Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer

Reconsidering the Spectacle of Capitalism in Politics

Abstract

This article aims to examine the concept of the spectacle by depending on the works of Guy Debord and some secondary sources, and then to evaluate the examination according to post-truth politics that have arisen after Debord. For that purpose, the article is separated into four parts. The concept of the spectacle is analyzed in detail in the first part. After that, in the second part, the societies functioning through the spectacle are elucidated and the mechanism of the spectacle is revealed by some examples. Then, the relation between the spectacle and the formation of historical memory is shown, along with the roles of digital myths in industrial culture, in the third part. As for the fourth part, the spectacle is discussed by regarding the concept of post-truth and post-truth politics, and the article is completed after coming to a point on the issue.

Keywords

Debord, the Spectacle, Hyperspectacle, Capitalism, Society of the Spectacle, Post-truth, Post-truth Politics

PDF HTML

References

  1. Agamben, G. (2000). Marginal notes on comments on the Society of the Spectacle. In Means without end: Notes on Politics (V. Binetti & C. Casarino, Trans.) (pp. 73-91). University of Minnesota Press.
  2. Benjamin, W. (2008). The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility and other writings (E. Jephcott, R. Livingstone, H. Eliand, and others, Trans.). Belknap Press.
  3. Best, S. and Kellner, D. (1999). Debord, cybersituations, the interactive spectacle. SubStance, 28(3) 129-156.
  4. Briziarelli, M. and Armano, E. (2017). From the notion of spectacle to spectacle 2.0: The dialectics of capitalist mediations. In M. Briziarelli & E. Armano (Eds.), The spectacle 2.0: Reading Debord in the context of digital capitalism (pp. 15-49). University of Westminster Press.
  5. Bleakley, P. (2018). Situationism and the recuperation of an ideology in the era of Trump, fake news and post-truth politics. Capital & Class, 1-16. doi:10.1177/0309816818759231
  6. Block, D. (2019). Post-truth and political discourse. Palgrave Macmillan.
  7. Carney, J. (2018). Resur(e)recting a spectacular hero: Diriliş Ertuğrul, necropolitics, and popular culture in Turkey. Review of Middle East Studies, 52(1), 93-114. doi:10.1017/rms.2018.6
  8. Crary, J. (1989). Spectacle, attention, counter-memory. October, 50, 96-107.
  9. CBS News (2016, September 27). Trump-Clinton first presidential debate [Video file]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7gDXtRS0jo
  10. Çevik, S. B. (2019). Turkish historical television series: public broadcasting of neo-Ottoman illusions. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 1-16. doi:10.1080/14683857.2019.1622288
  11. Çevik, S. B. (2020). The empire strikes back: Propagating AKP’s Ottoman Empire narrative on Turkish Television. Middle East Critique, 1-21. doi:10.1080/19436149.2020.1732031
  12. Debord, G. (1990). Comments on the society of the spectacle (M. Imrie, Trans.). Verso.
  13. Debord, G. (1995). Preface to the third French edition. In The society of the spectacle (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.) (pp. 7-11). Zone Books.
  14. Debord, G. (2005). Society of spectacle (K. Knabb, Trans.). Rebel Press.
  15. Debord, G. (2006a). Perspectives for conscious changes in everyday life. In K. Knabb (Ed.), Situationist International anthology (pp. 90-100). Bureau of Public Secrets.
  16. Debord, G. (2006b). Report on the construction of situations. In K. Knabb (Ed.), Situationist International anthology (pp. 25-47). Bureau of Public Secrets.
  17. Debord, G. (2015). Preface to the fourth Italian edition of the society of the spectacle (M. Prigent and L. Forsyth, Trans.). Libcom.org. https://libcom.org/library/preface-fourth-italian-edition-society-spectacle-guy-debord
  18. Dick, H. P. (2019). “Build the wall”: Post-truth on the US-Mexico border. American Anthropologist, 121(1), 179-185.
  19. Eagles, J. (2012). Guy Debord and the integrated spectacle. Fast Capitalism, 9(1), 21-33.
  20. Erickson, K. V. (2009). Presidential spectacles: Political illusionism and the rhetoric of travel. Communication Monographs, 65(2), 141-153.
  21. Frayssé, O. (2017). Guy Debord, a critique of modernism and Fordism: what lessons for today?. In M. Briziarelli and E. Armano (Eds.), The spectacle 2.0: Reading Debord in the context of digital capitalism (pp. 67-81). University of Westminster Press.
  22. Fuller, S. (2018). What can philosophy teach us about the post-truth condition. In M. A. Peters, S. Rider, M. Hyvönen and T. Besley (Eds.), Post-truth, Fake news (pp. 13-27). Springer.
  23. Garoian, C, R. and Gaudelius, Y. M. (2004). The spectacle of visual culture. Studies in Art Education, 45(4), 298-312.
  24. Gotham, K. (2007). Fast spectacle: Reflections on Hurricane Katrina and the contradictions of spectacle. Fast Capitalism, 2(2), 69-83.
  25. Gotham, K. Fox and Krier, D. A. (2008). From the culture industry to the society of the spectacle: Critical theory and the situationist international. In H. F. Dahms (Ed.), No Social Science without Critical Theory (Current perspectives in Social Theory, volume 25) (pp. 155-192). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
  26. Hartle, J. F. (2017). Reification as structural depoliticization: The political ontology of Lukács and Debord. In S. Gandesha and J. F. Hartle (Eds.), The spell of capital: Reification and spectacle (pp. 21-36). Amsterdam University Press.
  27. Happer, C., Hoskins, A., and Merrin, W. (2019). Weaponizing reality: An introduction to Trump’s war on the media. In C. Happer, A. Hoskins, W. Merrin (Eds.), Trump’s Media War (pp. 3-22). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
  28. Ho, K. and Cavanaugh, J. R (2019). What happened to social facts?. American Anthropologist, 121(1), 160-167.
  29. Jappe, A. (1999). Guy Debord (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). University of California Press.
  30. Keller, U. (2011). Producing/controlling spectacle: Presidential speech in media reportage. Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation, 21(2), 131-145.
  31. Kellner, D. (2003). Media spectacle. Routledge.
  32. Kellner, D. (2005). Media culture and the triumph of the spectacle. Fast Capitalism, 1(1), 58-71.
  33. Kellner, D. (2016). American nightmare: Donald Trump, media spectacle, and authoritarian populism. Sense Publishers.
  34. Kellner, D. (2017a). American horror show: Election 2016 and the ascent of Donald J. Trump. Sense Publishers.
  35. Kellner, D. (2017b). Guy Debord, Donald Trump, and the politics of the spectacle. In M. Briziarelli and E. Armano (Eds.), The spectacle 2.0: Reading Debord in the context of digital capitalism (pp. 1-15). University of Westminster Press.
  36. Lynch, T. (2017). President Donald Trump: A case study of spectacular power. The Political Quarterly, 1-10. doi:10.1111_1467-923X.12433
  37. Marx, K. and Engels, F. (2010). The German Ideology. In Marx & Engels Collected Works Volume 5 (pp. 19-540). Lawrence & Wishart.
  38. McIntyre, L. (2018). Post-truth. MIT Press.
  39. Mihailidis, P. & Viotty, S. (2017). Spreadable spectacle in digital culture: Civic expression, fake news, and the role of media literacies in “post-fact” society. American Behavioural Scientist, 1-14. doi: 10.1177/0002764217701217
  40. Montgomery, M. (2017). Post-truth politics? Authenticity, populism and the electoral discourses of Donald Trump. Journal of Language and Politics, 1-21. doi:10.1075/jlp.17023.mon
  41. Mountfort, Paul (2016). Tintin as spectacle: The backstory of a popular franchise and late capital. Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture, 1(1), 37-56.
  42. NBC News (2017, January 22). Kellyanne Conway: Press secretary Sean Spicer gave “alternative facts” [Video file]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSrEEDQgFc8&feature=emb_logo
  43. Rogers, P. and Grant, N. (2017). The pop-history spectacle: Curating public memory and historical consciousness through the visual. Canadian Journal of Education, 40(1), 1-24.
  44. Röttger, K. (2017). Spectacle and politics: Is there a political reality in the spectacle of society?. In S. Gandesha and J. F. Hartle (Eds.) The spell of capital: Reification and spectacle (pp. 133-148). Amsterdam University Press.
  45. Sciortino, R. and Wright, S. (2017). In M. Briziarelli & E. Armano (Eds.), The spectacle 2.0: Reading Debord in the context of digital capitalism (pp. 81-95). University of Westminster Press.
  46. Sismondo, S. (2018). Extraordinary popular delusions and the manipulation of crowds. In C. G. Prado (Ed.), America’s post-truth phenomenon: When feelings and opinions Trump facts and evidences (pp. 72-87). Praeger.
  47. Surugiu, R. (2017). “Freelancing” as spectacular free labour: A case study on independent digital journalists in Romania. In M. Briziarelli & E. Armano (Eds.), The spectacle 2.0: Reading Debord in the context of digital capitalism (pp. 183-197). University of Westminster Press.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.