guy debord comments on the society of the spectacle

'The disturbances of 1968, which in several countries lasted into the following years,' he writes in his Comments, having nowhere overthrown the existing organization of the society from which it springs apparently spontaneously, the spectacle has thus continued to gather strength that is, to spread to the furthest limits on all sides, while increasing its density in the centre. In this book, these writers say again and again, 'The events of May 1968 mark the re-opening of a revolutionary cycle' they say again and again 'It is thus a world in the process of change that began its expansion in '68 and which, since then, through a process of continuous mutation, including all sorts of failures and successes, has struggled to weave a new network of alliances at the heart of the multiplicity of isolated singular components comprising it.' For Guattari & Negri, who were active in the Italian struggles of the late 1970s, the revolution of 1968 was an 'irreversible' success, and thus they can write about it in the present tense: 1968 is this and 1968 represents that.īut, for Debord, 1968 - though it was indeed a modern revolution - represents an exception to the rule of the society of the spectacle. Let us take as an example Felix Guattari & Antonio Negri, the authors of Communists Like Us (Semiotext Foreign Agents Series written in 1984 and translated in 1990).

What changed between 19? What forced the writer's hand? Answer: the long-term spectacularization of the May 1968 revolution in France.Įxcept for Debord, every major 'radical' thinker in the West continues to sing the praises of May 1968. The pun in the title suggests that Debord's 1967 book and the society it discusses are virtually the same thing. But in the present situation, it seemed unlikely that anyone else would do it.Īnd so Debord, twenty one years later, wrote a second work: Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (Verso, 1990 trans. In fact, it fell on spectacular society itself to add something of which this book, I think, had no need - heavier and more convincing proofs and examples.' But in 1988, Debord was forced to admit that, in other circumstances, I think I could have considered myself altogether satisfied with my first work on this subject, and left others to consider future developments. the spectacle has done nothing but meet more exactly its concept. Comments on the Society of the Spectacle Guy Debord's Comments on the Society of the Spectacle issue #19, 1991Īs late as 1979, Guy Debord could write about his 1967 book of theory, which is entitled The Society of the Spectacle: 'There is no a word to be changed.

Guy debord comments on the society of the spectacle