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455> the commodified spectacle of it ∀ll + continued proliferation of dispossession (reading Debord in Atlanta)


1 > 13 Nov > @ Reagan Airport reading Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord > his 1° «thesis» as he calls them = «1. The whole life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.»

2> our spectacled (did we menshun sints 2-3 yrs ago we need them to read?) self by + by breaking down thawt into aphoristic #ed lists purhaps wut we need to help oregonize content in A Raft Manifest wich b4 we left compiled us a hardcopy draft uv all the gatherd notes in order cording to the structure we developed in the last post but by + by it remains to wride the raft chapters o primel intervols (Pi) as we call them + how to oregonize the mass accumulation of content w/in these ch headings so aphorisms we gif a go

3> astonishing that Debord wrote Society of the Spectacle in 1967 as it = truer than ever in this day + age talking about the inevitable mass mediazation of human lives killing what = living in the process of churning it into image for mass consumption > «The spectacle in its generality is a concrete inversion of life, and, as such, the autonomous movement of non-life. [#5 by his count]» ... + from #6: «... the spectacle epitomizes the prevailing model of social life. It is the omnipresent celebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production, and the consummate result of that choice.»

4> toto ya cashed b4 we born even BC in Greek times ∀ll = done as humins fuckup ∀ll they touch «pity Noah dint miss the boat» dicebat Twain

5> @ the gate pilot announced our flight = cancelled + that we all needed to rebook so every1 ran around like headless chickens looking for a sposed service center + then all gitting on phones in line but telagents said the flight not cancelled in the system + coodnt rebook every1 pissed + confused not knowing wut to do for a while then they announced the flight ≠ cancelled after all so those that did rebook had to book back massive clusterfuck amidst it all noticed our names on the upgrade list the 1° time this happend just our luck now short flight not worth it too much of a pain to change the hole time thinking of the relevants of the spectacle not just to social media but travel how more + more travellers = commodities not even human > air travel especially 1 of the most dehumanizing + indignant things we endure

5> or beyond just social media this sudden proliferation of selfies epitomizes the prevailing gesture of contemporary society «For the spectacle is simply the economic realm developing for itself—at once a faithful mirror held up to the production of things and a distorting objectification of the producers.» everywhere u look reminders only of the commodities we sposed to consume nothing naturel in our hystory

6> the only sense left unexploited = touch (unless perhaps u count iPhone swiping) > the rest of our senses constantly bombarded ± deceived makes us no longer want to go out in public cuz nada = real no moss

7> the hole world in 1 big circul jerk all these zombees jerking non-stop for instant gratification like a morphine drip u jerk mine i'll jerk yours + in the end the pleasure center resides @ sum unholy corporate HQ a rising # of $ on a screen scrolling ever higher taking + not gifing back wile zombees jerk in a spirel of ever-sudden death round + round per Debord: «24. By means of the spectacle the ruling order discourses endlessly upon itself in an uninterrupted monologue of self-praise. [...] if the administration of society and all contact between people now depends on the intervention of such "instant" communication, it is because this "communication" is essentially one-way: the concentration of the media thus amounts to the monopolization by the administrators of the existing system of the means to pursue their particular form of administration.»

8> yes Debord wrote this ~50 years ago long b4 your existence dear Inurnet b4 even our own curse of berth

9> like bees whose sole purpose = the proliferation of artificial sweetner to consume to make more wile innything of substints gits sapped out of us no1 to blame but our selves for bean humin beans to b-gin «25 [...] the spectacle is self-generated, and it makes up its own rules: it is a specious form of the sacred. And it makes no secret of what it is, namely, hierarchical power evolving on its own, in its separateness, thanks to an increasing productivity based on an ever more refined division of labor, an ever greater communition of machine-governed gestures, and an ever-widening market. In the course of this development all community and critical awareness have ceased to be; nor have those forces, which were able—by separating— to grow enormously in strength, yet found a way to reunite

10> purhaps in his time but nowadays nothing to reunite each + every cell cancerous the human race itself an ouroboristic cancer eating itself

wall in Atlanta

11> in Atlanta now checked into sum hotel near that Millennium Olympic park where Richard Jewel did NOT set off that bomb then hoofed it Atlanta no place for walking pulling roller bags to the Atlanta Contemporary where this event wich brings us here takes place set up the table (even passed inspection!) then walked around that area got drinks @ bartaco the event went 6-10 pm a few ppl milling about saw BB 1° thing good to see him + also MK not many ppl looking @ books mostly ppl chatting + drinking wine

12 > Guy Debord founded the Letterist Intl collective + now here we @ the Letters Festival pure coincidents not sure ether has to do w/ the other + yes we aware of the irony of Society of the Spectacle as itself part of the spectacle + us blogging about it too continuing to propagate this sensational specularization > the only way out = silence + absence of all sense ether that our complete resignation (suicide) but we dont go down w/o a fight wd rather resort to flooding the whorld w/ absurd nonsense or @ least doing our best part

outside wall not intended to = art

13> @ times thinking Debord's words cd git misconstrued as saying the spectacle = a good thing but in the intro he makes it clear the book = a declaration of war > amidst the chatting + drinking email alerts about more terror attacks in Paris dint spoil the party show must go on but u want to talk about senseless

14> all real activity gits forcibly usurped by the sensational spectacle it especially strives to reinforce the isolation of the «lonely crowd» > «Spectators are linked only by a one-way relationship to the very center that maintains their isolation from one another. The spectacle thus unites what is separate, but it unites it only in its separateness.»

15> again can only imagine what Debord wd think of the Inurnet + social media etc (he died in 1994) how these zombees can even think these other zombees count as «friends» where liking Σumthing amounts to a click of the button every1 posting pics not what comes natural to them eye but what gits the most «likes» highest chance to go viral wich in the end only serves the system they ∀ll beecomb commodified by + by: «The spectacle's externality with respect to the acting subject is demonstrated by the fact that the individual's own gestures are no longer his own, but rather those of someone else who represents them to him.»

16> + «The success of this production, that is, the abundance it generates, is experienced by its producers only as an abundance of dispossession.» we the dispossessed zombees where the only remaining fetish = fetish itself commodified + fed back on to itself «36 Here we have the principle of commodity fetishism, the domination of society by things whose qualities are "at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses." [...]»

selfie uv tree shadow

17> «[...] The commodity world is thus shown as it really is, for its logic is one with men's estrangement from one another and from the sum total of what they produce.» in our case the sum total of books we publish once published they become foreign commodity to barter for abstract denominations enabling us to make more

18> specially in America too much focus on growth + not sustainability why not good enough to just live? to strive for anything else becomes sheer vanity «Economic growth liberates societies from the natural pressures occasioned by their struggle for survival, but they still must be liberated from their liberators.»

studio space floor

19> «It is not just that the relationship to commodities is now plain to see—commodities are now all that there is to see; the world we see is the world of the commodity.» unless you = Bowman alone in deep space in which case «its full of stars» ∀ll this as we try to monger our books w/o selling them out + turning them into commodity

our assined sine (we not 1s to say howdy)

20> 14 Nov now > woke up early walked around Atlanta nada mucho to see back to the Atlanta Contemporary to the Letters Festival

21> not many ppl mostly other presses + writers from Atlanta sitting @ the table reading Debord + writing this «The spectacle is a permanent opium war waged to make it impossible to distinguish goods from commodities, or true satisfaction from a survival that increases according to its own logic.»

22> ∀ll just = illusion + speculation inevitably tethered to larger economies that hinge on growth not happy w/ just sustaining need more to feed the addiction the second u made it = it too late Debord quotes Freud in saying «Whatever is conscious wears out. Whatever is unconscious remains unalterable. Once freed, however, surely this too must fall into ruins.»

23> «[...] The opposite of this project is the society of the spectacle, where the commodity contemplates itself in a world of its own making.» may as well git high off your own supply rather then sell it inform a template to contemplate w/

24> «59 Behind the glitter of the spectacle's distractions, modern society lies in a thrall to the global domination of a banalizing trend that also dominates it at each point where the most advanced forms of commodity consumption have seemingly broadened the panoply of roles and objects available to choose from. [...] The life in question is after all produced solely as a form of pseudo-gratification which still embodies the repression.»

25> those that have made it in their fields specielly in entertainment those famous have sold their soles to beecomb role models for the zombeed masses to strive for «60 Media stars are spectacular representations of living human beings, distilling the essence of the spectacle's banality into images of possible roles.» + «In entering the spectacle as a model to be identified with, he renounces all autonomy in order himself to identify with the general law of obedience to the course of things.» not sure which role (celebrity or zombee) = worse how long can 1 ride the line inbetween? a society where every1 has the same # of followers as they follow = communism which in theory works as well capitalism

26> agin our only hope = flooding all channels w/ randumb absurdity «The sheer fad item perfectly expresses the fact that, as the mass of commodities become more and more absurd, absurdity becomes a commodity in its own right [...] far removed from that of their original use, bear eloquent witness to a mystical self-abandonment to the transcendent spirit of the commodity.»

27> better to adopt a cant beat them join them attitude otherwise go crazy? no escape from the vanity of it ∀ll «Each and every new product is supposed to offer a dramatic shortcut to the long-awaited promised land of total consumption. [...] But even this spectacular prestige evaporates into vulgarity as soon as the object is taken home by a consumer...» i.e. iPhone iWatch whatever we woodnt even know we only use 2nd-hand wat gits discarded

28> then Debord dives deep into Marxism + the Russian revolution the only real attempt to break the shackles of the spectacle but even still «... this was the moment when an image of the working class arose in radical opposition to the working class itself.» + «124 Revolutionary theory is now the sworn enemy of all revolutionary ideology—and it knows it

29> «The revolution will not be televised» got televised the TV 1 of the main commodities (that + the automobile) that Debord speaks of

30> Debord reinforces our moratorium on the verb to be «Man—that "negative being who is solely to the extent that he abolishes being.» [italics his] + also history insted we renounce to beecomb hystorical

31> then Debord tocks about time + space + how the shift from pastoralism to agriculture informs the basis for our modern conception of cyclical time primitive pastoral societies never got sucked into the vicious corso + ricorso psychole of Vico «Historical time became conscious in Greece—but it was not yet conscious of itself.»

32> thinking lately about Heraclitus + how his ideas of the flux way ahead of his time (600 BC) so far ahead he dont have a book pa only hearsay from what Plato or Socrates said he said + w/ stet concept of time also comes the concept of its irreversibility in death spirals also a river of sorts u cant stick your foot in the same 1 x2

33> «Thus the pilgrim was the man who emerged from cyclical time to become in actuality the traveler that each individual was qua sign.» pero hay nowhere in the whorld left to escape ± peregrinate to

34> «This was the melancholy of a world passing away—the last word where the security of myth could still balance history; and for this melancholy all earthly things were inevitably embarked on the path of corruption.»

35> + how this relates to our current state of conscious unconsciousness (in wriding A Raft Manifest) «This unconscious, however, continued to exist as such—and history still could not draw it out into the full light of day. This blind prehistory, a new fatality that no one controls, is the only thing that the commodity economy has democratized.»

36> + tourism «... tourism is the chance to go and see what has been made trite.» amen no point in leaving home

37> as the evening progressed sold a few books thanx to a few who bought in bulk but still we got 50 lbs (out of 80 we brought) we now have to check as baggage + lug to NYC agin cant think in e¢onomic terms or u go crazy the hole «independent» publiching scene absurdly unsustainable wat makes it so great after ∀ll sad + dun hanging from the rafters > had dinner sum sort of vietnamese nouveau not ½ bad @ least the further south u go the friendlier ppl git

view from our room (landscape as giant coca cola ad)

38> got back to our hotel all sorts of fratboy + ho-bag party ppl in our lobby evidently sum bartmitzvah on the roof our windows + stuff in room rattling from the throbbing beat call front desk matter get moved + after making a stink got room for free but sucks u got to make a stink about such things in the 1° place otherwise u git walked all over traveling sucks again just commodities not even human every room the same zombee after zombee coming thru these rooms sleeping in these sheets so fucking inhuman slept w/ pillow over our head as lately we prone to do like an ostrich wishing the world to go away ashamed of our humanity

15 Nov > ate @ wafflehouse (speaking of the spectacular commodificatio)n now @ Atlanta airport got batteries for noise cancelling headphones sitting in 1 of those isolation booths after some woman of all the many empty of course sits w/ her head almost touching the back of mine starts chatting + texting non-stop cant bear the beeping + banality of small talk > on our way to la gran manzana w/ a suitcase full of squid (inny 1 want sum hit us up)

 454 <( )> 456 > shedding a vestigial cautionary tail b-tween the whorld + white noize uv a grnd-zer0ed footprint


5cense

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