The Society of the Spectacle edition by Guy Debord Ken Knabb Politics Social Sciences eBooks
Download As PDF : The Society of the Spectacle edition by Guy Debord Ken Knabb Politics Social Sciences eBooks 
Guy Debord was the most influential figure in the Situationist International, the subversive group that helped trigger the May 1968 revolt in France. His book The Society of the Spectacle, originally published in Paris in 1967, has been translated into more than twenty other languages and is arguably the most important radical book of the twentieth century.
This is the first edition in any language to include extensive annotations, clarifying the historical allusions and revealing the sources of Debord’s “détournements.”
The Society of the Spectacle edition by Guy Debord Ken Knabb Politics Social Sciences eBooks
I don't think of myself as someone who shies away from tackling a challenging text (whether the difficulty is attributable to poor writing, or to the complexity of the ideas being communicated, or to some other reason), but....I ordered this version because it was the least expensive. The publisher is Black & Red, and the translator is not named.
Use Amazon's "Look Inside" feature to compare this edition to the Donald Nicholson-Smith translation (which is available free online as a 64 page .pdf Adobe Acrobat file), and you'll see what I mean.
I called Amazon's customer service because I didn't know what reason to give for the return ("Lousy Translation"?). As usual, they were very helpful, e-mailed me a return label, and gave me an instant refund, so I'm sending this edition back to them.
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The Society of the Spectacle edition by Guy Debord Ken Knabb Politics Social Sciences eBooks Reviews
It's good and refreshing.
This is very interesting book.
A classic. Not an easy read. Not meant to be. It's one to tackle, and its message is more pertinent than ever.
The rest of the book relies far too heavily on a critique of Marx. Specific examples and interesting thought experiments would have really made this book more engaging. It is very easy to criticize Marx. Even so it's one of the best things I've read in a little while.
Guy Debord's THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE is one of the most widely quoted and important works of the past fifty years. Society as spectacle has become one of the most frequently used descriptors for modern consumer society and the media that reinforces its basic principles. For instance, in only the past couple of weeks I have encountered frequent mentions of Debord in Telotte's REPLICATIONS A ROBOTIC HISTORY OF THE SCIENCE FICTION FILM as well as an essay on a number of recent important SF films by Bukatman (contained in Kuhn's first anthology of essays on SF film, ALIEN ZONE) entitled "Who Programs You? The Science Fiction of the Spectacle." One encounters Debord's central image in literary critics like Fredric Jameson and a host of writers on popular culture such as Greil Marcus (especially in his LIPSTICK TRACES A SECRET HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY).
Marcus's discussion of the Spectacle is at best vague, but I believe that is part of the source of its power. One sees -- to stay on the level of the SF film -- in movies like ROBOCOP the spectacle in full bloom, as the mass media through advertising pushes onto the public utterly irrational products like the 6000 SUX, a large luxury automobile that explicitly celebrates its horrible gas mileage and somehow makes this a reason for desiring it (in the course of the film a gunman holding hostages makes one of his demands a huge car that gets "really sh*tty gas mileage, like the 6000 SUX"). One can associate a wide range of phenomena with the Spectacle, from the endless hawking of products that are supposed to result in "a better you" to political regimes like the Bush administration that used the explicit, bald-faced lie as its primary tool for governing to our endless preoccupation with pseudo-celebrities like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and the contestants on AMERICAN IDLE (yeah I know that is spelled wrong). It is a flexible and versatile image that gets at our brute suspicion that our world is increasingly obsessed with what is not important but with what is trivial and unimportant. Debord's insight that the system of the spectacle elevates untruths to the level of uncontested beliefs is constantly on view, such as the absurd contention that the American news media -- one of the most conservative and compliant to the needs of the corporations that own it -- is "liberal." And when entities as the very conservative American news media or politicians like the fiscally conservative Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter are defined as "liberal" it shifts the "center" so far to the right as to make the far, far right seem mainstream. And the few voices that point this out -- such as Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who points out that he is, while the most liberal current member of the U. S. Supreme Court, in fact a moderate conservative -- are ignored. The celebrities, the pageant, the epic verbiage, the spectacle obscures history and prevents any other understanding either of history or of what kind of society would actually serve our real needs.
Both the major virtue and a major vice of both THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE and Debord's COMMENTS are the almost complete lack of structure. The former is written as a series of over 200 "Theses" that ramble over a host of matters. These are loosely arranged in chapters but I emphasize the word "loosely." Many comments are immediately clear and easily understood. Some passages are opaque to anyone who is not intimate with the most obscure debates concerning Marxist and Communist history. Some theses are brilliantly written and cut to the heart of our contemporary society; some theses are so dull and irrelevant that they may be guilty of killing brain cells. To say that THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE is uneven is an understatement. The upside is that if you don't understand one page, nothing has been said to prevent you from understanding the next; if one page is flat, the next can be thrilling.
COMMENTS ON THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE is, compared to the earlier work, very easy to read and understand. There is still some vagueness, but there is little that is impenetrable. It does a somewhat better job of connecting up the various bits and parts. He is more explicit here about precisely what his targets are. There might be a small parallel to a passage in Kierkegaard that he quotes at length in THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE. PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS (actually "Crumbs" -- it is a Biblical reference to the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table; here Kierkegaard imagines himself as the poor subjective thinker who has to content himself with the crumbs from the table of the great objective philosopher Hegel -- so far no translator has been willing to give the book the less impressive but more accurate title) deals with the problem of Christianity "algebraically" (in the Swenson translation), while the much larger sequel CONCLUDING UNSCIENTIFIC POSTSCRIPT "clothes it in its historical dress." So THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE is more abstract; the COMMENTS more concrete. He makes several explicit (and scathing) references to Reagan; his allusions in the first book are far more illusive.
Despite Debord's hesitancy to be as clear as he might about his overall argument, his intent is clear to indict the alliance and collusion between mass media, celebrity culture, market capitalism (and its expression in consumerism -- nicely captures in the title of Lizabeth Cohen's A CONSUMERS' REPUBLIC THE POLITICS OF MASS CONSUMPTION IN POSTWAR AMERICA), and politics. And by remaining less than utterly specific, he made his work all that much more usable by other thinkers and writers. THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE remains one of the most important books for anyone interested in modern culture and society with which to be familiar, while the COMMENTS is an important tool in aiding that familiarity.
Five star book & a good clear translation. Debord is pretty clear & concise in any event. The problem with this edition is the lack of links. It is not particularly easy on a kindle to constantly jump between text & footnotes, & as this translation is annotated, every section is footnoted. I did not pay $7.99 for a text which is available free online because I am an idiot. I paid the money with the expectation that the text would be easier to use. Link the notes.
Decades old, this slim volume has only become more relevant with age, delineating the ways in which we are shaped by false & distorted images of reality, rather than reality itself. If anything, the advent of the digital age has only increased the power of the image-makers to shape how we view both the world & ourselves -- and that view is utterly artificial & infinitely malleable. Those who control the images control society ... and we see this every day, in the consumerist lifestyle that's fed to a hungry populace eager to gobble it down. Anything of depth, from political discourse to ethical questions to the spiritual dimensions of life, is reduced to simplistic slogans & images designed to manipulate the individual as subtly but irrevocably as possible.
But did I say "the individual"? Even a cursory glance at contemporary society reveals few genuine individuals. The image of individuality is marketed & sold, of course, so that everyone feels special & singular; but the end result always seems to be people who are "individuals" just like millions of others, all believing themselves to be unique. Yet they all buy the same lifestyle, the same ideas, the same Pavlovian responses to their environment, just as they've been perfectly programmed to do. Oh, there's a gloss of superficial variation, to enhance the notion of individuality! But as for the real thing? The few who don't buy into the image are those derided as freaks, outsiders, uncool, etc.
Let's face it -- even the ideas expressed in this review can & have been commodified, marketed & sold to plenty of people. That's how insidious & pervasive the society of the spectacle really is. We are everywhere faced with a shiny, trendy, relentlessly cheerful image designed to flatter & ensnare us in its meshes. None of us escapes it entirely ... but the first steps are recognizing the lie of the image & reclaiming as much of our own reality as we can. That's what this book will help you do -- highly recommended!
I don't think of myself as someone who shies away from tackling a challenging text (whether the difficulty is attributable to poor writing, or to the complexity of the ideas being communicated, or to some other reason), but....
I ordered this version because it was the least expensive. The publisher is Black & Red, and the translator is not named.
Use 's "Look Inside" feature to compare this edition to the Donald Nicholson-Smith translation (which is available free online as a 64 page .pdf Adobe Acrobat file), and you'll see what I mean.
I called 's customer service because I didn't know what reason to give for the return ("Lousy Translation"?). As usual, they were very helpful, e-mailed me a return label, and gave me an instant refund, so I'm sending this edition back to them.
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