Situationists
Beneath the idol, the bureaucrat
A recently published volume of Guy Debord's early letters provides insights into a singular personality, and the fractious relationships that spawned the Situationist International. But, asks Sam Williams, how does this disenchanting account alter its spectacular legacy?
The SI just refuses to go away', writes Mckenzie Wark in his introduction to Guy Debord's Correspondence. Semiotext(e)'s publication of this book affirms the position. Translated from the French, and subtitled ‘The Foundation of the Situationist International', it is the first of seven volumes of Guy Debord's correspondence.
Review - Dancin' in the Streets - Red and Black Notes
Red and Black Notes review of Dancin' in the Streets editted by Franklin Rosemont and Charles Radcliffe.
Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2004.
On the face of it, there doesn't seem to be much in common between the Industrial Workers ' of the World's revolutionary unionism and the surrealists' project of recovery of the unconscious, Yet, as Franklin Rosemont, the co-editor of this collection notes, he and his friends joined the IWW because it was the only group around which wasn't boring.
Two Local Chapters in the Spectacle of Decomposition - Chris Shutes
Situationist-influenced reflections and critique on; the Jonestown cult massacre, conspiracy theory, black leftist ideology, San Francisco in the late 1970s, disco, the Harvey Milk murder and gay culture etc...
Published by Chris Shutes in Berkeley, CA, USA; May 1979.
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"Everything is said about the spectacle except what it always & fundamentally is: the colonization of the point of view of the individual by the point of view of the collectivity." Daniel Denevert
Preliminaries on councils and councilist organization - René Riesel
A look at workers' councils and the historical contexts in which they were created. A useful analysis - which challenges some aspects of the standard anarchist analysis of the events in Spain during the 1936 Revolution.
The state and counter-revolution - Negation
A 1972 article by Negation, in the United States debunking the myths of Leninism and the New Left in particular.
They confront the fact that state-capitalism, the state-management of production and society, the rule over society by the class of the state, the bureaucracy, is still almost universally confused with "communism" as Marx defined it, due in part to the conspiracy of silence and distortion which unites the capitalists of both "East" and "West".
How to talk like a Situationist
A guide on talking like a Situationist.
1. Learn French. No self-respecting situationist would dream of not knowing it.
2. Always use the most obscure language possible. Get lots of big scholarly words from a dictionary and use them often.
Poor: "Things are bad."
Heatwave Magazine - UK, 1960s
Texts about and from 1966 British magazine Heatwave, which was linked to American Surrealists and radical unionists.
We group together here 2 texts about the UK Heatwave magazine, which existed for 2 issues in 1966 - and the wider political scene it was a part of, which included its links with the US Industrial Workers of the World and American Surrealists. There then follows a text from issue 1 of Heatwave.
Debord's New Book (review) - by The Red Menace
The Red Menace was produced by an informal group of communists and appeared for several issues in late 1980s London. It contained news and reviews of class struggle topics.
Theses on the Situationist International and Its Time
Debord and Sanguinetti look back over the history of the Situationists and rather optimistically attempt to place them in historical perspective.
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IN A MOMENT of universal history, the Situationist International imposed itself as the thought of the collapse of a world, a downfall that has now begun under our very eyes.
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Review: Whatever happened to the Situationists?
A steady trickle of publications about the situationists testifies to the market value of their ideas, but it also reminds us of the continued requirement for revolutionaries to engage with them. In this review we look at two recent books. Ken Knabb's Public Secrets illustrates the self-obsessed nature of the situationist milieu after the heady days of 1968. What is Situationism? A Reader includes Barrot's important critique of the Situationist International for their one-sided emphasis on circulation rather then production.
These historically-determined limits cannot detract from the vitality of many of the SI's contributions, including, amongst others, their critique of the 'militant'.
Public Secrets by Ken Knabb
Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1997.
What is Situationism? A Reader edited by Stewart Home
Edinburgh: AK Press, 1996.
