#debord

[thirdity]

The spectacle ... is not a supplement to the real world, an additional decoration. It is the heart of the unrealism of the real society.

Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle

[lily-of-the-valley-2001]

“Obscenity begins when there is no more spectacle, no more stage, no more theatre, no more illusions, when everything becomes immediately transparent, visible, exposed in the raw and inexorable light of information and communication.”

Jean Baudrillard, The Ecstasy of Communication

[orbis-tertius]

In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.

The spatial field of a dérive may be precisely delimited or vague, depending on whether the goal is to study a terrain or to emotionally disorient oneself.

Our loose lifestyle and even certain amusements considered dubious that have always been enjoyed among our entourage -- slipping by night into houses undergoing demolition, hitchhiking nonstop and without destination through Paris during a transportation strike in the name of adding to the confusion, wandering in subterranean catacombs forbidden to the public, etc. -- are expressions of a more general sensibility which is no different from that of the dérive.

Guy Debord, "Theory of the Dérive" in Internationale Situationniste #2, (1958)

The dérive (with its flow of acts, its gestures, its strolls, its encounters) was to the totality exactly what psychoanalysis (in the best sense) is to language. Let yourself go with the flow of words, says the psychoanalyst. He listens, until the moment when he rejects or modifies (one could say detourns) a word, an expression or a definition. The dérive is certainly a technique, almost a therapeutic one. But just as analysis unaccompanied with anything else is almost always contraindicated, so continual dériving is dangerous to the extent that the individual, having gone too far (not without bases, but…) without defenses, is threatened with explosion, dissolution, dissociation, disintegration.

Ivan Chtcheglov, "Letter from Afar" in Internationale Situationniste #9 (1964)

[enyafans4communism]

”The erasure of personality is the fatal accompaniment to the conditions of existence that is concretely submissive to spectacular norms, and thus more separated from the possibilities of knowing experiences that are authentic and thus from the discovery of individual preferences. Paradoxically, the individual must permanently repudiate them if he wants to be respected a little in such a society. This existence postulates a fluid fidelity, a succession of continually disappointing commitments to false products. It is a matter of running quickly behind the inflation of devalued signs of life. Drugs help one to conform to this organization of things; madness allows one to flee it.”

Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

[less-ismore]

Guy Debord’s house at Champot.

Photo: Luc Olivier.

[soulthom]

Citation c-dessus en introduction de La Société Du Spectacle (Guy Debord).

Et j’ajouterais que le comique c’est l’ « authentique » qui au nom du spectaculaire, dans un idéalisme paradoxal, prétendra s’opposer au « vrai » en guise de justification !

[kiraleighart]

“The spectacle presents itself as a vast inaccessible reality that can never be questioned. Its sole message is: “What appears is good; what is good appears.” The passive acceptance it demands is already effectively imposed by its monopoly of appearances, its manner of appearing without allowing any reply.”

― Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle

[athousandgateaux]

To the extent that necessity is socially dreamed, the dream becomes necessary. The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of sleep.

Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, n. 21, pg. 14