Name: The revolution of everyday life
ISBN: 9780946061013

The revolution of everyday life

There is a grain of truth in the simplified notion that Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem represented two poles of the Situationist International: the 'objective' Debord versus the 'subjective' Vaneigem; Marxism versus anarchism; icy cerebrality versus sensualism. In short, The Society of the Spectacle versus The Revolution of Everyday Life - the two programmatic books of the Situationists, written independently, both published in 1967 just months before the May 1968 upheavals in France, each serving in its own way to kindle and colour that revolutionary moment. The Revolution of Everyday Life offers a lyrical and aphoristic critique of the 'society of the spectacle' from the point of view of individual experience. If Debord's analysis armed the revolutionaries of May with theory, Vaneigem's book described their desperation directly and armed them with 'formulations capable of firing point-blank on our enemies'. Vaneigem first defines the alienating features of everyday life in consumer society: survival rather than life, the call to sacrifice, the cultivation of false needs, the dictatorship of the commodity, subjection to social roles, and above all the replacement of God by the Economy. The second part of the work, 'Reversal of Perspective', explores the countervailing impulses that, in true dialectical fashion, persist within the deepest alienation: creativity, spontaneity, poetry, and the path from isolation to communication and participation.

What Hacker News says

euroderfJul 2024

One data point: a personal fave of the Situationism "genre" is The Revolution of Everyday Life, by Raoul Vaneigem.

If Society of the Spectacle is your thing, you might try Jean Baudrillard.

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euroderfFeb 2023

In the spirit of the Situationists, I recommend "The Revolution of Everyday Life"[0] by Raoul Vaneigem.

Better to have a paper copy if you're the type who gets so stimulated by observations and ideas that making notes in the margins is the only sufficiently efficient way to grok a book.

[0] http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/pub_contents/5

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icebrainingDec 2019

> hacks as the situationists.

Did you read more than Debord? I find Raoul Vaneigem's The Revolution of Everyday Life easier to grasp than The Society.

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shaunxcodeJun 2008

Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm

The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker

The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem

The Society of the Spectacle by Debord

Nihilist Communism by Monsieur Dupont

The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

And other classics: 1984, brave new world, planet of the apes, huckleberry fin, slaughter house five (anything by vonnegut actually!). Anything I have managed to get by Stafford Beer has been incredible as well not only as a work of relating to systems analysis but on a philisophical and political level at the same time. Too bad most of his books are in the hundreds of dollars. If you get the chance download Designing Freedom. I will see if I can find a link again.

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icebrainingMar 2015

"Ne Travaillez Jamais" (Never Work) - Guy Debord, 1963.

http://oaj.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/3/391/F4.large.jpg

To the extent that automation and cybernetics foreshadow the massive replacement of workers by mechanical slaves, forced labour is revealed as belonging purely to the barbaric practices needed to maintain order. Thus power manufactures the dose of fatigue necessary for the passive assimilation of its televised diktats. What carrot is worth working for, after this? The game is up; there is nothing to lose anymore, not even an illusion. The organization of work and the organization of leisure are the blades of the castrating shears whose job is to improve the race of fawning dogs. One day, will we see strikers, demanding automation and a ten-hour week, choosing, instead of picketing, to make love in the factories, the offices and the culture centres? Only the planners, the managers, the union bosses and the sociologists would be surprised and worried. Not without reason; after all, their skin is at stake.

"THE REVOLUTION OF EVERYDAY LIFE" - Raoul Vaneigem, 1972

(Full text: http://www.scenewash.org/lobbies/chainthinker/situationist/v...)

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icebrainingJan 2015

I think I know what you mean. Your comments remind me if an excerpt from a Situationist work, The Revolution of Everyday Life (by Raoul Vaneigem):

"an obscene hobbling rhythm. In the ebb and flow of the crowds sucked in and crushed together by the coming and going of suburban trains, and coughed out into streets, offices, factories, there is nothing but timid retreats, brutal attacks, smirking faces and scratches delivered for no apparent reason. Soured by unwanted encounters, wine turns to vinegar in the mouth. Innocent and good-natured crowds? What a laugh! Look how they bristle up, threaten on every side, clumsy and embarrassed in the enemy's territory, far, very far from themselves. Lacking knives, they learn to use their elbows and their eyes."

http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/pub_contents/5

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