Negation and Consumption within Culture

From The Society of the Spectacle, ch. 8, by Guy Debord

Anonymous

Introduction

Society of the Spectacle (Debord, 1967) constitutes a systematic analysis of the fragmentation, alienation, and negative self-perpetuation of society under the sway of an all-encompassing spectacle. His most well-known work, as well as the primary rubric for the artistic and social critique of his Situationist movement, it emphasizes the dialectical relations between cultural alienation and the perpetuation of class-division. Chapter 8 “Negation and Consumption within Culture” outlines the process by which culture becomes autonomous and its inevitable movement towards the dissolution of its autonomy and from our perspective, the end of culture. This is tied to a critique of the vanguard of modern art as a revolutionary apparatus and anchors the Situationist critique to a revolutionary programme through the concept of detournement, which realizes the unification of theory and action into a singular practice. Some background on Debord’s experience with the Lettrist and Lettrist International groups and their relationship to the Dadaist and Surrealist movements are necessary to provide context to his critiques of their theories. Furthermore, a brief summary of Debord’s theory of the spectacle itself is helpful in providing a basis through which to understand the concepts of autonomy and negation within culture.

Background

Lettrism

Born in Paris in 1931, Debord’s adolescence and early career took place in the context of the unique economic and cultural circumstances in post-war France, including a rapid modernization and proliferation of media and media technology which had eluded the nation during the war and so was introduced en masse after years of buildup in other Allied countries. He briefly studied law, but was “hardly tempted to pursue either an artistic or an academic career.” (Jappe, 47), before encountering Isidore Isou’s Lettrism in 1951 at the Cannes film festival. (Jappe, 51) Isou’s Lettrist movement began as an offshoot of Dadaism, building off of the Dadaist belief in the annihilation of traditional art forms. Lettrism explored the reduction of poetry to the most basic level, that of the letter, and by focusing on the graphic and aural qualities of the letter, Lettrist art crossed the barriers synthetic art forms such as poetry, painting, and sculpture through collage and experimental cinema. (Jappe, 47) Debord would split with Isou’s Lettrist movement in 1952, founding the Lettrist International group. Starting from the Lettrist position of the destruction of modern poetry and the reorganization of the arts under a new critical doctrine, but splitting with the original Letterists over their approach toward the supersession of art. (Jappe, 46) Debord’s desire to dissolve the boundaries between artist and spectator through the incursion of dialectical analysis into the praxis of artistic expression marked an early preoccupation of the future Situationists. (Jappe, 58) No longer content to simply locate poetry in the negation of traditional forms, Debord’s Lettrist faction sought to “construct” beauty through “a new urbanism in which all the arts would be mobilized in the creation of a passion-filled atmosphere.” (Jappe, 59) In Negation and Consumption within Culture, Debord presents a sharp critique of the Lettrists, Dadaists, and Surrealists, accusing them of false revolutionary claims and for remaining unwittingly complicit in the perpetuation of the spectacular system, dismissing the claim that art could affect change in society at large from solely within the sphere of culture.

Spectacle

Debord theorizes the spectacle as an amplification of Marx’s theory of alienation under capitalism. Marx based his theory of the alienation of the wage laborer within industrialized capitalism on the division of intellectual labour and the supersession of exchange-value over use-value in the engine of material production. Marx did, however, see a positive aspect of the alienating process in that alienation perforce creates new forms of subjectivity and that the pauperization of the proletariat would lead to the realization of his political program without the intervention of theory or revolutionary action. Optimism surrounding possibilities for new subjectivities through alienation would be taken up by later Marxist theoreticians, most notably in Walter Benjamin’s formulation of the effects of alienation on the apperceptive ability of the spectator and the consequently unique potential of the technology of images to act as a vehicle for ideological propaganda. Debord expands the scope of alienation theory to include the complete domination of the spectacle over the structures of social organization and the reciprocal relationship between material and cultural alienation, attributing all ideological representation as confined to its perpetuation. The spectacle transforms everyday experience into abstraction and in doing so replaces direct communication in present-time with a false representation of unified experience. The proliferation of mass media is not the cause of the phenomenon of spectacle as Debord defines it but a symptom of the spectacular social relation which flows from the same proletariat base as Marx’s theory of alienation. The separation of reality and image, or of social practice and the representation of social practice, is integral to the perpetuation of the spectacular society and therefore the production of these representations or “signs of the ruling production” (Debord, 7) becomes the ultimate goal of the system. The irrationality of representing a unified whole which no longer exists becomes like an Ouroboros of representation feeding into reality and vice versa, bringing us further and further away from the signifier toward the total disintegration of culture. This, Debord argues, is the only path available for the emancipation of experience from the spectacle, and is expressed through the practice of detournement and dialectical analysis.

Chapter Summary

Negation and Consumption within Culture, the penultimate chapter of Society of the Spectacle (Debord, 1967), theorizes the self-defeating nature of the spectacular society through a detournement of Hegel’s theory of autonomous culture, pronouncing the inevitable dissolution of culture through the realization of its complete autonomy. He critiques the ability of Dadaism, Surrealism and structuralist social theory to escape the confines of the spectacular system or affect change in society, and as an alternative, provides a rubric for the practice of detournement, and asserting the vital role of the integration of praxis into everyday practice in encouraging the “end of cultural history” (Debord, 184) and directing a society toward the restoration of a “unified social practice.” (Debord, 211)

Cultural Autonomy

Debord build’s on Hegel’s theory of the autonomy of culture from historical time, describing a break from the “community of the society of myth” (Debord, 186), manifesting as fragmentation among different branches of knowledge and representation caused by increased divisions in structures of society, such as the separation of philosophy and art from the sphere of religion. (180) Representation in art becomes the primary vehicle for the spectacle’s self-perpetuating project of a “restructuring without community” (Debord, 192) by creating a false representation of a unified society. The spectacular society both manifests itself as a symptom of the contradictory nature of a class-based society and as an engine of perpetuation for the dominant social order through the illusion of unity; in the form of “pseudo-histories” which “preserve the threatened equilibrium of present frozen time.” (Debord, 200) and which invade and define the experience of social life to the point that “men do not themselves live events.” (Debord, 200)

By linking the history of society to the history of culture we put culture’s autonomy at the core of our historical society, moving toward a conception of lived experience that is inseparable from culture and in doing so imagines a world without itself and inevitably moves towards its own negation. (Debord, 180) Each new fragmentation or “result” of culture “leads toward its dissolution” because it must inherently realize the “lack of rationality of separate culture.” (Debord, 182) Class-divided society is irrational, and autonomous culture both reinforces the stability of an irrational society and naturally moves towards its negation “because within it the victory of the rational is already present as a requirement.” (Debord, 182) This movement is propelled through the “permanent victory of innovation” in “cultural development in historical societies” (Debord, 181), which can only be achieved through an awareness of the “total historical movement” and which “moves toward the suppression of all separation” (Debord, 181), or in other words, the creation of new forms necessitates an awareness of the total history of culture and as such creates the conditions for the reunification of culture and historical time. Therefore art which attempts to express a false totality perpetuates the system but also calls for its own supersession.

Negation

Chapter eight of Society of the Spectacle deals explicitly with the phenomenon of negation as the inevitable trajectory of spectacular society. Much like Marx believed in the self-negation of capitalism, Debord believed that the society of the spectacle was similarly unstable and had no choice but to dissolve once culture’s inevitable “imperialist movement of enrichment” (Debord, 180) had achieved total independence from historical time. Once the spectacle is revealed as only a representation of a “community of dialogue and the game with time” (Debord, 187), it ultimately brings about its own dissolution through the negation of its representations. Expressions of the loss of communication through language either in the sphere of knowledge or of representation, ultimately only contribute to the perpetuation of the division of culture from experience by refusing to acknowledge the dialectical relationship between spectacular alienation and the production of dead spectacular objects of contemplation.

Any praxis that took place solely within the cultural sphere was insufficient to transcend the spectacle and served only to advance the “repressive practice of the general organization of society” (Debord,192) under a society based on class division. Lettrism, Dada, and other avant-gardists sought to reclaim communication from the repressive control of the state through its negative expression; the destruction of form and language allowing for the contemplation of the absence of communication in traditional art and culture. Debord points to the inability of his avant-gardist peers to understand a society controlled and defined by spectacle, or to free society from spectacle through the negation of art; they themselves becoming a part of spectacular consumption and leaving them “imprisoned in the same artistic field whose decrepitude they had announced” (Debord, 191) Lettrists, Dada, and other avant-gardists sought to reclaim social communication in the sphere of culture through its negative expression, the destruction of communication allowing for the contemplation of the absence of communication in traditional art and culture, which allowed for a “reconciliation with the dominant state of affairs [wherein] all communication is joyously proclaimed absent.” (Debord, 192) Debord accuses Dadaism and Surrealism of imagining a false dichotomy between their respective approaches, and of refusing to acknowledge the dialectical unity between the goals of the Dadaists to “supress art without realizing it” and the Surrealists’ to “realize art without suppressing it.” (Debord, 191) which Debord classifies as “inseparable aspects of the supersession of art.” (Debord, 191) While Debord maintained some aspects of Lettrist praxis in his activity and writings, such as an updated version of their strategy of detournement and largely maintaining the goal of the creation of new forms through the total annihilation of tradition and culture and a reformation of a realized community “not under the sign of the economy but under that of a generalized creativity” (Jappe, 47), he warned against the appropriation of their praxis, and even of the theory of the spectacle itself, into the perpetuation of the spectacular system.

Debord traces the first expression of a lack of communication in the arts to the Baroque period. What begins to happen is that art is no longer situated in the lived experience, but assumes an artificial representation of unity through which the separation of culture and community is expressed. The Baroque, through the instability of its constructed unity, was the first step in a general movement toward an “ever more individualized art of negation perpetually renewing itself to the point of the fragmentation and complete negation of the artistic sphere” (Debord, 189) which would culminate with the avant-gardist tendency toward the destruction of art as a way of negatively expressing both the death of communication in language and the necessity of rediscovering true forms of dialogue. For the Situationists, pre-war Dadaism and Surrealism marked the end-point of the negation of art as a form of social critique. Thenceforward, negation in art was appropriated into the spectacular system as a form of apologetic support for the “defense of class power” (Debord, 184) through the “communication of the incommunicable” (Debord, 191).

Dialectical Critique

Debord felt that the project of modern art, epitomized by the Lettrists, Dada, and other avant-gardists’ quest to reclaim communication through its negative expression in language, had been appropriated into the spectacle as a way to “preserve congealed past culture” (Debord, 191) and ultimately served to reinforce the system. The destruction of art becomes essentially apologetic for the dominant spectacular structure and functions as a perpetuation of class-divisions through negative appreciation of the incommunicable. If beauty can be appreciated in the destruction of communication in language, then those works which negatively assert the loss ultimately function as a “reconciliation with the dominant state of affairs” (Debord, 192), and any autonomous representations of lived experience, even those disguised as social critique, only perpetuate the spectacular division of history and culture. Similarly, Debord warns against the appropriation of the aesthetics of modern art into the superficial adornment of spectacular society. Similarly, attempts to fuse different strains of artistic expression, to reconstitute a totality out of the fractured culture, such as “team projects” or collaborations between different artistic mediums and styles, the collaborative elements of film production, or the incursion of artistic aesthetic elements into urbanism, which proclaim to reunify the “complex neo-artistic environment” (Debord, 192) of the society of myth, only function to perpetuate spectacular alienation.

Debord locates the basis for any participation in the spectacular system which perpetuates its existence in a lack of dialectical analysis. In the case of modern art, Dadaism and Surrealism were unable to reconcile their opposition into a unified praxis, that of a “single supersession of art” (Debord, 191) promoted by the Situationists. All branches of knowledge which are co-opted into the perpetuation of the spectacular society become either an apologetic justification or, in the case of structuralist systematization, function as pure advertisement for the perpetuation of class-divisions. (Debord, 201) Within the spectacular system, knowledge remains fragmentary and unable to grasp the totality of the spectacle because it “cannot and will not investigate its own material basis in the spectacular system.” (194), all autonomous branches of knowledge refuse to acknowledge the “critique immanent in this subject” (Debord, 197), the irrationality of class-division as a basis for society.

Sociologists who think only about the means by which separation are achieved end up participating in a “spectacular critique of the spectacle.” (Debord, 196) The failure of non-dialectical critique to consider the mutually effective relationship between the spectacular system and the alienated subject leads to an “essentially apologetic character of its assumptions and method.” (Debord, 196) Attempts to improve the system only to make it more tolerable ultimately advance the spectacular goal of remaining the dominant mode of society.

Structuralism represents the other dominant branch of knowledge corrupted by spectacular formation. It presents an absolutely all-encompassing formation of the spectacle, that of a “system which was never created and will never end” (Debord, 201) and which comes from the inability of structuralist thought to accept a reality outside of the current “short period of frozen historical time.” (Debord, 201) Although Debord also emphasizes the complete dominance of the spectacle over society, he does not accept the spectacular society as the natural state of affairs nor does he view the spectacular society as a stable phenomenon.

Praxis

If the concept of the spectacle is reduced to inescapable pessimism, it can be co-opted to perpetuate the spectacular system and becomes only a semantic negation of the anti-historical structuralist formations Debord heavily derides. What separates the Situationists from the structuralists is Debord’s conception of the spectacle as a self-defeating system and their belief in the incursion of praxis into every-day experience as the only available armature against the perpetuation of spectacular alienation. This can take the form of “a resumption of the revolutionary class struggle” (Debord, 203) based on an integration of the critical concept of the spectacular society with political action, as with the widespread worker’s revolts of May ‘68. But Debord also claims he “doesn’t expect miracles from the working class.” (Debord, 203); the restoration of a truly historical society would require both critical writing and revolutionary action to participate in a dialectical process of reunification before the destruction of the society of the spectacle can be achieved.

A dialectical analysis, therefore, must penetrate both critical writing and social praxis before the spectacle can be dismantled, and this incursion is expressed by the Situationists through the programme of “detournement” or diversion. Dialectical critique seeks to redefine existing relations between concrete concepts, destroying their stability as spectacular objects of contemplation. (Debord, 205) Through the practice of diversion, the Situationists could integrate dialectical analysis into the style and structure of critical writing and into the realization of their praxis in everyday life. Society of the Spectacle itself contains many examples of diversion, quoting extensively from Marx and Hegel and remixing their theories to express new critiques of society; neither deprecating their ideas nor simply quoting them to reinforce ideologies divorced from their context. (Jappe, 60) It is through this active interaction with cultural history that Situationist theory attempts to bridge the gap between critical writing and experience in time. In order to escape the scope of the spectacle, critical writing must lose its autonomy through an interaction with the history of culture and through a “subversion of past critical conclusions which were frozen into respectable truths.” (Debord, 206)

Society of the Spectacle Today

Some aspects of Debord’s theories seem eerily prescient, such as his predictions regarding the dominance of cultural commodification as the “driving force in the development of the economy” (Debord, 193) in the West. Others, such as the effectiveness of detournement and the creation of “situations” outside of the scope of spectacular contemplation, seem more suspect in an age where the complete permeation of media into every moment of experience makes the possibility for anti-spectacular critique seem impossible. In the end, the Situationist predictions on the intensification and ironic self-negation of the spectacular system remain relatively valid, while the revolutionary potential of the dissemination of their critical writing and of their artistic output is questionable at best. However much Debord tried to avoid it through diversion and dialectical analysis, the failure of the Situationist programme to affect measurable change or to provide a tangible experience outside the realm of the spectacle has largely caused his theory and praxis to be appropriated by the spectacle in defense of the class system. However, his critiques more than his predictions provide fertile ground for the proliferation of new branches of critical theory in the decades following the high-point of Situationist critique. Debord’s critique of structuralism covered in this chapter provides a direct trajectory for post-structuralist thought to develop in the 70s and 80s. Gilles Deleuze builds his description of societies of control on Debord’s critique of structuralism, identifying ways in which Debord’s description of “developed capitalism’s general project, which aims to recapture the fragmented worker as a ‘personality well integrated in the group.’” (Debord, 192) are effectively realized through the reunification of dispersed individuals through networks occurring paradoxically with the simultaneous fragmentation of real communities through spectacular alienation.

Works Cited

Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Black & Red, 1983.

Jappe, Anselm, et al. Guy Debord. PM Press, 2018.