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Few works
of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative
as Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle. From its
publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960s to the present,
the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates
on the shape of modernity, capitalism, and everyday life in the
late twentieth century. Now finally available in a superb English
translation approved by the author, Debord’s text remains
as crucial as ever for understanding the contemporary effects of
power, which are increasingly inseparable from the new virtual worlds
of our rapidly changing image / information culture.
“In all that has happened in the last twenty years, the most
important change lies in the very continuity of the spectacle. Quite
simply, the spectacle’s domination has succeeded in raising
a whole generation moulded to its laws. The extraordinary new conditions
in which this entire generation has lived constitute a comprehensive
summary of all that, henceforth, the spectacle will forbid; and
also all that it will permit.”
— Guy Debord (1988)
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