As much as I like Debord, he was not a revolutionary. He had some good analysis of the material basis for the media state and the greater propaganda aparatus of late imperialist financial capitalism, but he never really did anything about it except drink heavily and complain.
This obviously ignores 1968 as well as his role in organizing resistance to France's role in the war in Algeria.
But yes, he was explicitly a revolutionary. That you are equating SotS with propaganda and media, which it is not at all what it is about, is a sign that Debord should maybe have practiced a little of the obscurantism of his peers to avoid unprepared readers misreading it.
It is a work that is about the revolutionary potential of the proletariat and this is captured and misdirected via the loss of subjectivity caused by homogenized experience.
There's a reason his book doesn't stop at chapter 3 but damn do people seem to stop reading there.
I understand that, but would still classify that as analysis of industrialized propaganda and the de realization caused by ever present and invasive marketing.
Propaganda implies intent. The layout of your neighborhood is more important when it comes to spectacle than a billboard, for example. Which is why he has no chapter dedicated to marketing but an entire one devoted to psychogeography. The important part of "images" is that it's whatever you observe, not a literal image on a screen or object.
He goes over this a bit at the beginning of Comments.
I know. I've read both comments and SotS multiple times. Advertising and marketing are two different things. The most powerful and successful American propaganda/marketing crusade was the suburb. The idea of the "American dream". The creation of alienated little worlds that have no ability to self sustain or self organize.
Beyond that the campaigns by Ford and GM to gut and destroy public transportation in favor of private motor cars. These psychogeographic methods of control are directly related to marketing and advertisment. The creation of a false reality.
This stuff didn't just spring out of thin air. It was planned and designed to produce an expected result. It's a tool used to manipulate people into following a specific ideology. Like how video games force you to do certain actions, living in a world designed by financial capitalists and marketers forces people to participate in the markets they deem necessary.
What are you talking about lmao, subdivisions and suburbs are usually built and organized by big landlords or developers that build them based on marketing research. Some of the newer style ones with the little town centers are literally like Nielsen towns, where they just sit and observe purchasing behaviors and social developments.
All that data goes right back into the system to develop the next cookie cutter suburbs perfectly designed to pit neighbors against each other and simultaneously against everyone that isn't from the neighborhood.
As much as I like Debord, he was not a revolutionary. He had some good analysis of the material basis for the media state and the greater propaganda aparatus of late imperialist financial capitalism, but he never really did anything about it except drink heavily and complain.
To be fair, he was French, so he'd probably have been doing those things even if he was a revolutionary.
If complaining and drinking heavily makes you a revolutionary, France is full communist and I'm Che Guevara
This obviously ignores 1968 as well as his role in organizing resistance to France's role in the war in Algeria.
But yes, he was explicitly a revolutionary. That you are equating SotS with propaganda and media, which it is not at all what it is about, is a sign that Debord should maybe have practiced a little of the obscurantism of his peers to avoid unprepared readers misreading it.
It is a work that is about the revolutionary potential of the proletariat and this is captured and misdirected via the loss of subjectivity caused by homogenized experience.
There's a reason his book doesn't stop at chapter 3 but damn do people seem to stop reading there.
Even a few pages of this paper clear a lot of it up.
I understand that, but would still classify that as analysis of industrialized propaganda and the de realization caused by ever present and invasive marketing.
Propaganda implies intent. The layout of your neighborhood is more important when it comes to spectacle than a billboard, for example. Which is why he has no chapter dedicated to marketing but an entire one devoted to psychogeography. The important part of "images" is that it's whatever you observe, not a literal image on a screen or object.
He goes over this a bit at the beginning of Comments.
I know. I've read both comments and SotS multiple times. Advertising and marketing are two different things. The most powerful and successful American propaganda/marketing crusade was the suburb. The idea of the "American dream". The creation of alienated little worlds that have no ability to self sustain or self organize.
Beyond that the campaigns by Ford and GM to gut and destroy public transportation in favor of private motor cars. These psychogeographic methods of control are directly related to marketing and advertisment. The creation of a false reality.
This stuff didn't just spring out of thin air. It was planned and designed to produce an expected result. It's a tool used to manipulate people into following a specific ideology. Like how video games force you to do certain actions, living in a world designed by financial capitalists and marketers forces people to participate in the markets they deem necessary.
The suburbs regularly self organize.
What are you talking about lmao, subdivisions and suburbs are usually built and organized by big landlords or developers that build them based on marketing research. Some of the newer style ones with the little town centers are literally like Nielsen towns, where they just sit and observe purchasing behaviors and social developments.
All that data goes right back into the system to develop the next cookie cutter suburbs perfectly designed to pit neighbors against each other and simultaneously against everyone that isn't from the neighborhood.
During the Black Lives Matter movement, the most intense rebellions happened in suburbs, notably Ferguson