My Wark Review

Mckenzie Wark’s Spectacle of Disintegration explores the history of the French aesthetic and political Situationist movement. Connecting art and politics, Situationists wanted their work to be an occasion for democratic participation. Throughout history these members sought to create a participatory culture by way of provocation, or rather, through the spectacle. However, the term spectacle has deeply negative implications. Instead, spectacle might be better referred to through the connotations of an ideology, or a type of counter spectacle. Thus, Debord explains the spectacle through expression and transcendence of society’s limitations.

 By mapping the society of the spectacle, Wark traces the spectrum of Situationist ideas that can still be recognized in contemporary culture. He explains that the Situationist movement is something current intellectuals think they have outgrown. However, Wark illustrates that this is not the case. Situationists offer insightful strategies and useful tactics that have the potential to restructure the implications of lived experience. Wark describes “low theory” as critical thought believed to enhance institutional structures, which in turn merges theory and practice. He also discusses the commodification of intellectual property that promotes the rise of activism. He seeks to use low theory to understand the orientation of everyday experience. Although Wark sometimes gets caught up in the details of Debord’s role in the movement, he stresses the importance of Situationist thinking and creativity despite the constraints of capitalism. Situationists sought to restore revolutionary cultural politics out of everyday life. They encouraged the creation of a space where desires of the average person could easily and readily come into fruition. Censorship thwarted possibility and only enhanced passivity and alienation.

            Wark also provides a narrative analysis of the Situationist movement and its contemporary significance. At the same time, he offers a critique of modernity. The book seeks to ask what is both the precursor to the society of the spectacle and also what is the aftermath of the Situationist movement. He suggests that while digital culture opens up much possibility and new experiences, it can also present certain difficulties. Wark’s book is helpful in that it provides an understanding of participatory culture in the present moment and asks of its future potential. Situationist practice encourages creativity and is not hung up on originality and forms of private property.

 Similarly, Wark speaks of the technique called “detournement” which is described as the plagiarism and hijacking of past text, images, practices and forms of others. The spectacle almost turns against itself as author ownership and property is called into question. I can see how this would be problematic and raise much debate. Clearly, this theory does not settle well with the structure and premise of capitalism. This also infringes upon the legality and rights of private property in comparison to collective resources. Rather than turn individuals into passive consumers, this theory encourages cultural and political agency. Wark seeks to create a counter culture of expression similar to a creative commons of meaning and appropriation. Likewise, Situationists encourage such creative piracy and subverted originality.  Wark speaks of defiance against intellectual property and regulation of the public sphere, thus discouraging commodification in its many forms. Instead, he believes hacking is a creative form that reworks the relations of production and the circulation of both new and old information. Such resistance and refusal of the capitalist enterprise drives Situationist efforts. Thus, Situations resent engagement in commoditized activity. These thinkers sought to free both physical and mental space for new forms of experience not governed by capitalism. They wanted to create social networks not influenced by the realm of the spectacle.

More so, Wark believes that educational institutions contribute to society’s tendency toward conformity as a function of cultural capital. He rationalizes that the middle class receives both privilege and security through education, which explains much of their capital and moral investment in these institutions.

In relation to the creating a domain of one’s own project, like Wark, my peers and I are engaging in a kind adventure and culture critique. We are questioning appearances, reinventing and reimagining the humanities. This book was useful for understanding the kind of mediated intervention that we will be planning for our next and final project.