![]() ![]() ![]() This reciprocal alienation is the essence and support of the existing society” (Thesis 8). Each of these seemingly fixed concepts has no other basis than its transformation into its opposite: reality emerges within the spectacle, and the spectacle is real. Objective reality is present on both sides. Conversely, real life is materially invaded by the contemplation of the spectacle, and ends up absorbing it and aligning itself with it. Separation, in all its mind-numbing plentitude, becomes the total enemy of the dialectic, of society as totality: “The spectacle that falsifies reality is nevertheless a real product of that reality. These separations-that is, their intense reification-unleashes into practice Marx’s famous dictum that ideas become material forces when they seize the minds of the multitudes. The process of spectacle is sustained by Debord’s elaborate notion of “separation”-separation of work, of spaces, of people, of people from spaces, people from things, from products, etc. commodities), as Marx would have it, Debord sees that social relations between people have become deeply mediated by images and representations. Rather than social relations primarily mediated by mystified things (i.e. Put simply, Guy Debord’s “spectacle” is Marx’s notion of fetishism writ large. The Society of the Spectacle helps me pick up where I left off with my recent comments about the centrality of “fetishism” and “critique” in Henri Lefebvre’s work. ![]()
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