The Situationist International: A Critical Handbook

by Alastair Hemmens (Editor), Gabriel Zacarias (Editor)

Overview

Formed amidst the incendiary violence and political turmoil of the 1960s, beyond the barricades, the Situationist International (SI) remains to this day influential in anti-capitalist cultural, political and philosophical debates. 

Looking at philosophy, sociology, critical theory, art, architecture and literature, The Situationist International is an up-to-date and comprehensive survey of the SI and its thought. Leading thinkers analyze the SI's interdisciplinary challenges, its roots in the artistic avant-garde and the traditional workers' movements, its engagement with the problems of postcolonialism and issues of gender and sexuality.

Including contributions from key thinkers, including Anselm Jappe and Michael Lowy, as well as new and upcoming scholars, The Situationist International unpacks the complexity of a group that has come to define radical politics and culture in the postwar period. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780745338897
Publisher:	Pluto Press
Publication date:	04/20/2020
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.32(w) x 8.46(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Alastair Hemmens is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in French at Cardiff University School of Modern Languages. He is the editor of a volume of essays L’Extrême Littéraire (CSP, 2012).

Gabriel Zacarias is Professor of Art History at the University of Campinas, Brazil. He is the editor and contributor of the journal Marges. 

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: The Situationist International in Critical Perspective - Alastair Hemmens (Cardiff University) & Gabriel Zacarias (University of Campinas, Brazil)
Part I: Key Contexts
2. Debord’s Reading of Marx, Lukács and Wittfogel: A Look at the Archives - Anselm Jappe (Sassari Fine Arts Academy and EHESS)
3. The Unsurpassable: Dada, Surrealism and the Situationist International - Krzysztof Fijalkowski (University of Norwich)
4. Lettrism - Fabrice Flahutez (Paris 10 University - Nanterre)
5. The Situationists, Hegel and Hegelian Marxism in France - Tom Bunyard (Brighton University)
6. The Situationist International and the Rediscovery of the Revolutionary Workers’ Movement - Anthony Hayes (Canberra University)
7. The Shadow Cast by the Situationist International on May ’68 - Anna Trespeuch-Berthelot (University of Limoges)
8. The Situationists’ Anticolonialism: An Internationalist Perspective - Sophie Dolto (University of Pennsylvania) and Nedjib Sidi Moussa (Universite Pantheon-Sorbonne)
9. Gender and Sexuality in the SI - Ruth Baumeister (Aarhus School of Architecture)
10. Revolutionary Romanticism in the Twentieth Century: Surrealists and Situationists - Michael Lowy (EHESS)
Part II: Key Concepts
11. The Spectacle - Alastair Hemmens (Cardiff University) and Gabriel Zacarias (University of Campinas, Brazil)
12. Constructed Situations - Gabriel Zacarias (University of Campinas, Brazil)
13. Unitary Urbanism, Psychogeography and the dérive - Craig Buckley (Columbia University)
14. The Abolition of Alienated Labour - Alastair Hemmens (Cardiff University) 
15. Détournement in Language and the Visual Arts - Gabriel Zacarias (University of Campinas, Brazil)
16. The Revolution of Everyday Life: ‘What Real Project has Been Lost?’ - Michael E. Gardiner (University of Western Ontario)
17. Radical Subjectivity: Considered in its Psychological, Economic, Political, Sexual and, Notably, Philosophical Aspects - Alastair Hemmens (Cardiff University)
18. The Realisation of Philosophy - Tom Bunyard (Brighton University)
19. Recuperation - Patrick Marcolini (University of Montpellier)
20. Internationalism - Bertrand Cochard (Universite Nice Sophia Antipolis)
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

'It's hard to see how this book could be surpassed in rigor and scope. As its authors carefully unpack the complex manifold of situationism, readers begin to grasp again the political, aesthetic, philosophical, and cultural totality of consumer capitalism that the Situationists argued we can leave. This mid-twentieth-century critique and speculation remains an undeniable wonder' 

Simon Sadler

"Frances Stracey was an original and committed interpreter of the Situationist International, who saw their work not just as art history but as contributing to an ongoing challenge to commodified life, down into our own times" - McKenzie Wark

"The most penetrating inquiry into Situationist strategy yet to appear" - Times Higher Education

"Fuelled by her remarkable insights into the work of the image in an image-culture, Frances Stracey offers a ground-breaking and timely account of Situationist 'situations'. Not only does she restore a place for women as radical subjects within the movement but she fearlessly shows us what is at stake in living such a project now" - Briony Fer, Professor of Art History, University College London

"Stracey returns the SI to a living tradition of critique and negation in art. It is her work on women in the SI and the debate on gender and class, identity and the universal, though, that defines her investigation of the 'situation'' - Professor John Roberts, author of The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday

"Challenging the prevalent woolly and dehistoricized readings, Frances Stracey advances a powerful and incisive reconstruction of SI practice" - Gail Day

"Stracey does not reduce the Situationist movement to a form of art praxis or media theory. She takes the Situtationist's claim to have developed a modern approach to revolution seriously and focuses on the 'construction of situations' as a practical alternative to the spectacle. She addresses the difficult problem of assessing what parts of the Situationist legacy may still inspire contemporary critical cultural forms" - Anselm Jappe, author of 'Guy Debord'

From the Publisher

'Philosophy, critical theory, artistic practice, strategies and tactics of social contestation, transnational networks and internecine clashes all came together in the Situationist International. In this volume, new archival resources and a new generation of scholars point the way to a richer, more complete picture of the movement and its place in the 20th and 21st centuries' 

Kevin Repp