At Dusk

Of all the premature conclusions drawn by the S.I. about historical tendencies, none was so inopportune as that which it deduced about itself and the “success” of its theory. At precisely the moment when the “judgement of history” was prepared to render a verdict unfavorable to the supposed “victory” of the situationist movement, the S.I. could vaingloriously proclaim with respect to its precocious development that “such an extremist project has never affirmed its hegemony in the struggle of ideas . . . in so short a time.” (67 Theses) Today, one must add that never has such a theoretical hegemony proved so short-lived, and having attempted to explain the cause of the S.l.’s involuntary demise as a theoretical and practical force, criticism must be directed towards an examination of the actual legacy of the S.l.’s brief “preeminence” within the modern world. In achieving a certain superiority in a particular field of theoretical combat, the S.I. became an intellectual power, in other words, a power existing solely through the power of ideas. The prestige of the S.I. increased in proportion to the external diffusion of its theses, and this dissemination of its theory served to create a situationist constituency that was literally held in sway by situationist ideas. The S.l.’s influence over what it considered to be the “modern revolutionary movement” was unambiguously ideological—it became a de facto ideological authority. This quality of the S.I. was to be confirmed in the very nature of its success: the terrain of situationist activity was only enlarged by the mechanical reproduction—in formations outside the S.I.—of the S.l.’s theory and practice, or rather, their image. In the post-May period, the S.I. was acutely aware that it would either succeed as a revolutionary organization or become, in its own words, the “last revolutionary spectacle,” and while it was far from being the last such phenomenon, it certainly did become, both in its superficial notoriety and its substantive impact, a spectacle of opposition to capitalist power. The S.I. became a model organization in the real sense of the term, exerting a paradigmatic influence upon elements of ultra-left opposition within international capitalism. In this milieu, the generalization of the situationist critique consisted primarily in a generalized imitation of the S.I., where supposedly “autonomous” groups enveloped themselves in a mystique of situationist organization, a glamorous image enhanced by the S.I. itself. Although the S.I. renounced its property rights to its theory and magnanimously declared that “situationist theory does not belong to the S.I. alone,” no significant theoretical or practical development of asituationist naturedid in fact occuroutside the S.I.

In advanced capitalist states, the S.I. had expected to encounter the most modern revolutionary opposition, one which for that very reason would have been most receptive to situationist ideas. According to this view, the United States, as the most advanced capitalist power, should have provided a decisive opportunity for new advances in situationist agitation, even though it was precisely in the U.S. where the neutralization and absorption of radical opposition within dominant culture had progressed the furthest. But if the conditions which allowed a situationist tendency to appear in America were themselves an expression of the fundamental crisis of social authority in American capitalism, this movement emerged less as a unique and indigenous formation than as an imported derivative of the S.I. And this was not merely a phenomenon limited to America: virtually everywhere, even in France, the penetration of situationist ideas followed a line of least resistance, which had predictable results. Situationist ideas were not so much appropriated by autonomous tendencies as they were idealized by those who sought to emulate the radical “perfection” of the S.I., and who, on this basis, constituted themselves as an “autonomous” movement. The history of the American situationist movement is the history of a facsimile: its tortuous progress corresponds to the haphazard journey of its followers in pursuit of a coherent myth – the beau idéal of the S.I. The specific development of the American situationist movement must, however, be explained in terms of factors peculiar to American society. In America, as elsewhere, the situationist critique appealed to the same social stratum as that within which theS.I. had itself arisen in France: situationist theory in the U.S. became principally the theory of the American New Left and counter-culture. And it was a disaffection with the inadequacies of this revolt and its betrayal by an increasingly Stalinist New Left as much as with capitalist society which led certain of the most radical oppositional elements to adopt a situationist perspective; the theory of the S.I. promised to fill the theoretical vacuum of the extreme left in America and to provide a comprehensive program in opposition to “sacrificial militantism.”

The French revolt of May 1968 provided the historical basis for the introduction of situationist theses into radical circles throughout the U.S. May ’68 loomed as a revolutionary apparition on the horizon of American activism, and for a short time, all tendencies of opposition vicariously identified themselves with the events in France. Paris in revolt became the New Jerusalem of the American left: here, in a developed country, workers and students were uniting as a revolutionary force. And it was as an aspect of the “glorious tradition” of May that the existence of the Situationist International first became known in the U.S. Situationist theory, having apparently served as a direct inspiration for the French revolutionaries, became the direct inspiration for those who sought to explain the “lessons of May” to an American audience. If May ’68 became a paragon of modern revolutionary practice, situationist theory became the explanation par excellence of modern capitalist society, representing the hitherto unknown theory of the American “spectacle.” The situationist critique arrived in the U.S. relatively intact, but in isolation from the intellectual context of its analytical development—the competing theories against and through which situationist theory had evolved. Not surprisingly, situationist theory encountered little resistance in anarchist and libertarian circles, where it overwhelmed all opposition simply because no real alternative to it then existed, outside of a few obscure ultra-left theoretical tendencies that above all lacked the notoriety and compelling style of the S.I. The radical empiricist and sociological traditions prevalent in the American left were no match for situationist criticism, and the absence in America of a Marxist cultural tradition equivalent to that of Europe meant that there essentially were no critical standards—outside those of a few Marxist academics—by which to evaluate the situationist perspective. In America, the sources of situationist analysis and that analysis itself were encountered in reverse order: the critical antecedents of the S.I. were confronted ex post facto, after having been mediated by the S.I. Thus, in the American situationist movement, Marx largely became known only through the expropriation of the “essence” of his work by the S.I. and was initially approached from a situationist perspective. Situationist criticism thus came to enjoy by default a theoretical supremacy over a certain faction of the left, without any serious debate as to the real content of the positions of the S.I. It is also paradoxical that situationist theory could be considered here as the “avant-garde” of critical thought, even though its theoretical program was completed without addressing the particular structural characteristics of American capitalism. During its formative period in the mid-Sixties, the S.I. necessarily only accorded cursory treatment (in Decline and Fall . . . and On the Poverty of Student Life) to the radicalization process from which the American New Left, and eventually, the adherents to the situationist perspective, had emerged. The insufficiencies and the obsolete character of many situationist positions did not prevent the American followers of the S.I. from taking its perspective to be directly relevant to the American situation, and the failure of the American situationists to demonstrate any real theoretical autonomy can be attributed at its origins to their uncritical adoption of situationist theory as a definitive explanation of the social forms of American capitalism.

A situationist presence in the U.S. was multiplied, and situationist theory disseminated, through a hierarchical process of transmission in which the American section of the S.I. represented a center of radiating influence upon certain radical milieux, which would later constitute the American “situationist movement.” Under the unofficial auspices of the American S.I., a direct and indirect line of communication was established between those who became active participants in the situationist movement. At one point, nearly all protagonists were in contact with each other, and within this closed circle, an informal order was established on the basis of the longevity of each particular “organization/’ the American S.I. (and subsequently, Create Situations), Contradiction, Point-Blank, Negation—all were ranked according to the degrees of their supposed “experience,” and in the ensuing war of succession after the collapse of the S.I.. each was to assert its claim to the situationist throne on the basis of priority, with respect to who outranked whom in terms of authority and precedence (with the exception of Point-Blank and Negation who, for differing reasons, referred to the failure of their predecessors in order to establish their legitimacy). Even before these factional disputes commenced, communication between each tendency consisted as much of the establishment of a code of recognition between groups as of an exchange of ideas. Each successive group in the American situationist hierarchy imparted to the next not only the “situationist perspective,” but a prescribed mode of organizational behavior; this radical decorum, or situationist etiquette, was reflected in the stylized comportment of groups towards each other, complete with unwritten rules of conduct governing inter- organizational “breaks” and the maintenance of a situationist “public image.” Given the importance of a formal “revolutionary” demeanor to the situationist movement as a whole, it is not at all surprising that breaks between American groups almost always originated in procedural questions or subjective differences, in points of contention which would only later acquire a theoretical significance. Such apparently superficial matters are not simply peripheral to the history of the situationist movement in America; rather, they express the very nature of its development. The fanatical drive of almost any grouping for absolute mastery within the situationist camp was not merely a reflection of a collective “authoritarian personality” within a putatively “anti-hierarchical” movement; it can only be explained as a necessary consequence of the movement’s apprehension of situationist theory as absolute truth, as an exclusive theory, which, however “serviceable” to the proletariat as a whole, demanded an exclusive proprietorship in contemporary criticism. It is not, as Ken Knabb would have it, the existence of “pro-situs” resulting from a “limited theoretical monopoly” which is important — as if the non-exclusivity of situationist ideas could somehow prevent their distortion — it is the existence of an essentially (and not incidentally or temporarily) monopolistic situationist movement which must be considered. This monopolistic power involved both a concentration of theoretical authority in a few individuals and a constriction of critical thought under the domination of situationist perspectives. In viewing situationist theory as a uniform, completed structure, the American situationists could only embellish a pre-existing body of thought: any creative initiative was dependent on the S.I., and the apparent “coherence” of the S.I. engendered a critical paresis among its American followers. In the supposedly free atmosphere of situationist debate, a curious conformism manifested itself, not simply in regards to questions of protocol, but in a surprising unanimity as to what organizational practice constituted. Each group aspired to the summum bonum of revolutionary activity—being “like the S.I.” The subconscious inferiority complex of the American situationist movement marked its inability to develop critical perspectives.

Within the evolution of the American situationist movement, it is possible to distinguish two general trends of “critical” development: one tendency, of an almost exclusively practical orientation, being concerned with the popularization of situationist ideas; another, of a more theoretical inclination, being involved with a particularization of situationist analysis to the specific context of American capitalism. Both found an ulterior unity in their desire to “utilize” situationist thought within a contemporary context. The subjectivist tendency which emerged from a crude assimilation of Vaneigem’s Treatise and a vulgarization of his project of a “revolution of everyday life” was successful on at least one account: as the most accessible “situationist” position and consequently the one most easily translated into “practice,” it proved to be the more popular of the two. Having first come into vogue at least in the U.S. with the Council for Conscious Existence, this latter-day Fourierism found its most flamboyant expression in the doctrine of “communist egoism” promulgated by For Ourselves {a reincarnation of the group Negation); with this travestied Stirnerism, a situationist Messianism supplants an improvement program for daily experience. Here, Nechayev’s Revolutionary Catechism reappears not as a liturgy of revolutionary self-denial, but as a formulary of romantic self-affirmation. For example, in their “Preamble” to a situationist constitution, they enumerate the Rights of (Subjective) Man: “radical subjectivity,” “pleasure,” “self-authority”—all of which are founded on the primordial “right to be greedy.” With For Ourselves, “theory” is simply a means for them to further their proselytizing activity and to convert the “unconscious masses” to the path of what is altruistically termed “self-theory.” It is thus not surprising that they reduce the whole of a radical perspective to a simplistic doctrine in which critical elements become articles of faith. The revolutionary process is summarized as follows: “People seeking, in good conscience and without guilt, more pleasure from their own everyday lives, contains (sic) the whole of the revolution.” Thus, it is entirely in keeping that they talk of “self-management” as the “management of self.”

This subjectivist ideology is itself demanding of a strictly literal interpretation, but despite its fundamentally mundane nature, it has a significance beyond its immediate concepts; it is indicative of a general mode of perception of situationist theory. But subjectivism is more than strident situationism; it is situationist theory taken at face value, and there are sinister undertones to this prima facie interpretation. For Ourselves’s exhortation to “give everything you’ve got, to give your all” (The Right to be Greedy) announces the reign of a “subjective” tyranny: their desire to literally unite—to fuse—with others is a demand for an immediate total experience, where any subject-object distinction is obliterated in an undifferentiated totality of pleasurable sensations. Despite the subjectivists’ fastidious concern for individual “rights,” their notion of revolutionary transformation is nothing less than a quest for a totalitarian communion in which individual consciousness is subsumed within a metaphysical union attained through collective affinity, or the “resonance of egoisms.” The subjectivists’ obsession with an absolute experiential immediacy cannot simply be attributed to a situationist exuberance, and their eulogization of “community” is not that far removed from that found in Fascist mythology. Both contain a fundamentally irrational element in their appeal to pure emotion, and both pursue a classical ideal, that of a transcendent beauty. For Ourselves present this “ideal beyond” in an undiluted form even as they ground it in the “individual”: “Self-mastery, the conscious and effective wielding of myself for myself in the world, is indeed an aesthetic self-pleasure. It is the art of life.” (The Right to be Greedy) In subjectivist mythology, history, even when its name is invoked, collapses into an apocalyptic act of transcendence: “In the moment of social revolution, the present, the historical present, the presence of history, opens up like the sky.” Here, the sense of urgency (the other side of desperation) which For Ourselves display is itself a reflection of their chiliastic conception of the revolutionary millenium as the redemptive light opposed to the darkness of the capitalist world; in suitably hyperbolic language, they present the individual as confronted by an absolute choice between “revolution” or a “totalitarian nightmare.” More recently, the didacticism and moralistic invective of For Ourselves have been consecrated in a higher reincarnation, that of Unitary Space-Time, which has presented a series of sermons on situationist theory through the surprisingly unilateral means of radio. Here, situationist theory becomes pure ideology and is reduced to a crude program for a situationist lifestyle which can be “taught” in the manner of the Esalen Institute. Meanwhile, the “theoretical” faction of For Ourselves has attempted to disassociate itself from the embarrassing consequences of the positions which it previously formulated; it will no doubt apply its primitive theoretical skills to more elevated subjects.

All serious attempts at a genuine critical autonomy in the American situationist movement started from essentially the same proposition: to elaborate a “native” theoretical base for a situationist practice in the U.S. and to critically engage the social reality of American capitalism. This project involved the application of a prior model of theoretical analysis—that provided by the theses of the Situationist International—to the task of clarifying the specific features of the “American spectacle,” its structural principles and its contradictions, the latter of which were apparent in certain oppositional tendencies. From the inception of the American situationist movement, certain focal problems had been considered as crucial to its critical development: among these were the New Left and the cultural transformations concurrent to it. This orientation of criticism towards the New Left and the “counter- culture” was present in a rudimentary form in the polemical section of the American S.l.’s journal; however, this publication was less concerned with an extended interpretation of the New Left than with identifying—and denouncing—modernist ideology: e.g., McLuhan) and the theorists of the New Left (Bookchin, Marcuse, Baran and Sweezy). The central concern of the American S.I.—whose project, because of internal dissensions, can almost be considered as abortive from its inception—was not even with the New Left, but rather, with the summarization of general situationist theses. (6) The unoriginality of the American S.I., if not surprising given the relative backwardness of American cultural theory in comparison to that of Europe, is nonetheless striking: in areas where they had no recourse to situationist theory, they simply relied on the most conventional of current leftist ideologies. Thus, in their major theoretical work, Certain Extraordinary Considerations . . ., one finds Chasse offering an unadulterated Leninist critique of imperialism, one which is a mere paraphrase of André Gunder Frank’s: “The imperial phase of western capitalism creates one-crop economies. Colonial countries are totally dependent on the world market, which is the market of capitalism. Imperialism appropriates the wealth of a country; the country is deprived of the fruits of its labor. The so-called poor countries become poorer; the imperial center more wealthy.”

The particularization of situationist theory in America was to be accomplished, with varying success, by two tendencies, Diversion and Point-Blank. Although Point-Blank’s analysis preceded Diversion’s by nearly a year, the latter stands, in both its membership and its perspectives, in a direct relationship to the American S.I., and thus corresponds theoretically, if not chronologically, to an earlier stage of the American situationist movement. Although Jon Horelick states, in Beyond the Crisis of Abstraction . . ., that “the appearance of Diversion did not bear the intention of either reviving a situationist movement or getting rid of one,” Diversion nonetheless attempts to become all that the American S.I. could, and in Horelick’s view, should have been: Diversion #1 appears as a redemption of the American situationist movement in the face of its numerous failures. Contrary to what Chris Shutes and Isaac Cronin suggest in their pantomimed “skirmishes” with Horelick, Diversion doesn’t simply “operate from the same basic perspectives as the American section of the S.I.,” but proceeds from the same perspective as the S.I. as a whole. Horelick’s predicament results not from his positions being somehow insufficiently situationist. but rather, precisely from their being too situationist; the anachronistic character of much of Diversion #1 must be ascribed to the outmoded quality of situationist theory itself. Horelick at least displays a superior intelligence to that of his critics, who. as the self-appointed inquisitors of the American situationist movement, engage in the most facile deprecations of Horelick’s position, without having to concern themselves with an alternative. (7) However imperfectly, Horelick does attempt to analyze objective social reality: his article, The Poverty of Ecology, constitutes one of the most important contributions of situationist theory to an understanding of American capitalism. But the remainder of Diversion #1 demonstrates how little, if any, theoretical progress Horelick has made since 1970, when a provisional version of this article appeared as Strobe-Light Tyrannies of Adolescence. His essentially static perspective leads him to a desperate attempt to find the practical confirmation of situationist theses in the contemporary practice of the American proletariat, and in so doing, he exaggerates the importance of certain actions. (8) For Horelick, situationist theory remains impervious to historical influence, and he maintains that the essential assumptions of the Situationist International still remain valid under present conditions. When, in Beyond the Crisis of Abstraction, Horelick offers an explanation for the impasse reached by the S.I. in its later period, he views it as an organizational rather than historical failure: in order to go ”beyond the crisis of abstraction,” it is necessary to recapture the bygone “excellence” of the S.I., both theoretically and organizationally. This allows his “critics” to score a few cheap points, but although they indirectly advance the need for a “supersession of situationist theory,” they, at least, are hardly equal to the task.

Much in the same way as Diversion, the critical endeavors of Point-Blank suffered from their ultimate dependence on the theory of the S.I.** Although Point-Blank did attempt to engage historical realities and saw its task to be one of social criticism and not of mere commentary on secondary issues in situationist theory, at no time did we achieve an independent theoretical position from which to undertake a comprehensive investigation of the topics we had considered at that time to be pertinent. The critical achievements of Point-Blank should not be minimized, however: from the relatively minor accomplishment of an adequate critique of the New Left to the examination of issues that were inadequately treated in previous situationist theory (e.g., the implications of “generalized self-management” both in a specific historical situation—the Spanish Revolution—and as a theory of modern proletarian practice), we sought to verify situationist criticism in the light of recent history and to bridge the relatively large gap between the present and the point where previous situationist investigations had left off. Point-Blank’s ability to extend the situationist theory of spectacle was demonstrated in our analysis of structural reforms in the social and cultural organization of American capitalism. By identifying the principal modernizing tendencies in the American “spectacle,” we offered, however tentatively, a critique of contemporary social development as “spectacular” development. A series of transformations not immediately related to each other—increasing social equality, the emergence of participationist authority relations, environmental reform, and new developments in urbanism (9)—was integrated within a conceptual framework which attempted to establish the essentially reformist character of advanced capitalism and to indicate the various social ramifications of “spectacular” progress. Much less successfully, we also offered an “analysis” of the practical activity of the American proletariat in the period immediately preceding our critical endeavors and extrapolated out of certain events what we saw to be the historical trends of this class. But since we did not possess a theory of this proletariat and its practice, i.e., we did not explicate the various categories and subdivisions within this class and the objective determinants of its activity, the conclusions which we drew from Lordstown and other “autonomous” actions of the American proletariat lacked any sophistication; they appeared as unqualified assertions rather than working hypotheses.

However innovative certain of Point-Blank’s lines of analysis were, they still did not represent a real advance in situationist theory. Our attempted reformulation of situationist theses was merely a modernization and relativization of a pre-existing critical position: the theory of the S.I. formed an analytical model for our critical inquiry, whose results were largely predetermined and predictable, in that they corresponded to the previously-defined expectations of situationist theory. For the most part, our theoretical project consisted of a mechanistic application of the situationist perspective to contemporary history, which was “examined” in order to find corroborative evidence for that perspective, and thus, in order to merely confirm the theory of the S.I. Our unconscious methodology proceeded from inverted bases: our theory existed prior to any substantive investigation of reality, rather than developing out of such research. Thus, our analysis was weakest precisely where situationist analysis itself was most deficient. For instance, our argument regarding the apparent “unification” of world capitalism amounted to a gross over-simplification of international realities. On the basis of a few spectacular, and largely superficial events (e.g., Nixon’s visit to China), we virtually proclaimed a definitive resolution of inter-capitalist antagonisms within the current world order. Precisely because we did not penetrate the actual content of our subject and did not analyze the real bases and the real limits of such a unification process, our critique remained on an ephemeral level, that of “current events,” and the transitory nature of this critique was soon evidenced: despite a few trenchant observations in The Show Is Over, many of our theses on the “end of the Cold War” were rapidly invalidated by history. This weak aspect of our analysis was not simply limited to one article, but was, rather, a repeated tendency which must be attributed to our lack of a certain theoretical sophistication. This shortcoming resulted from our essential failure to grasp the material bases of modern capitalist society, a failure which can be seen in our consistent misinterpretation of provisional features in contemporary history. Above all, we failed to understand the specificity of the historical period we sought to examine, a period which corresponded in this instance to an expansionary phase of advanced capitalism; we did not recognize the objective limits of the “reformist” trends we had identified within American capitalism. To cite one example, it is precisely the most “modernistic” aspects of the American “spectacle” that we described in The Changing of the Guard which have proved to be the most expendable in the survival program of a depressed capitalism.

Our theoretical progress after the publication of the journal Point-Blank #1 was at best sporadic; our further development took place within a series of critical interventions formulated in response to a number of radical phenomena (the Lip occupation, the Detroit wildcat movement of 1973, and the defeat of the Chilean working class, first by Allende and subsequently by the generals who overthrew him) which we considered crucial, and even exigent, to the elaboration of a contemporary revolutionary perspective. That our analysis was essentially reactive did not, however, mean that it was inconsequential: in confronting these issues, we were forced to rely, first with Lip and more importantly with Chile, on our own critical capacities rather than on the theory of the S.I. Our evaluation of the “strange defeat” of the Chilean Revolution, for example, involved an analysis of the precise context and chronology of the events we were interpreting and did not rely upon a previous theoretical construct in order to explain this “given” situation. Similarly, our ability to draw definite conclusions from events such as Lip demonstrated a certain theoretical decisiveness: in view of the embarrassed silence of the world situationist movement with respect to the events at Besancon, where workers, however imperfectly and in however mystified a fashion, attempted to translate the once-heralded slogans of May 1968 into practice, the forcefulness of our then-maintained position at least set us apart from the timid commentaries of others. Nonetheless, even these positive contributions were indicative of a simple reflexive attitude, one which was insufficiently reflective. Our critical development proceeded on a largely ad hoc basis, with our theoretical production representing essentially a series of improvisations without sufficient consideration of the “perspective” through which we viewed reality. In our reliance on the thought of the S.I., we advanced theoretical positions without confronting their real implications or possible contradictions; like so much of the American situationist movement, we had made situationist theory “our own” without first having mastered—and reworked—its conceptual development. This lack of a solid theoretical foundation had obvious consequences—specifically, in our inability to fully comprehend situationist theory and to understand the finished program of the S.I. in relation to the changing historical circumstances in which we were attempting to develop a revolutionary practice. Although we certainly had not maintained an uncritical attitude towards the S.I. and had already (in Point-Blank #1) recognized the critical deficiencies of Debord and Sanguinetti in 61 Theses . . ., we still viewed what we had by then perceived as the failure of the S.I. to have been an essentially practical failure. In minimizing the theoretical aspects of the S.l.’s default, in failing to realize that the collapse of the S.I. was related to the collapse of the historical basis underlying the situationist theory of modern proletarian revolution, we maintained that the impasse of the situationist movement could be resolved by practical means, namely through the realization, for the first time, of a genuinely practical situationist activity. This confusion was to become insupportable in our confused attack on Daniel Denevert’s Theory of Misery. Misery of Theory (10), in which, while correctly attempting to refute Denevert’s pseudo-interpretation of the situationist project’s collapse, we merely reaffirmed the validity of situationist theory in the face of historical change, a change which had already escaped the power of the S.I. Despite our exploration of a few promising theses regarding the meaning of revolutionary activity as revolutionizing activity, we, like ultimately Denevert himself, did not view the failure of the S.I. as a theoretical failure.

Whatever the failures of Diversion and Point-Blank as revolutionary theorists, they at least corresponded to those of substantive—and, in this sense, complete—projects. If nothing else, this fact alone sets them apart from the situationist tendency which emerged from the ruins of a previous grouping, Contradiction. Certain survivors of this debacle, drawing renewed inspiration from Ken Knabb’s Remarks on Contradiction and its Failure and later joined by others, among them a defector from Point-Blank (11), organized themselves as “autonomous” members of an informal federation, all of whom are affiliated with Knabb’s Bureau of Public Secrets. (12) Although the theoretical output of the Knabbist axis amounts to very little in terms of conceptual presentation, they have achieved a certain preeminence within the American situationist movement by virtue of their sheer prolificacy, their ability to maintain at least the appearance of a continuing project. Here, it is worth noting that situationist analysis has not escaped its own rate of inflation: the real value of its content declines in proportion to the number of “situationist” texts. Nonetheless, the Knabbists have achieved at least a numerical superiority, and on this basis of this de facto supremacy—and additionally, through their observance of strictly orthodox situationist manners, this faction can rightly be considered as the legitimate heirs of the American situationist movement. The “success” of this axis, however, is paradoxically based on failure, not simply as a consequence of Knabb’s self-effacing, yet no less self-serving, proposal to “fail clearly, each time, over and over,” (Double Reflection) but in their direct relation to Contradiction’s failure; the particular ideological development of Knabb and his allies must be explained with reference to Contradiction’s inability, in its unachieved “movement critique,” to produce a contemporary social theory. Knabbist criticism begins with, and as, a collapse of theory as social criticism: beginning with Remarks on Contradiction . . . and culminating in Double Reflection, “theory” appears as mefa-theory, as, in a restricted sense, a theory of theory and theorizing about theorizing. This deliberate narrowing of the scope of critical inquiry marks a retreat from an historical plane of analysis. Criticism becomes explicitly dehistoricized and no longer develops within an historical, i.e., social, frame of reference, but moves within its own “conceptual” universe. The “problematic” that informs the critical program of Knabb and his ideological confrères appears initially as an internal discourse within situationist theory. Their exegetical interpretation of the S.l.’s perspective involves simply an embellishment of details neglected by the S.I. and a clarification of existing situationist positions. For these critics, it is above all a matter of emphasis, of the stress which is to be placed on a few “integral” concepts within the situationist perspective. Despite the avowedly “experimental” method of this tendency, they have consistently relied on external stimuli to provide their critical impetus, and in the wake of the collapse of situationist theory with 61 Theses . . ., the Knabbists have successfully attached themselves to a number of pseudo-theories (“character armor,” “publicity,” “distanciation”) in order to “advance” situationist thought in new directions. Each “intervention” of the Knabbist tendency provoked endless repercussions within their movement and underwent a subsequent refinement: with the introduction of a new idea, the terminological context of debate shifted. The superficially changing discussion of these sub-theorists is less a reflection of their being attuned to historical change than an indication of the fundamentally spurious character of their various positions. By carefully avoiding any discussion of controversial topics in situationist theory—self-management and the theory of the spectacle, for example—they can maintain an illusory consistency in their thinking. The texts of Knabb & Co. do, however, reflect a certain ideological continuity: in all their writings, situationist theory remains a frozen totality. Here, the concept of spectacle, invoked as an explanation for every specific development in the modern world, is rendered completely abstract; not only does it anthropomorphically become a persona—Knabb, for instance, can speak of the “unconsciousness of the spectacle” as if the spectacle were itself a singular being — it becomes an exterior authority presiding over social life, a determining force not only on account of its determining processes, but simply because it is the “spectacle.”

Although seemingly unimportant, the manner in which the critical interruptions of the Knabbists unfold is itself indicative of their theoretical underdevelopment. Their individual critiques appear in the form of précis, as brief expositions structured around a number of isolated idées fixes. These themes are not utilized as metaphors, but are meant as quite literal concepts, and the importance which these recurrent motifs, taken from the texts of Voyer, Denevert, and Knabb himself, assume for this tendency reveals a lack of critical comprehension and invalidates whatever claim they may have to theoretical autonomy. The unoriginality of the Knabb axis can be seen, for instance, in their use of Jean-Pierre Voyer’s Reich: How To Use. Voyer’s abysmally superficial interpretation of Reichian analysis is virtually canonized by Knabb and his subsequent followers. (13) Even when this tendency attempts—quite self-consciously—to be original, their efforts amount only to a vulgar sociology in which situationist concepts are brought to bear on a few issues, isolated from any historical context: hence, their naive critique of capitalist socialization in the family (14) and their dated application of the situationist method of dérive to the critique of an urban environment. (15) Such a description of the Knabbist perspective, however, attaches too much importance to its theoretical content; the real concern of this modern-day school of “Critical Criticism” is not with theory as such but with the role of the theorist considered abstractly as “producer” and “concretely” as a particular individual, i.e., as a member of their tendency. The “critical” undertakings of the Bureau of Public Secrets and his allies find their culmination in the project of a “Phenomenology (sic) of the Subjective Aspect of Practical-Critical Activity.” This concern with the subjective aspects of critical practice can only be understood in terms of a critical introversion, that of Knabbist theory’s “turning in on itself,” a withdrawal involving an actual disembodiment of criticism itself. In a very real sense, Knabbist criticism remains on the level of “being-in-itself.”

This trivialization of theory appears not only in Knabb’s crude parody of the Hegelian system but in his simplistic psychologization of “practical-critical activity.” In the Knabbist cosmos, which is surprisingly impervious to historical change, the theorist becomes the “experiencing subject,” who develops endlessly through a sequence of subjective “moments,” arriving finally at an ultimate goal of “realization.” This development, although erratic, is hardly dialectical: Knabb, in his Hegelian mimicry, does not even attempt a parallel construction to the latter’s Phenomenology. His pseudo-phenomenology does not involve the subject’s interpretation of the world as it appears to him; there is no movement analogous to the progression of naive consciousness from sense-certainty to perception to understand- ing. This fact, however, does not prevent Knabb from elevating himself and his cohorts to a position of world-historical status; having divested criticism of any social content, they invest every particular detail of their resistance to real theoretical activity—theory with an historical content—with historical profundity. In a certain sense, this école represents the ultimate in situationist subjectivism: they subjectivize theory so that it becomes simply personal criticism, a theory about themselves which supplies a raison d’être for their daily lives. As a result of this unshimmering banalization, their project becomes explicitly narcissistic, and their obsession with proto-theory, with the moments preceding the “production” of theory, represents a glorification of the existing conditions of their critical impotence. This does not prevent them from endowing their discoveries with a vital significance. Thus, their Phenomenology is proclaimed to be crucial to the “world revolutionary movement”; it becomes “one of the global proletarian tasks of the coming decade,” and the “question of the production of theory itself” is described as a “strategic problem facing the revolutionary movement.” However much the actual “production of theory” may elude this tendency, at least the question of their non-production of theory is conveniently resolved by their “strategic” (i.e., opportune) concept of “behindism.” This trifling, but surprisingly diffuse, notion serves two (confused) purposes:it offers both a subjective explanation of their objective condition (their historical backwardness can be attributed to the phenomenon of subjective behindism) and an objective explanation of their subjective condition (they are behindist because of the backwardness of the American situationist movement vis-à-vis the development of revolutionary theory). Behindism is thus simultaneously a psychological condition (pertaining to the “mental blocks” of the theorist), an explanation of the inequalities within the situationist movement (the inferior status of those who are “appropriating” situationist theory in relation to those who already have) and a social category. Furthermore Knabb announces that “the proletariat is collectively behindist as it struggles for the self-management of its own theory”—a statement which is as revealing of his mechanistic interpretation of the proletariat’s acquisition of self-consciousness (theorists produce “theory.” which is later “adopted” by the proletariat in its “practical search for truth”) as it is of the absurdity of his “theory” of behindism. But the importance which this concept assumes for the mini-theorists of the Knabbist tendency cannot be minimized; in fact, it assumes a position of absolute centrality, a significance which exposes their theoretical project as an absolute vacuity. In a further installment of Knabb’s Phenomenology, Chris Shutes, a slavish imitator who gives an added nuance to Knabb’s idea of “double reflection,” (Shutes is a reflection called forth by Knabb’s text) continues his master’s project by the curious method of reductio ad absurdum. In his both grammatically and critically illiterate text On Behindism, Shutes recasts Knabbist trivia in the form of an overblown aesthetic, and in the resulting kitsch, Stendhal’s theory of love—crystallization—becomes, quite gratuitously, a description of the pre-coital moments before the climactic act of “theorizing.” (15) Here, despite his tragico-heroic trappings, the behindist appears as the leading caricature in a situationist commedia dell’arte. The initiation rites of the pre-theorist correspond to the seven stations of the situationist cross: the road to Caivary is that which is traveled by the behindist, who is finally resurrected, after much travail, as the “theorist.” Throughout all this niaiserie, the Knabbists, even by their own admission, reveal themselves as a “behindist” tendency within international revolutionary theory. In spite of their egregious attempts to remain au courant in situationist circles through an extensive reliance on their foreign allies—they appear as démodé. as a self-insulated anachronism within contemporary theoretical debate. It is not so much that the Knabbists themselves are in the arrière-garde of revolutionary tendencies, but that their thought occupies an arrière-garde position; it is formulated as a rear-guard action in the backwash of situationist theory. Their critical focus is particularly revealing: the Knabbists are not concerned with phenomena as such, but with epiphenomena, with secondary manifestations or after-effects arising from a primary source. The issues which the Knabb tendency choose to discuss are essentially derivative, or auxiliary to an original problem; thus, they are concerned not with the history of the situationist movement, but with the pro-situ; not with the psychological structures of social behavior, but with “character armor”; not with social criticism, but with theoretical interpolation.

The apparent uniformity of the Knabbist axis, i.e., their seamless transition from “issue” to “issue,” is itself misleading. And the contradictions of their “perspective” are nowhere more transparent than in the various positions which they have taken regarding the Situationist International. Initially the most fervent admirers of situationist “excellence”—in Remarks on Contradiction . . ., Knabb can only affirm the “infallibility” of Debord and Sanguinetti in 61 Theses . . .— Knabb & Co. wind up embracing an abstract denunciation of situationist theory as “one ideology of revolution among the others . . . expressing something other than what it believes it wants to say and serving ends other than its explicit ends.” This volte-face is all the more surprising in view of the Knabbists’ failure to explain it and only serves to point up their dependency on the ideas of others. Following their brief infatuation with Voyer, the Knabbists’ romance with Daniel Denevert and their “use” of his text Theory of Misery, Misery of Theory (17) as a central reference point for their investigations were not simply accidental, but fortuitous: with one stroke, an authorized translation of Denevert, they “produced” an explanation of the historical failure of the situationist movement. The inadequacies of this explanation must rightfully be attributed not to the Knabbists, but to Denevert himself. Denevert’s attempt to realize the project first put forward in 61 Theses, that of “applying to the S.I. itself the critique which the S.I. had so correctly applied to the old world,” is, in its result and its method, a miscarriage of critical thought. Denevert abstracts situationist theory from the historical environment of its development, and having considered it in isolation as an autonomous function, he proceeds to reinsert it into the fabric of modern society; thus, the failure of the S.I. is attributed to the “implicit situationism” of the “society of the spectacle.” This teleological approach only succeeds inexplaining the determinants of situationist activity from the final, immobilized form which this activity assumed: the spectacularization of the S.I. occurs as an intrinsic aspect of situationist practice, and not as a result of an historical modification of the conditions of that activity. The superficial nature of Denevert’s critique derives from his crude approximation, and even schematization, of reality in terms of its most “basic” tendencies. Thus, situationist theory appears as the “revolutionary theory of dissatisfaction” and the society of the spectacle as the “hierarchized consumption of goods.” Ultimately, Denevert can only recognize the failure of the S.I. and cannot explain it in terms of its actual causation. The project which Denevert undertakes in so miserable a fashion—and does not come close to accomplishing—is itself tautological; it attempts to provide an explanation of the failure of the situationist movement simply by means of situationist concepts, and such internal criticism becomes a closed universe where a theoretical world replaces the historical one. And for all of Denevert’s attempts to invalidate situationist theory, his analysis of its failure remains situationist; it is essentially a reformulation of the situationist concept of recuperation, only this time Denevert suddenly discovers that the exposers of recuperation have themselves been recuperated. Following a traditionally situationist approach, he has the S.I. appear as the avant-garde of an ultra-reformist capitalism, a system in which there are neither serious internal contradictions nor “conflicts of interest,” a pure spectacle where ideology contains everything except “total revolution.” Thus, in Denevert’s simplistic world, the workers of Lip become merely the “ad-men” of the existing system. It is clear that Denevert cannot advance beyond the limits of situationist analysis. He himself speaks of a return to the original “situationist spirit” and seeks to continue the situationist program with those who would “live it all the way.” Denevert’s lack of any independent critical initiative is amply demonstrated in his abysmal attempts to formulate a theory of his own. Borrowing from a curious source, that of Brechtian dramatics, Denevert advances the notion of “distanciation”—which he most likely discovered in the pages of Tel Quel—as a positive goal to which consciousness must aspire, as in fact the very means by which a radical consciousness emerges. Denevert wishes to anchor theory to a viewpoint exterior to society, and “distanciation” amounts to the proposition that “consciousness” remove itself from an immediate social context and become a universal without ever having been concrete: “the negating faculty of distanciation can be understood as the faculty of turning in on oneself, as the faculty of breaking one’s own immediate relations with existing conditons.” From this “radical” isolationism, he even goes so far as to describe the revolutionary process as an “act of historical distanciation”; although this separation is termed an “historical movement,” distanciation itself represents a disengagement from history. As a resolution to the problem of negating spectacular immediacy, Denevert’s theory of distanciation is ultimately specious. While he speaks of it as a “process,” he can only isolate two poles between which all movement falls: “total externality,” and the “individual reconciled with his true individuality.” Denevert wants to grasp the whole (Reality) without a corresponding knowledge of its parts (social determinants): in his principal text, both “consciousness” and the “proletariat” appear as self-contained entities, and any possible interaction between these categories and their determining context is lost. Having discovered, with Debord, that all of the social terrain is occupied by ideology, Denevert wishes to prevent any possible contamination of consciousness by having it appear ex nihilo. He seeks to erect a cordon sanitaire around the spectacle in order to contain its corrupting powers of recuperation. The poverty of Denevert’s theses is inextricably linked to that of his method, and the impairment of his faculty of abstraction is amply evidenced in his absurd proposition regarding the relative importance of form vis-à-vis con- tent: “Dialectical intelligence, on the contrary, must draw its anti- ideological force by attaining the perception of form, the intelligence of the processes concealed under the immediate perception of content. In this passage of sheer sophistry, it is possible to inter- change “form” and “content” and produce an equally valid statement.

For all his attempts to demythologize the S.I., Denevert only reinforces the myth of the “historical role” of the S.I., that of its preponderant influence on modern history; however negatively, he still idealizes the S.I., which remains the focal point of his critique. The S.I. has the same importance for Denevert as it does for the pro-situs—in the last analysis, the S.I. is more important than its time. This same ambivalence vis-a-vis the S.I. is to be found in the perspective of Denevert’s American followers; having adopted Denevert’s critique of the S.I. as their own, they still nonetheless seek to maintain their situationist credentials. Even if the Situationist International is no longer the embodiment of theoretical truth, its legacy remains the exclusive inheritance of a select few of situationist initiates, an elite which not uncoincidentally consists, at least temporarily, of the Knabbists. In his poster, The Blind Men and the Elephant, Knabb himself wishes to play the role of curator of the situationist movement: since everyone outside of himself and his associates is unable to interpret the situationist project, Knabb takes upon himself the tasks of explaining the S.I. and of translating its texts. In the Knabbists’ view, the S.I., even in its posthumous existence, is accorded a crucial significance to the American proletariat: “while the new class struggle has not lagged behind that of the other modern industrialized countries, its consciousness of itself has (the fact that the principal texts of the Situationist International are not yet available in the most advanced spectacular society is merely the most glaring expression of this theoretical underdevelopment).” (18) The importance of the S.I. thus confers importance upon its heirs; as self-appointed guardians of the “truth,” they seek to defend the purity of situationist doctrine. And in setting themselves up as a situationist inquisition, they pronounce anathema upon various “heretics” (or rivals) in the situationist camp.

If the Knabbists have avoided the ephemerality of the subjectivist school of situationism, they have in no sense overcome the marginal social position of the situationist milieu, since the “forward position” they claim to hold is located within the social cul-de-sac of the American intellectual lumpenproletariat. Marginality is in fact celebrated by the Knabb axis: as self-conscious déclassés, they are automatically “distanciated” from society and consider themselves separate from both the hippy-New Left “stratum” and the proletariat. Their own unsophistication in matters of “class analysis” is demonstrated in their positive description of the proletariat as “direct producers of commodities” and their vulgar glorification, one which is worthy of PL, of workers as those who “take their alienation straight.” But this obvious distance from the arena of social conflict does not trouble them, since they view their own activity as directly parallel to that of the “proletariat”: behind their every individual action stand historical forces. Their theoretical activity is seen as complementary to—and even prefiguring—radical social practice; they are the communicators of “revolutionary self-consciousness,” which needs only to be joined to proletarian struggles. They appear ex mirabilis as the “consciousness” of the proletariat, and their theory becomes automatically a “proletarian” theory, although it is precisely a theory of the proletariat which they lack. Despite their fundamentally inward direction and the particularity of their concerns, they construct an imaginary constituency to whom they address their “findings.” As Knabb’s Bureau suggests, they are “public officials” who make appropriately officious declarations on behalf of “revolutionary” opinion. This substitutionism, in which the Knabbists represent others even while speaking only “for themselves,” occurs not on a Leninist level where the vanguard party substitutes itself for the proletariat, but with theorists substituting themselves for actual revolutionary forces.

The role of revolutionary surrogate which the Knabbist clique plays is of course not explicit, and in order to maintain a semblance of conventional avant-gardism, they fabricate an “international revolutionary movement” which “began diffusedly in the fifties and obtained its first decisive victories in the open struggles of the sixties (and which) is already entering a new phase,” and which, despite all obstacles, assumes ever-increasing proportions, is one of the Knabbists’ most significant achievements: the revolutionary movement is the tangible and immediate power which gives meaning to their “contributions.” However subordinate the matters they address may be, their writings become part of a general “current” of radical opposition to capitalism, and the issues they leave unexplained already possess their “answer” in the international activity of the proletariat; the failure of this movement, a crisis which would necessitate a drastic reevaluation of their theses, is simply not admitted.

The Knabbists, however, really cannot be held accountable for their stupidities, since their “theory” is in a continual process of self-correction. With a disarming and disingenuous candor, they are ready to concede every mistake, except the essential mistake on which their entire tendency is based. Their forthrightness does not prevent them from issuing, to the accompaniment of rhetorical bombast, various autocratic pronunciamentos in which they demand the world’s attention, if not its allegiance. Often, their language is appropriately confessional and self-deprecating, and they are willing to admit the errors of their ways, if only to make these errors more precise. Their self-criticism is such that it is able to proceed ad infinitum and ad nauseam.

It is, of course, no accident that Point-Blank formed a primary object of the Knabbists’ scorn: we, and later Diversion, constituted the most formidable threat to their hegemonic ambitions, in our precocious development from pupils of Contradiction to “theorists” who were at least more autonomous than those of Contradiction, Point-Blank appeared as the enfant terrible of the American situationist movement—whereas the situationist elders were merely content to guard the treasure of the situationist critique, we at least were able to develop this critique by applying it to an analysis of contemporary social reality. In retrospect, and not simply in the gratuitous assessment of Knabb and his friends, Point-Blank seems more enfant than terrible; our facile appropriation of a situationist perspective and our consequent ability to produce a situationist “analysis” of certain issues did not mean that we had progressed beyond an infantile stage of theoretical development and had begun to develop original ideas. If we recognize the failure of Point-Blank, it is certainly not out of a capitulation to our former antagonists. Our present interests lie outside the situationist movement, and our disagreements are not with this or that situationist group, but with the ensemble of existing situationist tendencies. Our abandonment of a situationist perspective is not an abandonment of radical criticism; it is, rather, a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions — in this case, the mystifications of the situationist critique. Our denial of the validity of a contemporary situationist theory is also a rejection of the possibility of a contemporary situationist practice—if, indeed, a situationist practice ever existed as more than a stated objective, and in this respect, our own experiences are particularly illuminating. Although our agitational history was to a certain extent really experimental in that we carried out a definite, albeit limited, sabotage of the most visible mechanisms (news media, government publicity) of the “public sphere” of modern capitalist society, we were never able to achieve a sustained practical activity. Our sporadic “interventions” remained on the level of non-practice, precisely because we were unable to become an historical force and concretely link our practice with social practice. (19) While the marginal influence of our activity can be superficially attributed to the marginality of its origins, our practical failure must finally be attributed to theoretical weakness, to contradictions in our assumptions about practice. We never arrived at a sufficient comprehension of what revolutionizing activity is and could be, nor did we understand the context — the contradictions of American society — in which we attempted to establish our own practice.