Society of the Spectacle

I agree, but this too goes beyond Debord's idea of the spectacle as an instrumentality. An example I can give of what I see as the change are things like polyamory. Not the tangible fact of the matter but its place, its presentation of life as a series of fantastical choices, of the virtual reality helmet as the ultimate emancipatory device.

Based Debord

[cont.]

What should I read before going onto Society of The Spectacle? I've heard some people say you need to have atleast read Vol 1 of Capital.

On a related topic: Is it possible to get a copy of Debord's board game? I really want to play it.

Certainly at least read Alienation of Labor, Commodity Fetishism, and sections from German Ideology. Reading Adorno & Horkheimer's Culture Industry would also really help, as it's really just an updated version of that for late capitalism. Benjamin's Short History of Photography and The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction are also beneficial.

The Spectacle is what we are left with after the (continual) process of "reification" (reeeeification for the memes) i.e. "becoming real". What "becomes real" are our relations to production, which are then expressed in our relations to everything else, thus, the spectacle is the signs and significations of every production and every reproduction of capitalist property relations, which are reflected back to us as the spectacular society, with which we do not engage. The alienated relations of production reproduce a society that is alien to us, thus we are separate from it, while being completely within it, we cannot affect it, only spectate, unless we engage in certain revolutionary acts ( like getting drunk and wandering around)

Aren't you confusing him with Baudrillard?

the spectacle is ideology materialized. I mean, it's the title of the last chapter ffs

I dunno, vol1 has some important bits like it's dialectical presentation and the chapter on commodity fetishism but I don't think you really need to understand the finer points of surplus value or anything

this, so much.

he is, sadly, though he was certainly influenced by Debord and the SI

That's how I was taught to think of it at University at least. The Prof was a former Situ.