At Dusk

To know is to name; to name is to choose. Description which rises above mere observation involves a conscious differentiation of the information at its disposal. Criticism is thus both selection and manipulation, an ordering of intelligibility on the basis of what this knowledge opens up. Interpretive thought returns as an active agent, as partisan explanation, to its source in the reality it perceives and then confronts. To the extent that consciousness can be construed as “to itself its own notion”—if it is led on by its own discoveries—its insights must also be signposts of change, of a transformation which begins first of all in the relation of understanding to the world it seeks to comprehend. The self-movement of ideas only becomes important where critical development relates itself to, and becomes a decisive part of—historical movement. Theoretical construction is inseparably historical construction: ideas unfold objectively within an historical continuum, and social theory distinguishes itself precisely on the basis of a consciousness of the content of its elaboration. Criticism criticizes in order to establish “the truth of this world,” a truth which appears as contradiction, namely, as social conflict. Here, the radical organization of significance is a precondition to the radical reorganization of society. But theory cannot simply be evaluated in terms of its orientation —its practical intent. The problem of actualizing theory is inseparable from the question of theorizing about actuality. Radical thought per se must be considered on its own terms, that it to say, it must be considered theoretically. As abstraction from reality, as conceptualization of that reality in its transformative process, analysis itself provides the criteria by which it is to be judged. These standards are both internal, relating strictly to the propositions advanced by criticism, and external, serving to measure a theoretical perspective in terms of its real effect upon the world. From the standpoint of theory, however, the correspondence between history and its critical representation is only provisional. Any critique is only “for the moment”) its tentativeness derives from its very claim to relevance. The contributions of theoretical knowledge to the modern revolutionary project are inconclusive, not simply because they only potentially form a material power, but because they are open-ended, and hence, indefinite. Radical criticism implies its own revision, its own correction; but it cannot anticipate (except by prior recourse to an empty caveat) its own displacement. Reality delivers its own practical lesson, however; the power of negative thinking extends no further than the force of its critical argument.

In what it makes known and how it communicates this intelligence, criticism reveals its own self-interest. The theoretical definition of concepts is also a definition of theory’s objectives. While orthodox thought disguises its predispositions within the general bias of bourgeois methodology, radical interpretation distinguishes itself by openly declaring its partiality. This candor allows theory to be assessed in terms of what it set out to achieve, namely, a comprehensive understanding of modern historical movement and of the role this understanding can play in influencing it. And the present stasis of situationist theory only becomes apparent when its results are compared with these original goals.

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The S.l.’s assertion during its 1970 orientation debate that “the only theory is situationist” was less a self-serving statement that a conscious affirmation of the exceptionality— the sui generis character—of the situationist critique. However, situationist theory was not the only theory of modern capitalism, but only one among many competing interpretations of contemporary society; the uniqueness of situationist analysis derived from its attempt to provide a theoretical construction of this reality as an organic whole. However flawed such a construction may ultimately have been, the S.I. differentiated itself from other tendencies on the basis of its intended comprehensiveness; situationist criticism specified the organizing principles of advanced capitalist society, not simply as general contours of its evolution, but as determinants of a specific integrated formation and hence, as the bases of a precise form of social reproduction. Beginning from an obvious—and hardly original—perception that daily life, mass culture, and social ideology in modern capitalism were constituted on the basis of commodity production, the S.I. made a further necessary distinction: these categories were themselves active, constituent elements of the total production of commodity society. This distinction was itself not entirely novel, and in comparison to the prior theoretical work of the Socialisme ou Barbarie tendency, the entire critical work of the S.I. appears as quite naive; what was innovative about situationist theory, however, was its apprehension of advanced capitalism as a new form of society. In understanding the objective deployment of social power and and its correlative, the objective unfoldment of praxis, as taking place within a unified plane of historical development, as comprising a specific mode of accumulation of social capital, situationist analysis presented a qualitative model of modern social organization. And if this paradigm sought to elaborate the structures of advanced capitalism it was obviously itself structured accordingly, i.e., along the same developmental axes it established for contemporary society. The structure of situationist theory must be understood in relation to its analytic procedure. In order to explain situationist theory, one must first of all explain how it arrived at a comprehension of its object. Situationist methodology must be explicated.

Situationist theory was distinguished not so much by its terminology, much of which was derived from other sources, as by its conceptual framework, the critical premises of its interpretation of modern capitalism. And these assumptions were not simply those of Marx transposed to a modern context. While situationist thought was epistemologically grounded in Marxian dialectics (it based itself on the theory of knowledge—of its possibilities and its necessary orientation—which was fundamental to Marx’s work, and on the form of articulation of that knowledge presented in Marx), its inquiry was framed by concerns which were only implicit in Marx; the scope of situationist analysis corresponded to the expanded dimensions of modern capitalist development. In the case of the S.I., it was less a question of applying historical materialism to subjects not treated by Marx thanit was one of reconceptualizing the nature of capitalist society as a structural totality. The initial difference between the Marxist and situationist analyses of capital is one of emphasis: whereas Marx was concerned with delineating the structure of the commodity economy and the role of this economy as a determining social force, the situationists were preoccupied with describing the structure of commodity society as a determined form. To insist upon such a difference in stress does not merely involve a facile distinction—although Marx’s theory of the capitalist economy was identically a theory of capitalist society, the centrality which the latter was to assume in the situationist critique was indicative of a decisive shift in theoretical orientation, one which in part explains both the strengths and weaknesses of this tendency. Situationist theory did not concentrate on the material basis of modern capitalism, but on the social structure in which this development took place.

In situationist theory, the concept of spectacle (3) assumes the methodological importance which the category of commodity has for Marx. This concept appears both as the starting point for theoretical investigation and as the unifying principle of that investigation, in that it defines the analytical plane of situationist criticism as the plane in which social organization develops. The theory of the “spectacle” is a theory of social organization: in attempting to specify the modalities of modern capitalist society, it interprets them in relation to an underlying determining structure, i.e., with respect to the general form or system in which they evolve. On this level, the relative significance between “commodity” and “spectacle” becomes absolute: the spectacle is defined as the “total commodity” (Debord), as the objectified result of alienated practice within capitalist society. (“Objectified” and “alienated” are not understood here as being synonymous; in other words, “alienation” can only be understood as the specific form of objectification in capitalism.) Like the commodity, the spectacle is considered as a “phenomenal form,” as being at once a concrete manifestation, and the form of mediation, of social relations. If the spectacle represents the truth of the commodity, in other words, represents the modern realization of commodity relations, it nonetheless displaces the commodity as the principal structure of capitalist society. Debord’s “correction” of Marx—”the entire life of societies in which modern conditions of production reign announces itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles“—can be understood in no other sense.

The “society of the spectacle” arises with the consolidation of commodity culture, appearing initially as the consequence of the extensive and intensive development of the superstructure of capitalist production (a superstructure which in actuality comprises a multiplicity of political, economic, and cultural superstructures). In fact, the spectacle as construed in situationist theory is nothing more than the capitalist superstructure at the moment when it attains an apparent autonomy, when it develops for itself as an active, creative force. Far from being a mere passive reflection of a given material base, the cultural sector of modern capitalist society acquires a quasi-independent role. Even as it retains its ultimate dependence on productive forces, it exhibits certain autogenous features. Here, ideology is a material power. The spectacle, thus, does not simply occur as a linear extension of capitalist progress, as a simple function of a certain level of economic development; it only manifests itself at the point when the capitalist superstructure, as the objective representation of bourgeois society, confronts, or engages, that society. Engels’s old, undialectical adage about the passage of quantity into quality is not, whatever Debord may say, confirmed in the spectacle, which cannot be measured by the degree of capitalist accumulation attained therein, but by the degree to which this accumulation is externalized in the realm of ruling ideas and ruling appearances. Spectacular society, however, does not reside solely in the sphere of social appearance, nor is it based on a dichotomy between (organized) representation and (organized) reality; rather, the spectacle—to the extent that capitalist society can be conceived to be “spectacular”—must be conceived of as a process (or as a concatenation of processes), of which the “play of appearances” is only one aspect. Modern capitalist society unifies the spheres of production, consumption, and culture within an integrated social complex, one which achieves a transcendent reality above any of its particular dimensions. On a most rudimentary level, spectacular organization imposes itself as a lateral division across these individual spheres and bisects society as a whole along the axis of externalizing activity and its necessary complement, externalized social reality, the total result of social objectification. The spectacle develops as the formalized mediation of base and superstructures in capitalist society, and in spectacular organization, this dialectic attains a new complexity: culture in its generic sense is not simply contrasted to material reality; rather, the two categories are joined on the basis of an integrated—and transformative—whole. Production, as the driving element of social reproduction, is not confined to strictly economic activity; in situationist theory, Marx’s analysis of material production as being identically the reproduction of productive structures achieves a broader significance. With the emergence of spectacular society, the goal of capitalist production is no longer the reproduction of the immediate presuppositions of the commodity economy (capital, labor, etc.) but the reproduction of a social totality: “the spectacle is the main production of present-day society.” (Debord) But even here, what is reproduced never leaves the sphere of production: not only does it form the total objectified product of society, it returns directly to the labor process as the activating power of that process. The “externality” of the superstructure is therefore only relative, since in the spectacle, the sphere of production extends into the superstructure as the production of consciousness. The unity of spectacular social organization consists in this: the spheres which are dependent on production are joined at both the base and the apex of society, in both the economy and the culture of the spectacle. Spectacular society is characterized by the synthesis of its essential categories: consumption appears both as a corollary of production and as a component of ideology; production encompasses both economic development and the general environment in which this development takes place; and culture manifests itself as both detached from and connected to material structures.

The theory of the spectacle involves, and indeed contains at its very origins, a “value judgement”: contemporary society only becomes intelligible as spectacle when it is considered as an alienated form and as a form of alienation. “Spectacle”—that which is beheld—as a term denotes something both extra-ordinary and immense, and its connotations of representational culture, specifically, dramatic art, cannot be minimized. The description of modern capitalism as spectacular situates theoretical criticism within an analytical context of representation: it asserts that in this society, “everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.” And with this assertion, the emphasis of criticism moves from portrayal (or image) to what is portrayed (or what the image expresses): the spectacle is construed as representing alienation, not simply as its equivalent, but as its source. In situationist theory, the theme of the spectacle thus becomes inseparable from those of estrangement, isolation, and loss. The spectacle becomes the primary division (dividing humanity from the product of its activity and dividing humanity from itself) from which all others emanate; it appears as an “alien power” and as the “portrait” of this separation. But the spectacle is neither a separate entity, nor is it simply a mode of representation; while based on an historically determined separation between social class (the modern proletariat) and social product, between this class and itself, it is, as Debord says, the “instrument of unification.” It is on the level of unification that spectacular hegemony reveals its complexity, and it is precisely this quality of spectacular social organization that situationist theory only partially recognized. If it succeeded in establishing the underlying unity of existing social conditions, it was nevertheless unable to fully elaborate the various aspects of this cohesion.

In its most elementary significance, the “spectacle” can be interpreted as a kind of mediating screen, as a set of integrating signs and structures determining the essential features of contemporary social organization. The spectacle can be conceived of as an apparitional plane on which social activity takes place and is made to appear, encompassing a reflecting surface of social appearance and a determining matrix of social practice. Considered in terms of its morphology, the spectacle is thus both representational and differential, both a screen and a screening process, in that it not only embodies existing social meaning, containing both the image and goal of social development, but superimposes itself as a structuring force upon contemporary existence. The “permanent presence” of the spectacle cannot be understood as a fixed authority. It involves, rather, a process of incorporation which channels activity in a definite direction and towards determined ends. The spectacle is itself based on the existing social division of labor, and the project of spectacular society is identically the development of modern productive forces. But if capitalist accumulation is the spectacle’s raison d’être, the spectacle is not Simply “capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image,” (Debord) but, rather, a social economy. The spectacle imposes itself as the exterior and interior unity of capitalist society, unifying the diverse moments of the realization of social capital within a practical and ideological configuration and sanctioning this whole as the whole of what is “real.” The legitimation process of the spectacle is not, however, limited to the moment when it “shows itself,” i.e., in the collective image of the spectacle—it is, rather, a continuous enterprise which is rooted in the basic structures of social life (work, consumption, culture, education, family, etc.). The intensity of spectacular domination can only be understood in terms of the pervasiveness of that power: spectacular social organization entails nothing less than the total socialization of human practice. Here, all elements of activity are charged with a social content: the absolutism of modern capitalist power joins diverse elements in a single process of quantification and valorization (the standardization of life on the basis of exchange), as moments imbued with official quality and reconstituted as total spectacle. This penetration of capitalist authority has obvious consequences for social and individual consciousness, and spectacular hegemony must be interpreted in terms of its objective and subjective dimensions. Spectacular organization is at its very base an organization of perception and behavior; it defines what is to be seen and how it is to be perceived, and this determination of consciousness is identically a definition of activity, of what is permitted within prevailing society. The alienation which is at the root of modern bourgeois life thus unfolds on an ontological as well as social plane; it involves the modification of the nature of social being. Class struggle is waged both without and within Homo economicus, and this divided reality forms the only possible starting point for radical criticism.

If, as Debord states, the spectacle must be conceived of as the means of existing social unification, its definition cannot be reduced to either the “image of the ruling economy” or the “moment when the commodity has attained the total occupation of social life.” It is, rather, the form of this economy and the form of this occupation. But the spectacle is not a purely structural entity, and it cannot be defined simply as the total structure of modern social praxis, nor can its mechanics be isolated independently of the processes which they regulate. The spectacle is, more correctly, a system, permutable yet constant, which incorporates numerous structures, all of which have a profoundly historical content. In terms of its methodological criteria, the theory of the spectacle distinguishes itself from structuralist analysis: the object of situationist analysis is not a meta-historical structure of power, but a specific process of social development. The historical bias of the situationist critique, however, does not ensure its definitiveness or obviate any of its conceptual difficulties: situationist theory must be held accountable to its claims of historical analysis. Any critical examination of the theory of spectacle also encounters this theory’s limitations, its insufficiencies as an explanation of contemporary social history. The theory of the spectacle corresponds to, and is a description of, a specific type of capitalist society, a specific phase of its evolution; once this specificity (and the historical specificity of its critique) is lost, the distance between the critique of spectacular society and “ideology” disappears. The critical perspective of the S.I. contained the seeds of its own destruction: situationist theses had their own anti-historical moments.

In situationist analysis, the concept of spectacle appears as both a theory of a distinct type of society, that of advanced capitalism, and of a world formation—international capitalism. But the situationist attempt to theoretically constitute the spectacle as both a localized and generalized phenomenon does not succeed. Although “the concept of the spectacle unifies and explains a great diversity of apparent phenomena,” it only provides an illusory explanation of contemporary world history. By treating the spectacle as a global category in the manner that it does, situationist theory is unable to arrive at a uniform notion of the spectacle; it can only apprise the various “moments” of the spectacle without demonstrating any real relation between them. In its insistence that the spectacle at one and the same time corresponds to a particular stage of advanced capitalist development and to more “primitive” societies, and that the fundamental character of modern societies as a whole is spectacular, situationist theory is thrown into contradiction with itself. Precisely because it does not provide a theory of international capitalist development, situationist theory ends up, like the spectacle whose movement it inadequately describes, by imposing a model of social organization upon the world. The “unity” of the spectacle is one which is forced by theory itself. In situationist analysis, it is not that international social reality is demonstrated to be spectacular as a result of its intrinsic processes, but that this reality is spectacularized by virtue of theoretical designation. The facile distinction between “concentrated” and “diffuse” spectacle, for example, makes the spectacle appear as if it were an archetypal form with various differing reflections. Situationist theory equates bureaucratic and advanced capitalist states and does so by means of a critique which ignores the real differences between these types (differences which cannot be reduced to the difference between “concentrated” and “diffuse” power) and which fails to elaborate a complex explanation of their real basis of identity—the productive and authority relations common to both. The S.l.’s analysis merely discovers that commodity relations prevail in both advanced and bureaucratic capitalism and then proclaims their absolute congruence; it considers them to be identically spectacular in their form, and thereby in fact trivializes the entire concept of spectacular society. When societies are characterized as spectacular merely because they are organized hierarchically and are sustained by affirmative social ideology, the theory of the spectacle loses all precision, and ultimately, all theoretical significance. The imprecision of situationist theory regarding the spectacle is less a confusion about bureaucracy than a distortion of actual historical development itself. The critique of the spectacle does not simply project its categories onto the whole of existing history, but is retroactive as well, extending spectacular domination into the past. In Society of the Spectacle, Debord views capitalist society as being spectacular ante diem: in this work, we are not only told that “all separate power has been spectacular,” we also learn that modern capitalist society represents the “material reconstruction of the religious illusion.” Here, spectacular relations achieve a supra-historical existence: not only are all previous hierarchical divisions termed “spectacular,” the modern spectacle itself appears as the embodiment of all past alienations. As Debord says, “here, the most modern is also the most archaic.” The spectacle appears as both the final truth of capitalist society and as the final truth of alienation; it is the “preservation of unconsciousness within the practical change of the conditions of existence,” an unconsciousness which predates both the spectacle and capitalism.

It is as a theory of advanced capitalism that the theory of the spectacle stands or falls, and once this is understood, the inconsistencies of the situationist argument no longer appear only as the consequences of its treatment of subjects outside of advanced capitalist society. The theory of the S.I. emerged during a period of relative abundance in Western societies and developed precisely as a critique of what it understood to be an “overdeveloped commodity economy.” The initial theses of the S.I. concerning the post-war period of capitalist development were centered around the concept of the “cybernetic welfare state,” which postulated that this period involved the increasing rationalization of social processes, a progressive modernization of social administration which would result in the stabilization of the capitalist order. If the designation of the modern capitalist state as “cybernetic” implied the ascendancy of a technocratic directorate, the description of it as a welfare state connoted a continuous program of social reform: with the elimination of the “irrational” features of its past (e.g., material and intellectual privation and overtly repressive authority), capitalism would realize an anti-Utopia based on economic prosperity. By taking what were then only provisional conditions of capitalist development to be in fact permanent tendencies, the situationists converted what was at best a working hypothesis into “theoretical” doctrine, into a perspective which appeared as absolutely conclusive. The situationists’ dogmatic conception of a reformist capitalism—which saw various distinct tendencies only as one uninterrupted movement of social change—was also translated into an equally dogmatic formulation of the possible basis for a radical transformation of this capitalism. A necessary derivative of the situationist critique of developed bourgeois society was the proposition that capitalism had resolved certain antagonisms inherent in its previous history. Thus, contradictions between competing factions of the ruling elite, between capitalism and syndicalism, between reformist movements and the bourgeois state, either no longer existed or no longer posed a direct threat to prevailing social authority. As a result of this neutralization of intra-capitalist conflict, social contradiction was displaced onto a qualitative level; for the situationists, the essential division in modern society was between those who had “lost all control over the use of their lives” and the system which maintained power against this “proletariat.” This division took precedence over all the immediate issues of social dispute, and opposition, even as it emerged from within the processes of spectacular society, would thus come from outside the plane of “spectacular” conflict. Situationist theory asserted that the institutions of capitalism would collapse as a result of a proletarian assault against modern social hierarchy and the alienation which this power organized. Furthermore, it implicitly maintained that capitalism would enter into crisis not as a result of its inherent economic contradictions, but as a result of a permanent social crisis engendered by its qualitative contradictions. Today, when the accelerating crisis of advanced capitalism is described even by the bourgeois press as a “mini-depression,” the converse would be more accurate: the breakdown of the economic mechanisms of advanced capitalism opens up the possibility of a generalized social crisis. But even disregarding this circumstance, which could not possibly have been anticipated by any theory developed in the mid-1960’s, situationist analysis is deficient in one crucial aspect: it does not undertake an examination of what exactly conditions proletarian practice, of the precise determinants of modern class struggle. This deficiency is compounded by an identical failure to comprehend the material basis of “spectacular” development.

Even though the theory of spectacular society is explicitly a critique of political economy, it is precisely this critique which is the most underdeveloped aspect of situationist theory: the political economy of the spectacle is never elaborated. While the situationists certainly recognized that material abundance was not incidental to the development of spectacular society, but was in fact at its core, all references to this basis were made en passant; the spectacle only appears at the “moment of economic abundance,” but this movement is not recognized for what it really is, a specific stage of capitalist development, and one which is not irreversible, at least in the sense of a majority of the population enjoying the benefits of abundance. And if situationist theory is at a loss to explain the internal development of advanced capitalism, it is no more able to explain its external expansion. There is no theory in situationist analysis superior to, or even analogous to, conventional explanations of “imperialism”; the accumulation of capital on an international level and the differentiation of capitalist societies are reduced to a matter of a “division of spectacular tasks.” Although Debord, in Society of the Spectacle, speaks of the “unique movement which has made the planet its field,” this hardly analytical statement is a mere digression in his central argument and is never elaborated upon. The primitivism of situationist theory in regard to economics reaches its ridiculous height in 61 Theses…, in which the authors assert that capitalism “has not shown itself incapable of pursuing (economic) development quantitatively, but rather, qualitatively.” This statement is not only remarkable in that it reveals the situationists’ misinterpretation of the level of material progress attained by advanced capitalism; it is also indicative of a misapprehension of the term “qualitative.” The strict equation of this term with “quality” in the sense of excellence or superiority is an error which is found throughout situationist writings. Despite what the S.I. says in this respect, capitalism is quite capable of entering into a qualitative crisis of its structures or of encountering a qualitative barrier to capitalist accumulation, which can be understood without any reference to its ability to improve the quality of human life. Similarly, Debord’s repeated use of the concept of “division of labor” without any qualifying adjective reflects a lack of theoretical sophistication; unlike the Marx of Das Kapital, he speaks in ahistorical terms of the division of labor rather than a specific (i.e., capitalist) division of labor, and consequently alludes to the necessity of overcoming the, rather than a, division of labor. But whatever these minor, if significant errors, the most important consequence of situationist theory’s neglect of productive forces and their development is to be found in a distinct theoretical bias towards social spheres outside of production; in many respects, the theory of the spectacle is a theory of consumption, of the concretized result of production, but not a theory, strictly speaking, of production itself. It is almost exclusively concerned with the realm of social appearances and with the image of modern production, where production finally affects social life, and not with the actual functioning of the advanced capitalist economy. The implicit separation which results from this preoccupation leads to an exaggeration of the role played by consumption in determining the essential features of advanced capitalist society. Here, the theory of the spectacle approaches the sociological analysis of the “consumer society,” and in fact a neo-situationist sociology has already appeared, one which is less a distortion of situationist theses than their logical extension, in Baudrillard’s theory of the “society of consumption.” (4)

The essential failure of situationist criticism as social theory is its failure to establish the structural dynamics of spectacular society, to produce an account of the developmental process of advanced capitalism. Situationist theory can only summarize structural evolution within the spectacle with the remark that here, “the goal is nothing, development is all.” As a result of this inability to formulate a comprehensive theory of social movement, the concept of spectacle appears as an undifferentiated Gestalt, a pure form or structure superimposed over social activity. While situationist theory recognizes that the spectacle is based on continuous transformation, that it in fact forms a dynamic unity, this transformation is never really confronted, and the real levels of spectacular dynamism are not explored. Although the spectacle is perceived as a body in motion, it is in the last instance treated by situationist theory as a body at rest. The theory of the spectacle can merely state that “what the spectacle gives as eternal is founded on change, and must change with its base”; even as the spectacle is “founded on change,” it remains an essentially unchanging entity. Without a theory of its articulation, the spectacle becomes—in theory—simply a general framework within which reality “rises up,” and if this rising up is only abstractly perceived, so also is the structure in which it unfolds. Situationist theory does confront the existence of antagonisms within the continuous surface of the spectacle, recognizing that the reality circumscribed by spectacular domination is divided into distinct spheres, but even as it takes up the problems posed by “unity and division within appearance,” it cannot adequately conceptualize the real foundation of either “unity” or “division” within modern society. An initial barrier to such a conceptualization is the reductionist approach of the theory of the spectacle, which consolidates all the component features of the spectacular superstructure under the rubric of “representation.” The most glaring example of this theoretical simplification of the form of advanced capitalist society is the situationists’ almost complete neglect of the “politico-juridical” sphere of the spectacle: the political dimension of modern capitalist power is simply subsumed within the all-embracing jurisdiction of “spectacular culture.” Additionally, situationist theory contains two contra- dictory notions of spectacular authority: the S.I., proceeding from quite different assumptions, shared with conventional leftism a view of modern capitalism as creating a monolithic, authoritarian society, and at the same time saw this society as existing in a permanent state of self-division and reform. Since both of these descriptions of advanced capitalism remain on the level of the superficial and do not enter into a discussion of the real conditions of spectacular cohesion and modification, they are no more than empty generalizations: the conception of the spectacle as being based on permanent division (as generating an endless series of “false” antagonisms) is merely the other side of the conception of the spectacle as a monolithic structure. Here, the much-vaunted dialectics” of the S.I. are found wanting: in both cases, no real grasp of the social antagonisms and the structural crises of modern capitalism is possible. Without an elaboration of its historical parameters, the fluidity of spectacular development remains a mere theoretical “given.”

Considered as a conceptual whole, the theory of the spectacle, like the object of its criticism, presents itself as an “enormous, inaccessible” construction. If the spectacle has an “essentially tautological” character, so also does its theory: the analysis in Society of the Spectacle consists largely of a series of definitions, each of which is interchangeable with another. The spectacle is alternately defined as the “result and project of the existing mode of production” and as the “uninterrupted conversation which the present order maintains about itself”; despite all these refinements of the term “spectacle,” a real concept of the spectacle eludes Debord. The theory of the spectacle is basically circumlocutory, establishing a conceptual perimeter around the spectacle, but never penetrating its interior. The essential nature of its object is never apprehended by situationist analysis. To a certain extent, the notion of the spectacle resembles the Kantian category of “thing in itself,” in that the spectacle can never really be known. Although the spectacle manifests itself in social phenomena, the real causes of the spectacle remain obscure; it acquires a certain ineffability even as it exerts its domination over everything. The omnipotent and omnipresent character which the spectacle assumes in situationist theory is an indication of the theory’s shortcomings: the spectacle is understood and shown only as a simple presence devoid of any real substance. In a sense, the theory of the spectacle is only a theory of presence and as such becomes spectacularized itself. Situationist thought eventually succumbs to the very spectacle whose “reality” it seeks to reveal, simply because this disclosure is entrapped within the contradictions of its own concepts. Even the appearance of a theory of the spectacle is inexplicable within the context of the situationist argument, which maintains both that in the spectacle, “every individual becomes unable to recognize reality,” and that theory is precisely a recognition and signification of that reality. In order to preserve an idea of the total permeation of “social reality” by the spectacle, situationist theory must situate its critical vantage point outside of the spectacle, which is to say, outside of history.

It is somewhat ironic that despite the S.l.’s summary dismissal of structuralism as the “thought guaranteed by the State,” situationist theory bears a distinct resemblance—in its conceptual deficiencies—to this tendency of modern criticism. Its supposedly historical character notwithstanding, the critique of the spectacle has a certain methodological affinity with the structuralist analysis of capitalism. Specifically, the theory of the spectacle as elaborated by Debord is vitiated by many of the same contradictions as Althusser’s theory of the “exposition” of capitalist structures; like Althusser’s interpretation of the Darstellung in capitalist society, (5) the concept of the spectacle interprets the sphere of “presentation” of modern society as being the location of both objective truth and social dissimulation, as embodying both true and false appearances. As with Althusserian criticism, situationist theory seeks to join the categories of the “real” and “unreal” and have them finally appear as one category—in the case of the S.I., that of the spectacle. This joining of the real and the unreal does not simply mean that the spectacle—like the labor process as described in Marx’s Grundrisse—represents at one and the same time the realization of existing social relations and the de-realization of existing humanity; rather, it involves a more far-reaching assertion, one which contains a serious conceptual dilemma, where Debord posits the spectacle as both a real and a false category. Thus, even while Debord can state that the spectacle is real, that “it is in fact produced,” he can also say that the “cumulative power of independent artificiality is followed everywhere by the falsification of social life.” Here, it must be emphasized that he is not talking about a distorted representation of social life, but the actual distortion of that life itself. Debord’s statement is open to the obvious criticism that it implies the existence of a “real” or “true” social life at some point in the past, but even more importantly, its methodological assumptions can also be challenged. By uniting both the moment of the “exposition” and distortion of social reality within a single plane of spectacular appearances, Debord departs from the critical approach of Marx, who consistently distinguishes between social organization and organized social appearances, even as he establishes that what is distinguished forms a “higher unity,” a total process of social mediation. Thus, in Capital, commodity fetishism appears as an aspect of commodity relations and even as the outward form of commodity circulation, but it does not form an aspect of the commodity per se or of the economic processes of commodity production. The commodity is the primary form of mediation in bourgeois society, but the ideological mediation of the commodity is a process which is carried out independently of the commodity itself. By failing to preserve the distinction between the outer form (“appearance”) and the inner reality (“essence”) of capitalist society, the theory of the spectacle loses any real conceptual base.

Although situationist theory attempts to transcend empirical analysis—and the spectacle is most certainly not empirically verifiable—it does not succeed in constituting the spectacle as a valid theoretical construction. It lacks an internal coherence. In endowing the spectacle with an intangible significance such that it only appears as a generalized (social) illusion, the situationist critique invalidates the very reality of the spectacle, whose existence, given the contradictions of situationist theory, cannot be confirmed. In order to sustain its indictment of capitalist domination, situationist theory must resurrect a kind of pre-Marxian anthropology, in which natural human essence is contrasted to its distorted form in contemporary society. The situationist discussion of class divisions does not preclude such an anthropological tendency: in Debord, spectacular society appears as the “true reflection of the producer of things, and the false objectification of the producers,” as if the producers in the capitalist economy qua producers could find anything but their true objectification in their activity. Spectacular authority is considered as a “denial” of Man, and with these descriptions, the situationist critique unconsciously becomes a moralistic denunciation of capitalist inhumanity. Borrowing from other sources, Debord evokes a melodramatic imagery to depict the global spectacle as, in its appearance, the “image of happy unification surrounded by desolation and horror, in the tranquil center of unhappiness.” Such a portrayal of the spectacle in terms of an absolute contrast where the spectacle’s “unhappiness” is opposed to human satisfaction leaves the situationists unable to explain how the spectacle can present itself as the already-achieved realization of human desires, as a power based in fact on sensory gratification. Spectacular experience is not perceived as compensatory experience, as an incorporation of individual fantasy into the basic structures of capitalist life. The S.I. is unable to see that the spectacle institutes its own, albeit reified, “pleasure principle” everywhere. And conversely, the real nature of spectacular repression escapes the S.I.: what can be understood in precise terms of compulsion and restriction, of the specific constraints imposed on individual and collective behavior by contemporary capitalism, is reduced to the abstract dimensions of a “negation of life.”

The forced separation in situationist criticism of “humanity” from the spectacle and the subsequent elevation of this dichotomy to the level of pure contradiction has a further consequence in the subjectivization of material categories in situationist theory. Debord’s view of the movement of the spectacle as the “autonomous movement of the non-living” leads to an inverted Hegelianism in which material reality becomes a force developing independently of human activity. This spiritualization of matter is ultimately its dematerialization: the spectacle manifests itself as Weltgeist, as a power diffused throughout social life and establishing itself for itself above that life. The spectacle, thus, must be perceived at its origin as a primum mobile, as the unmoved mover which instigates the motion of contemporary history. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” reappears in Debord as the spectacular authority which regulates all spheres of modern existence. This theory, like the world it attempts to describe, is a theory which is “really on its head”; here, things assume an active voice, and both commodities and society are personified, brought to life by theory. What was only an occasional rhetorical device in Marx’s writings—after all, in Capital, the words are “if commodities could talk,” not that they somehow do—is accorded the status of a fundamental critical principle. In the end, the spectacle appears as a supernatural realm, where the “commodity contemplates itself in a world which it has created.” The theory of the spectacle is a theory which fails to defetishize its object and is purely an account of mystified and mystifying appearances which never gets beyond the form to the underlying content. This is not to state that a theory of the Darstellungsform in advanced capitalism is not required, but simply that the situationist concept of the spectacie is no longer sufficient.

The theoretical shortcomings of the S.I. must finally be explained in terms of an inability to fulfill critical ambitions. The incompleteness of situationist analysis is evident not only in its failure to produce a sufficient explanation of existing historical conditions, but in its failure to fully apprehend the polarities of theoretical mediation itself, to appreciate the distinct levels on which critical explanation develops. On a still simplistic level, radical social theory unfolds within a dialectic comprising both the sphere of the “particular” (the concrete level at which social existence appears and finally constitutes itself) and that of the “universal” (the general historical contours in which social organization evolves). Within this context, theory emerges as a form of conscious mediation between the concrete and the general; it interposes itself as a conceptual unity of these two spheres. To borrow again from Hegelian terminology, theory must develop on the level of the “concrete universal.” that is. on the level of being and becoming. For social theory, this is the level of historical movement; it must relate the movement of its own concepts to that of history. Although it was able to arrive at an intuition of the essential “moments” of social realization, situationist theory was unable to provide an ultimate conceptual unity in its critique of modern capitalism. In order to establish the truth of the spectacle, spectacular immediacy must first be transcended: the immediate forms in which the spectacle appears not only preserve various pretenses (e.g., the strict demarcation between the “political” realm and the “neutral” sphere of daily life), they also, precisely through the “superficial” antagonisms of politics, economy, and culture, conceal the real content of the spectacle as, in the S.l.’s view, the absolute alienation of human desires and capacities. But in this transcendence, the S.I. did not accomplish a radical sublation of spectacular immediacy: it simply negated the specific sphere of capitalist development without preserving it as an essential aspect of the general sphere of this development, as a formative plane of the realization process of the spectacle. Particular developments within the spectacular totality were seen as simple reflections of universal structures and relationships. For the S.I., the particular only confirmed the universal.

The result of the S.l.’s establishing a direct, unilateral connection between these aspects was both an abstract immediacy and an abstract universality to the situationist critique: the S.l.’s theory sought to be both relevant to all particular situations in capitalist society and universally valid as a description of that social form. As with any such ultimately contradictory task, neither status was attained: the S.I. did not achieve relevancy, nor did it achieve universality. Its dismissal of the so-called “secondary” contradictions of spectacular society, i.e., economic and political disputes, meant that it was unable to perceive the real arena of conflict and reform in advanced capitalism. By failing to link its theory directly to historical development, the S.I. “left mediation outside itself”: the theoretical axes of the S.I. did not correspond to the developmental axes of modern social history. This lack of correspondence did not mean that the S.I. failed to discern the main tendencies of social transformation, but rather, their exact location. Ultimately, the concrete escaped the S.I., which was unable to establish the actual qualitative context—the precise socio-economic determinants—of contemporary practice. To understand the importance of this specific determination of activity is not to say, with Hegel, that the concrete simply “differentiates itself,” but to recognize that the concrete is differentiated by social activity and is differentiating of that activity. Despite the S.l.’s active concern with the “root structures of reification,” the particular historical manifestations of these structures remained terra incognita for situationist theory.

The absence in situationist theory of a genuine synthesis of specific and general categories, and the resulting disjunction between these categories within situationist theory, have further consequences: the fundamental incoherence of situationist criticism embraces an implicitly dualistic perspective, where each concept established by theory calls forth its (absolute) opposite. The world of the spectacle, like its description, the world of situationist theory, is a divided reality—divided not against itself but against its other. The spectacle is the realm of the “quantitative,” of “ideology,” of “false consciousness”; the anti-spectacle is the abode of the “qualitative,” of “theory,” of “radical consciousness.” Underlying the dichotomous world-view of the S.I. is an attempt to make reality conform to theory, to separate capitalist society completely from its negation. Because any connection between these opposites is lost, the S.I. fails to explain how they really are distinguished from each other, except on an arbitrary basis: all pretensions to the contrary, situationist theory does not contain a substantive theory of the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society. It can ultimately only show, by means of a facile contrast, that which is not hierarchical, that which is not alienated, and the realization process of the revolutionary class is only discussed in a cursory fashion. The original rupture within the situationist perspective, however, must be located in its uncritical acceptance of a rigid division between “subject” and “representation” within social reality. This superficially Hegelian Marxism conceives of everything that is not appropriated by the conscious human subject as mere alien externality, as absolute otherness: it traces the downfall of the social world from this original loss of unity and seeks as a goal its restoration. And in order to understand the particular “search” undertaken by situationist theory, it is necessary to examine what it takes as its sources, to look at where it draws its critical inspiration.

In appropriating the supposedly radical content of past theoretical and practical traditions, the S.I. also inherited their unresolved contradictions and ambiguities, and it accomplished less a contemporary mediation of these historical examples than their pure and simple retrieval, preserving their most “relevant” aspects without assimilating them within the context of modern criticism. The S.l.’s interpretation of previous theory was not historical: rather, intellectual “history” is seen in terms of a contrived sequence of points of innovation (Hegel-Marx-Lukács-Pannekoek) which are only formally related to each other. And this pseudo-history has an effect on both the theoretical style and content of the situationist perspective: Debord’s extensive and direct use of other sources in Society of the Spectacle has a determining influence on the course of his analysis. Of these antecedents, the S.l.’s relationship to Marx is particularly crucial; its “confrontation” with him remains more a simple intention than an accomplished fact. Only those writings of Marx that were most easily applicable to contemporary society—e.g., the theme of alienation in the 1844 Paris Manuscripts—were extensively cited by the S.I. In fact, Marx’s theory is never critically assessed as a whole in situationist writings: the corpus of the mature Marx is tacitly accepted as an intact body of thought, as if nothing in it required a thorough examination or revision. Marx’s critique of political economy remains an almost forbidden province of inquiry, whose concepts (“commodity fetishism,” for example) can be invoked but never seriously evaluated within the context of Marx’s own theoretical argument. Issues such as the labor theory of value or Marx’s general theory of capitalist economic crisis are left for others—usually those disparagingly referred to as “Marxists”—to take up. And beyond the situationists’ almost capricious use of Marx is a failure to analyze subsequent developments in political economy and philosophy, with the singular exception of Lukács. These omissions are not accidental; rather, what the S.I. chose not to discuss was as revealing as that with which it concerned itself. The silence of the S.I. on certain subjects was a de facto admission of the limits of its own inquiry; despite its concern with a “total critique,” situationist criticism engaged in the very kind of specialization it decried, concentrating its attention on a “qualitative” critique of the culture of alienation in modern capitalism. Even as it took up the questions of bureaucratic power and urbanism, it ceded the field of criticism in certain crucial areas to other specialists; in the sphere of modern economics, the S.I. had almost nothing to say, preferring to leave to the ideologists the task of “completing” the S.l.’s theoretical program.

The situationists share with Marx a curious reluctance to discuss their precise social origins and to openly consider the relationship of essentially intellectual theorists to the movement of the proletariat. And unlike Marx, this distance between theory and its proletarian practitioners is reproduced internally in situationist theory, whose conception of the proletariat is decidedly imprecise. Following the direct precedent of Lukács, who stood in a similar relation to the “class of consciousness,” the situationists arrive at a theoretical mythologization of the proletariat, which becomes more important as a conceptual than a social category. In Lukács, the proletariat is conceived almost as a philosophical construction, as a deus ex machina socia which resolves all contradictions of bourgeois thought and culture. In History and Class Consciousness, the proletariat appears as the savior of modern civilization, invested with the power of redeeming all the defects of bourgeois culture. In thecaseof theS.I., itarrives inorderto realize modern art. With both Lukács and the S.I., the proletariat is subjectivized by theory, and this can be seen not only in the description of the proletariat as a singular, as opposed to plural, entity, but in the characterization of this “historical subject” as a force which appears as having attained a “unity,” without, however, having objectively confirmed this fact. In situationist theory, the modern proletariat is never fully analyzed as an objective phenomenon. It does not appear as a class whose composition is to be investigated; rather, situationist criticism begins with a notion of the “proletariat” and applies it to reality. Thus, the S.I. can flatly assert that the “proletariat cannot be judged by what it is, but by what it does,” as if what the proletariat is has no effect upon what it does. The situationist theory of the proletariat becomes hypostatized and is taken to be real without any substantive empirical confirmation of its validity. Breaking with the Kautskyist-Leninist tradition, the situationists impute consciousness to, rather than impose it upon the proletariat. Its desire to identify itself with the most radical actions of the modern proletariat led theS.I. to confer an ex post facto situationist quality upon all the “revolts” of this class. With this ascription of consciousness, the looter of Watts is joined with the student rioter of Paris and the rebellious worker of Poland, and they are joined not on the basis of the real content of their actions, but on the basis of a content provided by theory: sincethey are all “fighting theiralienation,” they are all supposed to be part of the same proletariat.

In spite of its modernism, the S.I. retained a latent apocalyptic vision of revolutionary transformation, idealizing radical change as an ultimate break with history even as this change created the conditions where “real history” could begin. In the situationist conception of revolution, transformation becomes transmutation; the present is obliterated by a demiurgical act of collective will. Following tradition, the S.I. is appropriately vague about the probable features (and possible contradictions) of the new revolutionary order; it takes Marx’s supposed strictures against the formulation of any blueprint of a revolutionary society as absolving it from the task of elaborating a comprehensive theory of the revolutionary process. Even where the S.I. does attempt to consider the new world in its “bare generality,” as in Vaneigem’s Avis aux civilisés . . ., it can only produce a series of Fourierist platitudes about the inauguration of the realm of pleasure through the power of the workers’ councils. And if the S.I. is fashionably imprecise in its discussion of the implications of revolutionary social organization, it maintains a similar insouciance in regards to the determining origins of a generalized radical practice. TheS.I. thus minimizes the specific causal factors of the May revolt; the initiatory causes of the uprising become essentially unimportant in relation to its “world-historical” significance. With this indifference to causality, it is unable to account for the failure of similar revolts to occur in the post-May period. As a result of this superficial explanation of radical social activity, revolution appears in situationist theory as a categorical imperative which impels the proletariat to an autonomous historical practice for itself. Moreover, the S.I. is prepared to provide the theoretical content of this goal of contemporary history; it is willing to define the objectives of proletarian practice, and it defines them in terms of situationist concepts, namely, that of generalized self-management.

Autogestion emerges as an idée fixe within situationist thought: not only is it proposed as the necessary form of modern revolutionary struggle, it is presented as both the immediate and absolute aim of this movement. Self-management appears as the ultima ratio against capitalist power, both as the means to shatter spectacular reif ication and as the organizing principle of communist society; as a situationist put it, “with the lever of the councils and the fulcrum of a total negation of the spectacular commodity society, the World can be moved.” Despite the situationists’ preoccupation with the “uninterrupted transformation of everyday life” and the necessity of “total revolution,” self-management assumes the property of an end in itself, an initial and final embodiment of the revolutionary project. The situationist revival of a councilist tradition was not, obviously, an attempt to recover the actual historical experience of that tradition, but to recover an historical form, that of the workers’ councils, for application in contemporary practice. Whatever its essentially radical character (as an intervention against the monopoly of social form by capitalist-bureaucratic power), this recovery was identically a fetishization of a form of revolutionary practice (the council) and of the location of this practice (the capitalist economy). With its fixation on the proletarian assumption of economic power, situationist theory reproduced economism on a “qualitative” level. Its orientation towards the productive sphere as the location of revolutionary transformation caused it to minimize the extra-economic dimensions of the revolutionary process (culture, “politics,” socialization), and this relatively narrow view of councilist power was not only reflected in its underestimation of the difficulties of councilist organization within the context of a revolutionary social administration exercising hegemony over the whole of society, but in its neglect of the importance of issues arising outside the immediate sphere of alienated labor in determining the direction of a revolutionary movement. “Generalized self-management,” moreover, proved to be the most easily recuperable of all the situationist slogans, and this recuperation did not simply occur as a result of the appropriation of the term “self-management” by all sorts of existing authorities ranging from the CFDT to the Peruvian and Portuguese military juntas, but through the actual integration of elements of an autogestionnaire program into an international process of capitalist reform. The democratization of the capitalist work process, the breakdown of intensive specialization within the factory, and the introduction of various “workers’ participation” schemes, were not simply indications that capitalism had become “frantically reformist”; capitalist reformism had in fact undercut the real basis of the situationist position. Self-management as a form no longerappeared radical, but reformist. Although the S.I. was most certainly not talking about the democratic management of capitalism, but of the revolutionary supersession of capitalist society, the central importance of self-management to the situationist perspective ultimately becomes a liability.*

The convergence between situationist theses and advanced capitalist ideology is not limited to the issue of self-management, however. Most of the positive concepts of the situationist revolt (“quality of life,” “pleasure,” uninhibited “communication”) directly anticipate themes in contemporary culture, and in view of this, Vaneigem’s proposal (in the 1970 orientation debate) “to call all of modern ideology situationism” does not seem at all preposterous today. But to attribute the S.l.’s prefigurement of social ideology to the “implicit situationism” of advanced capitalist development is to misrepresent the source of the contamination of situationist theory: it is the implicit reflection in situationist theory of the reformist principles of advanced capitalism, and not the reverse phenomenon, which must be confronted. In particular, the situationist emphasis on the need for “authenticity” in experience mirrors the false sensuality of late capitalist culture. Precisely on account of the abstract manner of its formulation, this leitmotif of situationist theory is easily assimilable within—and itself assimilates—the immediate forms of “lived experience” in dominant culture. To the extent that the general positive program of the S.I. was formulated on an abstract level—i.e., without any immediate relation to specific struggles and issues—its neutralization by modernist ideology was a foregone conclusion; once stripped of its class perspective, this set of beliefs was compatible with any other value system. The mere possibility of a generalized situationist life-style—a possibility long since realized in fact—also points up the extent to which the situationist movement, in its defeat, rejoined the general movement of “radical” culture within capitalist society. Indeed, even in spite of its absolute break with all artistic forms and “illusions,” the S.I. always remained a cultural movement in the narrow sense of the term: certain stylized, almost ornamental, concepts which emerged out of Lettrism are retained in the “mature” situationist critique: psycho-geography, the theory of the dérive, and the entire abstract notion of the “created situation.” Even the situationist theory of détournement—the S.l.’s much-vaunted “style of subversion”—betrays elements of an aesthetic; it is a mode, rather than content, of expression, one, moreover, which is not entirely successful as a radical form. Occasionally, the subversion of images as practiced by the situationists speaks for others in a literal sense, joining acts to their “consciousness” after the fact and resorting to the same devices as the medium it “scandalizes.” If only beautiful women can articulate situationist theory, it is because this theory is itself beautiful, glamorous, and even orgasmic. As one “situationist” pin-up put it, “Aaaahhhh, L’lnternationale Situationniste!” More seriously, the situationist movement, like its precursor, surrealism, assumes certain features of a romanticist revival which seeks to attach itself to class struggle. These negative aspects are not restricted simply to the obvious case of Vaneigemism. In its self-caricaturist aspects, the situationist revolt becomes a seigneurial revolt whose aristocratic mot d’ordre is “never work” and whose goal is the rule of “masters without slaves.”

The situationist critique contained the seeds of its own destruction as social theory; its definitiveness lay more in its appearance than in its substance. In the light of contemporary analysis, the “coherent perspective” of the S.I. appears more as a related series of critical interventions than as a unified theory of modern history. If the most important critical contribution of the S.I.—the theory of the spectacle—is to retain any validity, it must be reformulated in a rigorous manner, and if, in the future, there is to be a situationist theory, it must be established on a new conceptual basis which corresponds to historical movement. The defeat of situationist theory, like the defeat of situationist practice, must be attributed to history, and if the critical insights of the S.I. are to be preserved, they must be used to analyze that history. Merely to disseminate situationist theses in their original form is only another mystification; they are already impoverished as ideas. And all those who have attempted to base themselves, either theoretically or practically, on situationist analysis have not escaped the fate of the S.I.