Situationism

Glasgow 1997, South Africa 1900

by Psychogeography from 'Transgressions'

by The Urban Research Group, 'Transgressions: A Journal of Urban Exploration', 1998, number 4

'Psychogeography from 'Transgressions'' brings you classic pieces from the early days of the psychogeography revival

An account of some experimental derive in Newcastle

by Psychogeography from 'Transgressions'

by James Burch, 'Transgressions: A Journal of Urban Exploration', 1995, number 1

'Psychogeography from 'Transgressions'' brings you classic pieces from the early days of the psychogeography revival

Situationist poise, space and architecture

by Psychogeography from 'Transgressions'

by James Burch, 'Transgressions: A Journal of Urban Exploration', 1995, number 1

'Psychogeography from 'Transgressions'' brings you classic pieces from the early days of the psychogeography revival

The transgressive geographies of daily life: socialist pathways within everyday urban spatial creativity

by alastair bonnett

'Transgressions: A Journal of Urban Exploration', 1996, number 2/3, pp.20-37

(It Will) Never Work: A critique of the Situationists’ appropriation of Johan Huizinga’s theory of play

by Tom Tenney

The Situationist International (1957-1972), or SI, was an intellectual avant-garde collective that used Homo Ludens, a... more The Situationist International (1957-1972), or SI, was an intellectual avant-garde collective that used Homo Ludens, a text written in 1938 by the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, as a key source informing much of their writing and key tenets of their philosophy. In this paper, I will first look at key elements of Huizinga’s theory of play as outlined in his seminal work, followed by the ways that these ideas were absorbed into the Situationists theories and practices. I will examine the ways that ludic principles were appropriated for, and played out in, the Situationist practices of dérive, détournement, situations, and unitary urbanism. I will argue that while the SI rightly believed that a rediscovery of man’s instinct to play could be used to inform revolutionary praxis, the way in which they utilized ludic ideals in practice tended to ignore essential elements of Huizinga’s theory.

There grows the neighbourhood’: Green citizenship, creativity and life politics on eco-TV

by Tania Lewis

Published in International Journal of Cultural Studies May 2012 vol. 15 no. 3

weakcity:dropcity

by elisa cristiana cattaneo

This Shit Is Fucked Up and Bullshit

by McKenzie Wark

Theory & Event, Vol. 11, No. 4, 2011

Spectacles of Disintegration

by McKenzie Wark

published in Social Research

New New Babylon

by McKenzie Wark

co-authored by Ali Dur.

On Constant's New Babylon, reimagined in New York City. Constant's work grasps the implications of the digital as the... more On Constant's New Babylon, reimagined in New York City. Constant's work grasps the implications of the digital as the architecture of the control society and its negation. His New Babylon proposes a conceptual architecture for realizing Marx and Engels administration of things and Johan Huizinga's homo ludens at the same time. This paper also includes a friendly dialogue with the work of Bernard Stiegler.

You Say the Party is Dull, I Say It is Lively: A Componential Approach to How Situations Are Perceived to Disentangle Perceiver, Situation, and Perceiver x Situation …

by John Rauthmann

Incidental exposure to no-smoking signs primes craving for cigarettes

by Brian Earp

Earp, B. D., Dill, B., Harris, J., Ackerman, J., and Bargh, J. (2011). Incidental exposure to no-smoking signs primes craving for cigarettes: An ironic effect of unconscious semantic processing? Yale Review of Undergraduate Research in Psychology, Vol 2, No 1, 12-23.

The present study tests whether incidental exposure to no-smoking signs may ironically boost craving for cigarettes in... more The present study tests whether incidental exposure to no-smoking signs may ironically boost craving for cigarettes in smokers. Smokers viewed photographs in which no-smoking signs were either incon- spicuously embedded (prime) or edited out (control). Participants then used a joystick to make quick approach vs. avoid motions while viewing smoking-related and neutral stimuli on a computer screen (Chen & Bargh, 1999). We hypothesized that primed smokers, but not controls, would show an automatic reach bias toward the smoking-related stimuli. The data supported our prediction. Possible mechanisms for the effect are discussed, as well as implications for public health policy, negation-based social campaigns in general, and our understanding of the unconscious processing of semantic information.

Popper, Rationality and the Possibility of Social Science

by Danny Frederick

Forthcoming, THEORIA

Social science employs teleological explanations which depend upon the rationality principle, according to which... more Social science employs teleological explanations which depend upon the rationality principle, according to which people exhibit instrumental rationality. Popper points out that people also exhibit critical rationality, the tendency to stand back from, and to question or criticise, their views. I explain how our critical rationality impugns the explanatory value of the rationality principle and thereby threatens the very possibility of social science. I discuss the relationship between instrumental and critical rationality and show how we can reconcile our critical rationality with the possibility of social science if we invoke Popper’s conception of limited rationality and his indeterminism.

"Beyond Adbusters: Can Subvertising Break Bricks?" (Souciant)

by Jason Adams

Souciant, December 2011.

***

Excerpt:

"In his essay on Debord’s films, Agamben does not simply oppose them in order to promote his own conceptions. Rather, he thinks with and against his interlocutor. For instance, while Agamben acknowledges that the Situationist critique of mediation is suspect, he still affirms that the aesthetic practice of détournement might suggest a process through which the paradoxes of representation could be radicalized. Since one of Debord’s primary media was cinema, Agamben focuses on this dimension in order to think through the manner in which it mobilizes the relation of reality and possibility, countering the static facticity deployed by “the media”: "Cinema does the opposite of the media. What is always given in the media is the fact, what was, without its possibility, its power: we are given a fact before which we are powerless. The media prefer a citizen who is indignant, but powerless. That’s exactly the goal of the TV news. It’s the bad form of memory, the kind of memory that produces the man of ressentiment. By placing repetition at the center of his compositional technique, Debord makes what he shows us possible again, or rather he opens up a zone of undecidability between the real and the possible. When he shows an excerpt of a TV news broadcast, the force of the repetition is to cease being an accomplished fact and to become possible again, so to speak. You ask, ‘How was that possible?’- first reaction – but at the same time you understand that yes, everything is possible." Agamben’s approach in other words, extracts particular forms of a medium such as cinema and, implicitly, specific examples of it such as Debord’s, from the conventional image of “the media” in order to assert that for all his critique of the spectacle, the most celebrated figure of Situationism used spectacular means to oppose it, and commendably so. Rather than interpreting this practice as a contradiction, he affirms the zone of indistinction between reality and possibility that is détournement, “turning expressions of the capitalist system against itself.” Implicitly then, Agamben suggests that Debord himself understood the plasticity of meaning even in spectacular images, at least when exposed to critical perception, and potentially without the assistance of additional alteration techniques. That is why Agamben follows Benjamin in considering even “un-détourned” advertisements as laden with as-yet unrealized possibility. By loosening the hold of identity, they serve as the “unknowing midwives of the new body of humanity”. What then, can we make of Adbusters and its subvertising culture? Is it cinema or is it “the media”? Lasn may have started as a filmmaker, but film is not necessarily cinema simply due to the medium. Cinema derives from the Greek word kinema, or movement. Thus it could be said that only that which refuses stagnation is cinematic in the deepest sense. Annual events like Buy Nothing Day, promoted as culminations of otherwise continuous efforts, have become increasingly predictable affairs, serving more often than not to chastise low-income and working class people for lack of access to the “choice”- based morality their accusers retain, thereby propping up the Feuerbachian/Platonist hierarchy critiqued by Ranciere. And while the magazine’s subvertising itself certainly did turn expressions of capitalism back against it over the last decades, they also restrained the process within a closed group bound more than anything by their chosen medium. What is different today is that the new meanings produced in subvertisements are nowhere near as easily contained within a single object. They have been plasticized, thereby enabling continuous alteration."

Virtue ethics, su base empírica y la crítica situacionista

by Ignasi Llobera Trias

Recensión de SNOW, N. E., Virtue as Social Intelligence: An Empirically Grounded Theory, Nueva York, Routledge, 2010, x + 134 pp.

Review of: SNOW, N., Virtue as Social Intelligence: An Empirically Grounded Theory (New York: Routledge, 2010).

by Ignasi Llobera Trias

Journal of Moral Philosophy, 8(2011), p. 633-648.

Philosophical situationists regarding the infl uences on moral behaviour like Harman, Doris and Merritt, argue that... more Philosophical situationists regarding the infl uences on moral behaviour like Harman, Doris and Merritt, argue that personality is far more fragmented than virtue ethicists are prepared to acknowledge. Because of this, they claim that moral character and virtue as traditionally conceived are not psychologically robust.

Nancy E. Snow rightly takes the situationist challenge seriously. Her Virtue as Social Intelligence: An Empirically Grounded Theory reports that contemporary virtue ethics remains largely divorced from psychology, and thus is vulnerable to the philosophical situationist challenge. Snow is devoted to solving this problem by articulating an empirically grounded theory of virtue, which is used to respond to the philosophical situationists’ scepticism.

Virtue Theory and Situationism

by Peter Grubesic

Controlling images: Surveillance, spectacle, and the power of high-stakes testing (Vinson & Ross, 2003)

by E. Wayne Ross

Vinson, K. D., & Ross, E. W. (2003). Controlling images: Surveillance, spectacle, and the power of high-stakes testing. In K. J. Saltman & D. Gabbard (Eds.), Education as enforcement (pp. 241-257). New York: Routledge.

A Justiça Social Exige uma Revolução do Quotidiano

by E. Wayne Ross

Ross, E. W., & Vinson, K. D. (2005). A Justiça Social Exige
uma Revolução do Quotidiano. Currículo sem Fronteiras, 5, (2), 65-78.

Ross, E. W., & Vinson, K. D. (2005). A justiça social requer uma revolução na vida quotidiana [Social justice requires a revolution of everyday life]. In J. Paraskeva, C. Rossatto, & R. L. Allen (Eds.), Reinventar a Pedagogia Critica (pp. 137-151). Lisbon, Portugal: Edições Pedago.

Resumo
O presente artigo debate o tema da justiça social, bem como analisa alguns dos principais obstáculos que... more Resumo
O presente artigo debate o tema da justiça social, bem como analisa alguns dos principais obstáculos que se colocam a uma sociedade mais “justa” e o que é necessário fazer para os superar. O texto debate o significado do que vem a ser justiça social e como ela pode ser obtida no quotidiano. Para isso o texto advoga a necessidade de uma revolução do quotidiano que altere as relações de alienação e opressão promovidas pelo poder.

Palavras-chave: justiça social; quotidiano; poder.

Abstract
This paper debates the theme of social justice, analyzes some of the main obstacles to a more “just” society, and what is necessary to overcome these obstacles. The article debates the meaning of social justice and how it can be achieved in everyday life. For this reason the text advocates the need for an everyday life revolution that could alter the relations of alienation and oppression promoted by the structures of power.

Key-words: social justice, everyday life, power.

Messham-Muir, Kit. ‘Practices of the City and the Kickflipping Flaneur’ Shaun Gladwell: Kickflipping Flaneur. Sydney: Artspace, 2000

by Kit Messham-Muir

Catalogue essay for Shaun Gladwell's Kickflipping Flaneur exhibition at Artspace, Sydney