The Situationist International Anthology

The Situationist International may be the least well-known influential social movement of the twentieth century, which made finding the book The Situationist International Anthology a special treat. Although there is a fine Situationist web site that I recommend called Nothingness.org, as well as some other sites that contain writings, nothing beats having an actual book that you can take around with you. The Situationist International Anthology was translated and edited by Ken Knabb and it represents a great improvement over the similar Leaving the Twentieth Century.

I first learned about Situationism from reading Greil Marcus’ Lipstick Traces and instantly knew I had found some kindred spirits. Which is not to say that I agree with everything they wrote. (Their dismissal of Louis Althusser particularly irks me.) So what is Situationism in general and what is the Situationist International in particular? The Situationist International were a group of radical French social agitators who began from a Marxist critique and extended outward.

They combined elements of the Dada movement to offer critiques of social life. Primary among their view was the concept that life as we know it is surrounded by and formulated on the principle of the spectacle. The spectacle basically can basically be seen as the falsehood of ideology that permeates society. Therefore it is incumbent upon people to subvert the spectacle to prove its falsity.

Perhaps the most lasting legacy of the Situationist legacy is the detournement. Basically this was a method of subversion by plagiarism. Detournement involves taking a work of media and subverting its original message for the benefit of parody that, ideally, offers an oppositional view using the same words or images.

A modern day equivalent of detournement can be seen by clicking on this link to Adbusters.org. If you don’t click here, let me give you example: A Camel cigarette parody featuring a camel named Joe Chemo lying dead in a coffin. True detournement involves using the actual words or images to reverse meaning. For instance, putting the infamous quote of Pres. Bush “Mission Accomplished” over the images of dead American soldiers.

The central figure in the Situationist International movement was Guy Debord and his seminal work was The Society of the Spectacle. I think that may be the only significant work not included in the anthology, probably because it is so long itself. Included in the anthology, however, are the chapters explaining detournement, as well as other key Situationist concepts as Psychogeography and the Derive.

This is a thick book, filled with fascinating Situationist takes on everything from the films of Jean Luc-Godard to the meaning of traffic. The Situationists were a huge influence on the punk rock music, as well as the student uprise popularly known as May 1968, when France came closer to a people’s revolution than it had any time since 1789. The writings of the Situationist International were key influences on the leaders of the uprising.

Situationism is being practiced in the entertainment and political realms on a daily basis, but not only do most targets not realize its debt to the Situationists International, most practitioners are ignorant as well. The Situationist International Anthology is the best collection ever of the writings of these revolutionaries ever compiled.

You won’t agree with everything written here-there were profound, some say even fatal, disagreements between the members themselves. But within these pages are more ideas for social progress that you could find if you went through the Congressional record through the past ten years.