Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents available in Paperback
Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents
- ISBN-10:
- 0262633000
- ISBN-13:
- 9780262633000
- Pub. Date:
- 02/27/2004
- Publisher:
- MIT Press
- ISBN-10:
- 0262633000
- ISBN-13:
- 9780262633000
- Pub. Date:
- 02/27/2004
- Publisher:
- MIT Press
Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents
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Overview
This volume is a revised and expanded version of a special issue of the journal October (Winter 1997) that was devoted to the work of the Situationist International (SI). The first section of the issue contained previously unpublished critical texts, and the second section contained translations of primary texts that had previously been unavailable in English. The emphasis was on the SI's profound engagement with the art and cultural politics of their time (1957-1972), with a strong argument for their primarily political and activist stance by two former members of the group, T. J. Clark and Donald Nicholson-Smith.
Guy Debord and the Situationist International supplements both sections. It reprints important, hard to find essays by Giorgio Agamben, Libero Andreotti, Jonathan Crary, Thomas Y. Levin, Greil Marcus, and Tom McDonough and doubles the number of translations of primary texts, which now encompass a broader and more representative range of the SI's writings on culture and language. In a field still dominated by hagiography, the critical texts were selected for their willingness to confront critically the history and legacy of the SI. They examine the group within the broader framework of the historical and neo-avant-gardes and, beyond that, the postwar world in general. The translations trace the SI's reflections on the legacy of the avant-garde in art and architecture, particularly on the linguistic and spatial significance of montage aesthetics. Many of the translated works are by Guy Debord (1932-1994), the impresario of the SI, especially known for his book The Society of the Spectacle.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780262633000 |
---|---|
Publisher: | MIT Press |
Publication date: | 02/27/2004 |
Series: | October Books |
Pages: | 514 |
Product dimensions: | 7.06(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.88(d) |
Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Introduction: Ideology and the Situationist Utopia | ix | |
The Long Walk of the Situationist International | 1 | |
Selected Situationist Texts | ||
The Great Sleep and Its Clients (1955) | 21 | |
One Step Back (1957) | 25 | |
Report on the Construction of Situations and on the Terms of Organization and Action of the International Situationist Tendency (1957) | 29 | |
One More Try If You Want to Be Situationists (The SI in and against Decomposition) (1957) | 51 | |
Theses on Cultural Revolution (1958) | 61 | |
Contribution to the Debate "Is Surrealism Dead or Alive?" (1958) | 67 | |
In Praise of Pinot-Gallizio (1958) | 69 | |
Constant: Extracts from Letters to the Situationist International (1958) | 75 | |
Editorial Notes: Absence and Its Costumers (1958) | 79 | |
Editorial Notes: The Meaning of Decay in Art (1959) | 85 | |
Constant: A Different City for a Different Life (1959) | 95 | |
Editorial Notes: Critique of Urbanism (1961) | 103 | |
Editorial Notes: Once Again, on Decomposition (1961) | 115 | |
Comments against Urbanism (1961) | 119 | |
Editorial Notes: Priority Communication (1962) | 129 | |
Editorial Notes: The Avant-Garde of Presence (1963) | 137 | |
Editorial Notes: All the King's Men (1963) | 153 | |
The Situationists and the New Forms of Action in Politics or Art (1963) | 159 | |
Perspectives for a Generation (1966) | 167 | |
Captive Words (Preface to a Situationist Dictionary) (1966) | 173 | |
The Situationists and the New Forms of Action against Politics and Art (1967) | 181 | |
The Practice of Theory: Cinema and Revolution (1969) | 187 | |
Asger Jorn's Avant-Garde Archives | 189 | |
Architecture and Play | 213 | |
Situationist Space | 241 | |
Lefebvre on the Situationists: An Interview | 267 | |
Angels of Purity | 285 | |
Difference and Repetition: On Guy Debord's Films | 313 | |
Dismantling the Spectacle: The Cinema of Guy Debord | 321 | |
Spectacle, Attention, Counter-Memory | 455 | |
Why Art Can't Kill the Situationist International | 467 | |
Letter and Response | 489 |
What People are Saying About This
The time has come to forget about the glossy clichés surrounding the group and put their theories back where they belong, in the Batallian gutter of the everyday political arena. After all, one should not forget that Guy Debord's project was a revolutionary one, a devastating critique of the effects of local and global capitalism. This volume is a timely jolt when one realizes that irreverence and political critique today are often considered an attack against the state, or even a terrorist act. In our new polarized world, debate and critique have become suspicious even when one attempts to 'understand' his/her own 'situation,' as independent thinking has become a threat to a generally welcomed blindness, stupidity, and nationalism. So this is a dangerous book because in its very structure it makes us think. Buy it, or better yet, steal it, as the 'Situ' used to say. It will clean up your brain from the mass of soot left there by your favorite newspapers.
Serge Guilbaut, Professor, Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory, University of British Columbia, Canada
The essays in this collection provide a dazzling variety of perspectives while remaining faithful to the idea that the Situationist project contains a revolutionary message for present and future generations. More than this, with wit, lucidity, and elegance, the essays in this book dissect the century we have just left, anticipating, as the Situationists would have it, the revolution as a world of endless possibilities.
Andrew Hussey, Lecturer in French, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, author of The Game of War: The Life and Death of Guy DebordThe time has come to forget about the glossy clichés surrounding the group and put their theories back where they belong, in the Batallian gutter of the everyday political arena. After all, one should not forget that Guy Debord's project was a revolutionary one, a devastating critique of the effects of local and global capitalism. This volume is a timely jolt when one realizes that irreverence and political critique today are often considered an attack against the state, or even a terrorist act. In our new polarized world, debate and critique have become suspicious even when one attempts to 'understand' his/her own 'situation,' as independent thinking has become a threat to a generally welcomed blindness, stupidity, and nationalism. So this is a dangerous book because in its very structure it makes us think. Buy it, or better yet, steal it, as the 'Situ' used to say. It will clean up your brain from the mass of soot left there by your favorite newspapers.
Serge Guilbaut, Professor, Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory, University of British Columbia, CanadaThe essays in this collection provide a dazzling variety of perspectives while remaining faithful to the idea that the Situationist project contains a revolutionary message for present and future generations. More than this, with wit, lucidity, and elegance, the essays in this book dissect the century we have just left, anticipating, as the Situationists would have it, the revolution as a world of endless possibilities.
The time has come to forget about the glossy clichés surrounding the group and put their theories back where they belong, in the Batallian gutter of the everyday political arena. After all, one should not forget that Guy Debord's project was a revolutionary one, a devastating critique of the effects of local and global capitalism. This volume is a timely jolt when one realizes that irreverence and political critique today are often considered an attack against the state, or even a terrorist act. In our new polarized world, debate and critique have become suspicious even when one attempts to 'understand' his/her own 'situation,' as independent thinking has become a threat to a generally welcomed blindness, stupidity, and nationalism. So this is a dangerous book because in its very structure it makes us think. Buy it, or better yet, steal it, as the 'Situ' used to say. It will clean up your brain from the mass of soot left there by your favorite newspapers.