9 ms·

The Society of the Spectacle

125 points by psychanarch 7y ago

chongli 7y ago
This thesis seems uncannily similar to the central theme in Huxley’s Brave New World, translated into Marxist academic language. Nevertheless, these ideas are highly relevant in our social media and mass media dominated world. At this point, they may now have become so obvious that they’re cliché.
- fit2rule 7y ago
  Things becoming cliché is how you know that beingness has supplanted havingness, with doingness long gone out the window. A society which puts more attention on the results of an activity rather than the factuality of the actions is long on its way out. Witness for example, modern America's relationship with its illegal wars: nobody wants to know what America is really doing, as long as the result is attained...
viburnum 7y ago
Guy Debord goes over my head but I think it's fun that he made a board game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Game_of_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Game_of_War
- pavlov 7y ago
  I'm slightly disappointed the board game is not called "Jeu Debord".
- onreact 7y ago
  Debord is somewhat elitist and difficult to read. Another situationist author - Raoul Vaneigem - is far more readable.
- no_identd 7y ago
  He in fact unironically declared it his most important work. And I feel inclined to agree. Here, a video on it: https://vimeo.com/17116481 https://vimeo.com/17116481 Here, the actual rules: http://www.classwargames.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/THE-RULES-OF-THE-GAME-OF-WAR1.pdf http://www.classwargames.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/THE-... And here, an absolutely ingenious, book length elaboration on the game: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard_Barbrook/publication/301799776_Class_Wargames_ludic_subversion_against_spectacular_capitalism/links/5728c20b08ae057b0a0334f7/Class-Wargames-ludic-subversion-against-spectacular-capitalism.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard_Barbrook/public...
0x8BADF00D 7y ago
It’s more that if you cannot find a tribe, you will live in isolation. Alienation is inevitable in any kind of society, whether it is communist, gift economy, or capitalist. The only type of society that alienation is limited is an ethnostate, and even then there will be alienated people.
aidenn0 7y ago
Someone recently linked me to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation which seems very closely related to this.
- beaconstudios 7y ago
  they're both seminal postmodern works.
  - onreact 7y ago
    Yeah, yet very different books. Debord is political while Baudrillard is just "postmodernist".
    - dadarepublic 7y ago
      I would agree but also add that the implications of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation are extremely relevant to the political sphere we inhabit today.
      - onreact 7y ago
        Sure - Debord just didn't mean to only explain things - he wanted to revolutionize them.
- 77544cec 7y ago
  I recommend Simulacra and Simulation by Baudrillard over The Society of the Spectacle. Less obscure. Better Style. Also check out America by the same author: > I went in search of astral America, not social and cultural America, but the America of the empty, absolute freedom of the freeways, not the deep America of mores and mentalities, but the America of desert speed, of motels and mineral surfaces. I looked for it in the speed of the screenplay, in the indifferent reflex of television, in the film of days and nights projected across an empty space, in the marvellously affectless succession of signs, images, faces, and ritual acts on the road; looked for what was nearest to the nuclear and enucleated universe, a universe which is virtually our own, right down to its European cottages. I sought the finished form of the future catastrophe of the social in geology, in that upturning of depth that can be seen in the striated spaces, the reliefs of salt and stone, the canyons where the fossil river flows down, the immemorial abyss of slowness that shows itself in erosion and geology. I even looked for it in the verticality of the great cities. I knew all about this nuclear form, this future catastrophe when I was still in Paris, of course. But to understand it, you have to take to the road, to that travelling which achieves what Virilio calls the aesthetics of disappearance. Here: https://monoskop.org/images/a/ac/Baudrillard_Jean_America_1989.pdf https://monoskop.org/images/a/ac/Baudrillard_Jean_America_19...
incompatible 7y ago
"it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images". This was about television and other mass media? It seems to apply better to Snapchat.
- cjslep 7y ago
  I don't think it was literal images/pictures, but the philosophical idea that an image represents (but is itself not) another [authentic] thing. Edit: An example: You make a post on Facebook simply about your $HOBBY. I hit the "Like" button. Do I actually, authentically like that Hobby, or you talking about it, or both? Am I just pressing it out of a social obligation? I instead could have reached out and called or texted and had a conversation about your $HOBBY. And you could have then judged to what degree my interest and "liking" of your $HOBBY was authentic, and how that reflects my interests, or how I am trying to branch out and am taking a genuine interest in you-the-person. But in lieu of a real conversation, I hit a "Like" button and let the image of an authentic feeling of "liked-ness" travel to you, instead of taking the effort of conveying the actual feeling of "I like you" to you. This is the core problem with social media.
  - incompatible 7y ago
    I hit the upvote button, and it wasn't out of a social obligation, but I'm nevertheless unsure if it was authentic.
  - thinkingemote 7y ago
    I think "authenticity" with regards to the society of the spectacle is also a kind of image, but I know what you mean. I have in mind the modern trendy value on authentic things. For example bespoke craft foods. The striving for authenticity in these things are itself a type of spectacle. Generally I struggle with Debord but with the Society of the Spectacle I think I've got it down to something like: 1) Where once Bob could be cool in himself and people wanted to be like Bob. Being. 2) Then people saw the cool clothes that Bob wore and got them. Having. 3) Now people just get the things that look like the clothes that the people who look like Bob have. Image. For "authentic" foods, same thing. People made good quality foods. Then people got the same thing that these people had or bought their products. Then people bought things that looked like it was the same thing. Or people valued the look of having these things. Image. I think it's basically consumerism. But I suspect it's something deeper and applies to non products also. For example the image of being a good person, or a useful employee. With regards to social media, clicking "Like" could be an authentic emotional response to an image. "I want to be like this"?
slim 7y ago
Original book in french http://classiques.uqac.ca/contemporains/debord_guy/societe_du_spectacle/spectacle.html http://classiques.uqac.ca/contemporains/debord_guy/societe_d...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
xtiansimon 7y ago
I like French intellectualism of this period, but why this, why now?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
itronitron 7y ago
Cliffs Notes for this >> https://hyperallergic.com/313435/an-illustrated-guide-to-guy-debords-the-society-of-the-spectacle/ https://hyperallergic.com/313435/an-illustrated-guide-to-guy...
cousin_it 7y ago
I think the main problem is that communication technology makes it easier for people to fall into sins, and harder to stay away from sins. If you internalize the idea that envy, rage and sloth are bad for you and should be kept out of your head, then Facebook and Twitter shouldn't pose much trouble.
- iliketosleep 7y ago
  Good point, but beyond internalizing those ideas, you also really have to be on guard these - the technologies in question are ubiquitous. They are almost inescapable and are designed to get you hooked. It's easy to say look something up on reddit and then dive into tangentially related material which ends up turning into procrastination.
onreact 7y ago
You can read and download the book here for free: https://antiworld.se/project/references/texts/The_Society%20_Of%20_The%20_Spectacle.pdf https://antiworld.se/project/references/texts/The_Society%20...
Iv 7y ago
So, I got into hot debate about this book. I read it, or attempted to do so in French, my native language. Thing is, while I do have some philosophical culture, I do not have a degree in philosophy, and people told me that my opinion is therefore irrelevant. Debord in this book insists on being obtuse and obfuscates relatively simple ideas. Worse, he would masquerade opinions as reasoning and loves using vague words without defining them, jumping from one possible meaning to the other the next sentence. The thing is unreadable and the ideas it contains (I read some explanations of the books by other "lesser" philosophers) pretty basic. Better read Manufacturing Content by Chomsky. I don't know why Americans are so enamored with French philosophers while they have decent ones at home. I am a bit ashamed that the aura our culture has is used to promote such hacks as the situationists.
- AlecSchueler 7y ago
  It's interesting because I can entirely see where you're coming from because Debord really does have those tendancies in his writing, but if you consider his background with the Lettrist movement and all of the avant garde artistic techqniues that they were experimenting with in the 50s (Check out some films by Isidore Isou) then you can see his later obscurantism as a development of those techniques and as an attempt to imbue those techniques with the same philisophical and political impact as his core message. The book is really very tightly packed with ideas, working as it does.
  - Iv 7y ago
    Oh, sure, Debord had his context and was experimenting. However if you consider that philosophy is a useful field, full of serious questions that one ought to seriously try to answer, I think you have to dismiss the Lettrist movement as unhelpful at best, as a failed experience or a dead end of modern philosophy, if you are as disappointed in it as I am. They may be an interesting literature movement, but they are as helpful to philosophy as would be people who would proclaim that all quantum theory makes more sense when expressed in Sumerian.
  - christopherbalz 7y ago
    Well-said.
maitland 7y ago
He made a movie of this text, which is available online, it's low resolution and some of the subtitles are hard to read. There's an updated version that's more legible but which stays true to the original in all the important ways: https://youtu.be/irdHSmRrdh0 https://youtu.be/irdHSmRrdh0
- maitland 7y ago
  I would also add that 'The Dialectic of Enlightenment', is perhaps a more thorough precedent to 'The Society of the Spectacle'... if you're at all interested ... the chapter 'The Culture Industry' is good. https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Max-Horkheimer-and-Theodor-Adorno-Dialectic-of-Enlightenment-Philosophical-Fragments-1944-1947.pdf https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Max-H...
foobar_ 7y ago
That's the thing about Marxist critique, they don't really have any solutions than pointing out what sucks.
- Der_Einzige 7y ago
  Hence why it's called "critical theory". Marxism is what you get when you take "critical thinking" to the extreme.
- barbecue_sauce 7y ago
  Its criticism, not solutionism.
rafaelvasco 7y ago
I see around me and this Society of Spectacle is all around us. Specially in social media;
sjustns 7y ago
Shameless plug: If you are interested in reading and discussing some of the books mentioned in this thread, we're looking for additional members: https://strangers-club.com https://strangers-club.com Our reading list: https://public.3.basecamp.com/p/8ogy66cGzqVxape4Th648eLV https://public.3.basecamp.com/p/8ogy66cGzqVxape4Th648eLV
etqwzutewzu 7y ago
I heard many times people mentioning this book but I also heard it is not very readable. Could somebody explain for people without a degree in philosophy like me what are the main ideas that are exposed in this book?

125 points by psychanarch 7y ago

This thesis seems uncannily similar to the central theme in Huxley’s Brave New World, translated into Marxist academic language. Nevertheless, these ideas are highly relevant in our social media and mass media dominated world. At this point, they may now have become so obvious that they’re cliché.

fit2rule 7y ago
Things becoming cliché is how you know that beingness has supplanted havingness, with doingness long gone out the window. A society which puts more attention on the results of an activity rather than the factuality of the actions is long on its way out. Witness for example, modern America's relationship with its illegal wars: nobody wants to know what America is really doing, as long as the result is attained...

viburnum 7y ago

Guy Debord goes over my head but I think it's fun that he made a board game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Game_of_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Game_of_War

pavlov 7y ago
I'm slightly disappointed the board game is not called "Jeu Debord".
onreact 7y ago
Debord is somewhat elitist and difficult to read. Another situationist author - Raoul Vaneigem - is far more readable.
no_identd 7y ago
He in fact unironically declared it his most important work. And I feel inclined to agree. Here, a video on it: https://vimeo.com/17116481 https://vimeo.com/17116481 Here, the actual rules: http://www.classwargames.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/THE-RULES-OF-THE-GAME-OF-WAR1.pdf http://www.classwargames.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/THE-... And here, an absolutely ingenious, book length elaboration on the game: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard_Barbrook/publication/301799776_Class_Wargames_ludic_subversion_against_spectacular_capitalism/links/5728c20b08ae057b0a0334f7/Class-Wargames-ludic-subversion-against-spectacular-capitalism.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard_Barbrook/public...

0x8BADF00D 7y ago

It’s more that if you cannot find a tribe, you will live in isolation. Alienation is inevitable in any kind of society, whether it is communist, gift economy, or capitalist. The only type of society that alienation is limited is an ethnostate, and even then there will be alienated people.

aidenn0 7y ago

Someone recently linked me to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation which seems very closely related to this.

beaconstudios 7y ago
they're both seminal postmodern works.
- onreact 7y ago
  Yeah, yet very different books. Debord is political while Baudrillard is just "postmodernist".
  - dadarepublic 7y ago
    I would agree but also add that the implications of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation are extremely relevant to the political sphere we inhabit today.
    - onreact 7y ago
      Sure - Debord just didn't mean to only explain things - he wanted to revolutionize them.
77544cec 7y ago
I recommend Simulacra and Simulation by Baudrillard over The Society of the Spectacle. Less obscure. Better Style. Also check out America by the same author: > I went in search of astral America, not social and cultural America, but the America of the empty, absolute freedom of the freeways, not the deep America of mores and mentalities, but the America of desert speed, of motels and mineral surfaces. I looked for it in the speed of the screenplay, in the indifferent reflex of television, in the film of days and nights projected across an empty space, in the marvellously affectless succession of signs, images, faces, and ritual acts on the road; looked for what was nearest to the nuclear and enucleated universe, a universe which is virtually our own, right down to its European cottages. I sought the finished form of the future catastrophe of the social in geology, in that upturning of depth that can be seen in the striated spaces, the reliefs of salt and stone, the canyons where the fossil river flows down, the immemorial abyss of slowness that shows itself in erosion and geology. I even looked for it in the verticality of the great cities. I knew all about this nuclear form, this future catastrophe when I was still in Paris, of course. But to understand it, you have to take to the road, to that travelling which achieves what Virilio calls the aesthetics of disappearance. Here: https://monoskop.org/images/a/ac/Baudrillard_Jean_America_1989.pdf https://monoskop.org/images/a/ac/Baudrillard_Jean_America_19...

incompatible 7y ago

"it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images". This was about television and other mass media? It seems to apply better to Snapchat.

cjslep 7y ago
I don't think it was literal images/pictures, but the philosophical idea that an image represents (but is itself not) another [authentic] thing. Edit: An example: You make a post on Facebook simply about your $HOBBY. I hit the "Like" button. Do I actually, authentically like that Hobby, or you talking about it, or both? Am I just pressing it out of a social obligation? I instead could have reached out and called or texted and had a conversation about your $HOBBY. And you could have then judged to what degree my interest and "liking" of your $HOBBY was authentic, and how that reflects my interests, or how I am trying to branch out and am taking a genuine interest in you-the-person. But in lieu of a real conversation, I hit a "Like" button and let the image of an authentic feeling of "liked-ness" travel to you, instead of taking the effort of conveying the actual feeling of "I like you" to you. This is the core problem with social media.
- incompatible 7y ago
  I hit the upvote button, and it wasn't out of a social obligation, but I'm nevertheless unsure if it was authentic.
- thinkingemote 7y ago
  I think "authenticity" with regards to the society of the spectacle is also a kind of image, but I know what you mean. I have in mind the modern trendy value on authentic things. For example bespoke craft foods. The striving for authenticity in these things are itself a type of spectacle. Generally I struggle with Debord but with the Society of the Spectacle I think I've got it down to something like: 1) Where once Bob could be cool in himself and people wanted to be like Bob. Being. 2) Then people saw the cool clothes that Bob wore and got them. Having. 3) Now people just get the things that look like the clothes that the people who look like Bob have. Image. For "authentic" foods, same thing. People made good quality foods. Then people got the same thing that these people had or bought their products. Then people bought things that looked like it was the same thing. Or people valued the look of having these things. Image. I think it's basically consumerism. But I suspect it's something deeper and applies to non products also. For example the image of being a good person, or a useful employee. With regards to social media, clicking "Like" could be an authentic emotional response to an image. "I want to be like this"?

slim 7y ago

Original book in french http://classiques.uqac.ca/contemporains/debord_guy/societe_du_spectacle/spectacle.html http://classiques.uqac.ca/contemporains/debord_guy/societe_d...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

xtiansimon 7y ago

I like French intellectualism of this period, but why this, why now?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

itronitron 7y ago

Cliffs Notes for this >> https://hyperallergic.com/313435/an-illustrated-guide-to-guy-debords-the-society-of-the-spectacle/ https://hyperallergic.com/313435/an-illustrated-guide-to-guy...

cousin_it 7y ago

I think the main problem is that communication technology makes it easier for people to fall into sins, and harder to stay away from sins. If you internalize the idea that envy, rage and sloth are bad for you and should be kept out of your head, then Facebook and Twitter shouldn't pose much trouble.

iliketosleep 7y ago
Good point, but beyond internalizing those ideas, you also really have to be on guard these - the technologies in question are ubiquitous. They are almost inescapable and are designed to get you hooked. It's easy to say look something up on reddit and then dive into tangentially related material which ends up turning into procrastination.

onreact 7y ago

You can read and download the book here for free: https://antiworld.se/project/references/texts/The_Society%20_Of%20_The%20_Spectacle.pdf https://antiworld.se/project/references/texts/The_Society%20...

Iv 7y ago

So, I got into hot debate about this book. I read it, or attempted to do so in French, my native language. Thing is, while I do have some philosophical culture, I do not have a degree in philosophy, and people told me that my opinion is therefore irrelevant. Debord in this book insists on being obtuse and obfuscates relatively simple ideas. Worse, he would masquerade opinions as reasoning and loves using vague words without defining them, jumping from one possible meaning to the other the next sentence. The thing is unreadable and the ideas it contains (I read some explanations of the books by other "lesser" philosophers) pretty basic. Better read Manufacturing Content by Chomsky. I don't know why Americans are so enamored with French philosophers while they have decent ones at home. I am a bit ashamed that the aura our culture has is used to promote such hacks as the situationists.

AlecSchueler 7y ago
It's interesting because I can entirely see where you're coming from because Debord really does have those tendancies in his writing, but if you consider his background with the Lettrist movement and all of the avant garde artistic techqniues that they were experimenting with in the 50s (Check out some films by Isidore Isou) then you can see his later obscurantism as a development of those techniques and as an attempt to imbue those techniques with the same philisophical and political impact as his core message. The book is really very tightly packed with ideas, working as it does.
- Iv 7y ago
  Oh, sure, Debord had his context and was experimenting. However if you consider that philosophy is a useful field, full of serious questions that one ought to seriously try to answer, I think you have to dismiss the Lettrist movement as unhelpful at best, as a failed experience or a dead end of modern philosophy, if you are as disappointed in it as I am. They may be an interesting literature movement, but they are as helpful to philosophy as would be people who would proclaim that all quantum theory makes more sense when expressed in Sumerian.
- christopherbalz 7y ago
  Well-said.

maitland 7y ago

He made a movie of this text, which is available online, it's low resolution and some of the subtitles are hard to read. There's an updated version that's more legible but which stays true to the original in all the important ways: https://youtu.be/irdHSmRrdh0 https://youtu.be/irdHSmRrdh0

maitland 7y ago
I would also add that 'The Dialectic of Enlightenment', is perhaps a more thorough precedent to 'The Society of the Spectacle'... if you're at all interested ... the chapter 'The Culture Industry' is good. https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Max-Horkheimer-and-Theodor-Adorno-Dialectic-of-Enlightenment-Philosophical-Fragments-1944-1947.pdf https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Max-H...

foobar_ 7y ago

That's the thing about Marxist critique, they don't really have any solutions than pointing out what sucks.

Der_Einzige 7y ago
Hence why it's called "critical theory". Marxism is what you get when you take "critical thinking" to the extreme.
barbecue_sauce 7y ago
Its criticism, not solutionism.

rafaelvasco 7y ago

I see around me and this Society of Spectacle is all around us. Specially in social media;

sjustns 7y ago

Shameless plug: If you are interested in reading and discussing some of the books mentioned in this thread, we're looking for additional members: https://strangers-club.com https://strangers-club.com Our reading list: https://public.3.basecamp.com/p/8ogy66cGzqVxape4Th648eLV https://public.3.basecamp.com/p/8ogy66cGzqVxape4Th648eLV

etqwzutewzu 7y ago

I heard many times people mentioning this book but I also heard it is not very readable. Could somebody explain for people without a degree in philosophy like me what are the main ideas that are exposed in this book?