Society of the Counter-Spectacle: Debord and the Theatre of the Situationists

Abstract

This article examines the work of the Situationists and their leading member, Guy Debord, as it relates to theatre history and the history of the manifesto. The Situationists privileged the writing of manifestos over the production of art works in order to avoid the fate of the historical avant-garde, whose provocative art had been co-opted by the cultural establishment. Despite this pro-manifesto and anti-art stance, the Situationists drew on the theatre, envisioning the construction of theatrical ‘situations’ influenced by the emerging New York happening as well as modern theatre artists such as Brecht and Artaud. This theatrical inheritance prompted a recent theatrical representation of their activities based on Greil Marcus's Lipstick Traces. What this theatrical rendering demonstrated, however, is that the theatricality of the ‘situation’ is different from that produced on a stage, reminding us that the strategies of the neo-avant-garde cannot be easily transferred to a traditional theatrical form.

Communication Code as Pillar of Successful Communication in Social Cultural Institution (by Example of Theatrical Discourse)

“…Still we cannot but mention the trend towards experiments in modern theatre which may bring changes to the usual structure of traditional theatre space comprising stage and audience hall. The changes are imbued in the nature of "what Hans-Thies Lehmann calls postdramatic theatre: they do not rely on a dramatic text as a structuring device" [13]. Thus, theatrical action is shifted from the stage to the hall or there appear several platforms for different scenes to be demonstrated simultaneously.…”

Rethinking theDérive

“…Rather, as editors we wanted to use drift as a device for instigating a larger and hopefully more generative dialogue between theatre and performance studies and the Situationist International (SI) than has been witnessed to date. For while it would be erroneous to claim that theatre and performance scholars have ignored the SI completely -some examples include the writings of White (1993), Megson (2004), Puchner (2004), Lavery (2010), Pecorari (2011), Turner (2015) -the fact remains that there is nothing in these disciplines to compare with the work of (to refer to only a selection from other disciplines): T. J. Clark (1984), Tom McDonough (2002 and Frances Stracey (2014) in art history; Sadie Plant (1992), Anselm Jappe (1999), Patrick Marcolini (2013), Anna Trespeuch-Berthelot (2015 and McKenzie Wark (2011 in critical theory and philosophy; Simon Sadler (1999) and Anthony Vidler (2011) in architecture; Alastair Bonnett (1989), Andy Merrifield (2005) and David Pinder (1996Pinder ( , 2005 in geography; and Tom Y.…”

Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle

“…During the past four decades, as Kellner (2003) explained in the book Media Spectacle, Debord's concept of the spectacle "has had a major impact on a variety of contemporary theories of society and culture," adding that "Debord's conception, first developed in the 1960s, continues to circulate through the Internet and other academic and subcultural sites today" (p. 2). For example, Debord's ideas have been taken up in academic disciplines such as art (Garoian & Gaudelius, 2004;Kauffman, 1979), film studies (Levin, 1989), communication arts (Erickson, 1998), geography (Bassett, 2004;Pinder, 2005), architecture (Swyngedouw, 2002), theater (Puchner, 2004), and anthropology (Smith, 2005). Debord's ideas have also been foundational in the work of a few academics in the field of education who have written about the necessity of engaging students in developing critical media literacy skills, such as Kellner (2003Kellner ( , 2005 and Giroux (2006).…”