/lit/ - Literature

"I have written much less than the majority of people who write, but I have drunk more than the majority of people who drink."

---Guy Debord

"The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images."
— Guy Debord (The Society of the Spectacle)

>on a sidenote, Guy Debord was so badass that released all his books without claiming copyrights

"Young people everywhere have been allowed to choose between love and a garbage disposal unit. Everywhere they have chosen the garbage disposal unit."
— Guy Debord

All writing is pigshit.

- Tony Artaud

/thread.

"Pump up the jam"

-Will Smith

>>1905698
"Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs."
— Guy Debord (Society of the Spectacle)
thread/
>Guy Debord always wins

>>1905653
His lifelong steady alcohol consumption began to take a toll on his health. Apparently to end the suffering from a form of polyneuritis brought on by his excessive drinking, he committed suicide,[4] shooting himself in the heart at his property in Champot, near Bellevue-la-Montagne, Haute-Loire, on November 30, 1994.

>>1905645

Get your situationist ass out of here you faggot.

You guys are always pulling shit. Heres a vid of a situationist interrupting one of the great minds of the century.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL6rkBSHS4A

>>1905707
Mind blown

>>1905707

>Using a quote that diminishes quotes in response to other quotes

I think you just blew my mind.

>>1905728

Yo Lacan, I'm happy for you and Imma let you finish, but guy debord has some of the best theories of all time.
-Kanye West

watching that video

>>1905728

Daaamn that situationist fucked up Lacan's desk!

Debord was a egotistical paranoid person. Situationalism however, was more of a collaboration and did contribute.

However, I really get a headache when I try to understand what situationalism is about. Society of the Spectacle? it makes no sense, to me it's pretentious critical theory bullshit.

But I would like to understand about it, if it's translated into plain english.

>>1905757

This is now a situationist thread.

Their shit is as dense as trying to read derrida. Could someone explain the basic principles of Society of the Spectacle? In like 3 paragraphs?

Why bother with Debord when you have Foucault?

>>1905767

Could you explain how they are similar?

>>1905776
how are they not?

both aim to do an ethnography of the western man

>>1905778

But you think Foucault does it better?

>>1905763

I can try:

Society is debased because people no longer relate to one another as people, instead we relate to one another as commodities, and as the vehicle of other commodities. Identification with the specatacle of these commodity relations has replaced any kind of interaction with the real. People will describe one another as 'Dave, the guy who drives the Fiat', people ask one another if they saw the game, they don't ask people to play a game. This makes Guy Debord haev a sad.

Guy is sad because not only does this prevent people from having an authentic existence, but the spectacle also elides the past and the future, and convinces people that they live in an endless consuming present. Now Guy has another sad, because the spectacle prevents people from conceiving revolution. It turns out that religion isn't the opiate of the people. Guy is aghast.

Guy wants to wake up the citizens of the spectacle with the creation of situations but he was vague about these things, because above all else, Situationists like to argue with one and other and bitchslap each other in an endlessly changing circle-jerk of alliances and feuds. Situations are supposed to wake the citizen from the specatacle, make them self-aware, and aware of the constructions around them, which will allow them to once again engage with the concept of revolution. Troll the motherfuckers till they get the fucking joke.

>>1905728
Dude had balls.

>>1905800

So according to the video of the dude throwing slop on Lacan, A situationist situation is basically being a dick to people and throwing stuff at them?

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (Lord Darlington says it in Lady Windermere's Fan)

"The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good — in spite of all the people who say he is very good." - Robert Graves (I found it on Wikiquote)

"Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers." - Stephen Fry on A Bit of Fry and Laurie (I think the third episode of the first season)

"Shape without form, shade without color
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion." - T. S. Eliot (my favorite lines from The Hollow Men)

>>1905809

That's one way. See also Neil Godin, and entartage - if you can read French then the frogwiki is

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entartage#No.C3.ABl_Godin

I think they also kidnapped the bishop of somewhere once, put his clothes on then went out and read Nietszche instead of the bible. Or maybe they didn't. They should have done mind.

"bump"
--anonymous

The SIutationist International did almost overthrow the French state in 1968, to be fair. That's more than David Foster Wallace ever managed.

On the other hand, flash mobs almost certainly derive directly from situationism, so it's not all good.

>>1905645
Never Work was a general slogan of May 69, Guy Debord has said it, but I don't believe he ever took credit for it.

"All changes, even the most longed-for, have their melancholy, for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another."

Anatole France

>>1905809
That's interrupting the scpectacle.

ITT: I'm reminded that there are some people who can't just read Derrida's work or SI texts and understand most of it first time.

>>1905893

Bear in mind also that French society is far more deferential to intellectuals, certainly in the period of that film. Basically in that time, everyone was just supposed to sit there and listen to Sartre or Lacan or whoever the fuck and nod politely and then tell them how brilliant they were. What Debord saw as 'the spectacle' had superceded any possibility of engagement, disagreement or debate - intellectualism had become something to be consumed, not challenged. By throwing shit all over them, or custard pies or whatever, the attempt was made to show that these were men, not gurus, and that their opinions could be challenged, and revolution was still possible.

The city of cats and the city of men exist one inside the other, but they are not the same city.

Me and my folks fought for this country, and we got some rights.

>Could someone explain the basic principles of Society of the Spectacle? In like 3 paragraphs?

Shit man it's not that hard:

Basically it's an explanation of how marx's commodity fetishism has developed into a methaphysical cancer, that is the spectacle. The spectacle has to be taken in a wide sense.

Example: think at your first kiss. The first kiss has been represented massively in spectacle form (movie, novels, comics, songs, you name it) and it became in your mind just an act that represent that spectacular form. An inversion. Basically, you have been expropriated of your singular experience and you only do it only to act the spectacular form. Acting spectacular forms is the only thing that makes you part of the spectacular society. You expect the act to conform the spectacular canons. If it doesn't happen, you perceive it wrong.
Spectacles are not there to tell storis, are there to give you orders.

Wiki sums it up quite good:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International

>protip: Debord has been situationalist only it the initial stage of the movement

>>1905918
>Example: think at your first kiss. The first kiss has been represented massively in spectacle form (movie, novels, comics, songs, you name it) and it became in your mind just an act that represent that spectacular form. An inversion. Basically, you have been expropriated of your singular experience and you only do it only to act the spectacular form.
Well, fuck.

i was drunk during my first kiss. she was drunk too. she was my cousin's girl. it was my cousin's birthday. she said let's kiss. so we kissed.

>>1905935

>>1905675

>>1905935
being drunk is the spectacle approved way to be allowed to do weird shit and feel "original" or "decadent" or "cool" and so on.

An obvious form of spectacle: music scenes. Boys and Girls conforming to ridiculous but strict way of dressing-acting to have the sensation to be "yourself" and "unique". This is an evident form and shouldn't be hard to understand.

>>1905675

also his first book had a sandpaper cover so that it would destroy the books next to it on the shelf

>>1905962

>>1905962
was debord a nazi? because nazis didn't like other books either

>>1905986

>>1905918
This hypothesis has generated itself in my mind as an amalgam of bits of things i've read here and there:
the idea that "genuine" human experience has been replaced by the desire to simply act out certain canonized stories like "The First Kiss." I also think that this plays a part in priests becoming child molesters, asians having "geeky" interests, blondes acting unintellectual -- people are attracted to being a stereotype, because these stereotypes give them a sense of identity that is recognized and reaffirmed by the society around them.

>>1905996
or you're just so socially inexperienced you don't realize most stereotypes aren't true

>So according to the video of the dude throwing slop on Lacan, A situationist situation is basically being a dick to people and throwing stuff at them?

Well....that's Debord's concept of "detournement". In which you basically hijack the pre-established narrative.

Lacan used to decide how long a therapeutic hour was, based on how he felt. He'd kick patients out after 5 minutes, just for the hell of it. I can sorta see why the detournement in this case was so crude.

But earlier, under the Lettrist International (forerunner to the Situationists), some guy got up in Notre Dame Cathedral dressed as an archbishop, and began to deliver a sermon that began "God is dead..." They eventually chased him out into the street and beat the shit out of him. THAT is the real gold-standard for Situationist detournement.

Anyone interested in all this should check out the Greil Marcus book (Lipstick Traces) as well as Sadie Plant's history of the Situationist Int'l (The Most Radical Gesture).

>>1906002
It doesn't make a difference if they're true, or even if people believe them to be "true". The point is that people act as if they're true.

>>1906002
There are subtler stereotypes than hipster and bro, like "carrer woman" and "family man" -- they're vague but may have a large effect on people's perceptions of themselves and each other.

>>1905996
Really? My childhood in an insulated, affluent community has affirmed the very opposite. When I venture into the "real world", I find the people have so much more depth than I could ever have expected. As I experience more of the world, I discover that the blue-collar worker, whom my upbringing has brought me to view as a brain-dead moron, has so much curiosity and verve to him.

>>1906002

And you're so socialised by the spectacle that you can't see how stereotypes propogate.

>>1906018
>the blue-collar worker
Is an example of such a "spectacle".

>>1906024

Dangit, beat me too it. But yeah, this guy is right - your perception of yourself as middle class and the others as blue collar is a part of what debord is talking about - only through detournment or situations can you be forced to think of yourself and others outside of these definitions that were just handed to you by the spectacle.

>>1906024
Well, I'm trying to convey that my experience is breaking 'spectacles'. I categorized as "blue-collar worker" because I still have to work within the idioms of our language and our society's expectations

what is not a spectacle?

>>1906044

The authentic.

>>1906047
is that your response or debord's

>>1906044

Nothing. Which is why the situationist movement fell apart when they realized this.

>>1906018
I didn't describe the quality of anybody's character -- i'm talking about where people's character originates and how it is shaped.
Even if in his inner-life someone has a sense of individuality, his interactions with others are all cliché acts replayed a thousand times before. Just like someone was talking about the "first kiss" scenario before-- your don't share your first kiss with just yourself and the other, you share it with the society that has defined the symbolic meaning of the act. Your perceptions of the kiss are influenced by popular songs and films that make a spectacle of an experience that would be shared by you two alone -- the whole of society is watching you while you kiss.

"I don't need no friend, I don't need no broad. The only thing I need is the help of the Good Lord."
-Z-Ro

>>1906055

I don't think you quite got it.

>>1906006

fuck sadie plant's book is incredible. there's a pdf of it up if people want to check it out, just google search.

and the guy saying situationism sounds like scraps of other stuff; that's cos it is. Debord's Society of the Spectacle for instance was 'plagurised' or 'detourned' from lots of other sources. The SI felt that enough had been said already and the capitalist system in fact realies on people carrying on saying things, on this continual innovation and novelty, so the SI were some of the first to say it's ok to just recycl what had been before, reconfiguring it, recontextualising it all etc. so that it is subverted or actionised

>>1906044
>>what is not a spectacle?

Whatever cannot be commodified.

Hence Debord's interest in art, and in games.

These things just keep coming back, even if there's no commodification possible.

But taking the examples of "spectacles" herein cited i've seen and experienced huge deviations from these supposedly fixed narratives; Are "spectacles" just the average narrative of an experience or are they supposed to be fixed and we cannot scape from them.?

>>1906054

Maybe neither - perhaps it's just a product of the spectacle.

>>1906057

What if I didn't feel like my first kiss was anything special? What if I can barely remember the scene of my first kiss because it wasn't some big ordeal to me? I can remember lots of other things about that relationship but I can't remember exactly when the first kiss went down because I didn't care.

Does this mean that I was outside of the spectacle for that particular instance?

>>1906064

Wait wuuut? I'm in art school right now, and art students are extremely easy to stereotype and divide into groups. They all wear berets for one thing (not even kidding). And they all have similar styles of dressing.

Being part of the 'against it' commodity is still a commodity.

>>1906075
It means you never had a first kiss.

>>1906078

and THAT was why the SI were all about secrecy, avoiding publicity etc. as ways of counteracting the intrusion of the spectacle

>>1906080

Wait what? I have a girlfriend, I have had 3 since my first girlfriend, I made out with my first girlfriend all the time, BUT I don't recall at which event our first kiss was, it just happened naturally.

>>1906083
>mfw I realized why Pynchon stays out of the limelight.

>>1906078

by which i mean the trust fund hipster faggots at your 'art school' are not special figures of the counter-culture

the situationsists didn't privilege certain spaces - like art etc. - as automatically free from the spectacle, they were equally critical of all areas of society, particularly art in fact, which they saw as one of the key conduites of spectacular power.

the key thing for them, for instance, would be that people made their own art or took what art promises and MADE IT REAL in society itself, or played football as a community rather than simply WATCHING the alienated and spectacular re-presentation of 'professional' football on a screen.

>>1906063

>fuck sadie plant's book is incredible.

Maybe so, but even the Kindle version is $53.09. Now that is spectacular.

>>1906102
>>1906102

>http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5TTF71LK

it's pretty cool that you can get it completely free also

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right."

"That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value."

"Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice."

"The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection."

"It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same."

"When my country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir."

--Thomas Paine

>>1906084
I'm saying you never had The First Kiss -- that spectacle of innocent romance, two silhouettes against a pale moon.
You just kissed someone, which is a different spectacle depending on how old you are. If you were a child, then it was mostly gossiping, giggling and embarrassed, flushed cheeks. Perhaps you were a bit older and it was a spectacle of masculinity where your bros pat you on the back for finally doing something you've been expected of. Maybe you were an adult and it was a about officiating your relationship. Maybe you were drunk, and it was the spectacle of two inebriated fools slobbering over each other at a party.
Whatever.
Maybe the guy above is right and everything is a spectacle so this shit has no point.

>>1906095

OH so looking at art in galleries rather than making their own! I get it.

>>1906112

I am so confused, so even if I kiss in the dead of night with nobody around to know that it was done it is still a spectacle? How would it not be a spectacle if I never kissed I suppose?

What can I do that isn't spectacle? WTF? this is complete bullshit.

>>1906110

I can never get that bent site to work - and I'm too lazy to make any effort. Why so much arseache for a fucking 450k upload.

Yeah, I'm a moron, but fuck it, I can't be bothered.

>>1906123

You wait 45 seconds, then click download.. wow.. Are you new to the internet or something?

>>1906121

Yeah this whole spectacle thing made sense at first but now I'm thinking that maybe the people here are just not explaining it correctly. What isn't spectacle?

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” - George Bernard Shaw

>>1906127

Forget it - I'm a moron. I've got it now, I think. Now I owe this Sadie bird fifty sheets - anyone know where she lives? And is she hot?

>>1906121
It's a spectacle because you're acting it out is influenced partially by societial ideals, memes, impressions, etc. Not just the act itself but the way you act it.
You are aware of the experience before it's happened because you've seen it played in spectacular form in pictures, videos, stories, etc. So when you come to kiss someone it's not entirely motivated by your desire to kiss but also by your desire to perform the spectacle of kissing-- a spectacle that has played on your mind.
You can think of more overt variations of this spectacle-- like the man walking the woman home after a date: he walks her to the door and instead of saying goodbye she looks around shyly and waits for him to approach her with a kiss.
I guess the only non-spectacle form of experience then is experience that catches you unaware-- an experience that you had no knowledge of or that you thought possible.

>>1906150

>And is she hot?

Errm, your mileage may vary, is perhaps the kindest thing I can say here.

>>1906153

>I guess the only non-spectacle form of experience then is experience that catches you unaware-- an experience that you had no knowledge of or that you thought possible.

LIke seeing George Bush get pwned in the chops with a custard pie, or disembowelling Santa on the stairs of Harrods, or sharking the queen.

If enough people watch a detournment, does it become a part of the spectacle? Seeing the Lacan thing on Youtube made me realise that Situationalism never really accounted for the internet generation - he'd probably have flipped his shit at the chance to be a full-time internet troll.

>>1906160

If I am a film-maker am I creating new spectacles? Why don't film makers do every single combination just to piss off S.I. jerks.

Above all else the key is to realise how the spectacle functions, which will help you stay aware of when you're just steping into a spectaular role and participating in some re-staging of the spectacle rather than at least trying to live authentically.

A good way of conceiving the specatcle is as something like a force acting in a field, like gravity say. Following Deleuze and Guattari you could configure this field as the 'authentic' relational space between people and even between people and the world, calling it 'desire', which in their view is a productive field in which flows are channelled etc. rather than simply a system or dialectic of lack/want. The spectacle comes into this as a kind of fat 'accretion' of capital, commodity relations reaching the point where they become pure image and start distorting the field of desire, perverting it, blocking it, re-routing it and so on. The Sitationists sought out forms of praxis which would pervert things in the other direction, as it were, which would bring individual desire to the fore and 'inscribe it on the real' in such a way that it nullifies/counter-acts the spectacle.

One problem though is the fact that, especially with the internet, the distoriting effects of the spectacle have reached such a critical point that we're almost entirely alienated from any kind of primal field of genuine, unmediated desire, with some figures like Baudrillard declaring there's no actual way back now, leading to this post-modern malaise where we just 'enjoy the ride' rather than try to contest anything in a fundamental way. The question then is always how far gone do you think we are, too far perhaps to ever be able to break out of spectacular relations?

>>1906191
>>1906191


>The question then is always how far gone do you think we are, too far perhaps to ever be able to break out of spectacular relations?

Yes, because pr0n.

>>1906191
>>1906191

This is actually quite disheartening. I wish I didn't know about it, since there is nothing I can do about it.

>>1906221

YOU'RE A FUCKING IDIOT THAT'S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK

THAT'S WHY BAUDRILLARD JUST SLID INTO THIS AIMLESS NIHILISM

THE POINTS IS TO DIRECT THE NIHILISM

YOU CAN DO EVERYTHING ABOUT IT

>>1906221

Of course you can't, because the spectacle is still working upon you - as said elsewhere in the thread, one of the aspects of the spectacular society is to elide the past and the future, so that we live in an endlessly mediated present, believing that there is not possibility of change or revolution.

By indulging in situations, through derive and detournment, we free ourselves and others from the spectacular consciousness.

Or something.

>>1906226

What? I know that I can be existential. I am. It's more a matter of I know my existential actions are part of my upbringing and have been influenced by the spectacle, and even as an existentialist there is nothing I can do that isn't in some shape or form participating in the spectacle because of the advent of the internet.

Read the whole thread before jumping in with shit, since you clearly don't realize that we are discussing the works of Debord.

posting some good stuff sadie plant's book:

" Arguments abound as to whether these were displays of situationist or surrealist influence; when the issue was raised with the surrealist Jean Schuster in 1987, his response to the suggestion that ‘the situationists stole the surrealists’ thunder in 1968’ was pert: ‘If you read their revue and Raoul Vaneigem’s writings attentively you’ll see that there isn’t a single new idea in them.’122 But when had the situationists ever claimed originality? Theirs was a patchwork of materials stolen from everywhere, and if surrealism’s contribution to the revolutionary moment was particularly strong, it was obviously particularly useful. In 1968, surrealism was subject to a détournement of its own, taken out of the galleries and acted in the streets. Perhaps the most famous and significant of the slogans read: ‘Under the cobblestones, the beach’, an expression which captured both the tactics of the revolutionaries, for whom the cobblestones provided the most obvious weapons against the police, and the symbolic meaning of this détournement of the streets. Another slogan read, ‘The most beautiful sculpture is the sandstone cobble, the heavy square cobble, the cobble you throw at the police’, and André Fermigier pointed out that Duchamp’s ‘“ready-made” finally realised its revolutionary potential when it took the form of paving-stones which the students threw at the CRS [riot police]’. "

>>1906235

How can you derive in the internet age though?

this post barely makes sense >>1906237

also, another great quote:

" Regardless of the actual booty, what the rioter really takes is the spectacle literally. The spectacle which offers itself as a whole is taken as such: the spell of the shop window is broken and the objects are revealed for what they really are in relation to their subjective appropriation—useful, beautiful, empty, or worthless as the case may be. The real desire which begins to emerge is for the power to choose, to assign value, to control what is offered and that which is possible.

...their condemnations of existing society left no room for calls for a return to nature or any precapitalist age. The situationists envisaged a future in which the creativity, imagination, technology, and knowledge developed within capitalist society would allow us to abolish work, satisfy desire, create situations, and overcome all the problems posed by the perpetuation of outmoded social and economic relations.

The material conditions for a world of playful engagement, uncommodified leisure and unqualified pleasure had long been achieved. "

>>1906237

In fact, the 'edgy existential young intellectual' is just another role that the spectacle places us into. Hence all the shops which service precisely this social demographic - the angry existentialist is just another example of commodity relations, a good way to sell macbooks and black jeans.

>>1906240

It's an interesting question - a derive without leaving the house. Is chatroulette a situationalist website, or just a load of fat guys fapping?

Buggered if I know, I'm just a stiltwalker.

How is this related at all to Post-Modernism ala Foucault? I'm still confused.

So post-modernism is saying that everything new is just a combination of things in the past? since nothing new is ever created, everything is just a combination.

So in regards to Debord, every action has already been done in the past and is part of the spectacle which we cannot escape?

Is this close to being right?

>>1906252

had a seminar on situationism in which someone raised chatroulette in those terms, and my lecturer pointed out how he'd been to some conference and someone had basically stood up and said, before anyone goes putting the internet forward as a new area of hope or whatever, how many of you actually understand how a search engine works?

he turned this into a point about how what we think of the internet as this free flowing space where truly random encounters can happen etc. is in fact false, as we're constantly directed by algorithems reading our own browsing habits and re-directing us along standardised routes defined by advertising and commodification etc. etc. Also just our tendency to visit certian forums etc. where everyone is like us rather than actually meeting radically different people.

"They're buying it! They're actually buying it! What a bunch of dumbasses! Sweetheart, order us up some pizza and beer, we just made another couple of million!"

-George R. R. Martin

This is the coolest thread I've seen on this site in awhile.

Let's see here.
No troll arguments
No name calling
Actual discussion of philosophical ideas
People learning from one another

Oh and did I mention this thread has no tripfags in it?

inb4 they come and ruin the thread.

>>1906263

I don't know how useful it is to link or compare post-structuralism and post-modernism. The Structuralist International was above all an artistic/political movement in the old school - they had manifestoes and meetings, and they self-conscously thought of themselves as situationalists (then spent years bitching at one another about what that meant and who was best at it).

Postmodernism is a term generally applied by others to artists and thinkers, it had no manifesto, and no core body of work to which one can refer in order to attempt to define what it is, and in many ways the core of postmodernism is the resistance to the kind of metanarrative that Debord sought to apply.

In many ways, postmodernism is the spectacular extension of structuralism, it adopts the techniques and methods of the Situationists, but turns them inwards, with the free-play of meaning and the narratological pyrotechnics that affirm "postmodernism is serious art, read it for the next 20 years"

Am I the only one not seeing how is it bad that we all play roles as given to us by spectacles? It may not allow for revolution in a political sense, but scientific development doesn't seem to be any hampered by our spectacular way of doing everything; and if we can still develop technologically, what danger is there in making things stable, albeit at the cost of being able to choose?
Then again, I'm a physics student, and this might be just me looking through spectacular glasses, assuming things are supposed to be one certain way and being heavily biased, and this is getting hard to understand help please

>>1906263

Sadie Plant's book's entire thesis is basically that the point which postmodernism has reached was already arrived at many years before with the Situationists, the only real difference being that the latter said "let's try and actively contest/change the status quo" and then set about doing all sorts of stuff along those lines, while post-modernism simply says "can't do anything, it's too difficult to change things/I'm a lazy faggot or whatever, might as well just mess around in all this meaningless culture while we blithely affirm capitalism".

>>1906280

>Oh and did I mention this thread has no tripfags in it?

I'd just noticed that myself as I was typing my last entry, and I thought "I'm not going to mention it and draw attention to the fact by saying their name. It's like Candlejack, if you talk about them, they appe

>>1906303

well the situationist's point would be that those spectacular roles are what keep us from actualising all those developments in technology etc. for the benefit of everyone

something like, capitalism has helped us develop the means of building something like a utopia where hunger/poverty etc. don't need to exist anymore if we would just organise society differently, and yet it's precisely the sacred position alloted to capitalism's commodity form which is keeping us from breaking out of it and instantiating this utopia.

the problem with the 'specatcular roles' is that they are essentially created by the commodity form and help prop it up at the same time.

>>1906303

But isn't science in itself an attempt to avoid the spectacle - I'm no science guy btw, so I'll probably get out of my depth quite quickly here. However, I'm thinking Galileo: The Church is all "hey, dudes, the sun like, totally goes round the earth" and Galileo is totally "nuh-uh, not even" and the church is like "man, we're going to burn you" and he's "yeh, but no but, I can like totally prove it innit" and he gets the old telemescope out and has a look at his anus, or something.

The point being that physics is the ultimate attempt to see beneath the spectacle - people say that light is something that travels through the aether, and capitalist discourse dines out on that for a few decades until someone comes along and says errm guys, I don't think there's any aether AND WHERE THE FUCK IS THIS PHLOGISTON SHIT ANYWAY, I CAN'T BELIEVE CAPITALISM HAS BEEN TROLLING YOU LIKE THIS, I AM GUY DEBORD THE PYSICIST.

Or something. Revolutions in science tend to come exactly when someone sees beyong the perception, and bends everybody's tiny brain. It's kind of different to the political revolution of Situationalism.

You guys have entry level taste in quotes.

We live in a world of extreme diversity and multiplicity: but the basic /condition of possibility/ for this profusion is the functioning of money, or credit, as a single standard of value or "universal equivalent". The proliferation of variations, and of consumer choices, is underwritten by a more fundamental homogeneity. Money and credit make it possible for anything to be exchanged with anything else. In the realm of digital media, binary code functions in a similar manner. For this code is a universal equivalent for all data, all inputs, and all sensory modalities. Everything can be samples, captured, and transcribed into a string of ones and zeros. This string can then be manipulated and transformed, in various measured and controllable ways. Under such conditions, multiple differences ramify endlessly; but none of these differences actually /makes a difference/, since they are all completely interchangeable.

-Steven Shaviro, Post-cinematic Affect, p. 132

MAH NIGGAS.

>>1906270

Yeah, but chatroulette really is just a load of random fat guys giving churning the baby butter. Isn't it? Please don't tell me that there are algorithms that have discerned that I like that stuff, because I really don't.

>>1906357

sorry guys, thread closed

>>1906387

Yup - time to go.

Can we archive this as the first time a /lit/ thread went over 100 pages till a tripcunt fucked it up?

then a tripcunt fucked it up

It will also be useful ammunition next time this useless spastic cunt tries to claim that tripfags contribute to threads.

>>1906406
yeah it's pretty incontrovertible here. good conversation -> stupid clique-ish tripshit.

>>1906406

3/4

>>1906406
>>1906406

>people saying tripfags fucked up this thread
>over 100 posts about 'quotes'
>which aren't literature

the following posts are also off-topic or irrelevant quotes to be posted on a board for Literature!
>>1905750
>>1905801
>>1905836
>>1905702
>>1905952
>>1905959
>>1905962
>>1905973
>>1905986
>>1905995
>>1905996
>>1906002
>>1906006
>>1906008
>>1906015
>>1906018
>>1906023
>>1906024
>>1906036
>>1906037
>>1906044
>>1906047
>>1906054
>>1906055
>>1906057
>>1906062
>>1906080
>>1906084
>>1906090
>>1906095
>>1906113
>>1906121
>>1906127
>>1906150
>>1906226
>>1906240
>>1906318
>>1906333
>>1906347
>>1906381
>>1906387
>>1906392
>>1906406


also, all posts in this thread are off-topic because they are not about literature, they are about quotes. If you want to talk about what does or does not constitute a spectacle, make your own thread.

a final thing, this thread has over 100 posts, but not over 100 posters. Nothing special.

thank you!

>>1906406
>>1906406

>Can we archive this as the first time a /lit/ thread went over 100 pages till a tripcunt fucked it up?

if it was the answer would still be no

it's kind of a sad thing to witness so much moral bankruptcy and obvious BS

>>1906430
seriously, brownbear

come on

none of this is clever or funny, it's time to give it a rest.

remember how you're not deep&edgy?

>>1906436
>>1906436

are you saying that what i said isn't true?

The posts are not the topic of the first post. But the topic ti evolved into taught me a lot that I didn't know about the entire Situationist movement!

This was the most information I've got out of /lit/ in a month.

Why can't we have more threads about topics like this?

>>1906438
brownbear i think that's pretty clear to everyone involved, to the point where we don't have to spend any time denying your ridiculous assertions

>>1906439
USUALLY BECAUSE OF CERTAIN TRIPFAGS DERAILING THREADS.

>>1906438
you try too hard to be clever and funny and it fails every time

just settle down

>>1906439
>>1906439

why don't you make one instead of complaining?

>>1906441
>>1906441

or certain posters posting in capslock for attention and derailing threads by posting pictures of themselves in Japan?

>>1906440
>>1906440

then what's the issue?

i hope everyone has saged and reported this thread also

>>1906443
>why don't you make one instead of complaining?

ahahahahahaha the ironing is delicious

>i hope everyone has saged and reported this thread also

brownbear this thread was on-topic, and you know it. it was about the ideas of a political and artistic movement. stop trying to pretend it wasn't on-topic. i know you derive enjoyment from ruining things for other people (which is really sad) so i can't get you to stop but ugh you're just hideous.

>>1906442
>>1906442

>try too hard to be clever and funny

i am both more intelligent and more funny than you.

this thread is neither.

someone has to clear these off-topic shit posts by Anonymous

write a wise saying and your name will live forever - anonymous

>>1906446
>>1906446

>ahahahahahaha the ironing is delicious
i'm going to assume that you mean 'ironic'
if you do, you mis-used the term 'ironic'

this thread was on-topic?
if people wanted to discuss the a certain artistic/political movement then they were free to do so in a separate on-topic thread.

i don't take pleasure out of ruining things for people, i just take displeasure from seeing off-topic shitposts.

>>1906451
I'm pretty sure that this is so obviously disingenuous that I don't even have to point it out

>>1906448
brownbear, you're not d&e, but you were right about derrida using language as a showcase for ideas

you're not enlightening, you're not a clever troll

you're barely above stagolee and he's the lowest of the lows

>>1906456
>>1906456

>doesn't have anything to say
>lol i dnt need 2 tell you!

>>1906458
>>1906458

>you're not a clever troll
how was i trolling

>you're not d&e
where was i trying to be?
feel free to use greenoval to compare posts

>>1906456

You're wasting your time. Report the bear if it makes you feel better and move on. This one's dead, I don't think anyone who was posting about situationism is still here - I'm one of them, and I only came back to log the PC off. Thread's over.

How bout we just ignore the bullshit and just keep talking about this? I've been lurking the thread for awhile now, and it's interesting. I still think there's two interesting criticisms/side-issues, scientific discourse as apposite to spectacle and how can we be certain of something being outside of the spectacle; couldn't it even be possible for this self-awareness to be co-opted as a commodity, akin to mysticism turned to New Age, or say, punk rock sold to teenagers?

>>1906462
>>1906462

stop it

>>1906458
>you're not a clever troll
>posts some bullshit list in this thread
>everyone gets mad
>not a clever troll

and it's still early.

>>1906460
sigh. i like how you put the first (very stupid) post second, so it seems as if you weren't a dumbass to begin with

i was the anon who called you on it

just stop, you're not d&e, leave the clever trolling, anonymous bashing to someone who actually has wit, go back to /litclub and hang with people like pizza

>>1906471
no one is upset

guys like stagolee and brownbear only troll themselves

>>1906473
>>1906473

and is that supposed to mean something?
in the second post (image wise) i make it very clear that i'm clearning what i said up
"basically what i'm saying is"

is it supposed to be some kind of 'funny' or 'clever' troll that you pretend not to notice that?

is there something wrong with making things clearer for those who do not immediately get it?

serious answer please!

>just stop, you're not d&e, leave the clever trolling, anonymous bashing to someone who actually has wit,

>implying any tripGODS troll this board
pic related kiddo

>>1906462
I definitely think it's difficult for something to be really outside the spectacle - as you say, it's very easy to commodify things and turn them into something that's within the mainstream. Usually this transformation destroys them, stripping them as it must of the authenticity, the space for public display, the public-ness and the way in which these things are kind of self-created. I guess the only real answer is that you have to keep creating new spaces for public life, new spaces for authentic discourse and genuine, non-spectacle interaction.

Does that make sense or am I just rambling?

>>1906462
I was just going to ask this. Seems a bit of a hopeless pickle.

>>1906462

Ok back to the topic of discussion I really jsut think that Debord's and the Situationist's ideas are inherently flawed.

For starters what I've gathered from reaidn this thread, basically all activity is bad because it is part of the spectacle. Now I don't see how this is correct at all!

I personally feel that they just take their ideas way to far, to the point of being ridiculous. Like why can't I just be a normal human? What is so wrong about that?

When did society first become a society of the spectacle? We have always acted out the actions that have been laid before us since we stopped being cavemen! So do I have to revert to my cave-man self to be authentic? WTF?

Does anyone else see these theories of spectacle are totally bogus?

>>1906476
>>1906476

i have not trolled once in this thread, stop using the word 'trolll' as a buzzword to dismiss those who are more intelligent than you and who put you in a position where you are unable to defend your retarded logic.

>>1906488
> When did society first become a society of the spectacle? We have always acted out the actions that have been laid before us since we stopped being cavemen! So do I have to revert to my cave-man self to be authentic? WTF?

This. While I can see what the movement is getting but it just seems like the same shit, different pile.

>>1906277
Ahahahaha! made my day.

>>1906488
It's related, I think to the rise of capitalism, the development of the bourgeois, the development of society and the social in European history. Although there's always been society and actions have always . been for public display. In addition, the mass society didn't really develop until the early 20th century, with mechanization and mass media, and it really made a profound difference I think.

>>1906488

Yeah man total agreement. The entire idea of the spectacle of society needs some serious reworking. I'm having a hard time picturing how a society would even function without a spectacle?

They seem to talk about the fact that succumbing to the spectacle meaning that revolution isn't possible. But what on earth do they mean by revolution? I guess my question is, revolution from what? The spectacle? That doesn't make sense. Even if they mean a Marxist revolution, even in marxist societies the spectacle would still exist.

>>1906462
>How bout we just ignore the bullshit and just keep talking about this?
>How bout we just ignore the bullshit and just keep talking about this?
>How bout we just ignore the bullshit and just keep talking about this?
>How bout we just ignore the bullshit and just keep talking about this?

>>1906462
I realize this is an incredibly crass example, but it's the best that comes to mind, but for example we could take the idea of Tyler Durden and we can see situationalism... not given an archetype, but some of his actions: Raymond Kessler and the gun to his head sprang to mind, or destroying the credit unions - if we were to see this happen as a real event. What we would see is that the situation which breaks itself from normal thematic elements (commodities), i.e. generates self-awareness, can be immediately subsumed or absorbed into capitalist consciousness as a commodity; neighborhood football games can and do get sponsored by local bars, for that matter pool leagues, bowling alley leagues, etc.

It just seems like an outpouring of effort which devolves into useless criticisms through antagonism for its own end, just like an internet troll, it has to constantly re-assert, re-affirm, and revise itself.

>>1906506
Well, I think for Debord that after a Marxist revolution (and I think that's the kind of revolution he means) a society of the spectacle will no longer exist because after the society of the spectacle people will be free and live authentic lives. They will be free from labor alienation and the exigencies of the capitalist economy, and therefore the historic pressures which give rise to the society of the spectacle won't be operating anymore. Again, I think.

>>1906506

Yeah while reading through the history of S.I. I'm getting the feeling that the reason why they broke apart is because they couldn't all decide on what actions they would take or what they were in revolt against in the first place. I realize that they didn't like the spectacle, and they didn't like society as it was but that seems to be the only two things that all of the S.I. guys agreed upon. So the question was totally up in the air what they meant by revolution.

>>1906510
>>1906511
> It just seems like an outpouring of effort which devolves into useless criticisms through antagonism for its own end, just like an internet troll, it has to constantly re-assert, re-affirm, and revise itself.

Yep, pretty much while capitalism is still alive.

>>1906519

What is the point of even worrying about the spectacle if it is just going to dissappear when capitalism disappears? Why didn't they just focus on disrupting capitalism in general instead of sitting around making art and playing neighborhood football games? WTF?

>>1906494
>>1906494

Debord's argument is that society became the society of the spectacle with the rise of capitalism, and that spectacle effectively props up and facilitates capitalist discourse. The srgument of situationalism is that we can escape the spectacle, and the rest of the movement is bitching about the best way to aceive this - detournment, pranks, derive, anything which forces people to drop their habitual action (or formulate a new praxis if you'd rather), and perceive the world beyond the spectacle, even if that only means perceiving that the spectacle exists.

There are two sort of people, those who get the joke, and those who don't. If you don't know there's a joke, you're in the second group.

>>1906527

>Why didn't they just focus on disrupting capitalism in general instead of sitting around making art and playing neighborhood football games?

Because they perceived this as the best way to acheive the end of capitalism, by removing its spectacular underpinnings - while people are playing football, they're not paying hundreds of pounds to watch it.

There were more serious and straightforward political aspects to the movement as well - organising strikes, supporting workers groups, and leading the student revolts of 1968 were also part of it - once the detournment was acheived, the newly conscious citizens had to organise in a post-capitalist formation. It wasn't all custard pies and kidnapping priests.

>>1906537

It just seems like they achieved nothing and gave up.

>>1906537
sounds fun, if ineffectual

>>1906537

Yeah so they failed at the revolution and they just said fuck it? and dissolved? what gives?

Well I can see why the revolution failed for them. I mean think that theirs is a problem that we still face today.

All of the anarchist and Communists are still trying to do revolutions based on the marxist revolutionary tactics which don't fucking work in today's society.

But that really begs the question of why nobody seems to have formulated a plan for todays society upon which revolution could take place.

Does anyone here know of any such plans?

Seems to me that they just wanted to reach self awareness in everyday life as a reason d'etre.
Achievable through practice: http://bodhi.ru/samadhi/for/eng/index-samadhi-eng.htm

>>1906721

Haha I think I know what you mean. All the kids who are all 'ANARCHY ROFL XD' are to stupid to realize that the revolutionary tactics used before are complete failures. The only new tactic they have come up with is spray painting their names on walls.

Makes me facepalm hard.

>>1906734

Sure is Republican pig that ought to have its belly slit the fuck open in here.

>>1906554

Most things are ineffectual - if you can have fun doing them, then that's at least a bonus.

>>1906700

Pretty much, but then not really. One of the main problems with Situationism was that it came out of a lot of other movements (lettrism has been mentioned, but also the COBRA movement was very important, as well as the more 'mainstream' leftist movements of the time), and all of these movements were effective opposed to authority, and they all had different perspectives. So they all fell out, all the time. Add to this the fact that Debord was by all accounts a bit of a cunt and you have an inherently fractious movement, destined to failure from the beginning.

On the other hand, there's still a lot of Situationist thinking about - as Debord may have predicted, a lot of the detournments of Situationism have been recuperated into the mainstream, and you see situationism everywhere in adverts, music, media of all sorts - the people making this stuff all read Debord at college.

On the other hand - yeah, three hands. Wooh, it's a situation, did I blow your mind? There are still political movements like Adbusters and other culture jammers who represent detournment and situationist ideas. Artists like Banksy and Blek le Rat still attempt to maintain the spirit. I was a member of Reclaim the Streets in the 1990s (yeh, oldfag, I know), and we held parties on the motorway and tried to break people out of their ecologically unsound, carbound spectacle, and we explicitly aligned ourselves with sutuationism. Similar things still crop up from time to time and situationism still isn't dead.

And, of course, pic related. I've never actually seen this show, so I hope this is the right douchebag

I do wonder what a revolution plan would look like in today's culture. It would probably not resemble much of marxism at all. I honestly doubt it could work out in a stable country such as america. It could only happen in someplace totally unstable like greece.

>>1906263
Foucault was definitely not a post-modernist. Although the subject matter he investigated was unorthodox, his method and conclusions were not post-modern in the Lyotard sense of the idea.

>Does anyone here know of any such plans?
On the 4chan literature board? lol

reminds me of when people on /r9k/ would make threads asking how to get a girlfriend

>>1906734

This is another aspect of the problem - it was identified as Recuperation, the opposite of Detournment, and even detournments can be recuperated - commercials incorporating John Lennon's Bed-in, the Sex Pistols advertising Cialis, images of Guy Debord being used to sell iPads, whatever. The point is that for revolution to be acheived, the advantages of Situationist techniques must be followed up with revolutionary methods, otherwise capitalism will chew up your revolution, commercialise it and spit it back into your face, then charge you $25 for the T-shirt that said you were there.

>Those who make revolutions halfway dig their own graves
>Some dude, can't remember specifically who.

>>1906750
>>1906750

Like this

actually no troll - Fight Club was a novel riddled with situationist ideas.

>>1906760

I meant sites of a Crimethinc-esque quality only with revolutionary tactics that are made to fit in with the world of today, as opposed to marxist tactics that are complete shit.

>>1906734
The failure of (certain brands of) anarchism doesn't lie in any inherent err of propaganda of the deed, indeed terrorism, as in to terrify the opponent, is how most disputes are settled nowadays when law is not applicable (wars e.g.). What a serious critic of anarchism should 'facepalm' to is its failure to control the aftermath of a revolt.
>>1906721
Full automation of production will inevitably end capitalism. Your best course of action is an advanced robotics degree.

>>1906777

I would hope that we would be working under a communist/anarchist-type of society before this happened where the wealth was evenly distributed and very few people had to even do work due to the automation. and everyone could just reap the benefits of the robots.

>>1906750
it would be collective, but not national

consumer autonomy/independence is revolution in today's culture

it's not as exciting as bloodshed and riot gear, but growing and cooking your own food, making your own clothes and living with people in a cooperative way is the last refuge

Have you guys seen the Society of the Spectacle movie? I just discovered it online and I'm watching it.
Looks weird.
http://www.ubu.com/film/debord_spectacle.html

>>1906789

How do you think we could build a society where people could do high-tech advanced research in labs and study intensively in college under a communistic commune sort of anti-capitalistic setting? I wonder how that would work.

>>1906810
wouldn't worry about it, not gonna happen in our lifetime

>>1906817

LOL, yeah if you have that attitude it won't lol.

>>1906810
You'd have universities that are funded by the state and they'd be pretty much the same. It's hardly unprecedented. How do you think the Russians won the space race?

>>1906832
>>1906832

Would you have it so that kids with better grades would go to the universities and then the kids that didn't were assigned to the service jobs which best fit what they were interested in?

>>1906810
High technology development was for a long time and still is a chiefly State sponsored program, it's not hard to imagine this kind of arrangement being successful. The "revolution" is more about the individual's relation to the private sector, because that's where most of today's money and power lies. It's also about an individual's relationship to his/her peers, because we've been alienated from one another. What I'm imagining is not communist nor anti-capitalist in an economic sense.

Reintegrate work and home. We're already seeing this with Google's workplace being enviable because of the environment it provides its workers. Communal living doesn't necessitate primitivism. If anything, high technology (robotics) liberates labor to perform socially and metaphysically beneficial tasks.

This is all highly idealistic though; obviously we will spin our wheels with the service economy and unfettered speculation for decades to come.

>>1906825
you're never gonna have your commie anarchy revolution

if it did success you would be trading one slave master for another

techonological singularity is issac asimov's joke on humanity, almost as bad as the guy who founded buddhism

>>1906817

And there you have it, the socirty of the spectacle exemplified in one post

>>1906859
not sure what kind of college bullshit you've gotten caught up but i've got news for you: nothing's gonna change

The only consistancies in revolutions is that they lead to a new platform of corruption. The lead themselves to failure because they only work during the time that they can be remembered intimatly (ignoring the inconsistancy of memory)

I have heard a theory that revolutions for in three generational cycles.

>revolution <--
>re-building |
>corruption |
>-------------------

I have some problems with this idea, however recent history can show some merit.

>>1906862

My friends parents are allowing a commune to be built on their land as we speak and I live in the middle of republican-ville, Tennessee.

One brick at a time my friend. One brick at a time.

>>1906862

Read the rest of the thread, then you'll see what kind of college bullshit I've gotten caught up (whatever the fuck that means).

Goodnight, thread - it was one of the rare good ones. Pic related.

>>1906868
>>1906862

You're not going to get this through to Marxists. They're very well-insulated from reality.

>>1906868

Ah but what you are talking about is the Marxist style revolution, which is true, anytime there is a revolution russian-style or a coup d'tat or whatever it does always lead to the model you are talking about.

The discussion for the last 20 posts has been about how the Marxist model for revolution doesn't work and about how a new model would work.

>>1906873
>i'm gonna go live in squalor, become an economic non-participant/nonfactor, and basically not affect anything that goes on in society
you weren't good enough to function in our magnificent civilization, anyway

good riddance hippie scum

>>1906888
Not really, the same can be seen in the sexual revolution. The feminist movement....

It does not have to be revolution on a mass scale with warfare and death/destruction...

Small scale social revolutions have the same resemblance...

>>1906901
Even internet forums can show the same pattern,

take /b/ they are complaining about corruption...

>>1906895

They are going to be living in a brand newly built mansion with free water from a well with filters (the city water itself comes from a well anyway and I actually just got the annual water quality report a week ago and it is perfectly fine so don't even go there) Their power will be from a rooftop of solar panels as well as some in their yard. They will use the field in the backyard for farming.

Every person that drops out of society is one less person being a useless wageslave perpetuating the ongoing capitalist agenda.

Has anyone else thought that Anonymous and other hactivists groups could be participating in a form of Situationism? When you think about it, they interrupt (even if it's on a small scale) what big corporations like Sony try to exert all their power over the internet. It might not take them down or even do significant damage, but the ploys that lulzsec though (for the lulz) interrupt what people expect from the internet and the expected dynamic and what other have referred to as the controlled routes that people are usually brought to and limited by (for example, when Anonymous sneaked all that pr0n onto youtube--or when they made up that rumor that Steve Jobs died and Apple's stock suffered)--it upsets the power balance even just a little--or at least causes an interruption that causes some people to think about the internet and the "powers that be" a bit differently.

>>1906918

This is a good point but time has shown us that the little interruptions although can help, they are no substitute for an actual revolution in which people rise up and actually make a real change.

Nobody is willing to actually revolt because in this day and age nobody is willing to die for causes anymore. And very few are willing to go to jail over their beliefs.

The fact that america is completely OK with being wage slaves because they don't know any other way is the biggest problem. You have to give people the option and make the option available to revolt.

How the hell do they brainwash disillusioned Islamic kids into killing themselves? Why can't all the disillusioned forever alone 4channers go out and make a name for themselves and become a martyr for a greater cause instead of being a useless waste of space as most /b/ tards tend to be.

A few problems with revolutions in today's age.

Rulers gives the opposition some concessions and the people will just turn on themselves, attacking the radical elements of the revolution which has now become undesirable.

Need for funding allow the wealthy to still have a great influence over them.

The Revolutionaries only tear parts of the old structure leaving those parts that still benefit them monetarily, which will only lead to more corruption in the future.

Rebelliousness subcultures being commercialized and stripped of most of their content becoming another market to be exploited.

>>1906862
No one is advocating a total-societal revolution or change. The way you are imagining revolution has been irrelevant for some time and many of the posters in this thread realize this and are already discussing alternatives.

>>1906868
You're making some important assumptions here:
- That the revolution is political, antagonistic and total in nature
- That it would destroy what is currently in place
- That it would replace what it destroys with similar political forms and structures

Look, I don't doubt that all great ideas degrade in potency when they take an institutional form and that human nature is characterized by is its tendency for laziness and failure, but please at least be aware of assumptions when you make them.

>>1906887
I'm not sure that there are any Marxists in this thread. Marxist maybe in their viewpoint, but it's not likely that many support classical communism.

>>1906895
The cooperative houses and communal living situations I've been in tend to be cleaner than the efficiency or studio apartments I've visited. Since house members share tasks for cooking and cleaning they look pretty nice, generally. I don't know why you'd think people live in squalor. As for affecting the economy, they ARE participants in at least two ways:
- They often buy food in bulk directly from local sources.
- If they grow their own food, they are withdrawing their demand for industrial agriculture. This has an economic affect, and in this sense they are participating in world economy.
- They often use solar energy, and their withdrawl from energy generated by gas, nuclear or coal processes reduces demand there and increases demand for solar technology.

You should find a way to rig a chair to protect yourself from knee-jerk reactions, you might really hurt yourself someday.

>>1906933
>Nobody is willing to actually revolt because in this day and age nobody is willing to die for causes anymore

I wish this were true. It would be a credit to our generation. More likely, it's become more beneficial to most causes to live for them rather than to die for them. Dead folks generate no economic action (except for the undertaker).

>>1906933
Nobody can be simply brainwashed into being a suicide bomber. Baghdad is a shit hole that nobody wants to live in, and desperate individuals are willing to take out a few of their enemies as long as they've decided to kill themselves. Poverty is as much a factor as ideology in suicide bombings.

>>1906933
Except some hacktivists HAVE gone to jail.
What about Julian Assange?

>>1906965

He went to jail for rape, not for his activism.

>>1906961
Right. And the kind of poverty these countries have is nothing compared to what poor people in our nation face (although that is a problem itself). But we haven't gotten to the point in our country where mass amounts of people are experiencing that kind of poverty and danger. I would consider our consumerist culture, where even the working class can buy a plethora of crap, a scarily effective opiate.

>>1906975
His sources have been taken to court and expelled from the army.

>>1906975
Innocent until proven guilty, pal. A lot of people would disagree with you about that. Know any other suspected rapists imprisoned in their own homes?

Also, all of the wikileaks staff is in danger of being arrested. That doesn't change my argument. I was countering the argument that everyone is too afraid of arrest or death to rebel, but obviosuly that isn't true. The wikileaks staff, whether you agree with them or not, continue doing what they are doing even though the threat of arrest is very real for them. Even assasination isn't out of the cards for them, particularly Assange. And even if he HAS been arrested for rape, he knew, doing the journalism that he was doing that arrest and death were possibly outcomes.

In todays political and global climate you couldn't have a country of anarchism/communism. Because we are still in a world where people are killing each other over their religions. How would an anarchist country defend itself?

The only way an anarchist community could actually exist, it would have to be prefaced with the abolition of religion in the world. But I feel like we are going to do that with muslims soon enough anyway.

The only religions that are actually a threat in the modern age is Islam. And if it were abolished then there would be very little need for defenses.

>>1906985
WOW you really are narrow minded....

not even going to tell you how...

>>1906983

What I was saying was in general. Oh, so you have named 5-10 people who would die for their cause. That is nice, out of the millions who are not willing to. What I am saying is in most anarchist/communist groups, and organizations there are very few who are willing to die, whereas in the past there would be thousands who were willing. I wasn't saying that nobody would die, just very few when you look at how many armchair anarchists there are.

>>1906985
>war is about religion, not resources

>>1906985
Anarchism would be a complete disintegrating of society. There would be no anarchist state. There would just be a whole lot of anarchists in close proximity.

Anarchy, by its definition is the abolishment of all government and governing body.

>>1906995
Maybe I misread what you were saying, but I thought you meant that because no one was willing to die we could never have any revolutions. But it can take just a few people who are willing to risk death to start a revolution. Especially in a culture like ours when a few people can influence many people through the internet. And you're ignoring the many many people who have provided source material to wikileaks, and mirror sites for wikileaks, or have done hacking on behalf of wikileaks. I used them as one example.

>>1907001

Which is why we are talking about Anarcho-Communism. Not just straight up anarchy. There are tons of different forms of both anarchism and communism and for our purposes we are talking about a broad range. What you are referring to, a stateless anarchism is not what we are talking about ( What you are describing is anarcho-primitivism which is in my opinion a dumb idea)

>>1906997

What factors do you think would have to happen in order for a country say in south america to have an entirely anarcho-communist government? With very little in the way of army-style defense, although I can see a street police force being in place.

What kind of geo-political enviornment would have to occur for them to be safe and not in fear of being under attack by other countries?

>>1907006
They seem like completely opposing governmental structures.

One(comunism) complete control be the government
other(anarchy) complete abolition of the government.

>>1907022

>One(comunism) complete control be the government
>control be the government
My face when ebonics makes an unexpected appearance in this thread.

>>1907001
Not it wouldn't, in that society =|= state...

>>1907022
Here is some information on the subject.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism

I hope you find it enlightening as it is just one of like 50 branches of anarchy/communism.

I was actually about to make some snide remark about how you shouldn't try to participate in a thread you know nothing about. But then I realized that this thread has been about nothing but teaching people and helping other people understand ideas without tripfags fucking it up. So I decided, hey! I won't be a jerk, I'll help this guy understand.

Why can't we all just be friends and have intellectual discussions like this all the time?

>>1907022
I'm guessing you're American? Most Americans have very strange views about communism as well as anarchism. As the anarcho-communism page has already been linked, I'd suggest reading about Rosa Luxemburg, Anton Pannekoek, council communists, and the libertarian communist tradition if you're interested. Interestingly, up until the mid-18th century (and everywhere but America), libertarianism was exclusively considered the domain of the left and socialists. Socialist economies are not the same thing as state-run economies, merely economies where the means of production are collectively owned.

and everything was going so well until they ran out of tiolet paper.

>>1907041

Slowly one person stands up in the crowd and begins clapping loudly and proudly.

problem..

>volutray

>>1907059
>and everything was going so well until the self-proclaimed intellectuals of the society were unable to even spell the word "toilet" correctly

>>1907059

Before disposable diapers we used cloth ones. Guess what? Cloth with shit on it can be washed if you are not a lazy fuck.

>>1907041
>>1907067

Yep even when Brownbear tried to turn the thread to shit we wouldn't have it. This thread stands as a testament to all that is good about anonymous on this board (not that we needed to be told what we already know, that tripfags generally derail threads and start bullshit arguments with people whereas we are helpful)

I wish this thread didn't have to 404 and could stay here forever.

>>1907070
I self proclaim nothing, and am fully aware that I am an idiot. Just fondly remembering Poland.

I think that capitalism is quite fine. Yes there is uneven distrobution of wealth, however this would still appear in anarcho-comunism, priority to 'important people'.

How would people who have to do the hardest, most undesirable jobs be compensated?

>>1905728

Lacan is soooo useless. And apparently also a clown. Despite having moved to a position in the last two years where I can somehow see the functional sides of French post-Structuralism (mostly because of what else they ripped off, e.g. Nietzsche), I am still convinced that their overall style of writing is completely unnecessary to their arguments and only supports personal vanity and fortifies the boundaries of the intellectual ghetto

>>1907089

Like what? I can't really think of any jobs that are really that undesirable.

>>1907091

Could you elaborate on this more? Are you talking specifically about derrida or who else?

What do they write about that is Irrelevant? And what specifically did they steal from Nietzsche and other people?

and remember, this thread will "always" be archived at http://chanarchive.org/

>>1907104

How it has no votes?

>>1907096
People who have to clean up...

sweage,
dead bodies, accidents.
police, don't be nieve and say that there wont be any crime.
miners,
truck drivers, because any society that was to disrupt capitalism would be stupid to throw away all the good things of capitalism(mass production)
any position where someone has to take authority, putting them in a position to be despised, sociall outcasted

>>1907114
>must register to vote
FUCKING chanarchive

I think you meant green oval.

>>1907101

The Nietzsche thing works especially well for Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze, as showcased in Alan D. Schrift's "Nietzsche's French Legacy". For Derrida this includes the idea of deconstructing binary oppositions etymologically, historically and psychologically (at least). If you want to see for yourself, I recommend Nietzsche's "On the Genealogy of Morals".

What irks me most about post-Structuralists apart from their style is that most of the points they seem to be trying to make have been made more clearly before. I really don't see why I need them and the Situationists to tell me that politics are not entirely governed by material relations, since this fallacy of Marx' can be easily backtraced to the German Ideology. Funnily enough, the person Marx disagreed with is extremely similar (albeit more rigorous) in his thought to many of those who later disagreed with Marx: Max Stirner.

TLDR: Instead of annoying French post-Structuralists, read Protagoras, Nietzsche, Stirner.


If you want to, I can make a model case of Foucault's take on the Panopticon, showing how and why he makes no sense.

>>1907133

By the time we get around to a theoretical communist/anarchist government the mines will be dwindled. Police and ambulance workers clean up dead bodies.

Sewage is cleaned by people who work at the waste treatment plant/janitors/
That's stupid anyway, nobody has sewage cleaner- as a fulltime job-title now! (maybe one person, but you've been watching to many dirty jobs shows)

Truck driver is nowhere near the level of sewage? My friends dad is a truck driver he likes it just fine. Why would you have a hard time filling that position?

Policemen would be trained to be what they are, just like now. Only the laws in such a society would be lax and the work so great that there really wouldn't be much action for them.

>>1907162
>>1907162

I'm all ears on why you think Foucault is bogus. Go right ahead! I honestly didn't think to highly of them to begin with but I would love to hear why I should actually outright dislike him.

>>1907167
Wow life through rose coloured glasses.

>Policemen would be trained to be what they are, just like now. Only the laws in such a society would be lax and the work so great that there really wouldn't be much action for them.

Sewerage work would still be shit, even if it is labled waste management...

How about authoritarian figures?

The piont is that there will always be undesirable jobs. Someone will have to do them, sacrifices to the good of society.

>>1907189

Look dude, I don't know how I would have my perfect government setup, and I damn well wouldn't come up with a setup that would be set in stone in the minute I took to write you a reply.

Maybe we could have prisoners do all of the shitty labor and make them work as much as everyone else so that the prisons would pay for themselves? Or we could have people who skip all of their school classes be signed off into shit jobs?

We can do whatever you think would work in our imaginary government? Why don't you think of some cool ideas?

>>1907189

Also there wouldn't be any authoritarian figures, well I guess there would be, but we would have them divided up similar to a republic, with 3 separate parliaments or however many we would need and they would each be made up of multiple topics. And they would switch out extremely often with very very short term lengths. Hows that?

>>1907184

I don't feel like putting a lot of effort into something I dislike, but it would go something like this:

p. 207: “The panoptic schema, without disappearing as such or losing any of its properties, was destined to spread throughout the social body”

However, it does not. The examples Foucault mentions do not actually conform to the model of the Panopticon but are merely instances of individual parts or of surveillance in general:

gathering of information is presented as an advantage of the panopticon, which does not make sense as it requires precise the kind of constant attention which not having to pay is the panopticon’s biggest advantage (cf. the welfare system on p. 211). The positive effects of the panopticon described on page 203 are actually not so much peculiar to the panopticon as they are to any prison which separates the inmates: because each observation has to be made individually, the value-added power of the panopticon does not apply here: imagined observations do not take notes, unfortunately. The whole idea of “knowledge follows power” (p. 204) is not specific to the panopticon.

>>1907231


Also, Bentham mentions the possibility for the Panopticon to be democratically controlled by letting anyone visit it. This is not only a bad idea in the original but is also phased out quietly by Foucault because it does not fit his examples.

The mechanism of the plague-city is actually not that similar to the Panopticon: the arborescent distribution of power through top-down branching actually does not take place in the Panopticon (at least not on more than one level). This is also the effect described in the centralized police system, it is not specifically panoptic, only a centralized arborescent hierarchy. Deleuze’s rhizomatics actually provide a more fruitful basis for an analysis of this than the Panopticon does, simply due to the fact that there is a much stronger structural analogy.

What I generally don't like is that the individual parts of the text exist in far superior quality by other writers, Foucault somehow makes it less than the sum of its parts:

The idea of internalized authority existed both independently of and prior to both Foucault and Bentham's Panopticon.

A far more thorough study of penal systems has apparently been undertaken by two guys from the Frankfurt School, unfortunately I forgot their names.

Holy fuck, this thread is still going? I was the one who recommended Sadie Plant way back at

>>1906006

Since this thread is still going, I wanted to recommend the following:

http://www.notbored.org/index1.html

I discovered this website about a year or two ago. He has translations of a lot of Debord's material, including his letters (which aren't available anywhere else on the web, so far as I know). His footnotes are really helpful as well.

>>1907219
>>1907211
Short term lengths are bad because the new people coming in would spend most of their time working out what has been going on before the were instated. Even with the australian 4 year term it takes 4-5 months at the beginging of the term for politicians to get settled.

I just don't see any improvement by instigating an anarcho-communist society. It would be just as problematic as now (if not more so).

The only way this could work is through complete automation of the workforce. So noone has to do anything, like Logan's run

>>1907133
My guess is that if we turned the course of technology away from devising new and ingenious ways to kill people and towards making labour less onerous, that wouldn't be much of a problem.

>>1906933

>Nobody is willing to actually revolt because in this day and age nobody is willing to die for causes anymore. And very few are willing to go to jail over their beliefs.Nobody is willing to actually revolt because in this day and age nobody is willing to die for causes anymore. And very few are willing to go to jail over their beliefs.

You 100% sure about that, bro. Seems to me a lot of people are prepared to do exactly that. Pic related.

>>1907249

I think it would be more of people who got good grades went on to uni and those that did poorly would simply be fitted to the job that seemed best suited for them based on questionaires of what they were interested in. And then all the normal jobs would fill that way.

You say that it would have as many problems as Capitalism, but why couldn't we just try to work out the kinks just for the fun of it? Which is all I'm doing. I think if we sat around a round table and tried to come up with shit then we could do it effectively.

>>1907264
This happen in socialist germany, where children were taken from kindergarden and put into gymnastics school because they were tallented in that area....

I like this discussion, I think that we are ready for a complete change of ideoligy. Communism seemed like a response to captalism, and I think that we are ready for something completly different

don't ask me what that is... i dunno LOL. But selective democracy like the USA is not the way.

>>1907114
>>1907158

http://chanarchive.org/4chan/lit/13592/itt-quotes-author-is-mandatory-never-work-guy-debord

>>1907279
IT'S FINE IN AUSTRALIA

>>1907279
sorry socialist russia.....

>>1907279
lol thats an extreme example. I don't think we would make any selections that early, although I think the inclusion theory of including Disability kids in with regular classes is stupid and I think they should remain separate and be taught by teachers specialized in teaching kids with those disabilities and not by somebody who doesnt understand them. But I was talking about selections based on high school graduation GPA sort of thing.

a LARGE part of the problem is that post-fordist capitalism in the west increasingly insulates itself against a CLASSic Marxist revolution by sort of 'exporting' the proletariat, as it were. Nick Land writes about something to this effect in his 'Kant, capital and the prohibition of incest.' Here part of his point is that, on a global scale, entire industries like manufacturing, or things like call centres for intsance, are outsourced to places like China and India, so a large swathe of the proletariat doing the work for country A are now dociled in country B, and therefore it becomes impossible for an oppressed class to effectively attack the true source of their oppression, as it lies on another side of the world. Combine this with the fact that most people in the west, even the most exploited and the particularly well-off, increasingly identify themselves as 'middle class' rather than anything accurately reflecting their actual relative economic condition (this is partly because of the way that postmodernism has lead to this thing whereby 'class' is another empty signifier that can freely circulate; so someone like myself, who has lived in near poverty their whole life, gets to university and is declared a kind of honorary member of the bourgeoisie just because I read critical theory say, which isn't what we associate with the spectacular image of the working class, as simply 'chavs' for instance), and what you have is the left wondering where the proletariat has actually gone, asking 'where are they? we can't have a revolution without a proletariat!'

>>1907293 cont.

But the SI always sought to distance itself from the traditional, 'official' left, taking them as another focus for critique and negation. For them the 'search for the proletariat' should be abandoned, or at least reconfigured. Debord does this by pointing out that, if we take the theory of the spectacle to be true, then the 'proletariat' in a first world western country like France or the U.S. can now effectively constitute pretty much anyone, anyone who is alienated by the spectacular relations of capitalism, which of course is everyone in society, even celebrities say. The key is to galvanise people against the spectacle, to make them aware of their alienation etc.

>>1907293
>>1907294

Nice.

>>1907294

The problem is that most people are not so bad off to think that they even need to revolt against naything, they are perfectly happy being wage slaves. and they don't care to change this.

>>1907293

also the flipside of the of the first point would be that western countries also increasingly IMPORT workers from the third world to do jobs traditonally taken by a nation's domestic proletariat, mexican cleaners, polish plumbers and what have you. The very nature of these worker's situation, in a foreign country, often illegally, trying to simply assimilate without problems etc. means that organising into any kind of revolutionary force is the last thing on their minds, and in practice nearly impossible.

In her 'One-dimensional woman' Nina Powers has a great little section about how the nature of modern modes of work, like people who work through temp agencies for instance, makes any kind of unionising or organisation impossible, because workers are constantly shifted around, re-located etc.

The Society of the Spectacle - THE MOVIE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g34XVscFkIs

maybe this wil be more clear to those who claims to not understand shit

>>1907326
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BizT7-QcRVs

better image quality but not english subs

Heave chocolate
at the manequin goddess
sheltering behind her diamond cage.

>>1907283
its the same in australia... probably worse.

grammar is not taught in school, neither is critical thought. the whole point of school is just to create obedient workers, capable of reading and writing but not thinking 'too much' to cause the state a problem

Sometimes 4Chan looks to me like SI of internet.
>just sain

"Elephants piss with fear."
--Vyasa

Situationism is nothing more than the ejaculate wasted on the back of a certain kind of homosexual capitalism.

>>1908403

Does anyone know how to get something on Mythbusters, because it seems to me that this fakir needs a schooling.

OH god this thread is still here?

Let's start another good thread today folks. We can do it!

"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do."
-Bob Dylan

"We are living in a computer programmed reality and the only clue we have to it is when one variable is changed and some alteration in our reality occurs. We would have the overwhelming impression that we were reliving the present, deja vu."

Philip K. Dick

I don't think you can successfully deny that the pursuit of specific experiences has largely been replaced by the pursuit of representations of those experiences.

The entire industry of mainstream hip-hop is based on making people feel powerful and wealthy by selling them commodities that will fool other people into thinking they're wealthy by associating those objects with power and wealth. They fall for it despite the fact that every other person they know has these same objects and isn't powerful.

>>1909021

Could you give more examples of things like this, maybe with other aspects of life that are fake besides hip hop?

"Karma Repair Kit Items 1-4.

1.Get enough food to eat,
and eat it.

2.Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
and sleep there.

3.Reduce intellectual and emotional noise
until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
and listen to it.

4."

Richard Brautigan

"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."

>>1909021

That's not just hip-hop, son, that's the whole western world. Fascinating stuff when you start getting into it. Scary, too, kinda.

>>1909021
How is the experience of a representation not an experience in its own right? "Representations" are not so different from "real things": policemen are only policemen because everyone agrees that they are, same argument for everything else, etc.

"Why the need for privacy? Is someone going to serve tea and bring out the dancing girls?" - Bail Channis to Han Pritcher, Second Foundation.

The Foundation series has the most great quotes of any book series.

"I dream too much and I don’t write enough and I’m trying to find God everywhere." - Anis Mojgani

"Ariel, listen to me. The human world--it's a mess."
-- Sebastian the Jamaican Sea Crab.