ancient cities

752 Society of the Spectacle
agents who were collectively and freely able to
shape their destinies. For the situationists, the
concept of the spectacle addresses an image-
saturated world in which authentic life is supplanted
by appearances and in which control of
the image realm is of vital political significance.
Their aim in coining the term was, to echo Marx’s
famous line about the task facing philosophers,
not merely to interpret the world but to change it.
For them it was a weapon with which to combat
dominant social powers and to seek alternatives.
The terminology, if not the theoretical and
political force of this situationist critique, has since
been widely taken up by commentators. Often this
has been part of descriptions or theorizations of
the role of the mass media and technologies such
as television and electronic communication in
mediating and shaping contemporary social and
cultural life. The phrase “society of the spectacle”
has thus featured occasionally with, but more
often without, acknowledgment of Debord and the
situationists, alongside a number of other terms
within postmodern cultural theory since the 1980s.
Jean Baudrillard, for example, was indebted to
Debord in his writings on simulation and the simulacrum
while at the same time arguing that the
conditions of the spectacle have been surpassed at a
time of hyperreality. Supposedly evaporating with
those conditions, as Baudrillard and some postmodernists
suggest, is the possibility of revolutionary
critique and resistance that drove the situationist
project, claims that were met with withering
responses from Debord during his lifetime as he
never wavered from his commitment to revolution.
Writings on the society of the spectacle by
Debord and the situationists have influenced urban
studies in a number of ways. Most directly this has
been in relation to historical and contemporary
accounts of the imaging of cities and the construction
of spectacular urban spaces to be looked at
and contemplated, from the remaking of nineteenth-century
Paris to more recent redevelopment
projects, expositions, and grand events. A sense of
the spectacle as a mask that entertains and diverts
its audiences, while it glosses over the social divisions
and problems that remain underneath, has
been prominent in much critical writing in this
area. So too has the idea of the spectacle’s
depoliticizing and passifying qualities as a powerful
means of ensuring the consent, or at least
acquiescence, of the population. Many references
to situationist ideas within this area of urban studies,
however, neglect their radical and totalizing
perspectives. To appreciate their distinctive power
more fully it is necessary to acknowledge their
rootedness in Marxist thought, especially in critical
writings on commodity fetishism and alienation
from within the Hegelian–Marxist tradition, and
their inseparability from a revolutionary political
project. The importance the situationists gave to
urbanism within this project is of particular pertinence
to those concerned with the politics of urban
space today.
The Spectacle, Urbanism, and Revolution
At times the situationists employed the term spectacle
to refer to events, scenes, and places, referring
disparagingly to the construction of urban or touristic
spectacles in the plural. Debord wrote at the
opening of The Society of the Spectacle, “The
whole life of those societies in which modern conditions
of production prevail presents itself as an
immense accumulation of spectacles.” But as its
title indicates, his book was concerned more with
delineating and criticizing the spectacle as a condition.
This condition entailed a prodigious expansion
of the influence of the economy and the
commodity over all aspects of social life, according
to Debord. The mass media, advertising, and
entertainment are only specific manifestations
rather than determinants, he argued, emphasizing
that the spectacle is “not a collection of images”
but “a social relationship between people that is
mediated by images.” It is “the outcome and the
goal of the dominant mode of production” and, as
such, it is “not something added to the real world”
but is “the very heart of society’s real unreality.”
Alienation and separation are its central characteristics
as people live out roles and gestures presented
to them rather than forging their own authentic
paths. This is even the case with oppositional political
stances, for the situationists were acutely sensitive
to the ways in which radical art and politics are
co-opted, repackaged, and sold back to people to
become yet more fodder for the spectacle.
Debord had no illusions about the supposedly
socialist states of the Soviet Union, China, and
elsewhere. His critique of the spectacle was directed
at all modern societies, although he initially