Listen: Guy Debord and the Ideology of Situationism

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C Derick Varn returns this week for a discussion of the Situationist International or the SI. What you’ll hear is not a theoretical explanation of the SI nor less an introduction to the history of the SI, but rather some personal reflections on how we first encountered the SI and what the SI has come to be within the Spectacle. To misquote Guy Debord:

In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. And everything, even revolutionary theories, is reduced to fodder for snarky Facebook posts and monotonous podcasts where two guys drone on with their half baked impressions.

At the end of this episode you’ll find a ten minute excerpt from what was a 40 minute reading of Douglas Lain‘s short story “The Dead Celebrity” from his short story collection Last Week’s Apocalypse. Nicholas Techosky is the narrator.

You can find the rest of this story and nine more hours from that collection on audible.