With and Against: The Situationist International in the Age of Automation (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781804292556)

The little-known story of the Situationist International's struggle against the automation of everyday life

No other art movement has so profoundly influenced radical politics as the Situationist International. But beyond the clich駸 about its purported leader Guy Debord, the "society of the spectacle," d騁ournement and d駻ive, lies a more complex story about key historical shifts in the composition of capital, work, labor, art, and revolutionary theory during the 1950s and 60s.

With and Against reframes the history of the Situationist International as a struggle to come to terms with the then-emerging ideologies of cybernetics and automation. Through each of the book's four chapters, Dominique Routhier dissects Situationist pamphlets, documents, artworks, and objects that refract elements of a "cybernetic hypothesis" the theoretically hyperbolic belief that technological progress, computers and automation make class struggle and the idea of revolution obsolete.

With equal attention to aesthetic detail and to the broader contours of political economy, this book serves as a critical intervention in art history as well a call to reconsider, more broadly, the contemporary lessons of the most political of all artistic avantgardes.

Author: Dominique Routhier
ISBN-10: 1804292559
ISBN-13: 9781804292556
Publisher: Verso
Language: English
Published: 10/24/2023
Pages: 272
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.50lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.50w x 0.70d