The Spectacle of Disintegration: Situationist Passages out of the Twentieth Century 1st Edition

by McKenzie Wark (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-1844679577

ISBN-10: 1844679578

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Following his acclaimed history of the Situationist International up until the late sixties, The Beach Beneath the Street, McKenzie Wark returns with a companion volume which puts the late work of the Situationists in a broader and deeper context, charting their contemporary relevance and their deep critique of modernity. Wark builds on their work to map the historical stages of the society of the spectacle, from the diffuse to the integrated to what he calls the disintegrating spectacle. The Spectacle of Disintegration takes the reader through the critique of political aesthetics of former Situationist T.J. Clark, the Fourierist utopia of Raoul Vaneigem, René Vienet’s earthy situationist cinema, Gianfranco Sangunetti’s pranking of the Italian ruling class, Alice-Becker Ho’s account of the anonymous language of the Romany, Guy Debord’s late films and his surprising work as a game designer.

At once an extraordinary counter history of radical praxis and a call to arms in the age of financial crisis and the resurgence of the streets, The Spectacle of Disintegration recalls the hidden journeys taken in the attempt to leave the twentieth century, and plots an exit from the twenty first.

The dustjacket unfolds to reveal a fold-out poster of the collaborative graphic essay combining text selected by McKenzie Wark with composition and drawings by Kevin C. Pyle.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Wark’s readable explanation of the movement’s ideas is the best I have read.”—Edwin Heathcote, In praise of 'Beach Beneath the Street', Financial Times

“A playful, smart and occasionally epigrammatic study of the Situationists ... this brilliant account is not only an essential work for our own times; it also comes with a cover that, with the minimum of manual dexterity, folds out intoa collaborative graphic essay.”—John Burnside, Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

McKenzie Wark is the author of A Hacker Manifesto, Gamer Theory, 50 Years of Recuperation of the Situationist International and The Beach Beneath the Street, among other books. He teaches at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College in New York City.

Product details

Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Verso; 1 edition (March 12, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1844679578
ISBN-13: 978-1844679577
Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 1 x 8.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 3 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,275,094 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #313 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > Philosophy > Aesthetics
- #775 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Criticism
- #945 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Aesthetics

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Christopher M. Moylan

July 13, 2014

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

A really smart and well written survey of Situationist projects, focusing in large part on film work. It's a great pleasure to read a work of this sort free of jargon. I enjoyed reading the book.

3 people found this helpful

April 4, 2015

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

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In-depth review

October 6, 2015

Format: Hardcover

McKenzie Wark's follow-up to The Beach Beneath the Street on the aesthetic influences and bohemian precursors of the Situationists extends his interests. While it covers Guy Debord, it also looks at his wife, Alice Becker-Ho, and their shared interest in what they called Gypsy life, for instance. This delves into very loosely related themes by chapters. For once, attention to both T.J. Clark's art history and Raoul Vaneigem's 1970s writings is given, even if for me the latter thinker garners less attention than he merits (a shortcoming of Wark's previous study, also reviewed by me).

Wark chooses to drift from the period of SI into current times, as in a Red Shirt uprising crushed by Thai police, Rachel Uchitel and "bottle service" at NYC nightclubs, and Julian Assange's vilification by the mainstream media. These elements enliven what can be elsewhere a dutiful summation of Debord-centered critique, focusing on his film work. Still, as in the clever "detournements" of Cultural Revolution Maoist propaganda, raunchy 1970s Japanese cinema, and the portrayal of the SI itself on film, these chapters will help international audiences appreciate the cut-ups that Debord and Rene Vienet practiced. Their aim was to upend expectations of what viewers expected to watch, when presented with content that at first appeared merely odd, juxtaposing Situationist struggles upon Communist ones, to both subvert the ideals propagandized by the originals, and to promote their own.

Readers without some grounding in the Italian Autonomists of the 1970s will find context necessary. Wark provides some, but he, writing as a professor at the New School, expects his readers to know his original sources already. He charts here the shift of Debord's spectacle into its disintegration in later 20th and early 21st century culture. As he notes, Big Brother's surveillance has been augmented by "Little Sister," who may instead entice you to buy shoes at the mall in the middle of the night, Wark suggests. Or, I may add, as this review's own medium enables, with one-click online, by Prime.

For a book subtitled "Situationist Passages out of the 20th Century," it needed more direction to guide current readers. Wark touches on the dichotomy of time sacrificed for space by exurban commuters, and the breakdown of work-life boundaries thanks to our gadgets, but these are familiar remarks. Perhaps the SI lacks an ability to speak to our post-industrial, knowledge-economy concerns, but if remains relevant in part, a half-century later in a transformed late-capitalist, globalized system, we deserve a book that makes more of an effort to connect their demands to those of our own fraught era.

He adds insight about now, relating it often casually or digressively. Analyzing Fourier's 19c. utopian "phalansteries" vs. our "disintegrating spectacle," he suddenly quotes Eric Santner. We supplicate "Job Creators" for "grace or gratuitousness reserved for divinity."(64) We sacrifice to capitalists, "lest they abandon us and elect others as their chosen people (other nations who make bigger and better sacrifices)." Instead of One Creator God, we disperse Him into idols of the marketplace.

Concluding these essays, he walks down from the New School to Zuccotti Park during Occupy Wall Street. Alongside the "anarchists,' if only in the sartorial sense," he finds someone dressed as a businessman holding a red-and-black flag, and he witnesses that, for once, there is nothing for sale. "If you want to make the moment intelligible to yourself, you have to find your own way to do it." (203) That sums up what is left in this space between work and leisure, laid out for office workers. When it is empty on that autumn night of 2011, Wark reflects on the possibilities it held, for all.

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