I prefer the term "spectacle". The spectacle consumes reality and destroys its history. It takes movements grounded in reality and struggle against they system and integrates them into the zeitgeist in a "safe" way
Not "a spectacle", it's been digested into the spectacle. Which basically means that the struggle has become a weapon against the actual LGBTQ+ movement. Like Lenin's intro to State and Rev,
During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.
The spectacle of revolution/movements is the vulgarized form. It's the utilization of liberation language in service of oppression. It's the capitalization of anti-capitalist struggle. It's the total absorbtion of a struggle that seeks to upend the system into the system itself.
The original struggle still exists, but the coverage and visibility of it will be filtered through the spectacle.
Highly recommend Society of the Spectacle and Comments on Society of the Spectacle (both on Libgen). Debord can be hard to understand, but he occasionally says something that just makes the systemic nature of "spectacle" click.
But essentially yes, he also constantly brings up the "theory is the enemy of ideology" which basically means that using revolutionary language derived from ideology is meaningless without having the revolutionary theory to back it up.
So people using the language of revolution in an ideological manner are contributing to the vulgarization of the revolutionary theory and building up the spectacular version of the struggle.
(In this case, applying the surface level aspects of anti-racism without any actual analysis of the conditions and history of the situation in which it's being applied)
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I prefer the term "spectacle". The spectacle consumes reality and destroys its history. It takes movements grounded in reality and struggle against they system and integrates them into the zeitgeist in a "safe" way
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Not "a spectacle", it's been digested into the spectacle. Which basically means that the struggle has become a weapon against the actual LGBTQ+ movement. Like Lenin's intro to State and Rev,
The spectacle of revolution/movements is the vulgarized form. It's the utilization of liberation language in service of oppression. It's the capitalization of anti-capitalist struggle. It's the total absorbtion of a struggle that seeks to upend the system into the system itself.
The original struggle still exists, but the coverage and visibility of it will be filtered through the spectacle.
deleted by creator
Highly recommend Society of the Spectacle and Comments on Society of the Spectacle (both on Libgen). Debord can be hard to understand, but he occasionally says something that just makes the systemic nature of "spectacle" click.
But essentially yes, he also constantly brings up the "theory is the enemy of ideology" which basically means that using revolutionary language derived from ideology is meaningless without having the revolutionary theory to back it up.
So people using the language of revolution in an ideological manner are contributing to the vulgarization of the revolutionary theory and building up the spectacular version of the struggle.
(In this case, applying the surface level aspects of anti-racism without any actual analysis of the conditions and history of the situation in which it's being applied)
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No he's just really obtuse when he talks about it and it sounds like he's dunking on theory. I misread that part when I posted it here.
He does say that theory is pointless without political praxis though, which kinda goes without saying.
praxis > theory > ideology