They were expressed not only in SI books and pamphlets, but most importantly through increasingly widespread graffiti, posters, occupations and other interventions. Situationist themes more and more frequently appeared in this social ferment. A protest that soon led to the tumultuous-now semi-mythical-"May Days" as student strikes and street protests were amplified by a huge wave of wildcat strikes that became a general strike and severely threatened the stability of the Gaullist regime. Only a short year later the anarchistic (though fairly incoherent) March 22nd Movement and the charismatic "Danny the Red" (Daniel Cohn-Bendit), along with a small group of more coherently-radical, reinvented Enrages (who were proteges of the SI), helped incite spreading student protests, initially from the University of Paris at Nanterre to the Sorbonne, and then throughout France. But stylistically the books could hardly have been more different, though they ostensibly argue for the same end: inspiring the creation of a social revolution which would both destroy capitalism and realize art in everyday life! Both books exemplified a savagely critical and creatively artistic, historical and theoretical erudition rare among the usual offerings of then still new New Left. The latter was originally entitled Traite de savoir-vivre a l'usage des jeunes generations, but was initially translated into English as The Revolution of Everyday Life, appearing under the authorship of Raoul Vaneigem. On the one side, a slim but dense book, The Society of the Spectacle, appeared under the authorship of one Guy Debord-an avant-garde film-maker, but more importantly the principle theorist and organizer from its earliest days of the tiny "International" of curiously-named "Situationists." On the other side, a how-to book on living "for the younger generations," describing a surprisingly combative "radical subjectivity" in extravagant and often poetic language. Each has made its permanent mark on the world. However, there are good reasons to take Vaneigem and his Treatise more seriously.Ī half-century ago in 1967 two related books appeared, authored by then-obscure members of the Situationist International (hereafter, the SI). As a result Vaneigem's contributions have been rather consistently under-appreciated when not at times intentionally minimized or even ignored. And Vaneigem himself, along with his wider insurrectionary and social-revolutionary contributions, has too often also been overshadowed by Debord's very successfully self-promoted mystique.
Raoul Vaneigem's Treatise on Etiquette for the Younger Generations has, despite its epochal importance, often been overshadowed by Guy Debord's equally significant Society of the Spectacle.
0 kommentar(er)
