Sunday, 27 March 2011

Having a little read...

So, I got Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle out of the library and its first chapter is entitled 'Separation Perfected', these are parts taken from this chapter.
"2. Images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream, and the former unity of life is lost forever. Apprehended in a partial way, reality unfolds in a new generality as a pseudo-world apart, solely as an object of contemplation. The tendency toward the specialisation of images-of-the-world finds its highest expression in the world of the autonomous image, where deceit deceives itself. The spectacle is its generality is a concrete inversion of life, and, as such , the autonomous movement of non life.
3. The spectacle appears at once as society itself, as a part of society and as a means of unification. As part of society, it is that sector where all attention, all consciousness, converges. Being isolated - and precisely for that reason -this sector is the locus of illusion and false consciousness; the unity it imposes is merely the official language of generalised separation.
4. The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images
5. The spectacle cannot be understood either as a deliberate distortion of the visual world or as a product of the technology of the mass dissemination of images. It is far better viewed as a weltanschauung (: a comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world especially from a specific standpoint) that has been actualised, translated into the material realm - a world view transformed into an objective force."
I like these quotes, especially point 4 maybe we should have a discussion about the idea of a collection of images...

Alice

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