La société du spectacle (The Society of the Spectacle)

Guy Debord published La sociéte du spectacle in 1967, with his film version appearing in 1973. Indebted to Marxist critical theory, Debord’s work introduced and developed the concept of the “spectacle”, which is fundamental to Situationist analyses and critiques of social control in developed capitalism’s mobilisation of mass media, consumption and alienation. For Retort, a group of writers, artists, artisans and activists based in San Francisco, the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and the US “War on Terror” are most productively analysed through Debord’s work and the politics of the Situationists in Paris during and around the revolutionary events of May ‘68.