Am I retarded or is this book impossible to read? It seems like the author wanted to use as many words as possible rather than trying to clearly get his point across.
I find the concept of the Spectacle extremely interesting, but I just can't understand this book. Are there any other books on the same topic that are a bit more comprehensible?
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What part do you find unintelligible?
Pretty much everything. It's written is such heavy purple prose I feel like most of the paragraphs don't even have a point behind them.
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It is really difficult. There is a reading group for it on reddit and you could probably find a reader's guide on youtube or in print.
Have you got the good translation?
You are not alone fam.
Make sure that you get either the 'Practical Pirate 1981' edition or the 'Black and Red 1983' edition AKA 'Perlman 1977' edition.
The DNS and Knabb translations are bad and very difficult to read.
Thanks m8.
At least that's something.
Well, I got the DNS translation, so that might have something to do with it.
lol DNS is the hardest to read: here's a comparison.
Debord's film made in 1973.
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Yeah, it's horribly written. It is really interesting, but it's like he didn't want people to read it…
That's okay its just a random snippet devoid of context; I just wanted to show how DNS is far more vague.
should I read this before or after the book?
Before posting any summary or analysis myself, I'd give two recommendations.
First. When reading it, try to keep into mind things like modern consumerism, planned obsolescence, mass media, advertizing, social media, information technology, the commodification of basically everything, obsession with economic growth, etc.
Secondly. Read it all in one go.
French writers tend toward difficult or flowery prose. It's not hard for me, but I'm used to reading 18th and 19th century texts being a history faggot. I think more writers should focus on clarity over style. At least when it is something for a broad audience.
The Society of the Spectacle is indeed hard to read.
His theses and the definition of some words he used can be interpreted too liberally, and he isn't very rigorous in general.
His taste for concise prose with an atypical vocabulary played a role there, and also maybe the fact that he wrote this text while withdrawing from alcohol.
He also twisted a lot of sentences from Hegel and Marx among other things without mentioning the original authors on a sidenote.
As a Frenchfag, reading an English translation on the internet alongside the original text helped me significantly sometimes. If you can read any other language, try to do this maybe.
I think In girum imus nocte… is a better introduction to Debord anyway.
He is a bit too edgy and complaisant with himself there, but that is part of the charm.
I didn't understand everything the first times I saw it, but his analysis of modern society during the first part of the film rang so much bells that it ended up blowing my mind I wasn't used to Marxist theories at the time tho.
You should be able to find English subtitles for it. Réfutation de tous les judgements… is also an interesting film to watch while reading the book, but I don't know if there are subtitles available for this one.
Don't be afraid to skip some parts of the book if you don't understand them too.
Some interesting parts that get overshadowed by his discouraging prose at the beginning are the ones about time and space in chapters 5, 6 and 7.
I think they are the key to understand that his theory of the spectacle isn't just about the mass medias and advertising, but about the general transformation of our environment caused by the imperative of profit in capitalist societies.
The fourth chapter, about the history of proletariat struggle and its history, is also very interesting.
Commentary on the SotS is more digest and can also help you to understand the original book.
It's basically a short update and can help you to put things in perspective.
That said, his alcoholism made him a bit too paranoid during the 70s-80s, so take what he said with a grain of salt sometimes.
Even though I haven't read his stuff very rigorously and I'm generally uneducated when it comes to leftist theory, he is one of my favorite authors.
He is sometimes annoying with his tendency to hate everyone, but he made me realize you can be Marxist while disavowing tankies, and more importantly, why modern life can be so shitty and dull at times.
Fuck, I meant "the history of proletariat struggle and its theory".
Watch the movie first then, it makes it much more digestable.
He explicitly said that he made the book impossible to read here:
He says it's because he doesn't want his enemies to understand what he said. But then he proceeds to say that society of the spectacle would've been read only by people who understand it anyways, were them enemies or allies, so it's pretty much an excuse to be way more dumbfounding than it's actually necessary. Maybe it was a Situationist experiment, but boy there are a bunch of people who caught on this trick and use it to write pointless tripe.
after
Situationist prose is generally quite difficult. But also, the Society of the Spectacle is poetry, and the poetry is lost in the translation to English, so it is even weirder to read than normal.
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honestly yes, I think that's what he was trying to do.
Try reading the first chapter of Capital vol. 1 and the chapter on reification in Lukács' History and Class Consciousness first. PDF related might also help.
explain
debord wants to explain the spectacle and in doing so he purposefully uses a difficult to understand prose, mixing art and philosophy and also making a commentary on how critique of ideology poses comprehension problems in and of itself.
it was a common situationist technique to create art that tried to coopt capitalist communication.
But that has nothing to do with what Debord calls Spectacle
Bumping this for people who haven't read the Spectacle.
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It's a riff on the "spooks are a spook" meme, I'm guessing
I dunno if I'd call it postmodern, but critical theory is generally trash.
Really unfurls the neurons
Just pretend that you understand it like everybody else