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> it's just being flash or whether it's also a postmodernist nod to postmodernism itself (which...isn't all postmodernism?). Keep in mind that Debord was familiar with Lyotard, but postmodernism had only just recently started when this book was written. That said, Debord specifically refutes postmodernist tendencies in [thesis 179](https://unredacted-word.pub/spectacle/#section-179) Note that Debords concept of Spectacle had *Three Degrees* the concrete reality of the spectacle, as opposed to its relatively superficial existence as a set of mediatic and ideological practices, ‘can only be justified by reference to these ^^three degrees: simple technico-ideological appearances / the reality of the social organisation of appearances / historical reality^^’ On the first of these three ‘degrees’, or levels – that of ‘simple technico-ideological appearances’ – the spectacle is simply an ideological and media-driven ‘part of society’: something very much akin to Adorno and Horkheimer’s ‘culture industry’. Seen in these terms, the spectacle is the sector of society ‘where all attention, all consciousness, converges’. This is the level of Debord’s analysis upon which much of the academic work referred to earlier has tended to focus. Social media, TikTok, Facebook and the issues you discuss concern this level. On the *second level* of this schema, however, and thus ‘behind the phenomenal appearances of the spectacle’, such as ‘television, advertising, the discourse of the State, etc.,’ we find what Debord refers to as ‘the general __reality __of the
spectacle itself’, understood as ‘a moment in the mode of production.’ The concept of spectacle, addressed on this second, deeper level, pertains to the social operation of capitalist value, and to the manner in which society has been ordered to suit capital’s continued operation. On the first, more ‘superficial’ level of this schema, spectators contemplate the fads, fashions, adverts and trinkets that celebrate this social order; on this second, more profound level, they become contemplative observers of their own lives, because their social activity has become so thoroughly governed and shaped by that same order. This is the dimension of Debord’s theory that has been addressed by the best studies of his work. Anselm Jappe’s excellent __Guy Debord __(1993, in Italian; 1999 in English) is of particular significance here, as it deals with this theme in detail. The second level entails that the concept of spectacle also operates on a *third level*: that of ‘historical reality’. In this regard, spectacle needs to be understood as __a relation to historical time__. For Debord, the articulation of all social existence via capitalist social relations involves the separation of human subjects from their own lived activity. The result is a historical moment characterized by a loss of historical agency; or, as Debord puts it in another letter: modern capitalism has produced the paradox of a ‘historical society that refuses history’. Thus, this third and deepest level of Debord’s tripartite schema concerns a state of separation from history itself. Although we will touch on the first level of Debord’s theory in later chapters, and although we will also discuss the technicalities of its second level at some length, this book
will focus primarily on its third, ‘historical’ level. |