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3.92 AVERAGE
3.92 AVERAGE
Might be worth reading other books on Marxist theory ahead of time. There was a LOT of stuff that went over my head because I wasn't familiar with the concepts yet. Really interesting, though.
GOATed, but difficult - Hegel seems very, very hard to understand, and I wasn’t expecting this book to interact with Hegel so much. Several extremely cool (and obviously hugely influential) chapters, but it took several years and a switch to the audiobook for me to finish!
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
debord would have a stroke if he lived long to see the emergence of tiktok
challenging
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
informative
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
slow-paced
A wholly frustrating book. I sought this out after having read "The Beach Beneath The Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International" by McKenzie Wark, an enjoyable dive into the context and works of the early SI. It's a shame that one of the foundational texts that inspired it is so wildly obtuse and frequently unfounded. The parts of this book that (somewhat) work are those that pull on threads of thought within the reader, but Debord's absolute insistence on being the final word in all that he writes about is absolutely stifling if not outright repellant. The concept of the spectacle is valuable, but he appears to be absolutely reluctant to write about it in a straightforward manner for fear of his words being used as decontextualized dogma. This removes all the bite of this revelation, and instead of being a clarifying understanding of how our very alienation is being repackaged and sold back to us, it immediately muddies the waters. The product is a book that belabors its point and contorts around its concepts in anticipation of "lowly understanding".
Maybe the only valuable part of this book is his writings on time, but even that concept has most likely been incorporated into subsequent theory that is more readable than this (a low bar to set).
Maybe the only valuable part of this book is his writings on time, but even that concept has most likely been incorporated into subsequent theory that is more readable than this (a low bar to set).