Date: Thu, 12 May 1994 11:32:22 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Re: Ok, I think I have (some of) my categories straight now
To: avant-garde-AT-world.std.com
Cc: avant-garde-AT-world.std.com





On Thu, 12 May 1994, Mark Evenson wrote:

> 
> 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?

To a large degree, yes. But I wouldn't say it was an "unquestioned" 
back-drop. I can see the headlines (actually I HAVE seen them) 
"SITUATIONISTS SOFT ON COMMUNISM!"

  Isn't it slightly defeatist
> to concentrate on the sphere of poetics for transformation at the expense
> of the "real" substrate of economics/politics?

Resoundingly yes.

  This substrate has to
> exist, for the Situtationists depend on the world being a deadening place
> to create the need for transformation. 

What!? I don't think they ever sat down and said, "we're not properly 
immersed in the psychology of alienation, we'd better try and find more 
ways to make ourselves miserable so we'll have a reason to be pissed  
off and need to transform our daily lives." These guys weren't 
late-twentieth century self-hating collegians (even though they _did_ write 
some pretty stupid stuff about the Newark and LA riots).

 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
> 
> 
It sounds as if you're wondering if they were professional 
revolutionaries balking at putting themselves out of a job- either that 
or you think the sits were an "art movement".

my superstructure's base is basically super,


Tad "Nechayevist Front" Kepley