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September 22, 2005
La Société du Spectacle
Ouf.
Getting to the end of La Société du Spectacle was straightforward. I just kept going through the fields of words I could pronounce and recognize without understanding. Debord might simply turn up his nose and mutter something about ces dupes who haven't even read Hegel, much less understood him.
I gradually realized my reading was simply to fill time, the mental equivalent of watching television or getting drunk. Certainly Debord wouldn't have written in that stupor. He was aiming to make sense, or at least to get a leg up on other guys who read Hegel and thought they understood it, at least well enough to make the appropriate vocalizations.
It seems like there's more to it that that. Mathematics exposes findings by starting with a defintion of terms, then a logical argument, to arrive at a conclusion consistent with the definitions and the rules of formal logic and of earlier conclusions based on the same approach. When properly applied, the mathematical approach leads to conclusions you can count on within their context.
Much of the real crap I read looks like a caricature of mathematics. The worst of it usually starts with reams of definitions. The author redefines the world as much as possible instead of describing the existing world as economically as possible. Then woolly and jargon filled argument attempts to lead from the multitude of definitions to pithy, but perhaps unjustified conclusions.
In fact you cannot necessarily put your finger on exactly what was wrong or right. Allez, au hasard :
Le temps pseudo-cyclique consommable est le temps spectaculaire, à la fois comme temps de la consommation des images, au sens restreint, et comme image de la consommation du temps, dans toute son extension.
I don't own an authorized translation, but let me try to render that as: "Pseudo-cyclical, consumable time is spectacular time, both as time for consuming images in the restricted sense and as a representation of the consumption of time in its fullest extension." It reminds me of a book I once tried to read, The Condition of Postmodernity by David Harvey. Reviews are rave at Amazon. Gee, this stuff must be good because somebody else says it is.
Posted by Mark at September 22, 2005 08:16 PM
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Comments
Given the unusual construction of "le temps spectaculaire", I think he means "spectaculaire" as the adjectivization of "spectacle," primarily, and the literal meaning only secondarily. It's not really a play on words, but more a play on vocabulary that gives 2 meanings to word, and is kinda ingenious because both are meant to apply.
In other words, I would translate it as "consumable time is specatular showtime" or to vaguely retain the play on vocabulary "consumable time is show time."
To be honest, though, I still don't understand that first part of the sentence. I kinda get the second part, but would need more context (definitions) for the first part.
And you are correct to say such books are like mathematics in that they apply logic, but they also really do good things with the language. I admire such books because they do use language to it's fullest, while in everyday speech we barely even put together a subject, verb, and object. And yes they often sound pompous and redefine the world, but as in every field, you have to find the good among the mediocre. Some of those redefinitions can turn out to be novel and useful ways of looking at the world, instead of applying the usual economies (both meanings of economy intended).
I think the French "intellectuel" circles write books to impress each other, not the public. There are enough highly educated people in France who are in that clique or want to be in that clique for them to sell books. When Guy Debord was writing, he wasn't thinking about how an intellectually curious American ex-pat would decipher his book.
On the one hand, I have to admire a culture where learning, language, and erudition are still thriving, on the other, I wonder how people who are obviously so intelligent fail to recognize that their ideas are irrelevant to most people's lives. They react to the outside world but don't really reach out to it.
In the end, I would compare the French intellectuals to particle physicists. They are analyzing the limits of human social experience the way physicist probe the limits of matter, trying to make sense out of the vast complexity of possibilities. Both fields seem so remote and aloof, and they often seem fruitless, yet you know that they are fundamental.
Posted by: Andy at September 23, 2005 11:02 PM
Guy Debord apparently took his own life. Maybe he was depressed about having seen so many things, so many important patterns, but he couldn't use that knowledge to turn back the the tide of what he saw as the alienating spectacle estranging us not only from each other but even from ourselves.
Maybe he just got old and tired. Maybe his best friend left him for somebody else. Maybe his favorite dog died and he couldn't stand it anymore.
The books we write may fall into the same conceptual category as books for intellectuals. First the reader needs lots of baggage to make any sense of them. Next the writer usually only does a partial job explaining things. You do better than I do, but we often stop short of explaining fully what the reader would need to know to be able to understand what's really going on.
Posted by: Mark at September 24, 2005 04:08 PM