Wark Review

The Spectacle of Disintegration: Situationist Passages Out of the 20^th Century by McKenzie Wark discusses the history and present day narrative of the Situationists and the Situationism movement. The Situationism movement took place between the 1950s and 70s and was led by an organization called Situationist International, which was comprised of a group of intellectuals, artists, political theorist, and social revolutionaries that sought to challenge and critique modern society and its perpetual use of capitalism. Wark argues that although the movement officially ended in 1972, it isn’t really over and Situationist ideology is still present today.

            Wark is critical of people in modern society not knowing the difference between what one needs and what one desires. As a consequence of capitalism, people have fallen into believing they need material items as opposed to just wanting them. He also believes that almost everything has become a part of consumerism—for instance, his mention of sex once being a private act but being transformed into a public market for buyer consumption. Wark believes mass media/the government, or the spectacle, is to blame for this. The idea of the spectacle was the most interesting part of the book in my opinion. The spectacle is the relationship between people and the images shown in the media. These images include material items and luxuries as well as images of people (celebrities). These images seem to have control over the average person because consumerism has become so engrained in every day life of those in modern society. The idea of the spectacle is very relevant to today. Images shown in the mass media definitely have control over many people because they shape many people’s ideas. The mass media teaches people how to classify and view things—whether it is: who is or isn’t beautiful, what is acceptable as a career/job, what kind of car one should drive, how one should dress, how one should view certain groups of people, etc. Many of Wark’s ideas and the ideas of the Situationist coincide with Marxist theories.

            While I am biased to some of the ideas expressed in the book because of my personal opinions about capitalism and modern society, I still had many problems with this book. First and foremost, the book was written with the assumption that the reader had previous and vast knowledge of French art. The book brings up a lot of works of art, especially paintings, and explains their connection to the Situationism movement. As somebody who doesn’t know anything about French art, this aspect made some parts of the book hard to fully understand. In addition to this, Wark speaks of the life and work of many people that are also not commonly known to people who do not already have background knowledge on the given topic. Although this book is a sequel, it still seems that someone educated in the things that I have been educated in lacks much of the knowledge needed to really get into the book without asking an overload of questions.

            Despite this, there were things that I learned from the book. I feel that I gained more understanding of participatory culture by learning about Situationists International because their goal was to use participatory culture to create a more democratic and participatory society. By banding together as a community with a common goal, the Situationists used participatory culture. Each member of Situationist International contributed whatever he or she could offer in hopes of changing the world. Their coming together to participate in a common thing is similar to people that come together on the Internet to participate in common interests, such as our class blog. By working together with the goal of changing the world for the better, Situationist International was using participatory culture in a beneficial way, which I think participatory culture is about. Participatory culture aims to include everybody—to be inherently democratic—benefiting everybody and not just elite groups.

Kelley and Mickenberg Powerpoint

Please go to joshuambloom.weebly.com and go under "coursework" to view the document.

Fandom Mental Health - Data Collection and Presentation Uploaded

Data collection
Presentation

Wark Book Review

‘The Spectacle of Disintegration,’ by McKenzie Wark discusses the history, both past and modern, of Situationists and their cause and movement. Within this book, Wark focuses on the Situationist movement post-Situationist era. The book starts by giving you a history of the movement, and really details Situationism from 1968 and on. Though this book was full of information, it was very specialized for people with backgrounds and knowledge of French art and culture and it’s ties with Situationism. Further more, this book was entirely made of up anecdotes, and unless you knew a good amount of information about the Situationists and their history, you would be lost in reading, which I was. This book would be a great second or third book to read about the Situationist history and movement, but not for your first encounter with the ideals and thoughts behind the Situationist movement.

My problem with this book was the fact that it was so entirely based on un-explained notions, making it inaccessible as it connected real life events and trends to specific knowledge. The details within the book seemed to run together, as even after googling information on Situationists; I could not comprehend their detailed yet seemingly arbitrary stories connections to “situationists” ideas. This book would be much easier to understand if the author gave some back story or explanation of what exactly Situationists were and did, rather than just giving example after example and making the reader sift for information.

            Wark’s book mapped the society of the spectacle, while tracing Situationist ideas and occurrences and showing how they could still relate in our present day society. The book starts off with an anecdote and then traces the history of Situationism. In Chapter 2 of Wark’s book, he states that he has purposely put anecdotes cut from their context to connect a theoretical itinerary to every day life to prove that the Situationist theory is still applicable and alive today. Wark points out in chapter one that today, our society relies on consuming and buying, a much more consumer-based society comparatively to past generations. Wark continues to state that this book is concerned with the “third step” of taking three steps back to take one forward. This “third step” is post May 68’ political defeat, and it works to continue to prove that the Situationist movement is alive (Wark, 19-20).

            The topic of the Situationist idea of the spectacle was very interesting in Wark’s book. The idea of the spectacle – government control through media and central images, was shown through examples of daily life spectacles. Although it was hard to decipher, the examples were very relevant. The spectacle is now quite different from the original ideas of the term ‘spectacle.’ It is now much more decentralized and in our every day lives via television commercials and shows, advertisements on the Internet, magazines, social media, clothing, etc. And as we absorb these images, ideals, and so called ‘norms,’ they become apart of our lives and us. Wark shows how the spectacle has shifted and changed, but continues to stay alive past the official “movement.” He also gave examples of the revolution in 2010 in Thailand to show that there is still a more close to original idea of the spectacle still in certain areas of the world (Wark, 27).

            It was interesting that Wark showed participatory culture through a history and examples of a movement that wanted to change the ways of the world. It allowed me to understand how beneficial participatory culture can be, but it also shows that even though many participated through the decades, the Situationists did not win and grand win, but rather were able to change their daily lives through being aware of the spectacle, compared to people who allowed themselves to be influenced and apart of the control of media, government, etc. The book also pointed to things that could be fixed within society that would make the world a better place – less corrupted. Although this book was not my first choice for a read or textbook, it did allow for me to see specific participation in many different cultures, as well as the idea of how participation can change.

Wark Review

            The Spectacle of Disintegration by McKenzie Wark seeks to explain the Situationist International (SI) movement that occurred between 1957 and 1972. Although history states that the movement is over, he argues that is it present in everyday modern life- people just do not realize it. The situationists wanted to uncover the world for what it really is, why it is so, what it should be, and how it should be changed. They centered around this concept known as the spectacle, which can be described as the mass media of images that surrounds the modern person as well as some of his predecessors.

            The spectacle has changed over time, but overall, it has remained the same. The concentrated spectacle was prominent toward the first half of the twentieth century, and in some places, such as North Korea, it still exists today. It focused around centralized states such as Germany and the Soviet Union during these times, and how citizens were forced to obey what they were told. In this case, the media were the communist leaders, and the people were forced to believe that what they were told was true. Later, it became the diffuse spectacle- rather than leaders telling the people what to do, the mass media produced a set of prominent images that society convinced itself it needed to follow. Needs became synonymous with desire, and the world became false- what the people believed was necessary was only necessary because the spectacle told them that it was. Today, the spectacle is disintegrated- not centralized, but in our everyday lives. Advertisements, television shows, clothing- it is all part of the spectacle. Once we see it, we absorb it into our lives.

            Wark’s purpose in writing this novel was to show how the spectacle persists even four decades after the movement “officially” ended. He uses revolutions in France during the 19^th century and in Thailand in 2010 as an example (Wark 27). In both cases, the peasantry staged a revolution against the leadership. Mass media was used to spark these revolutions- in 1848 Paris, through artwork, and in 2010 Bangkok, through radio stations.

            This book requires at least some knowledge of the SI movement before reading it. While Wark explains the basics of it in the early chapters, it helped me to do some research on the movement as well as the spectacle itself before moving further into the book. If you understand the main concepts as you are reading it, you are better able to connect his examples to the goals of the movement, which explains why he uses the examples in the first place. However, if you were to pick up the book with no prior knowledge of the movement (keep in mind, the book is a sequel), it would be quite challenging to comprehend the material as well as the overall point of the novel. The issue I have with his examples is that he does not ease the reader into them- he throws a random situation at you that seems completely random, but only after finishing the explanation of that situation does he relate it to the SI movement and participatory culture.

            Despite some of the book’s odd examples, it allowed me to look at participatory culture through a movement that aimed to change the world. This is related to our final project in the sense that our goal in doing research and creating a website is to spark a sense of alarm in the public sphere that there is a problem with the world that needs to be fixed. After all, activism only follows exposure.

            Perhaps the most important thing I learned from reading this book was that I am participating in participatory culture much more often than I thought- not through Facebook, as Standage says, but through the spectacle. When society is exposed to a new object, it is led to believe that the object is desirable, is good, and is necessary. For example, every time I use or walk around with a smartphone, I am conveying the message that smartphones are necessary for survival. In previous times, as recent as ten years ago, people survived without these devices. My ultimate question for Wark is: what would he like me to do about this? Does he believe that if one person puts down their smartphone, others will follow until the point where society reverts back to a point where this technological need will not be necessary anymore? More importantly, how would society be any better without this technology? Has anything created by the spectacle been harmful to society?

Literature Review Regarding the Illicit Use of Study Drugs on College Campuses

            In recent years there has been a widespread rising trend of nonmedical use of ADHD medication on college campuses. It is a growing area of concern for several reasons. First, nonmedical use of prescription stimulants is illegal. Second, it is possible that students with illegal access to such medications garner an academic advantage over those who do not. Third, stimulants carry a host of potential side effects ranging in severity from headache and insomnia to irregular heartbeat and psychosis. Several institutions have implemented measures to curb the illicit use of ADHD stimulants on their campus through educational programs, amendments to university honor codes, or revisions to protocols regarding the distribution of such medicines from campus health centers. However, illicit use of prescription stimulants remains largely unmonitored.

Numerous studies employing self-report surveys and in-depth interviews across numerous US college campuses have revealed largely consistent data about this trend. In 2009, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration published that full-time college students aged 18-22 were more than twice as likely to have illicitly used Adderall in the past year (6.4 vs. 3.0%) compared to those in the same age group who were not full-time students (The National Survey on Drug Use and Health Report). DeSantis et al. (2010) showed that 34% of the full-time students at a large, public southeastern research university who participated in the study (N=1,811) used ADHD stimulants illegally. They found that most of this population engaged in this behavior during periods of high academic stress.

While there have been studies attempting to link the nonmedical use of psychostimulants to demographic information such as sex, age, race, annual family income, Greek affiliation, and age at initiation of stimulant use, to my knowledge there have not been studies examining illicit use of ADHD medication by field of study. According to Arria et al. (2008), there is a perception that the use of psychostimulants will improve academic performance. Undergraduate work has become increasingly competitive, as the number of students pursuing secondary degrees has increased. Based on preliminary interview results I have personally collected, one of the more prevalent motivators behind illicit use of prescription stimulants is a Machiavellian attitude of “the ends justify the means.” Students seem willing to take extreme measures to boost their chances of getting into the graduate school or employment field of their choice.

For this reason, I believe it will be worthwhile to explore whether or not notoriously difficult pre-professional tracks or majors encourage comparatively higher rates of illicit ADHD medication use. I will collect data from self-report surveys administered to the student population at a southern medium-sized, elite research institution. I will collect demographic information including age, class standing, race, annual family income, cumulative GPA, pre-professional track, and major. I will also ask questions regarding the motivations behind illicit use of prescription psychostimulants. There seems to be a relatively widespread sentiment that “everybody’s doing it so it’s not a big deal.” If this is true and society has engendered a hyper-competitive environment at most American universities, it is a sign that we should, as a society, take a step back to address and attempt to rectify whatever it is that drives students to take such extreme actions for the sake of academic advancement. My hope is that my modest contribution to the existing body of literature regarding the illicit use of prescription ADHD medication will assist in this discourse.

Works Cited:

Abuse, S. (2009). Mental Health Services Administration (2009) Results from the 2008 national survey on drug use and health: national findings (Office of Applied Studies, NSDUH Series H-36, HHS Publication No. SMA 09-4434).Rockville, MD.

Arria, A. M., O'Grady, K. E., Caldeira, K. M., Vincent, K. B., & Wish, E. D. (2008). Nonmedical use of prescription stimulants and analgesics: Associations with social and academic behaviors among college students. Journal of drug issues, 38(4), 1045-1060.

DeSantis, A. D., Webb, E. M., & Noar, S. M. (2008). Illicit use of prescription ADHD medications on a college campus: a multimethodological approach.Journal of American college health, 57(3), 315-324.

Project

My topic is religion and it's effects on general well-being. I gathered research on the correlations between people who are religious vs. those who are non-religious and their health, livelihood, and levels of "happiness." My question was: Does religion make a difference in regard to these things? Are religious people happier? Healthier? Wealthier? These questions have previous research done at an attempt to answer them but as times change, the amount of people who no longer consider themselves religiously affiliated is growing and I wanted to explore if the well-being of this newer generation of people would be consistent with the research already done. I conducted interviews with various people in order to gather my research.

My hub site
My project site

Review of Wark

The Situationist International was active from the late-mid 1950’s until the early 1970’s, though one could argue that, while the organization itself may have dissolved, it theories and ideologies live onward. McKenzie Wark’s The Spectacle of Disintegration: Situationist Passages out of the Twentieth Century explains the Situationist International’s work from 1968 and onward. 

Initially, I had one large issue delving into the book: The Spectacle of Disintegration is a follow up of her previous book, The Beach Beneath the Street, so I had the initial impression that I was already going to be missing some key aspects I would need to understand. This proved to be true rather quickly, as I had to spend significant time looking into various terms and groups to get a grasp of what I was reading. While I can understand that being the case since this book is essentially a sequel, were this to be the first book or the only book, I would be disappointed that more background information were not provided. In fact, even reading under the impression that I was missing the first half of the text, I wanted more background to be provided, if nothing more than as a refresher to what had previously been discussed.

With that lens being cleared through additional research, I still found the book a bit hard to get through despite being one of the more entertaining books I have read in a while (perhaps because it was, in many instances, so metaphorical and amusing in terms of stories). I found the book to be a bit odd, sometimes actually laughing at the strangeness of some of the comparisons that I at first saw little connection between their relevance and the group. With more thought and time, I was able to draw connections, but I still found the book relatively inaccessible – it was difficult to wade through the anecdotes that changed with every chapter. It would take several pages and rereadings of passages to determine the point of a specific chapter, and though this makes sense as a type of reading for such a theoretical book, I would have almost preferred a more blunt approach, or at least a better idea starting off as to what I would be getting myself into with each chapter. Each chapter became more and more exhausting to decipher, though I applaud the creativity of the situations used to elaborate upon each point, as it kept me interested enough to continue to want to pursue understanding.

However, moving on to the idea of this book’s utility for understanding participatory culture, I can see one clear link. The Situationist International group’s members sought to provoke or use “spectacles” to make statements, or, as we may see it, to participate in culture. Though the term spectacle was considered negative, it has an ideology of turning something into something else, something that can be used for a greater purpose or critique. It is in this way that participatory culture can be linked – through the use of whatever medium, individuals can come to use the public sphere and participate in participatory culture. Following from that, the group was incredibly critical, in a way that I see can be intertwined with participatory culture: when one is participating, one may become more aware of issues that need to be critiques, and one may become even more critical of the input of others, wanting to be sure the ideologies put forth are fully understood before expressing agreement or disagreement. When engaging in participatory culture, as we are through this class, we must be vigilant in critiquing the views and opinions around us to see to come to some form of knowledge or truth. The book helped highlight how a previous group of intellectuals did just that. 

Finally, and perhaps most universally applicable, is the idea in the book that, regardless of the happening, it should be recorded that some things did actually happen. This is another aspect of participatory culture: that individuals share experiences and happenings with others, whether for critique or validation, and it through this sharing in the public sphere that we are able to truly act in a meaningful manner in a participatory culture.