
not simply "have fun" all the time (although they could, if they
wanted to): all of the forms that merely speculated on the possibility
of utopia -- philosophy, art in all its forms, and religion -- could
now be pursued directly and fully. One would not go to school to study
to become a good worker or a good consumer, but a good person. All
forms of morality and ethics could be completely reinvented.
3) Who prevents these radical changes (this social
revolution) from taking place? The owners of this world, of
course, but they have a great deal of help: the people who position
themselves as "representatives" and thus arbiters of who gets what
(the politicians and union bosses); the people who design and
construct the buildings, modes of transportation and cities that use
separation and isolation to prevent the vast majority of the
population from forming general assemblies or enjoying unproductive
expenditures (the architects, urbanists and "developers"); the people
who use deadly force to prevent wealth from being reappropriated (the
police, private security firms, and the military); the people who
continue to propagate the general myth of scarcity (the mass media),
who hinder or suppress distribution so that scarcity seems to continue
to exist (the various mafias), or who invent and impose new scarcities
(the people in the businesses of security and safety); the people who
specialize in the controlled and very limited expenditure of surpluses
(the spectacular entertainers, stars and performers); and, last but
not least, the suppressors of dreams and utopias (the priests, social
workers and psychiatrists).
4) What happens because social revolution is continually deferred?
In the words of the situationists, the autonomous capitalist economy
-- "one of those fragments of social power which claim to represent a
coherent totality, and tend to impose themselves as a total
explanation and organization" (Critique of Urbanism) -- becomes
more and more totalitarian. The autonomous economy becomes "the
totalitarian dictatorship of the fragment" (Basic Banalities).
Not surprisingly, its products become more and more noxious, to the
point of toxicity, which was clearly reached with the invention and
widespread use of nuclear power plants. Precisely because an
autonomous economy is an economy deprived of reason, the increasing
toxicity of capitalism itself and its various products seem "natural"
or impossible to understand, and (in either case) unavoidable. Note
well: even if the economy had not become autonomous, the commodity
would still be noxious. Indeed, there were plenty of toxic products
put on the market before the 1917-1939 period. The toxicity of the
commodity is not accidental nor even controllable: it is part of its
very structure as "value," that is to say, its internal split into
use-value, which is useful by definition, into exchange-value, which
is essentially indifferent, if not openly hostile to usefulness. This
is precisely why revolutionaries, if they wish to live in a society
without alienation, cannot simply return to the days before either
capitalism or industrial society existed: the very same structure of
alienation exists in the "value" of money, which is the commodity that
has no use-value in itself, except for its ability to be exchanged for
any other commodity, indeed, all other commodities.
To continue to develop the economy and yet to continue to
defer social revolution, certain forms of government have been
necessary, and their study was in fact Debord's central concern, not
just in The Society of the Spectacle, but also in his
Preface to the Fourth Italian Edition of "The Society of the
Spectacle" (1979), and his Comments on the Society of the
Spectacle (1988).[11] Between 1967 and 1988, Debord identified three such
forms: 1) the concentrated spectacle ("totalitarian" societies such as
Nazi Germany and Communist Russia), 2) the diffuse spectacle
("democratic" societies such as the United States), and 3) the
integrated spectacular, which resulted from the "historic compromise"
between "Communism" (State bureaucratic capitalism) and "capitalism"
(corporate bureaucratic capitalism) that began in the mid-1970s (in
France and Italy), and culminated in the late 1980s and early 1990s as
the dominant paradigm.
In many ways, the most important of these forms is the concentrated
spectacle. Even though it arrived many decades after the Industrial
Revolution, and arose as a spectacular alternative to free-market
capitalism, the concentrated spectacle is the "first" spectacle: in
its very totalitarianism, it is the closest to the essentially
totalitarian nature of the commodity.[12] And, to the precise extent that it
is the form taken by the capitalist State when it is in crisis, the
concentrated spectacle will also be the final form it will take: "the
destiny of the spectacle," Debord says near the very end of his
Comments, "is certainly not to end in enlightened
despotism."
There were and still are real differences between these three forms
of the modern State: wars, both "hot" and "cold," have been fought.
But what makes all three "spectacular" -- what makes "the spectacle" a
truly global system of government -- are the facts that they have
positioned themselves as balancing each other out (as in the "balance
of terror") and that each one has striven to suppress working-class
subversion within its borders. There have also been moments -- and
these are quite instructive -- in which the apparently opposed or
competing State-forms have collaborated on the suppression of
working-class revolution: Spain in the 1930s, Hungary in the 1950s,
and Italy in the 1970s.
It is indeed significant that precious little of what we have just
mentioned appears in contemporary discussions of "the spectacle"
and/or Guy Debord personally. Generally such discussions focus upon
Debord's art (he was primarly a filmmaker, but also a writer,
translator and book designer), or upon the early years of his
involvement in the Situationist International (1957-1961) and its
art-based theories of detournement, derive and psychogeography.
Here's a good example, provided by the university professor and
neo-anarchist David Graeber: "The Situationists, like many '60s
radicals, wished to strike back through a strategy of direct action:
creating 'situations' by creative acts of subversion that undermined
the logic of the Spectacle and allowed actors to at least momentarily
recapture their imaginative powers."[13] It is very infrequent that there are discussions of
Debord's political theories or the middle years of the SI (1962-1968),
when it was preoccupied with purely political subjects (the Watts
riots in the USA, the Six Day War, the Vietnam War, the Algerian
independence movement, the Czech Spring of 1968, and, of course, May
1968 in France). Furthermore, there is virtually no discussion of
Debord's political activities after the SI dissolved itself in 1972:
that is, no discussion of his efforts in and with revolutionaries from
Italy (1973-1975), Portugal
(1974-75), and Spain (1980-81).
And yet commentators of all types -- on both the Right and the Left
-- feel compelled to speak of him. Why? "The extreme disaster in which
spectacular democracy has plunged us, by confirming even more clumsily
Guy Debord's conclusions, has in large part convinced the enemy of the
truth of his judgments" (Jean-Francois Martos, Oil on Fire). If
we now briefly focus on a recent article by Henry A. Giroux -- "Beyond
the Spectacle of Terrorism," which derives from his book, Beyond
the Spectacle of Terrorism: Global Uncertainty and the Challenge of
the New Media (2006) -- it is only because it is one of the very
few to take Debord's political ideas (half-way) seriously and
because it does so in such an inadequate fashion. In other words, it
indicates just how empty the field is of serious discussion.
Following a pattern established in the 1970s by Michel Foucault[14] and Jean
Baudrillard, Giroux only mentions Guy Debord and his "pioneering"
theory of the society of the spectacle so as to say that, since the
1960s, the spectacle has changed so much that Debord's theory is no
longer relevant. Debord and "older notions of the spectacle" could not
possibly account for "the emergence of new media and image-based media
technologies" such as "camcorders, cellular camera-phones, satellite
television, digital recorders and the Internet" because none of it
existed in 1967. Either these gadgets are so fundamentally different
from radio, TV and the cinema, or the "new media" exist in such great
quantities, that "a structural transformation of everyday life" has
taken place: these media "have revolutionized the relationship between
the specificity of an event and its public display." And while
"neither the concept of the spectacle nor the practice of terrorism
itself is new," there has been a new and completely unprecedented
"merging of the spectacle, terrorism, war and politics." There is, in
sum, "a new regime of the spectacle in which screen culture and visual
politics create spectacular events just as much as they record
them."
Lest we suspect that this "new" spectacle seems an awful lot like
the "old" spectacle, and that is it not true that "critical discourses
of the spectacle need to be revised so as to provide the theoretical
tools required to fully understand how the spectacle has changed,"
Giroux contrasts "the terrorism of the spectacle" (the old, surpassed
reality) with "the spectacle of terrorism" (the new one). While the
former was based in "fascist culture and late capitalism's culture of
commodification," the later is rooted in "a new notion of the subject
forged in social relations largely constructed around fear
and terror." And, while the former was dominated by "consensus," "a
sense of unity," "solidarity," "illusion" and "depoliticization" (as
if the Cold War never existed!), the later is dominated by "a
theatrics of fear and shock," "politicization," and "the image added
with the thrill of the real." The key idea is that "the spectacle of
terrorism undercuts the primacy of consumerism, challenges
state power and uses the image to construct a new type of politics
organized around the modalities of death, hysteria, panic and
violence" (emphasis added).
To dismiss Debord in this way requires two operations, neither of
which is intellectually honest. First, Giroux must primarily rely upon
summaries of Debord's The Society of the Spectacle produced by
other academics, and not on a direct confrontation with the text
itself. Not surprisingly, such summaries are completely inadequate and
have an agenda that Giroux shares: "The image had replaced the
commodity as the basic unit of capitalism; rather than arguing that
commodities remained the sine qua non of domination, he
insisted, as Eugene L. Arva points out, that in the current era, 'the
system of mediation by representation (the world of the spectacle, if
you wish) has come
to bear more relevance than commodities themselves.'" Second, Giroux
must pretend that Debord never wrote another word about the spectacle
after 1967: "Debord could not have imagined either how the second
media revolution would play out, with its multiple producers,
distributors and consumers; or how a post-9/11 war on terrorism would
shift, especially in the United States, from an emphasis on
consumerism to an equally absorbing obsession with war and its
politically regressive corollaries of fear, anxiety and insecurity."
And so, for Giroux, neither the Comments on the Society of the
Spectacle (and its remarks on computerized networks), nor the
preface to the fourth Italian edition of The Society of the
Spectacle (and its remarks on the spectacle of terrorism in
Italy during the 1970s), ever existed.
With Guy Debord and his inconvenient insistence on the commodity
out of the way, Giroux can get to where he wants to go (where he has
always been?), which is a completely uncritical embrace of the "new"
media and Leftist politics: "Radically new modes of communication and
resistance based upon the new media are on full display [sic] in the
global justice movements, in the emergence of bloggers holding
corporate and government powers more accountable, and in the new kinds
of cultural and political struggles waged by the Zapatistas, the
Seattle protesters, and various new social movements held together
through the informational networks provided by the Internet and the
Web." Unlike Debord, obsessed as he was with social revolution,
"theorists such as Thomas Keenan, Mark Poster, Douglas Kellner and
Jacques Derrida are right in suggesting that new electronic
technologies and media publics 'remove restrictions on the horizon of
possible communications' and, in doing so, suggest new possibilities
for engaging the media as a democratic force both for critique and for
positive intervention and change."
Part Three
"It is the law as in art, so in politics, that
improvements ever prevail; and though fixed usages may be best for
undisturbed communities, constant necessities of action must be
accompanied by the constant improvement of methods." -- Thucydides,
The History of the Peloponnesian War.
If we return to Debord's theory of the spectacle today, we do not
do so to simply reiterate it or defend it. Good, even great as it is,
the theory of the spectacle must be improved. And this is why we offer
our readers the theory of the virtual spectacle, which is what
the global spectacle becomes as or after the integration of Communism
and capitalism becomes so complete that one no longer refers to
"Communism," and "capitalism" is replaced by euphemisms such "free
enterprise" or "the free market." The moment of its birth can be dated
fairly precisely (the first American-led attack on Iraq), as can the
beginning of its maturation (September 11th, 2001).
It is our hope that our proposed extensions and improvements will
increase the theory's usefulness to today's struggles. Theory,
Clausewitz says, "must always remain practical." For him, and for us,
"All positive results of theoretical inquiry, all principles, rules,
and methods, are all the more wanting in generality and positive truth
the more they become positive doctrine. They exist to offer themselves
for use as required, and it must always be left for judgment to decide
whether they are suitable or not."
* * *
First, a note about the manner of our exposition. In The Society
of the Spectacle, which was partly composed of "detourned"
(altered and unattributed) quotations from Hegel, Marx and other
famous sources, Debord explains why he chose this unusual form of
communication.
Critical theory must be communicated in its own language. This
is the language of contradiction, which must be dialectical in its
form as in its content [...] In its very style, the exposition of
dialectical theory is a scandal and an abomination according to the
rules of the dominant language and for the tastes of those that it has
educated because, in the positive use of existing concepts, this
exposition includes both the intelligence of their retrieved
fluidity and their necessary destruction [...] Detournement is
the contrary of the quotation, of theoretical authority that is always
falsified due to the sole fact that it has become quotation; a
fragment torn from its context, its movement and finally from its era
as a global reference and from the precise option that was inside this
reference, exactly or erroneously recognized. Detournement is the
fluid language of anti-ideology. It appears in communication that
knows that it cannot claim to hold any guarantee in itself and
definitively [...] What presents itself as detourned in its
theoretical formulation -- by denying all durable autonomy to the
sphere of what is theoretically expressed, that is, by (through
this violence) bringing about the intervention of the action that
disturbs and carries off the existing order -- recalls that the
existence of the theoretical is nothing in itself and can only know
historical action and the historical correction that is its
real fidelity.
But, in the 1979 Preface and his Comments on the Society
of the Spectacle, Debord abandoned detournement in favor of a
"new" or at least different method of exposition. He says in the
latter work,
This misfortune of the times thus compels me, once again, to write in
a new way. Some elements will be intentionally omitted; and the plan
will have to remain rather unclear. Readers will encounter certain
decoys, like the very hallmark of the era. As long as other pages are
interpolated here and there, the overall meaning may appear just as
secret clauses have very often been added to whatever treaties may
openly stipulate, just as some chemical agents only reveal their
hidden properties when they are combined with others.
To the extent that The Society of the Spectacle was an
extended detournement of Marx's Capital (it was published
almost exactly 100 years later), the abandonment of detournement as a
form of exposition corresponded with an (apparent) abandonment of
Marxism. Unlike Marx, who focused on the workers and their
relationship to the means of production, Debord's focus in the
Comments is on consumers and their relationship to the means of
distribution. There are some who allege that this movement away from
Marx either weakens or ruins the Comments, and transforms the
theory of the spectacle into a kind of "conspiracy theory." These
objections do not particularly trouble us.
In 1967, it was both surprising and disturbing that Debord had
"returned" to Marx: the pre-war defeat of the workers' movement and
the post-war birth of the "consumer society" seemed to render much of
what Marx had written on the pauperization of the working class
irrelevant. Furthermore, revolutionary groups such as Socialisme ou
Barbarie had begun to abandon Marx as early as 1964 or 1965. (It was
in fact to counter this abandonment that Debord wrote The Society
of the Spectacle.)[15] But one must remember that Debord's connection to
Marx was neither full nor direct: it proceeded through Georg Lukacs'
History and Class Consciousness (1924), which was not available
in French until 1960, and connected back to Marxian themes that were
either marginal or relatively undeveloped at the time that Marx
himself was alive (the chapter of Capital, Volume 1 that
concerned commodity fetishism) or texts that weren't published until
well after Marx's death (The Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts, which were not published in any language until
1932).
But today, references to Marx trigger nearly automatic
reactions of laughter and dismissal from both the capitalists, who
either believe that the collapse of the Soviet Union marked the
definitive "defeat" of Marxism or believe that Marxism was one of the
best things to ever happen to capitalism (!), and hostility and
resentment from the anarchists, who see Marxism as their enemy. And
so, we see no reason not to let the whole thing go, provided, of
course, that we retain the good things that Debord got from Marx via
Lukacs and remove the bad things that Debord retained from them
both.
On the positive side, Debord (through Lukacs) inherited Marx's
insistence on theorizing the totality of capitalism, not just
one aspect of it. "It is not the primacy of economic motives in
historical explanation that constitutes the decisive difference
between Marxism and bourgeois thought," Lukacs wrote, "but the point
of view of totality." The situationists echoed: "The primacy of the
category of totality is the bearer of the principle of revolution in
science" (Concerning Several Errors of Interpretation). This
insistence on the totality prevented the situationists from focusing
on and getting caught up in isolated facts or events, but allowed them
to grasp the overarching process that included such moments. Unlike
Marx, Debord was not a scientist: he did not maintain a linear view of
history, nor did he put any faith in the "laws" of history. Struggle
is everything, and the outcome of that struggle is neither determined
nor known in advance. In The Society of the Spectacle, Debord
declared:
What closely tied Marx's theory to scientific thought was the rational
comprehension of the forces that were really active in society. But
Marx's theory is fundamentally beyond scientific thought, which
is only conserved by being surpassed: it is a comprehension of the
struggle, and not at all the law. "We only know a single
science: the science of history," says The German
Ideology.
On the negative side, Debord retained a certain ambivalence, lack
of certainty or self-contradiction concerning the economy. "There are
in fact two competing views to be found in Marx," says Anselm Jappe,
"the one envisaging liberation from the economy, the other
liberation by means of the economy; nor may the two be simply
assigned to different phases of this thought, as some would like to
do." This shows up in Debord in his famous graffito "Never Work!"
(which he claimed in 1963 to be the "Preliminary Program to the
Situationist Movement"), on the one hand, and in his insistence in
The Society of the Spectacle that "the finally discovered
political form in which the economic emancipation of work can be
realized" has "in this century taken a clear form in the revolutionary
Workers Councils, concentrating in themselves all the functions of
decision and execution, and federating themselves by the means of
delegates who are responsible to the base and revocable at any moment"
(Thesis 116). The problems, of course, are that those who never work
will never form workers' councils, and workers' councils must
eventually put the idea "never work" into practice, which thereby
undermines the very basis of their own existence.
This split concerning emancipation can be closely associated with
another. Is the proletariat ("the negative at work in this society" in
the words of Thesis 114 of The Society of the Spectacle)
inevitably constituted by capitalism itself? Is the proletariat
potentially or virtually "revolutionary" because of its crucial place
in the production process, its internal cohesion, its concentration in
the cities and its exclusion from the "benefits" of bourgeois society?
Or, rather, is a revolutionary proletarian anyone (student,
housewife, mid-level manager) who has no power over his or her own
life, who is condemned to an existence of executing the commands of
others, knows it and is willing to act on that knowledge? Anselm Jappe
makes a very good point: the urban proletariat of Marx's time "was in
reality nothing but a pre-capitalist relic, an 'estate' in the feudal
sense, and not a direct result of capitalist development at all."
Precisely due to the maturation of capitalism -- that is to say, its
post-1960s embrace of robotization, automation and computerization --
the "proletariat" of Marx's time has been dissolved or at least been
displaced to "third-world countries." In the words of Les Amis de
Nemesis: "the dominant system is no longer -- as in the Ancien
Regime or the strong, national State -- a centralized system that
possesses a "seat of power" against which the jacqueries must
march, with pitchforks and scythes in hand; that there is no longer
even a network of factories that the workers can blockade or
appropriate, but a diffuse order of which the manifestations are
everywhere, like the market values that constitute themselves through
all of the moments of the economical cycle (through the production,
circulation and consumption of commodities), and in which human beings
vegetate without jobs and especially without income."[16]
And yet, as late as 30 June 1992, when he wrote his "Preface to the
Third French Edition" of Spectacle, Debord believed that
"everywhere gets posed the same frightening question, which has
haunted the world for two centuries: how to get the poor to work,
where illusion has been foiled and force has been defeated?" He does
not take into consideration the people stuck in France's
banlieus, where the poor are left completely alone, except of
course, when they riot.[17] The very fact that his Comments on the Society of
the Spectacle does not include a single word about "the
proletariat" or "class struggle" does not show that Debord managed to
overcome this self-contradiction, but that he was aware of it enough
to try to suppress it.
* * *
To return to our main line of inquiry: Comments on the Society
of the Spectacle is clearly an elaboration of the theory that
Debord formulated in 1967. Early on in this book, he reminds his
readers of the two essential features of the spectacle (that is to
say, the essential features of the concentrated, diffuse and
integrated spectacles): "incessant technological renewal" and "fusion
of State and economy." Together, these two features match the original
definition of the spectacle: it is the one-two punch that both creates
and destroys the conditions for social revolution.
Debord then goes on to illustrate three new aspects of what, back
in 1967, he theorized under the heading of decomposition, which
we discussed in Part Two of this text under the heading, "What happens
because social revolution is continually deferred?" He emphasizes
three features:
Generalised secrecy stands behind the spectacle, as the decisive
complement of all it displays and, in the last analysis, as its most
important operation.
The simple fact of being without reply has given to the false an
entirely new quality. At a stroke it is truth which has almost
everywhere ceased to exist or, at best, has been reduced to the status
of pure hypothesis that can never be demonstrated. The false without
reply has succeeded in making public opinion disappear: first it found
itself incapable of making itself heard and then very quickly
dissolved altogether. This evidently has significant consequences for
politics, the applied sciences, the justice system and artistic
knowledge.
The construction of a present where fashion itself, from clothes to
music, has come to a halt, which wants to forget the past and no
longer seems to believe in a future, is achieved by the ceaseless
circular passage of information, always returning to the same short
list of trivialities, passionately proclaimed as major discoveries.
Meanwhile news of what is genuinely important, of what is actually
changing, comes rarely, and then in fits and starts. It always
concerns this world's apparent condemnation of its own existence, the
stages in its programmed self-destruction.
Each one of these features continues to be, shall we say,
operational. Let us take them one-by-one.
Secrecy -- and here one doesn't simply mean keeping secrets, but
also keeping quiet about things that should be discussed openly -- has
grown immensely since 1988. Perhaps the biggest "secret" of the last
20 years is September 11th: what really happened on that day?
Obviously "state secrets" (the role of the "secret services" in the
attacks or their failure to detect and prevent them), "trade secrets"
(were the towers that collapsed shoddily constructed?) and questions
left unanswered by the official investigation (why did Building 7 at
the World Trade Center collapse, even though it wasn't struck by an
airplane?) are in play. And, of course, precisely because those
attacks were used as the justification for launching "the war on
terrorism," all of the secrets mentioned by Debord (who was accused of
being paranoid) -- "the 'defense secrets' that today cover an immense
domain of full extra-judicial liberty of the State," the "police and
counter-espionage services, along with secret services, both State and
para-State" that "each country, not to mention the numerous
supranational alliances, currently possesses an undetermined number
of," the "many private companies dealing in surveillance, security and
investigation," and the services possessed by "the large
multinationals" -- have become a "routine" part of everyday life.
Debord mentions a number of fakes in his Comments: art
works, historical relics, and food, among them. But he also implicates
revolutionary groups.
When, for example, the new conditions of the society of the integrated
spectacular have forced its critique to remain really clandestine, not
because it hides itself but because it is hidden by the heavy
stage-management of the thought of diversion, those who are
nonetheless charged with surveilling this critique and, if necessary,
for denying it, can now employ traditional methods in the milieu of
clandestinity: provocation, infiltrations, and various forms of
elimination of authentic critique to the profit of a false one which
will have been put in place for this purpose.
In our translator's footnote to this passage, which again might
seem wildly paranoid, we remind the reader of the following example:
"In the summer of 1968, an Italian neo-Nazi and agent
provocateur named Mario Merlino succeded in infiltrating Roman
anarchist circles by forming the 'XXII March Group,' whose name was a
close echo of the '22d March Movement,' the French group from Nanterre
that included Daniel Cohn-Bendit and several enrages who later
joined the Situationist International. One of the first actions taken
by the XXII March Group was the destruction of several cars after a
demonstration in front of the French Embassy in Rome. The Italian
press quickly blamed the violence on the Italian Communist Party." As
another example of a "false flag" operation, we might also have cited
the Red Brigades, which allegedly kidnapped and murdered Aldo Moro in
1978.[18] Of course,
there are people who believe that September 11th was also a "false
flag" operation.
Today, the creation of fake people is increasingly common in
advertising. In "viral marketing," which induces consumers to
voluntarily disseminate propaganda amongst themselves, an advertising
agency will create several imaginary people, complete with full
"profiles." These "people" (or, rather, their puppet masters) will
contribute "blog" entries on particular Web sites about a commodity,
politician or idea. (Note that these things need not be real either.
In fact, it is "better" if they, too, are fakes.) These "blog" entries
can either be positive or negative. Other imaginary "people" will post
comments to these entries, thereby simulating dialogue. Still other
"people" (or the original entry writers) will create hypertext links
from these "blogs" to a Web site that promotes or slanders the
commodity, politician or idea, thereby increasing the ranking given to
this Web site by prominent search engines. In an effort to prove the
truthfulness of the claims made, "people" will post supporting (but
completely fake) "visual evidence" on popular "community" web sites
such as Flickr, Photobucket or YouTube. A "blogger" (another imaginary
person) who "reports" on "grassroots" stories for "news" sites such as
DIGG, the Huffington Post and/or the Drudge Report will then "break
the story" about the particular commodity, politician or idea.
It is at this point that the commodity's manufacturer, the
politician's press secretary or the people who supposedly believe in
the idea will speak, as if for the first time. Whoever or whatever
they are, they will circulate press releases or other statements about
themselves and their "values." They will either confirm or deny what
the "grassroots" has been saying. The original "bloggers" and posters
of comments will then respond, and the whole cycle of spectacular
lies takes another turn. Inevitably -- or so it would appear --
"people" (hopefully real ones) will start protests that deny whatever
has been asserted, be it praise or slander, which will once again gets
the "news" cycle going again. Finally, whomever is intended to profit
from this entire operation will reveal the hoax, that is to say, the
actual nonexistence of the now-(in)famous commodity, politician or
idea, and then will let it be known that the real thing
(whatever it is) is spectacularly valuable, because, after all, he or
she or it was smart and resourceful (and cynical?) enough to perpetrate such a
successful hoax in the first place.
Since Debord mentions "clothes and music" in his discussion of the
"perpetual present," we feel justified in reminding our readers that
in, say John Lennon's peaceful "Imagine" or the Sex Pistols'
apocalyptic "God Save the Queen," the denial of the future was a
crucial element in the liberation of the present. But the perpetual
present of the integrated spectacular is not liberated, nor is it an
idyllic hippie dream. It is either a bland dream that has gone on for
too long or a nightmare that we wish would end. But it doesn't: it
keeps going and going and going, producing nothing more than
exhaustion, which in turns strengthens the desire to sleep.
Today, almost 20 years after the publication of Comments on the
Society of the Spectacle, "incessant technological renewal" has
produced the "information economy," that is to say, the economy (a
whole society) that is filled with and dominated by computers and
data networks. It is here that the word "virtual" imposes itself. This
word can mean three different things: 1) almost as described, but not
completely or according to strict definition; 2) (Computing) not
physically existing as such but made by software to appear to do so;
and 3) (Optics) relating to the points at which rays would meet if
projected backwards. And so, today one speaks of virtual images,
virtual memory and virtual reality. Ironically, perhaps, none of these
things are "strong" (as in the Latin word virtus) or possessed
of "moral excellence" (as in the word virtue): the virtual
itself is weak to the extent it really doesn't exist, and is a cheat
to the extent that it is "almost" what it is defined as or what it
attempts to duplicate. Thus, the "virtual spectacle" fits in nicely
with the regression sketched out in Thesis 17 of The Society of the
Spectacle:
The first phase of the domination of the economy over social life
involved in the definition of all human realization an obvious
degradation of being into having. The current phase of
the total occupation of social life by the accumulated results of the
economy leads to a general slide from having into
appearing, from which all real "having" must draw its immediate
prestige and final function.
In the third phase, appearing has slipped into
seeming: even the image has lost its "being," its substance.
Social life or "human realization" doesn't exist: it only seems to
appear to exist.
Today, the State and the economy are fused into a single,
autonomous institution by a shared interest in "terrorism": on the one
hand, fighting the "global war on terrorism" (GWOT), which requires
tremendous investments in and reaps equally large profits for the
military-industrial complex; and, on the other hand, protecting both
the State and the economy from "terrorist" acts committed by the same
forces against which the GWOT is fought. Because the first was (or
claims to be) a response to the second, and because the second is in
fact a response to the first (and the foreign policies that the GWOT
is intended to support, justify and protect), an extremely dangerous
and profitable "vicious cycle" is guaranteed. To the precise extent to
which "the terrorists" fight in a spectacularly "asymmetrical"
fashion, the State and the economy can justify even further research
into and development of "smart" (technologically renewed) weaponry,
even deeper retreats into secrecy, and even further advances into
"false flag" operations.
The society "modernized" to the stage of the virtual spectacle is
characterized by the combined effects of five new or previously
undiscussed features: sonorization, torture, speed, accidents and
refugee camps.
It is not just sight that is spectacularized in the society of the
virtual spectacle: so is sound. This is done in two ways: first by
digitizing it, then by having computers "play" it everywhere, all the
time. When CDs were first introduced, they were condemned by music lovers
because -- during the process of transferring the music from analog to
digital -- what the machines defined as "noise" was removed and
replaced by "clean" silence. This ruined many recordings made
prior to the introduction of advanced studio techniques in the 1960s:
they sounded dry and brittle, and lacked the excitement and vividness
of the originals. But then, after the introduction of even more
"advanced" studio techniques, all new recordings were made by digital
equipment. The problem was worsened: all recordings now lacked
excitement and vividness. And yet, when played upon the new
mini-computers (cellphones, iPods and the like), they sounded
"spectacular": clean and dry, as if no human beings were involved in
their production. And, of course, in music that relies (almost)
completely on synthesizers, sequencers, drum machines and other
micro-processors, few human beings are in fact involved.
With the proliferation of both stationary and hand-held computers,
spectacularized sound has also proliferated. Indeed, it isn't just in
"unusual" places such as supermarkets and elevators that one is forced
to listen to "muzak": pre-recorded computerized sounds, messages,
prompts and "ringtones" are virtually everywhere. Like analog sound
before it, silence itself is disappearing. Paul Virilio has called
this development "sonorization."[19] We can think of no better illustration of it than
the pre-recorded messages that are regularly delivered to the riders
of the new computerized subway trains that run in New York City.
Clearly audible -- no, loud and clear enough to intrude into or force
the temporary suspension of conversation -- these messages never let
up: "Ladies and gentlemen: not only is it unsafe, it is a violation of
the rules to walk between subway cars
when the train is in motion, except in an emergency and when directed
by emergency personnel. For a complete list of subway rules, please
visit mta.info"; "Ladies and gentlemen: please use trash receptacles
that are provided for your use on subway platforms"; "Ladies and
gentlemen: riding on the outside of subway cars is dangerous. Please
remain inside subways cars at all times"; "Ladies and gentlemen:
backpacks and large containers are subject to random search by the
police"; and "Ladies and gentlemen: this is an important message from
the New York City Police Department. Keep your eyes on your belongings
at all times. Protect yourself. If you see a suspicious object or
activity on the train or platform, do not keep it to yourself. Tell a
police officer or a MTA employee. Remain alert and have a safe
day."
There are obviously a handful of themes shared by these commands:
there is danger; there might be an emergency; obey the rules; respect
the authority of the police; and "have a safe day." Clearly the
millions of people who ride the subways of this city are being
psychologically prepared for the rapidly emerging national security
state, for the time when temporary emergency measures become
permanent. But the maddening repetition of these messages is more than
just propaganda or even brainwashing: it is torture. What are the
riders supposed to do, crack under the pressure and declare (aloud, of
course) that they, too, love Big Brother?
Like assassination, torture used to be practiced -- secretly,
illegally and with discrimination -- at both the very summits of
spectacular power (CIA agents) and the very nadir of the "underworld"
(mafia enforcers). But today, torture is now practiced openly, legally
and indiscriminately. Rather than being practiced by professional
sadists for the dubious results that it might produce -- the
extraction of information or money from unwilling subjects -- torture
is now practiced by amateur sadists as a form of punishment or
retribution against large groups of people.
Take for example the U.S. military's use of loud rock 'n' roll
music against Manuel Noriega in December 1989 or the Israeli
Defense Force's use of pornography against the besieged people
of Ramallah in April 2002. Note well that, in the first instance, it
wasn't punk or another "marginal" form of pop music, and that in the
second instance, it was not torture-themed pornography: in both cases,
just run-of-the-mill commercial product. In the words of reporter
Charles Paul Freund, "The idea, apparently, is to locate a cultural
form that discomfits the target, and to subject that target to an
unending stream of it."[20] Here "torture" is relative: what is intensely
painful to Noriega or Muslim insurgents might be pleasurable to some.
While I might find working in an office with no walls or cubicles --
just a big room in which we can all see and hear each other, all day
-- to be torture, you might find it pleasurable. But what
distinguishes the 1989 episode from the 2002 one is the presence of
large numbers of innocent third-parties and unwilling witnesses. As
Freund reported,
Replacing Palestinian news and other programming with such material
also increases the stress and frustration of the populace. Remember,
Ramallah's residents were unable to leave their homes, even to buy
groceries. Their need for information was intense. Israeli forces had
the option of taking the TV stations off the air entirely. Instead,
they left them operating, but broadcasting "replacement" imagery. The
pornography may well have been even more demoralizing than no
programming at all.
Today, representations of pain and painful representations are
everywhere: TV shows such as 24 and Law & Order Special
Victims Unit; movies such as Wolf Creek and Hostel;
advertising campaigns for "Razr" cellphones and "Mentitas" breath
mints; etc etc. Not surprisingly, so is self-inflicted torture and
passionate self-abasement: Fear Factor, Stelarc, "noise music,"
genital piercings, participation in "reality TV" shows and contests,
etc etc. Is this not a generalized confirmation of the thesis of the
"Stockholm Syndrome"? People who are kidnapped and held against their
will eventually come to identify with their kidnappers. Only, today,
"Stockholm" is the whole world.
Modern technologies -- and here we mean both digital and industrial
technologies -- are technologies of speed: they all lessen the time
necessary to accomplish tasks, deliver objects or messages, and travel
through space. Profitability ("time is money") originally drove the
"need" for speed, but with the invention of digital technologies and
hyperspeeds, decreased time is now both expected and desired for its
own sake. For example, people like to drive fast cars not to get
anywhere, but simply enjoy the sensation of rapid transit.
But as the "speed of speed" has increased and approached the point
of instantaneity, certain problems have emerged and worsened.
Accidents that involve greater speeds tend to be more "serious," more
destructive to all concerned. Decision-making becomes increasingly
difficult and prone to error when the time in which to make decisions
shrinks; indeed, instantaneity precludes all decisions that are not
pre-programmed and machine-controlled. Space -- the sense of it and
thus its importance -- becomes dismissible and even forgettable, which
in turns leads to its homogenization or destruction. And, finally,
time (the only "thing" that matters) becomes "spatialized," that is to
say, frozen in place, frozen into a perpetual present.
None of these problems bother the spectacle, which is in fact
strengthened by them. And yet, in some "places," speed is not allowed
to accelerate any further or to approach or attain simultaneity.
Indeed, in one "place" in particular, speed has been "reversed" or
replaced by extreme slowness: the political arena. In the United
States at least, the primary season has been greatly lengthened. It is
now an entire year before the 2008 presidential election, and
yet the candidates in both parties have been at it for several months.
Surely such a slow pace -- a kind of torture, given the aggressive
saber-rattling and warmongering of almost all of these people --
guarantees increased campaign donations. But it also guarantees
over-exposure and the exhaustion of the voter's interest in any or all
of these candidates. One is forced to wonder: is this an accident or
precisely the intention?
Incessant technological renewal accidentally creates accidents on a
large scale: the invention of the automobile was also the invention of
the automobile crash; the invention of the airplane was also the
invention of the airplane crash, etc. Because capitalism's
technological renewal is deliberate, the accident becomes easily
foreseeable, even predictable; and because such renewal is incessant,
the scope of the accident becomes wider and deeper. The "vector" here
is clear: spectacular accidents will take place globally: not just
anywhere in the world, but all over the world at the same
time. Thus, there is a certain symmetry or integration between the
predictable technological accident and deliberate acts of terrorism,
which can be defined as the interruption of everyday life by acts of
war. It will become increasingly impossible to distinguish, say, an
"accidental" explosion at a nuclear power plant and a deliberate act
of sabotage at such an installation. In the society of the
spectacle, terrorism and everyday life become
indistinguishable.
Let us put forward an example. Many people have wondered how it was
possible for both towers at the World Trade Center to collapse
speedily and completely -- as if brought down by controlled
demolitions -- after each building was struck by an airplane that was
deliberately crashed into it. Some have simply believed the official
explanation, which says that the crashes (and/or the heat released by
the explosion and immolation of the planes' fuel) were sufficient to
bring the buildings down in "pancake" fashion, while others have put
forward the "conspiracy" theory that bombs were detonated in these
buildings at the same time of the crashes and/or immediately after
them. The first theory is scientifically (physically) impossible,
while the "conspiracy" theory makes it necessary to believe that
either the "outsiders" (the hijackers of the planes) and the
"insiders" (the placers and detonators of the bombs) were working
together, or that the "outsiders" were in fact "insiders." It is true
that the second theory offers an explanation that seems to account for
what actually happened, but it requires us to believe in a
super-competency that none of the potential "insiders" (Bush/Cheney,
the CIA, the Mossad/Bet Shin, etc.) demonstrated before September 11,
2001 or have been able to demonstrate since then.
Drawing upon -- or, rather, attempting to prove -- the hypothesis
that terrorism and everyday life have become indistinguishable, we can
envision the following situation: there were indeed "outsiders"
(terrorists) who managed to hijack several airplanes on September 11,
2001 and fly two of them directly into the twins towers at the World
Trade Center, but these terrorists did not know that both of these
buildings (as well as WTC 7, which also completely collapsed on that
day, though not struck by an airplane) had been slated for closure and
evacuation due to their failure as commercial enterprises and --
because it was cheaper to do it well in advance -- had already been
secretly wired for demolition by experts. In other words, the towers
were "accidents" waiting to happen, and the "accident" that happened
was a pre-planned terrorist attack.
While right-wing politicians in France and the United States use
"the immigrant question" to frighten the general population and erect
literal and figurative walls around "their" countries to prevent any
more "illegals" from entering them -- all the while ignoring or
worsening the destruction from within, from the summits of
spectacular power, of what makes France "France" and America
"America" (a revolutionary history and a tradition of liberty) --
there is another "question" that goes without being posed, not to
mention answered. And that is the question of the refugee, the person
who, "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of
race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group,
or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality, and
is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself
of the protection of that country" (United Nations Convention
Relating to the Status of Refugees, 1951).
According to a variety of estimates, there are at present between
15 and 20 million people who are refugees, that is, "temporary"
inhabitants of refugee camps, in which -- while they wait to be
granted asylum in another country -- they have no freedom of movement,
no right to employment and no right to own property. They are simply
"wards" of the UN and international humanitarian aid groups. All too
often, they are not granted asylum, and simply live out their lives,
such as they are, in these camps.
Unfortunately, the UN's definition of "refugee" does not cover the
20 to 30 million people who have been displaced (generally by civil
war) within their own country, nor does it include the untold
millions of people who have fled their own countries due to natural
catastrophes, "man-made" accidents, market ("crop") failures, and
invasions and occupations by foreign powers. And, of course, no one
thinks to account for all the people who remain where they are,
"undisplaced," and yet -- due to alienation, embittered disgust or
"political opinion" -- are unwilling to avail themselves of the
alleged protections of the countries of their respective
nationalities. Together, are not all these people the majority of the
world's population? And so we see that the vector of the virtual
spectacle points to billions of "refugees," either held in huge
and always-growing camps or walking around like ghosts, strangers in
their own lands, exiles on Main Street. This is not a world turned
upside-down, but a world turned inside-out.
No one -- certainly not the neo-anarchists, the citizenists, nor
the Leftists, preoccupied as they are with multi-national
corporations, neo-liberalism and strengthening ("democratizing") the
State to keep these powers "honest" -- has adequately theorized this
vector. Not even Guy Debord, whose response to the Vaux-en-Velin riots
of 1990 was unexpectedly unsupportive and moralizing, and certainly at
variance with his excellent 1985 text on the "immigrant question."[21] In refugee camps,
the capitalist economy (work and the consumption of commodities
purchased with money earned at work) is absent; and, to the extent
that such camps operate under "states of exception," so is the State.
Thus these camps are in great peril of being turned into concentration
camps or even death camps.
According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees, there are three "durable solutions": voluntary repatriation
of the refugees to their respective countries of origin; local
integration into the countries of intended (rejected) asylum; and
resettlement to other countries. Quite obviously, none of these
solutions is possible. Here as elsewhere (e.g., favela squatter
developments in Rio de Janeiro, gecekondu homes in Istanbul,
etc.), the only viable option is revolution and autonomous
self-rule.
Part Four
"I might, it is true, have written to you something
different and more agreeable than this, but nothing certainly more
useful, if it is desirable for you to know the real state of things
here before taking your measures. Besides I know that it is your
nature to love to be told the best side of things, and then to blame
the teller if the expectations which he has raised in your minds are
not answered by the result; and I therefore thought it safest to
declare to you the truth." -- Thucydides.
Let us now concentrate on practical or, rather, organizational
matters. Revolutionaries must band together: the spectacle is
predicated on isolation and separation; each revolutionary needs the
support, encouragement, inspiration and friendship that only other
revolutionaries can provide. But such bands must themselves be
revolutionary, which means they must be constituted by equals
and they cannot reproduce within themselves the conditions that exist
in the spectacle, in particular, hierarchy, deception (of self and
others), fragmentation and incoherence. In sum, revolutionary
organizations cannot be collectives or, even less, federations of
collectives: they must be groups of individuals, that is,
groups that do not suppress or dissolve the individuality of their
members, but retain and enrich them, and in turn are enriched by
them.
Thus, we reject the concept of "multitudes" as it has been
elaborated by Antonio Negri.[22] We are not philosophers, nor are we interested in
establishing or elaborating ontological systems, which are better
suited to academic "discussions" than revolutionary activity. Note
well that, despite Negri's post-modern replacement of the word
"individuals" with "singularities," his politics go no further than
electoral politics and "radical" political parties. We also reject the
text by the Situationist International entitled "Minimum Definition of
Revolutionary Organizations," which rather dogmatically insists that
any such organization "pursues with consequence the
international realization of the absolute power of the Workers'
Councils, such as it has been sketched out by the experience of the
proletarian revolutions of this century." Oppressed workers but not
members of a single "class," becoming ever-more conscious of our
situation but in no need of "class consciousness," we seek our
emancipation outside the economy, whether it be capitalist,
socialist or communist.
It seems to us that all of the organizational tactics used by the
situationists remain relevant and useful to today's struggles. Since
the spectacle is a global system, revolutionary organizations must be
international in composition and action, and must include members of
as many countries as possible. But such members cannot be nationalists
or "representatives" of their respective countries of origin: they
must be internationalists. (Foreign language skills therefore are
obligatory.) Since revolutionary organizations must be small, they
cannot admit too many members; nor can they tolerate the presence
within themselves of people who turn out to be fundamentally different
from what they appeared to be before they joined. As a result,
exclusions are regrettable but absolutely necessary, as are breaks
with "outsiders" who are hostile to our existence, program or actions,
or who continue to collaborate with third-parties with whom we have
broken.
Revolutionary organizations must also be real communities
that exist in face-to-face situations: they cannot exist "online,"
that is, in or on list-servs, posting boards or chat rooms. Such
communities must strive to produce their own food, clothing and
housing; otherwise they are part of the commodity system. Such
communities must constantly strive to better their personal and
interpersonal communication skills, which means that individuals must
be "in touch" with their true feelings and desires, and must know how
to express and act upon them; otherwise, deception, hierarchies and
power structures are inevitable.
To be coherent, our political "programme" must return to and derive
from our definition of the spectacle. That is to say, it must insist
upon the super-concentration of wealth in this society, the poor or
even lethal uses to which this wealth is put (the USA spends $3
billion per week on the GWOT), and the type of society that could be
constructed if this society were overthrown and its wealth was put to
truly human uses. The pleasures and "happiness" that this society
offers must be mercilessly critiqued as insufficient. Our progamme
must condemn the obsolescence and irrevelance of work, the commodity
and the market; it and it must ceaselessly expose and undermine those
institutions, people and forces that prevent these relics from being
placed squarely in the trashcan of history.
Part Five
"Citizens who carry out some undertaking in republics
either in favor of liberty or of tyranny should, then, consider the
basic material of their society and should judge by that the
difficulty of their undertakings, because it is as difficult and as
dangerous to try to liberate a people that wishes to live in slavery
as it is to try to enslave a people that wishes to live in freedom
[...] Those cities used to living in servitude think nothing of
changing their master frequently, indeed, many times they desire to do
so." (Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy).
Despite the optimistic reports of self-congratulatory
neo-anarchists such as David Graeber,[23] we face a very difficult situation
today, indeed, one that is much worse than the situation faced by the
SI in 1957. Never has the spectacle been so powerful: it has succeeded
in raising yet another generation molded to its laws; it has been able
to accomplish its lethal program, despite the objections, critique and
protests of millions and millions of people; and it aims to accomplish
even more. All this is due in part to the confidence or sense of
invulnerability among its leaders: as Debord wrote at the very end of
his Comments on the Society of the Spectacle,
We must conclude that a change is imminent and ineluctable
in the co-opted cast who manage the domination and, notably, those who
direct the protection of that domination. In such an affair, the
novelty of course will never be displayed on the stage of the
spectacle. It will only appear like lightning, which we know only when
it strikes. This change, which will decisively complete the work of
these spectacular times, will occur discreetly and, although it
concerns those already installed in the sphere of power,
conspiratorially. It will select those who will take part in it on
this central requirement: that they clearly know what obstacles they
have overcome, and of what they are capable.
The current success of the spectacle also derives from the failure
of the various protest movements of the past decade (the
anti-globalization movement and the anti-war movement, in particular)
to correctly identify the roots of the problem and the best means of
solving it; instead, they have wasted time, effort and good faith by
focusing on symptoms and remaining solidly within the systems of
workplace and political representation. We should also not discount
the role played by the passivity and apathy of the large numbers of
people who are not politically active or, in other words, the
continued effectiveness of the spectacle in keeping the majority of
the people from turning their anger and bitterness into a desire to be
politically active. Either they "enjoy" (are tranquilized by) their
beer and TV too much, or they doubt that anything meaningful can be
done to change the way things are.
In our struggles, we must never forget that we are a minority
within a minority: the vast majority of the contestatory movement is
made up of paleo-Marxists, citizenists, Leftists and neo-anarchists.
That is to say, the majority is not made up of revolutionaries, but
radical reformers who are content to work on aspects of the problem,
or to use the State ("democracy") to correct problems in the market.
On the other hand, like the situationists in their day, we cannot
expect much help from the artists, who tend to see themselves as mere
questioners and habitually act unconcerned with what the answers might
be: it is up to others to decide. It is crucial that we are just as
persistent and merciless in our critique of these "radicals" as we are
of the "conservatives" who are perfectly happy (or happy enough) with
the way things are. Significantly, when they are critiqued, the
artists respond quite differently from the activists: while the former
do not respond or, after a single response, disappear, the latter
become "defensive" or even go on the attack. They are indignant that
anyone would dare to criticize them (this is especially true of
activists who are actually academics), and proclaim that their
"attackers" are damaging the movement itself through their
"negativity" or "divisiveness." (Strangely enough, few activists will
make these claims about the snitches and wannabe-COINTELPRO agents who
are in their midsts.) Especially if they are part of a "collective" or
any other individuality-suppressing group, and feel confident in their
numbers ("everyone feels as I do"), they will try to shame their
"attackers" into silence or retractions. We have seen this so many
times that we feel confident in making the following claim: the very
fact of individuality is what is shameful to these people, and so
anyone who displays his or her own individuality (autonomy) must be
shamed, must be made to feel shame. But we, who have nothing to defend
in the spectacle, cannot be shamed. We are in fact
shameless.
NOT BORED!
New York City
1 November 2007
[1] From Oil on Fire, which
was Martos' 1997 preface to his book Correspondance avec Guy
Debord.
[2] On War
(1832), translated from the German by Colonel J.J. Graham (Barnes &
Noble, 2004).
[3] The presence of
"Communist" groups in various American protest movements (against
police brutality, against the war in Iraq, and against the on-going
imprisonment of Mumia Abu-Jamal) is quite significant in the light of
Guy Debord's comments on the roots of the "integrated
spectacular."
[4] Our short text A critique of
neo-anarchism (April 2007) denounces Leftists and other reformists
who have cynically chosen to call themselves "anarchists." An
anonymous text that we translated from the French called The Citizenist
Impasse (April 2001) defines "citizenism" as "an ideology of which
the principal traits are 1) the belief in democracy as something
capable of opposing capitalism, 2) the project of reinforcing the
State (the States) so as to put this politics in place, [and] 3) the
citizen as the active basis for this politics." Many "citizenists" are
active in the so-called anti-globalization and "global justice"
movements.
[5] It seems
significant to us that, despite its overall rejection of the theories
and practice of the Situationist International (too Marxist, too
enamored of technology), this issue contains a text by the
ex-situationist Raoul Vaneigem entitled Lines of Flight:
To Liberate the Earth of Celestial Illusions and Their Tyranny. It
is a confirmation of our thesis (advanced in our July 2007 text On the 50th
Anniversary of the Founding of the Situationist International)
that there is now a significant difference between situationist theory
(which is "Vaneigemist" in nature) and Debord's theory of the
spectacle.
[6] All quotes in
this paragraph come from the March 2007 essay by Max Vincent entitled
Du
Temps que les situationnistes avaient raison.
[7] Anselm Jappe,
Guy Debord (originally published in Italian in 1993; translated
from the 1995 French version by Donald Nicholson-Smith in 1999).
[8] Quoted in Guy
Debord's Comments
on the Society of the Spectacle (1988).
[9] Originally
published by Buchet-Castel, The Society of the Spectacle has
been translated into English by three different translators: Fredy
Perlman (Red & Black, 1977); Donald Nicholson-Smith (Zone Books,
1994); and Ken Knabb (Rebel Press, 2005). Here, as elsewhere in this
text, we have preferred to translate all passages from Debord and the
other situationists ourselves.
[10] Georges
Bataille, "The Notion of Expenditure," originally published in French
in 1933; translated by Allan Stoekl and published in Visions of
Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939 (University of Minnesota,
1985). Note that Bataille uses the word "spectacle," but in a way that
completely differs from Debord's use. For Bataille, "spectacles,"
"spectacular collective expenditures" and "the spectacular function"
refer to the traditional obligation of the wealthy to provide or make
"unproductive social expenditures" for the excitation and orgiastic
satisfaction of the entire society, but especially the poor. "In
so-called civilized societies," Bataille notes, "the fundamental
obligation of wealth disappeared only in a fairly recent period
(...) Today the great and free forms of unproductive social
expenditure have
disappeared." But the thing that replaced "spectacle" in Bataille's
sense is precisely what Debord, writing 40 years later, will call the
society of the spectacle. Bataille writes: "As the class that possess
the wealth -- having received with wealth the obligation of functional
expenditure -- the modern bourgeoisie is characterized by the refusal
in principle of this obligation. It has distinguished itself from the
aristocracy through the fact that it has consented only to spend
for itself, and within itself -- in other words, by hiding its
expenditures as much as possible from the eyes of the other classes."
Perhaps because he conceives of "war" as an unproductive expenditure,
Bataille sees the revolution against the bourgeoisie as a "great
night when their beautiful phrases will be drowned out by death
screams in riots," which is "the bloody hope which, each day, is one
with the existence of the people, and which sums up the insubordinate
content of the class struggle." But Debord, seeing war as a means to
an end, and not an end in itself, sees the revolution as the outbreak
of a "festival": see the classic situationist text "Theses on the
Paris Commune." In the words of Les Amis de Nemesis (On Politics: Letter to JLD 13 October
2001): "It is not at all a question of opposing a Dionysian
irrationality to an Apollonian rationality, but rather surpassing this
sterile opposition and surpassing the finding of the rational where,
stupidly, one does not seek it."
[11] One of the
primary differences between situationist theory and Debord's theory of
the spectacle (see footnote #5) is that, unlike the former, the latter
was updated and reiterated several times after its first formulation
in the era prior to May 1968.
[12] It is worth
recalling in this context that many ancient Greeks believed that Lydia
was the birthplace of both the first commodity (coined money) and
political tyranny. For example, in the legend of the ring of Gyges,
tyranny begins after the king is deposed by a man who wields a
special, inscribed ring that allows him to become invisible at will.
See Marc Shell, The Economy of Literature (Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1978).
[13] From the essay
entitled "Revolution in Reverse," which was posted to a Web site
called Infoshop
News. People who follow the link we have provided will see that,
in the "Comments" section, Bill Not Bored pointed out that Graeber
used a falsified quote from Raoul Vaneigem in this essay. Graeber's
(non)responses to this point are typical of the neo-anarchists (see
Part Five of the current text).
[14] See our
October-December 2004 essay entitled On the flaws
of Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish.
[15] Debord was a
member of Socialisme ou Barbarie from July 1960 to May 1961. On 5 May 1961, he
addressed a very interesting letter of resignation to the participants
in the national conference of Pouvoir Ouvrier. In a series of essays
written between 1996 and 1999, we explored the relationship between
Cornelius Castoriadis and Socialisme ou Barbarie, on the one hand, and
Guy Debord and the Situationist International, on the other. For the
role this relationship played in the writing of The Society of the
Spectacle, see Debord's letter to Edouard Taube dated 17 October
1964.
[16] See the essay
entitled From a
Supper of Ashes to Embers of Satin (On the Riots of November 2005 in
France).
[17] For good
discussions of the November 2005 riots in the French banlieus,
see the aforementioned text by Les Amis de
Nemesis (footnote #15) and Max Vincent's Remarks on the Riots
of Autumn 2005 in the French Banlieus.
[18] See Guy
Debord's letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti dated 21 April 1978.
[19] See our review
of Virilio's 2003 book Art and Fear.
[20] Porn and Politics in
Palestine, Reason Magazine Online, 3 April 2002.
[21] For Debord's
reaction to the Vaux-en-Velin riots, see his letter to Jean-Francois
Martos dated 26 December
1990. Debord's Notes on the
"immigrant question" was written to help Mezioud Ouldamer, who was
working on a book entitled The Immigrant Nightmare in the
Decomposition of France.
[22] See Arianna
Bove's translation of Negri's essay Approximations:
Towards an Ontological Definition of the Multitude. For more on
Negri, see our July 2001 text The Relevance of Antonio
Negri to the Anti-Globalization Movement.
[23]
From the essay entitled "The Shock Of Victory," which was posted to Infoshop
News. People who follow the link we have provided will see that,
in the "Comments" section, Bill Not Bored pointed out that "there is a
big difference between optimism and self-congratulary self-deception."
Graeber's (non)responses to this point were very revealing.
 Website: http://www.notbored.org/virtual-spectacle.html
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