Report on the Construction of Situations

The pamphlet Report on the Construction of Situations is the founding Manifesto of the Situationist International revolutionary organization. It was published by Guy Debord in June 1957, and the following month the organization was founded, at Cosio d'Arroscia, Italy.

The organization was founded by the fusion of three organizations: the Lettrist International, the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, and the London Psychogeographical Association.

The complete title is Report on the Construction of Situations and on the International Situationist Tendency’s Conditions of Organization and Action.

Content

Revolutionary movement

Expressing the view of the national leaders of the previous organizations, particularly Jorn, Debord, Gallizio and Korun, this report states since the beginning the main political aim of the movement, which is to be a revolutionary movement:

First, we believe that the world must be changed. We desire the most liberatory possbile change of the society and the life in which we find ourselves confined. We know that such change is possible by means of pertinent actions.

During May 68 ( "The largest general strike that ever stopped the economy of an advanced industrial country, and the first wildcat general strike in history" ), the Situationists, against the unions and the Communist Party that were starting to side with the de Gaulle government to contain the revolt, will call for the formation of workers' councils to take control of the factories, expelling union leaders and left-wing burocrats, in order to keep the power in the hands of the workers with direct democracy.

Official culture and the trivialization and sterilization of the subversive

For Debord, official culture is a "rigged game", where conservative powers forbid subversive ideas to have direct access to the public discourse, and where such ideas are integrated only after been trivialized and sterilized.

Debord discusses the close link between revolution and culture and everyday life, and the reason why conservative powers are interested in forbidding them "any direct access to the rigged game of official culture." Debord recalls that worldwide revolutionary movements that emerged during the 1920s, where followed by "an ebbing of the movements that had tried to advance a liberatory new attitude in culture and everyday life," and that such movements were brought to a "complete social isolation."

Emptiness of an art separated from politics

Historically, revolutionary ideas have emerged first among artists and intellectuals. That's why a precise mechanism to defuse the role of artists and intellectuals is to relegate them into specialized, compartmentalized disciplines, in order to impose unnatural dichotomies as the "separation of art from politics". Once artistic-intellectual works are separated from current events and from a comprehensive critique of society, they are sterilized and can be safely integrated into the official culture and the public discourse, where they can add new flavors to old dominant ideas and play the role of a gear wheel in the mechanism of the society of the spectacle.

One of the contradictions of the bourgeoisie [...] is that while it respects the abstract principle of intellectual and artistic creation, it resists actual creations when they first appear, then eventually exploits them. This is because it needs to maintain a certain sense of criticality and experimental research among a minority, but must take care to channel this activity into narrowly compartmentalized utilitarian disciplines, dismissing all comprehensive critique and research. In the domain of culture, the bourgeoisie strives to divert the taste for the new, which has become dangerous for it, toward certain degraded forms of novelty that are harmless and confused. [...] The people within avant-garde tendencies who distinguished themselves are generally accepted on an individual basis, at the price of vital renunciations: the fundamental point of debate is always the renunciation of comprehensive demands, and the acceptance of a fragmentary work, susceptible to multiple interpretations. This is what makes the very term avant-garde, which in the end is always defined and manipulated by the bourgeoisie, somewhat suspicious and ridiculous. ( pp.2-3 )

References

• Bandini, Mirella (1988) [1977]. L'estetico, il politico. Da Cobra all'Internazionale situazionista 1948-1957 (in Italian). Ancone: Costa & Nolan. ISBN 8876483446. OCLC 42461565.
• Debord, Guy (2006) [1957]. "Report on the Construction of Situations". Situationist International Anthology. Berkeley, California: Bureau of Public Secrets (translated by Ken Knabb). ISBN 0939682044. OCLC 124093356. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)

See also

• Council for Maintaining the Occupations

Editions and translations

• Original french text Rapport sur la construction des situations
• English translations:
  • by Ken Knabb [1]
  • by Tom McDonough, published at pp.29-seq of Guy Debord and the Situationist International
• Italian translation: published by Nautilus (counterculture publisher).