/lit/ - Literature

>>17093348
>Why does everything have to be so abstruse?
It's not, you're just disconnecting yourself from the Matrix

Because French theory authors think that the longer and more cryptic your book is the better it is. If your book is simple to understand it can't be good

I find the english translation to be horrendous. Some passage are pretty obscure in french as well but nothing insurmountable, if you're familiar with Marx and reread. I'm currently rereading it for the 3rd time.

>>17093348
people who spend their lives reading instead of practicing a more rigorous discipline need to feel smart somehow

>>17093348
I always thought this book was pretty straightforward. Maybe you have a poor translation?

>>17093395
This - perhaps you should start with something simple like an A level Sociology textbook?

>>17093366
>If your book is simple to understand it can't be good
Simplification would be a marketing enterprise fucking the goal of the book

>>17093380
They were writing books actually

>waaah everything is just images
Ok fine nothing new about this
>except classes, those are real and we need marxism now
The weakness of Debord is that everything is conveniently fake except the need for revolution; that must be real and important to have because communist skydaddy says so. Baudrillard is the better pomo since he understood that cybernetically there was no extraction from the system of symbols.

>>17093543
But Baudrillard provides no solution, I.e. he's completely useless. Even if marxist revolution was a LARP it would still bring change.

>>17093558
Why does a description of something have to solve it? Debord's pleas for a workers' revolution that get louder and more distracting the deeper you go into Spectacle are a hundred years out of date. The revolution happened; it became the Soviet Union. In our own times we see how a revolution would play out, with every multinational corporation adopting progressive signage to maintain their control of the situation. At no point do the people become frustrated enough to turn it off because it is in a feedback with them. It adapts to them faster than any contradictions would develop because it also shapes them in the first place.

because denouncing the spectacle has to be done in a spectacular way.

test

>>17093543
>The weakness of Debord is that everything is conveniently fake except the need for revolution; that must be real and important to have because communist skydaddy says so
This was pretty jarring. So far it's a bunch of hard-to-parse paragraphs about the spectacle and then all of a sudden: COMMUNISM

>>17093558
>WAHHH MUH PRAXIS
stop being so cringe, tankie

>>17094767
Based. Baudrillard’s critique of tankies and utopic thinking in general is spot on.

>>17094767
>*does absolutely nothing*
>"woah.... I'm so fucking smart.... Everything is fake bro...." *hits bong*
OK closeted neolib

>>17094827
>thinking Baudrillard doesn’t provide a solution
Learn how to read you absolute idiot

>>17094863
Accelerationism is not a solution pseud
again: >>17094827

>>17094898
>Baudrillard
>Accelerationism
Wow you really are dumb

>the Soviet Union was really capitalist. Real communism hasn't been tried
LOL. Debord is such a hack.

>>17093348
>some french bitch gives birth
>"oui oui! It is a baby boy! what should we name it?"
>"hmm well when he grows up he'll be a guy... so I guess we should name him Guy"

>>17093558
>if marxist revolution was a LARP
It's a LARP, quite literally, like everything else.

>>17094907
muh negative symbolic exchange is pure LARP I.e. unintentional accelerationism, pseud

>>17095560
>negative symbolic exchange
Dude you gotta stop at this point, you really have no idea what you’re talking about. The idea that Baudrillard qualifies symbolic exchange as negative or in any form is retarded. He never does that. Baudrillard as an accelerationist is equally non-present in his work, only the opposite is. You could at least skim the IEP article on him and pretend you’ve read him but you’re clearly too dumb for that one.

So, is SotS worth reading? I have it on my to-read list.

>>17095638
The follow up, Comments on The Society of The Spectacle, is better and clearer.

>>17095638
Honestly it’s a little difficult starting off but what helped me was trying to find real life examples of the things he was talking about and explaining them to myself. Otherwise it becomes pure abstraction and its message gets kind of lost when you read it that way. I really like the way he organized it it makes it more digestible. Also read Roland Barthes mythologies (Not required) and understand saussure’s idea of sign signifier signified (definitely need this)

>>17095670
>Roland Barthes mythologies

I'll have to check this out. Thanks.

>>17095656
Thanks for the suggestion, also.

>jamming with the intro sections,
>shit's pretty true
>get to the later chapters
>all that setup was just to shill for communism
Dropped

I really don't get it
Do I need to read Marx first?

>>17095670
Based anon

>>17095638
Yes definitely. Also make sure to read Bataille and Baudrillard
>>17096204
The shilling for communism and his discussions about twentieth century revolutions can be pretty jarring but given the political situation of his time I think it’s understandable. Radicalism wasn’t quite as “spectacular” as it is now.

>>17093348
It's a nonsensical book. Why waste your time?

>The entire middle section
I literally don't care about your opinion on the Soviet Union you frog. Good job ruining an otherwise decent book.

>>17096279
yea honestly even if Baudrillard was influenced by Debord he is much easier to read for me personally. i've only read Story of the Eye by Bataille which one of his non fiction works would you recommend I start with?

Everything I've seen so far ffom Ellul and McLuhan were much more substantial on the same topic desu

>>17093366
the irony with a lot of marxist/situationist discourse (critical theories in general) is that the very people they are trying to help (workers, everyday people) can not understand the language being used by academics to explain their condition. the writing style is so insulated to these specific groups of academics that the discourse fails to take into account the people who would benefit from learning about the discourse. it's sad really because it's not their fault that everything is so complicated. i compare it to a 19th century doctor trying to explain why washing your hands before eating is important to the masses without having to use the language of biology/bacterial growth

>>17096431
Visions of Excess

>>17095543
>t. Dick

>>17093543
Marxism is rooted in material relations and economic circumstances that are not ideals or representations of images but tangible realities

>>17093366
>>17096500
>In his final interview, with Le Monde in 2004, Derrida characterised the approach of his generation of French philosophers, as being governed by “an intransigent, even incorruptible, ethos of writing and thinking…without concession even to philosophy, and not letting public opinion, the media, or the phantasm of an intimidating readership frighten or force us into simplifying or repressing. Hence the strict taste for refinement, paradox, and aporia.”

>>17097406
>>17097406
yea i understand the refusal to simplify it's just that it's self defeating and i cant think of a way to bridge that gap. like it's "an intransigent even incorruptible ethos of writing and thinking". yea buddy of course when you have middle to upper class parents and can spend your days discussing this shit but when you're a dockworker you are fucking tired you don't have the freetime to read hegel sausurre marx debord. the people who need it the most can't get the help they need because the academics value their own ethos too much without thinking about the people that the ethos is for. or not even ethos more their own sense of pride in their work. but lets say you were deeply ill and I had the cure but i only chose to tell it to you in spanish because i was a proud spaniard and Idgaf. its like cmon bud maybe have like a Society of the Spectacle dummy's edition and spread it for free. im serious. its the most proletariat option.

if the root essence of marxist/situationist thought is to help the proletariat it's kinda demeaning when you create a whole language to exclude them from reading it. it creates a dialectic of language where they rule over those who don't understand while purporting to help them.

>>17097406
also to clarify I love the fucking book. and I've seen the movie debord made. its still confusing as fuck and i think they really needed to simplify even more. it sounds callous but its the only way.

>>17097519
to provide an example I've tried explaining situationism to a few of my friends who work shit jobs day in day out just pure wageslavery. and they dont get it. I dont know how to simplify and I want to know how you would approach that divide?

More like "Guys, I'm bored" XD

>>17093495
I had to write this down from how dumb this is

>>17098888
Kek

>glowies were too dumb to parse it
ohnono

>>17098888
checked

>>17093558
>But Baudrillard provides no solution

whenever someone says "but x provides no solution" they can be immediately written off as a pseud.

>>17099365
nah a pseud would tell you "this is how it is" and be like "but there's no solution even though I know everything XD"
it's like if marx only ever wrote das kapital

>>17096500
its as simple as say its things like this you can say to them; you can say to them: the things you touch can make you sick; the needless rot; the ceaseless famine; all horrible disease;;; is softened when You, dear reader; do your part. Go wash your hands; please; washe your hands before you eat. It's that easy wash your hands and clense thein of thee devils on ye fingertipsZ.

>>17093348
>>17093366
>Filtered by Society of the Spectacle of all things
Theres no shortage of overwrought or poorly translated theory out there, but this is far and away among the most straightforward I've encountered, you might just be stupid

Has anyone read The Revolution of Everyday Life? I got it recently, gonna read soon. From the bits I’ve skimmed over I feel like it could end up annoying me as lifestylist anarchism, but I will give it a fair go

>>17093543
Try less

>>17093587
It was written fifty years into the USSR

>>17097534
The point of marxism is middle class intellectuals who don’t want to take part in society jerking each other off and paying lip service to poor people

>>17097534
Idk about situationism specifically, but I agree with your criticism wrt the incorruptibles on a general basis. I don't really know how to bridge the gap theory wise, but you can demonstrate methods of political analysis you learn from those authors to people without explaining the theoretical backdrop. Ie explain the way money influences journalism from a materialist perspective, without explaining Marx or materialism, and hopefully they will learn to practice similar thinking themselves.
>>17094863
>>17095627
His "on nihilism" chapter doesn't do a while lot to dissuade me of this notion, why don't you explain what you think and why rather than telling other people they are wrong?

>>17093495
Mystique and intrigue come from overcomplicated language, which is also marketing. Get fucked, spook

>>17093348
if you think that's bad read the comments

idgi i've never read theory and this made perfect sense

>>17101009
yea i see what you're saying. I guess it just comes down to Deleuze's ideas about irreducibility and how systems involve so many multiplicities that reducing them down to single points sort of defeats the purpose because the way to understand the system is to understand how those multiplicities interact in a system and not just the individual parts. the complexity itself is necessary and irreducible but the people who need it can't bring themselves to analyze the systems.

like for example you can say that it's the media...but its not just the media its also how the media interacts with politics and how politics interacts with the market. the spectacle itself is so pervasive that individual components will never capture its essence.

it's all very interesting stuff like I said I love the whole movement. im just tired of people brushing me off but I also understand why they do so. its a double bind.

>>17101215
to add on to this I really recommend listening to this lecture about reductionism. he talks about James Gleick's book Chaos which i also recommend reading. sort of like another look at deleuze's ideas from a mathematical/neurobiology perspective:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_njf8jwEGRo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_ZuWbX-CyE

>>17101009
Since you’ve actually read him I’d be more than happy to talk Baudrillard. The first thing is he doesn’t really posit things In a problem-solution fashion the way we tend to think of politics. In fact, the book where he discusses what could arguably be called solutions is his book that follows the one you’ve read, it’s called Fatal Strategies. Radical Alterity also has other ‘solutions’. The whole point of his ideas of simulation/simulacra/integral reality/duality is the inability of escape of them. His ‘solutions’ are gonna be working within that horizon.
As far as Baudrillard as an accelerationist that’s just a bad reading of the guy. His idea of the reversibility inherent to a system, especially the pushed systems of post-modernity is antithetical to actual accelerationist thought. His retelling of the automatic writing of the world goes to show this.
If he actually made an effort to read and engage with baldretard instead of whatever it is you’d call his non-informed non-opinions I’d not call him dumb. But he’s dumb.

>>17101269
tl;dr Baudrillard is a crypto-existentialist hiding under his post-structuralism

>>17101303
>>17101269
Interesting, I will put fatal strategies on my tbr, the way s&s ends made me kind of feel at a dead end with his thought.
>>17101215
I think taking a materialist approach might be more productive. When I think about why many proletarians have trouble with complex theory, it has to do with lack of education, alienation of labor, hyperindividuated leisure, etc.
The solution is actually realizing their own intuitions and ideas if only to politely disagree and engage with them (reversing hyperindividuated leisure), supporting unions to improve working conditions (reversing alienation of labor), and helping provide access to written knowledge for those who do have the means and want to engage with it (reversing lack of education).

>>17093366
>the longer
SoS is like 80 pages long

>>17101551
Do it! Imo S&S isn’t even in the top 5 of works he’s written

>>17101581
What are the top 5 then?

>>17101857
The perfect crime
Seduction
Impossible exchange
Intelligence of evil
Symbolic exchange and death

>>17101551
honestly as much as baudrillard disavowed the matrix and said it misinterpreted his ideas i think movie's like the matrix are necessary as tools to gently introduce his ideas to the masses. same with debord.

>>17093348
The font is ass, but that doesn't look like "Translated by Ken Knabb" to me. Get this translation anon.