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The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution in 1972. The intellectual foundations of the Situationist International were derived primarily from Libertarian Marxism and the avant-garde art movements of the early 20th century, particularly Dada and Surrealism. Overall, situationist theory represented an attempt to synthesize this diverse field of theoretical disciplines into a modern and comprehensive critique of mid-20th century advanced capitalism.
Guy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, philosopher, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International. He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.
Beginning in May 1968, a period of civil unrest occurred throughout France, lasting some seven weeks and punctuated by demonstrations, general strikes, as well as the occupation of universities and factories. At the height of events, which have since become known as May 68, the economy of France came to a halt. The protests reached such a point that political leaders feared civil war or revolution; the national government briefly ceased to function after President Charles de Gaulle secretly fled France to Germany at one point. The protests spurred movements worldwide, with songs, imaginative graffiti, posters, and slogans.
The Enragés were a small number of firebrands known for defending the lower class and expressing the demands of the radical sans-culottes during the French Revolution. They played an active role in the 31 May 31 – 2 June 1793 Paris uprisings that forced the expulsion of the Girondins from the National Convention, allowing the Montagnards to assume full control. The Enragés became associated with this term for their angry rhetoric appealing to the National Convention to take more measures that would benefit the poor. Jacques Roux, Jean-François Varlet, Jean Théophile Victor Leclerc and Claire Lacombe, the primary leaders of the Enragés, were strident critics of the National Convention for failing to carry out the promises of the French Revolution.
Anti-art is a loosely used term applied to an array of concepts and attitudes that reject prior definitions of art and question art in general. Somewhat paradoxically, anti-art tends to conduct this questioning and rejection from the vantage point of art. The term is associated with the Dada movement and is generally accepted as attributable to Marcel Duchamp pre-World War I around 1914, when he began to use found objects as art. It was used to describe revolutionary forms of art. The term was used later by the Conceptual artists of the 1960s to describe the work of those who claimed to have retired altogether from the practice of art, from the production of works which could be sold.
Isidore Isou, born Isidor Goldstein, was a Romanian-born French poet, dramaturge, novelist, film director, economist, and visual artist who lived in the 20th century. He was the founder of Lettrism, an art and literary movement which owed inspiration to Dada and Surrealism.
The Sorbonne Occupation Committee was a politically radical student group that occupied the Sorbonne during the May 1968 events in France.
La dialectique peut-elle casser des briques ?, in English, "Can Dialectics Break Bricks?", is a 1973 Situationist film produced by the French director René Viénet which explores the development of class conflict through revolutionary agitation against a backdrop of graphic kung-fu fighting.
René Viénet is a French sinologist who is famous as a situationist writer and filmmaker. Viénet used the situationist technique of détournement — the diversion of already existing cultural elements to new subversive purposes.
The Sorbonne is a building in the Latin Quarter of Paris which from 1253 onwards housed the College of Sorbonne, part of one of the first universities in the world, later renamed to University of Paris and commonly known as "the Sorbonne". Today, it continues to house the successor universities of the University of Paris, such as Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Sorbonne University, Sorbonne Nouvelle University and University of Paris, as well as the Chancellerie des Universités de Paris. Sorbonne Université is also now the university resulting from the merger on 1 January 2018 of Paris 6 UPMC and Paris 4 Sorbonne.
Libertarian Marxism is a broad scope of economic and political philosophies that emphasize the anti-authoritarian and libertarian aspects of Marxism. Early currents of libertarian Marxism such as left communism emerged in opposition to Marxism–Leninism.
Communization mainly refers to a contemporary communist theory in which there is a mixing-up of insurrectionist anarchism, the communist ultra-left, post-autonomists, anti-political currents, groups like the Invisible Committee, as well as more explicitly ‘communizing’ currents, such as Théorie Communiste. "Obviously at the heart of the word is communism and, as the shift to communization suggests, communism as a particular activity and process..." It is important to note the big differences in perception and usage. Some groups start out from an activist voluntarism, while others derive communization as an historical and social result emerging out of capital's development over the last decades. Endnotes totally distinguishes itself from the mixing of all sorts of meanings of the word communization and explicitly refers to the different reception in the Anglophone world as opposed to the original French milieu from which it emerged as a critique.
Gilles Dauvé is a French political theorist, school teacher, and translator associated with left communism and the contemporary tendency of communization.
La Société du Spectacle is a black-and-white 1974 film by the Situationist Guy Debord, based on his 1967 book of the same name. It was Debord's first feature-length film. It uses found footage and détournement in a radical Marxist critique of mass marketing and its role in the alienation of modern society.
Michèle Bernstein is a French novelist and critic, most often remembered as a member of the Situationist International from its foundation in 1957 until 1967, and as the first wife of its most prominent member, Guy Debord.
Combat was a French newspaper created during the Second World War. It was founded in 1941 as a clandestine newspaper of the French Resistance.
On the Poverty of Student Life: A Consideration of Its Economic, Political, Sexual, Psychological and Notably Intellectual Aspects and of a Few Ways to Cure it is a pamphlet first published by students of the University of Strasbourg and the Situationist International (SI) in 1966. Attacking the subservience of university students and the strategies of student radicals, it caused significant uproar, led to the dissemination of Situationist ideas, and precipitated the events of May 1968 in France.
Chinese People, One more effort, to be revolutionaries! a.k.a. Peking Duck Soup is a 1977 film by Situationist director René Viénet.
Report on the Construction of Situations is the founding Manifesto of the Situationist International revolutionary organization. The pamphlet was published by Guy Debord in June 1957, and the following month the organization was founded, at Cosio d'Arroscia, Italy.
A workers' council or labor council is a form of political and economic organization in which a single local administrative division, such as a municipality or a county, is governed by a council made up of temporary and instantly revocable delegates elected in the region's workplaces.
References
- 1 2 3 René Viénet (1968) The "Council for Maintaining the Occupations" and Councilist Tendencies . Enragés and Situationists in the Occupations Movement (Paris, May 1968). Translated by Loren Goldner and Paul Sieveking.
- ↑ Guy Debord, Mustapha Khayati, René Riesel, Christian Sébastiani, Raoul Vaneigem, René Viénet (1969) The Beginning of an Era . Internationale Situationniste #12 (Paris, September 1969).Translated by Ken Knabb.
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