Date: Thu, 12 May 1994 00:26:21 -0400
To: avant-garde-AT-world.std.com
Subject: Ok, I think I have (some of) my categories straight now



So, I went back and read the excerpts from Debord's "Report on Constructing
Situations" that are printed in the _SI Anthology_, and indeed my comments
earlier today about the spectacle occuring as a value-neutral phenomena in
mass-culture were just dead wrong.  At least from the Situtationist
International's line.  It's good to get one's critical clock cleaned, and
definately humbling.

Debord equates the spectacle with "non-involvement" on the part of the
spectator.  The constructed situation "begins on the ruins of the
spectacle", and its constructors become more and more involved in its
construction to the point that it becomes lived experience.

Since I answered my earlier question, I'll ask another: did the
Situtationists leave the 19th century marxist critique of economic history
more or less intact, using it for an unquestioned 'back-drop' providing the
reasons for the alienation of the spectacle?  Isn't it slightly defeatist
to concentrate on the sphere of poetics for transformation at the expense
of the "real" substrate of economics/politics?  This substrate has to
exist, for the Situtationists depend on the world being a deadening place
to create the need for transformation.  If constructed situations provide
transitory passageways to a new mode of lived experience, can one "bring
back" knowledge that can be used to critque and change existing conditions?

Trying to be less dumb,

		Mark