TS: Debord v. Lyotard

Hi! I don't know what either of those things are. What are they?

They are French philosophers. I don't really know much about them either.

I go with Guy.

I have only read Debord.

I am looking forward to this thread! I am sorry I cannot start it, I will leave it for a theory Big Gun type. My dad is convinced that Debord was 100% accurate abt basically everything.

When is Pirates! coming out in the UK?

This seems to suggest that Lyotard invented like all of modern thought, this can't be true surely? I know virtually nothing about him, but I read that and ws all "wait that was him??"

Lyotard is good, tho i disagree with him about the sublime. never read Debord

I have only read Lyotard, have heard of Debord but know nothing about him - what does he have to say that would win this fight?

Women would look rubbish in a debord.

hold your horses, gravel puzzleworth, it will ship soon

a debord-lyotard tag team would seem more likely=

"The question Lyotard continued to asked himself again and again is this -how does one practice a more radical politics in an era when politics itself is being displaced by corporate management, the mass media andpublic relations?

Lyotard was far from an 'anything goes' celebrant of the postmodernspectacle. As he once wrote in his essay on Hannah Arendt entitled "The Survivor": "...the 'law' of development finds both a means and a mask even more powerful (because more acceptable to 'philistines') than totalitarian organization. Crude propaganda is discreet in democratic forms: it givesway to the inoffensive rhetoric of the media. And worldwide expansion occurs not through war, but through technological, scientific, and economic competition. The historical names for this Mr. Nice Guy totalitarianism are no longer Stalingrad or Normandy (much lessAuschwitiz) but Wall Street's Dow Jones Average and the Tokyo's Nikkei Index."

This politicized view of Lyotard situates him in a historical context with contemporaries, who while differing from him in many of their philosophical concerns, recognized that, post-World War II, capitalist as well as communist society had entered into a new phase in which war would become permanent and consumption would become spectacular.

This included Theodor Adorno, the close friend of Walter Benjamin, who argued that despite the revolutionary potential released by changes in technological reproduction, the culture industry of late capitalism had created instead a highly administered society.

It also included Henri Lefebvre, Guy Debord and the situationists, who saw themselves as the successors to the surrealists, and who argued thata revolution of ordinary life must occur in which art would no longer belinked to consumption, but would instead create new psychogeographical spaces for driftworks and adventures; a world of Homo Ludens instead of Homo Faber.

As Lyotard wrote in his very early essay "Born in 1925" which waspublished in 1948:

"No one knows whether this youth of ours is a youth. Any definition scatters it, revolts it, makes it laugh.We engage in a sustained refusal to be whatever isn't us - and to qualify this 'we'."

I'll just add, I think radical politics is possible without necessairly being anti-technology.

ha that's putting it lightly

Debord mighta killed somebody! This I did not know! Because of this, I go with him.

He killed himself, that's for sure.

Fuck, I can't choose...I'm really surprised I've never heard of Lyotard before (but as I'm growing fond of reading post-modern theory thanks to Baudrillard, I'll definitely have to check him out), but I quite love Debord and the Situationists Internationale.

http://portland.indymedia.org/icon/2003/07/267689.jpg vs. http://www.costumesandprops.com/graphics/Nylon%20Long%20Sleeve%20Leotard.jpg

when Lyotard died in 98, I cried and forgot about my date. sorry.

http://www.timnortonart.com/paintings/symbolic/angry-bear.jpg
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advocate progressive politics/ ******************
an enthusiasm for technology *********************
to be emancipatory= traditional position to the left[[[[[*********
only ,recently the left got suspicious,[[******
skeptical about the idea of progress[[[[...*********
]]]]teh tecnoskepticism = part of the left was rejecting tekno***
/ re/tu/rn /to natural law./.. pervading pr/ogr/essive though/t ///// ***
& another part had a very romantic vision of techno... ww2 flipped it around.

Now the ]]enthusiasm for]]*********************
tech comes from ]]******************
the right because ]]obv there is lot of money*********
to be made]]. ************
Teh suspicion @ tech is understandable]]*********
, ppl learned hard lessons]]***************
so they make it short hand ]]***************
for environment degradation]] ******************
corporate warfare]]************************************
military hardware]]************************************************
they don't make it all up]]*********************************
but they]]*********************************
relinquish the alternatives to that. ]]******************
there is a lot of work to do to reclaim the capacity to dream]*********
http://www.timnortonart.com/paintings/symbolic/angry-bear.jpg
************************************

most of technological development discourses[[*********
[ taking **************************************************
[place as commercials[*********************
, _]newage- hyperfuturist- androidal- images- on-your-screen[,**********
fantasy[[**************************************************
of the future [********************************
[inextricably linked to corporate interests,[*****************
[ as a result of such an association[[****************
the left repudiate the future itself...[*********************
[ yet the left is defined by the future.***********************************************
there is a lot of work to do to reclaim the capacity to dream