Abused and trivialized like few others, "The society of the spectacle” is a 1967 text written by the French philosopher Guy Debord. Although closer to social philosophy than to sociological research, the work had, and still has, profound implications for the discipline.
dedicated to understanding our society.
Media, religion, state
"The society of the spectacle” is considered by many as a cult book, a prophetic text that, just at the dawn of thetelevision era, he managed to capture the pervasiveness of the mass media and to predict that domination of media images over reality that only today is so evident in every aspect of our lives, increasingly tending towards the virtues of appearance rather than of being. This, while true, is only the most obvious, superficial and recent aspect of what Debord calls "The performance” and which presents itself rather as the absolute fulfillment of an atavistic social path towards thealienation This last concept, elaborated by (post) Hegelian philosophy and already introduced into sociological reflection by Karl Marx, is brought by Debord to a new level, which is no longer exclusively that of work and economic production, but rather of best before date and, more generally, of the representationsIt is these latter, understood in a much broader sense than the narrow artistic or media meaning, that constitute the true object of interest of the French philosopher and provide the key to understanding his work. Debord, in fact, maintains that every aspect of social life has acquired the "separate" character typical of spectacles in the strict sense, those in which the stage can be clearly distinguished from the stalls, the performers from the audience, the activity of representation from the passivity of reception. Thus, following the Young Hegelians and Feuerbach in particular, the French philosopher believes that already in religious phenomenon one can identify the characteristics of a spectacle in which divinity is nothing other than the celestial projection of what Man could do on Earth. Similarly, reworking the vision of Moses Hess e Karl MarxDebord sees in ideologies, political leaders, and state institutions the "delegated" image of what the community could achieve as a whole. The losses resulting from these separations toward which humanity tends are, however, mitigated by the capacity of spectacular representation to recompose and restore a fictitious and apparent unity on the level of the image. In any case, if "The society of the spectacle"had nothing else to say, the text would be a simple reworking of post-Hegelian philosophy embellished with a sharp metaphor for the spectacle. To understand the disruptive sociological value of Debord's work, we must look at its contemporaneity.
The commodity and augmented survival
In France as in Italy, the 60s saw a economic boom unprecedented, so intense as to bring about an almost total restructuring of daily life which, thanks to the massification of means of transport and appliances, was apparently enriched with many possibilities and freed from as many burdens. It is in this context that “The society of the spectacle” bursts forth with all its force: drawing again from the Marxist tradition, Debord observes how the field of action of the commodity fetishism it is no longer the production of the workers but the consumption of the massesIt is in consumption, in fact, that alienation is definitively accomplished with the restitution, fictitious because it is mediated by the market and money, of the product of labor previously taken from the worker. Even in the commodity and its consumption, therefore, Debord traces that typically spectacular dynamic whereby the public, even deprived of what is rightfully itss, is content with a simple image that is returned to it. As a corollary to this, we find two other essential and innovative aspects of Debord's analysis: the tendential fall of the use value , increased survivalManipulating the famous Marxian intuition on the tendential fall of the rate of profit, Debord observes how the incessant and tautological spectacular system now results in the senseless production of commodities that are increasingly aestheticized, futile, immaterial and, in other words, oriented towards exchange value rather than its use value. Although it managed to satisfy the essential needs of a large part of its population, the society of the spectacle continues to perpetrate an immense collective effort to participate in an economic system that is an end in itself, unconscious and that "does not cease to contain deprivation”. Here then the problem of survival, although resolved in its biological aspect, arises again on an increased level, the social one. In this sense, Debord's work becomes much more than a simple condemnation of the media society of appearance in which the spectacle becomes a commodity: rather, it is a fierce critique of the society in which the the commodity itself is a spectacle.
Heredity
“ The Society of the Spectacle ” is an extremely engaging text, also because of the passionate and almost aphoristic style that characterizes the 221 theses into which it is divided, but nevertheless very complex given the mass of arguments explored. Media, religion, the state and commodities are but some of the many themes addressed in the work, among which Debord's historical analysis of class struggle , real socialism , culture , the temporality of the spectacle and the way in which it organizes spaces stands out. The breadth and depth of Debord's work is such that it is not simply an original reworking of the Marxist critique that inspired it, but also in having inaugurated a reflection that would give new life to visual sociology and that of consumption, the media, everyday life and communication, inspiring the work of numerous authors such as, among others, Michel De Certeau and Jean Baudrillard.
Stefano Oricchio
