Guy Debord's Hegelian Marxism: A Critical Analysis of The Society of the Spectacle, Lecture notes of Acting

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A Genealogy and Critique of Guy

Debord's Theory of Spectacle

Tom Bunyard

PhD Thesis, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of

London

The work presented in this thesis is the candidates own.

Signed:......................

Date:..........................

Contents

• Acknowledgements…………………………………………..……………
• Preface…………………………………………………………..…………
• Introduction: Debord, Time and History…………………….………...
• Part One: Art and Negativity, 1952-1961 – Introduction……………..
• Chapter One: Negativity and the End of History……………………...
• Artists'…………………………………………………………………… Chapter Two: 'We are Artists only insofar as we are No Longer
• Chapter Three: The Everyday and the Absolute……...……………....
• Conclusion to Part One………………………………………………….
• Part Two: Capital and Spectacle, 1962-1975 – Introduction…...…...
• Chapter Four: The Spectacle...……………………………..................
• Chapter Five: Fetish and Appearance………………………………...
• Chapter Six: Marxism and Spectacle…………………………………
• Conclusion to Part Two……...………………………………………...
• Postscript: May 1968 and the End of the S.I…………………………
• Introduction……………………………………………………………. Part Three: 'The Theory of Historical Action', 1976-1994 –
• Chapter Seven: The Integrated Spectacle ……………………………
• Chapter Eight: Strategy and Subjectivity…………………………….
• Chapter Nine: Freedom and Praxis…………………………………...
• Conclusion to Part Three………………………………………………
• Conclusion………………………………………………………………
• Bibliography…………………………………………………………….

Acknowledgements

This project was conducted at the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths under the supervision of Professor John Hutnyk, whose help and guidance were of enormous assistance throughout. Thanks are also due to all those who helped me to discuss and develop ideas over the last few years, whether in seminars, reading groups or the broader research environment in and around Goldsmiths. I owe much in this regard to Andy Christodoulou, Nick Grey, Mark Fisher, Jeff Kinkle, Rob Lucas, Sam Meaden, Ben Noys and Alberto Toscano. I’m very grateful to John McHale, who generously directed me towards a number of useful texts and helped me trace some missing references, and to Fiona Elvines, Alison Hulme and Amanda Johansson for their helpful comments on early drafts of this thesis. M.Beatrice Fazi offered excellent advice as to how to produce a final version, and I’m greatly indebted to her for the input and support that she provided during the course of this project. I should also thank Neil Griffiths and Anna Thomas for helping me work part time and for making that work feel less like a chore. Most importantly I should thank my parents and grandparents, without whose help this would not have been possible.

appearances is itself rooted within those appearances,^7 and that this has perhaps facilitated its reduction – as predicted by its own author in 1967 – to the status of “just another empty formula of sociologico-political rhetoric”.^8 However, I'll also show that a close and critical analysis of the theory can yield a set of ideas and themes that remain largely overlooked within the existing literature. Not only do these ideas serve to illuminate Debord’s work as a whole: in addition, I’ll suggest that they may be of greater contemporary interest than the theory of spectacle itself. In this latter respect, and in keeping with the essentially Hegelian content of my subject matter, I've tried to adopt the maxim that “the refutation” should “properly consist in the further development of the principle”.^9 To that end, and as far as is possible, the thesis will take Debord and the S.I. on their own terms: their work will be read through the philosophical and theoretical influences that inform it, and through indicating these lines of development and influence I’ll attempt to provide a detailed reading able to identify the theory’s shortcomings and contradictions. I will not therefore be taking the S.I.'s work as a discrete, given corpus that can be measured against more recent theories of deconstruction, assemblage, event, etc. (although connections to contemporary debates will be signalled where relevant); instead, I’ll try to show the ways in which aspects of this material might be seen to point beyond their own extant formulations. The primary elements of Debord's oeuvre that I'll attempt to draw out in this respect are his Hegelian Marxist views on praxis, and I'll place particular emphasis on the connections between the latter and his interests in temporality and strategic agency. Admittedly, Debord's interest in strategy has received greater acknowledgement since the re-release of his Game of War (2006; 2007 in English), but I would argue that this interest remains largely unexplored. I would also suggest that this is due to a broader failure to address the primarily Hegelian notions of time, subjectivity and history that structure Debord’s work. These latter concerns have little to no place within what seems at times to be the popular understanding of the theory of spectacle, which is frequently depicted as a simple diatribe about society's saturation with visual media. It’s thus pertinent to recall that in The Society of the Spectacle itself (1967) Debord describes the “mass media” as the spectacle's “most stultifyingly superficial manifestation”,^10 and

(^7) My claims are close to those of Dauvé here, according to whom Debord “made a study of the

8 profound, through and by means of the superficial appearance” (Dauvé 1979). 9 Debord 1995, p.143; 2006, p. 10 Hegel 1977, p. Debord 1995, p.19; 2006, p.

states that the spectacle “cannot be understood as a product of the technology of the mass dissemination of images.”^11 In contrast to such readings, this thesis will stress the sense in which the spectacle should be understood – and I quote again from The Society of the Spectacle – as a “paralysed history”: as an “abandonment of any history founded in historical time”, and as “a false consciousness of time .”^12 Rather than a simple complaint as to the functional import of the media and mass entertainment within modern capitalism, Debord's theory is a description of a society that has become separated from its own historical agency. This thesis will attempt to explore the nature and implications of that notion of agency. My interpretation of Debord’s theory will be set out in the thesis' general introduction, which also offers initial commentary on some of the existing literature on the subject (further remarks in this regard will be included in later sections of the thesis). My aim in the introduction is to demonstrate that addressing Debord's oeuvre through its concerns with time and history illuminates a number of connections between some of the more seemingly disparate elements of his work. I’ll also show that the links that can thus be inferred between his concerns with temporality and strategy may afford insight into his Hegelian Marxism. In making that case – and by way of a brief overview of the theory of spectacle's primary problems – I'll present an initial argument as to the comparative merits of Debord's views on historical action vis a vis those of the theory of spectacle itself. The grounds and implications of that claim will then be developed throughout the thesis as a whole. The rest of the thesis is composed of three sections, each of which is bracketed by an introduction and a conclusion. Part one attempts to clarify the temporal dimensions of Situationist subjectivity, setting out the ideas that inform the theory of spectacle; part two offers a detailed account and critique of the latter; part three then indicates the ways in which the material identified in part one might be developed in the light of the problems set out in part two. The thesis' movement through these three sections is also broadly chronological. Part one makes its claims by addressing the S.I.'s avant-garde beginnings in the late 1950's; part two is centred around Debord and the S.I.'s work in the 1960's, with a particular focus on 1967's The Society of the Spectacle ; part three addresses the interests in time and strategy that come to the fore in Debord’s later years, and discusses 1988's Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. The movement between the three parts of the thesis is also a route towards

(^11) Debord 1995, pp.12-3; 2006, p. (^12) Debord 1995, p.114; 2006, p.

perpetually 'de-totalised' totality (the for-itself's impossible “desire to be God”)^13 – that any such deferral can also be seen to be 'tragic' in a sense. Such a continual deferral is, on my reading, closer to Debord's views on spectatorship than it is to the resolution of alienation and separation that he posits beyond the spectacle’s historical impasse. I'll thus suggest that Debord is in fact far closer to what I take to be Hegel's own position than he gives one to realise. Hegel's ‘absolute’ is not a state of static arrest but rather a perpetual self-determinate process, and given that the concept of spectacle rests upon the denial of identity between the subject and its actions I'll suggest that Debord's views on the relation between Hegel and Marx serve to cast Hegelian resolution not as the end of history, but rather as an intellectual representation (a Vorstellung ) of what Marx referred to as the end of pre -history.^14 Hegel's unification of the ideal and the material would then constitute a “mystified”,^15 static depiction of self-determinate praxis, as would the spectacle's own “non-inverted”^16 manifestation of Hegelian philosophy. This is not a position that Debord states explicitly, but I'll show that it can be inferred from textual evidence. It will also form the basis for some of the proposals set out in part three. Part two will then consider the theory of spectacle itself in greater detail, paying particular attention to its Marxist components, and will address its notion of alienation via Hegel's attempt to unite the universal and the particular. Having contended in part one that the Hegelian absolute becomes a figure for praxis, I'll look here at the manner in which both Marx's comments on capital and Debord's views on the spectacle indicate a disjuncture between the particular and the universal, thus implying a more 'authentic' form of collectivity. Both capital and spectacle are at times presented as 'false', alienated forms of interrelation that maintain the isolation of the particular elements that they mediate (e.g. for Debord the spectacle is a “unity ... of generalised separation”;^17 for Marx capital is a “social relation”^18 in which “men are ... related in a purely atomistic

(^13) Sartre 2003, p. (^14) “This social formation [i.e. capitalism] brings, therefore, the pre-history of human society to a close” (Marx 2000 p.426). See also volume three of Capital , where capitalism is described as “that epoch of human history that directly precedes the conscious reconstruction of human society” (Marx 1976, 15 p.182). 16 Cf. Marx 1976, p. “[T]he contemplation of the movement of the economy in the dominant thought of present day society is indeed a non-inverted legacy of the undialectical part of the Hegelian attempt to create a circular system” Debord 1995, p.51, translation altered; 2006, p.795, emphasis in the original). I will suggest that this implies there to be a dialectical aspect to Hegelian 'circularity', and that this might be 17 'inverted'. 18 Debord 1995, p.12; 2006, p. Marx 1976, p.

way”).^19 Through a detailed critique of the concept of spectacle – in which I'll discuss the manner in which Debord's theory employs Marxist concepts and categories whilst undermining their connection to the classical primacy of labour – I'll contend that Debord's account effaces the particular differences of capitalism's antagonistic social relations by subsuming them under the equally abstract universality of the alienated, occidental spectator. Having taken the Hegelian absolute as an image of praxis in part one, and having shown the degree to which the unity associated with it might be linked to forms of association in part two, part three will then consider its self-founding and self- determinate movement in relation to Debord's association of strategic and dialectical thought. I'll also show how Debord's Comments on The Society of the Spectacle can be understood in the light of the arguments presented in part one, and I'll present an interpretation of that book that highlights the importance of its remarks on the connection between historical and strategic thought. This will be shown to offer a response to the supposedly hyperreal morass that the Comments is often said to have described. However, having argued in part two that the theory of spectacle is flawed, I'll show that the model of historical agency that one can draw from it not only solves some of the theory’s apparent problems, but may also be of interest in its own right. In this regard the closing sections of the thesis will offer indications as to the manner in which this material might be developed. To sum up, the thesis will contend that:

1. The theory of spectacle should be understood through Debord's concerns with time and history.
2. The theory is inadequate as a critique of the operation of capital.
3. The ideas that found the theory may be of more interest today than the theory itself.

In demonstrating the first two claims, and in making a case for the latter, the thesis will make the following contributions to the existing corpus of work on Debord and the S.I.:

• The thesis will build on the extant literature on the subject by addressing the philosophical dimensions, influences and implications of Debord's work.

(^19) Marx 1976, p.

Introduction

Time and Subjectivity

The 125th^ thesis of The Society of the Spectacle , which opens the book's chapter on 'Time and History', begins with the following claim: “Man – that 'negative being who is to the extent that he abolishes being' – is one [ identique ] with time”. The quoted phrase (“ l'être négatif qui est uniquement de la mesure ou il supprime l'être ”) stems from Hyppolite’s translation of the Phenomenology of Spirit ,^1 and it provides us with an apposite starting point for a number of reasons. Firstly, its description of a negative, transitive and temporal subjectivity will be pursued throughout the thesis. Secondly, it illustrates the affinity between Debord's Hegelianism and aspects of existentialism: his work's occasionally fraught interrelation of those two schools of thought will be introduced below and developed throughout the thesis. Thirdly however, and most importantly for our present purposes, Debord's statement provides a means of addressing one of the most prevalent misconceptions about his work: namely, the contention that it posits a pure, a priori human essence that lies buried beneath the spectacle. Addressing this error here will serve to introduce a number of attendant themes. For Vincent Kaufmann, Debord “postulates a golden age, a humanity originally transparent to itself”.^2 There is however no such fixed human essence within Debord's work (a point also made by Jappe):^3 instead, on the reading that I'll present here, the human subject within Debord and the S.I.'s account is a changing, malleable being, engaged in a dialectical relationship with an objective world; an entity that creates and shapes itself through negating and changing the contexts in which it is located, and which is thus 'one' (or rather identique ) with time. It would seem that like Marx, Debord presents human subjectivity as historically contextual, and this means that there can be no a priori human identity: only an open capacity for free self-determination. Consequently, the supersession of the society of the spectacle cannot involve the restitution of a buried realm of authenticity. Rather, it was to inaugurate a new form of

(^1) The line can be found on p.236 of the Hyppolite translation. Thanks are due to John McHale for this

2 reference. 3 Kaufmann 2006, p. Jappe1999, p.

subjectivity in which the latter's negative, temporal movement might be self-consciously directed rather than abdicated to alienated forms of social power. This, for Debord, was to be an inherently historical form of subjectivity: a qualification that might be clarified by noting that history, in his essentially Hegelian view, was by no means solely a catalogue of events or the study of the past, but rather something to be self-consciously and pro-actively made. I'll argue throughout the thesis that communism, for the S.I., was not to be a static economic formula or a discrete social system, but rather an ongoing historical process, and as we'll also see, Debord is far closer to Marx's early texts in this regard than he is to the latter's mature work. I would thus suggest that the line quoted above, which describes the negative and temporal qualities of subjective self- determination, might usefully be placed in relation to Marx and Engels' early claim in The German Ideology that “communism” is “the real movement that abolishes [ aufhebt ] the present state of things”:^4 for time, in Debord's account, constitutes the medium in which a perpetual and collective project of change and self-determination was to be established. Thus rather than allowing the recovery of Kaufmann's lost, Arcadian past, post-spectacular society was to provide conditions in which the transitive, temporal nature of the human subject would flourish. As is perhaps already evident from these initial comments, The Society of the Spectacle is at root a book about history, or rather the creation thereof. However, and as I signalled in the preface above, this has been largely obscured by the prevalence of academic works that fixate on the theory of spectacle's links to the mass media, and which pursue its possible relevance to visual cultural concerns. The import of time and history to the theory can however be illustrated here by way of reference to Debord's own statements about The Society of the Spectacle , and by drawing attention to its three seldom-discussed chapters on time and history. In a letter containing advice and instruction on an Italian translation of his book, Debord states that its fourth chapter ('The Proletariat as Subject and Representation'), which describes the rise and fall of the workers' movement in terms of a drive towards the self-conscious creation of history, holds “the principal place” in the whole work; in the same letter, the fifth chapter ('Time and History') is said to present “historical time” as the “milieu and goal of the proletarian revolution”, whilst the sixth ('Spectacular Time') is referred to as describing “a society that refuses history”.^5 The importance of history to the book can be developed by referring once again

(^4) Marx 2000, p. (^5) Debord 2004a, p.

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deprivation of the power to freely shape one's existence; thus, whilst commodity society was tending to remedy the former problematic, through doing so it was also tending to reveal and generalise the latter. The proletariat – now considered as “all people who have no possibility of altering the social space-time that society allots to them”^11 – was not disappearing at all, but rather growing: for the expansion of capitalist wealth was also that of a desire for a 'real' wealth of self-directed time and experience (the S.I. can thus be seen to echo some of Marx's contentions in the Grundrisse^12 prior to its French translation).^13 Thus for Debord, “history itself is the spectre haunting modern society”.^14 As the S.I. developed, the avant-garde artistic and cultural concerns that characterised their early years came to be replaced by more explicitly theoretical and political positions. Nonetheless, their early concerns and interest in the construction of situations bear direct relation to these themes, for the constructed situation was intende as an experimental anticipation of the conscious control over lived experience offere by post-revolutionary society. The situation would later evolve into a more general concern with historical self-determination, but it originated as an attempt to unify art and life through the 'realisation' of the former as lived praxis; an actualisation that was deliberately modelled upon Marx's Young Hegelian concerns with the 'realisation' of philosophy. Echoing the Theses on Feuerbach , the S.I. held that where Sartre and the existentialists had “only interpreted situations”, the S.I. would “transform them”;^15 an where spectacular society constituted an historical arrest, or rather a separation from one's own history, the “Situationist attitude” would consist in “going with the flow of time.”^16 The revolutionary unification of art and life would thus inaugurate a new a re sophisticated form of historical agency. Debord and the S.I.'s concern with the construction of situations and self- constitutive action owes an obvious debt to the legacy and intellectual ambience of French existentialism, as indeed does Debord's concern with temporality. Th deny that his interest in time was perhaps more directly inflected by French

(^11) S.I. 2006, p.141; 1997, p. (^12) “For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then

13 not any longer, in any way, labour time, but rather disposable time” (Marx 1973, p.708). The Grundrisse appeared in France in two volumes in 1967 and 1968. Marx's comments on time as wealth appear towards its end, so would presumably have become available after The Society of the Spectacle 's publication. Debord did not read German (“my ignorance of German surpasses credulity [as I was] unaware [as a youth] that...I would become an internationalist and dialectician” (Debord 14 1986b)). 15 Debord 1995, p.141; 2006, p. 16 S.I. 2006 p.178; 1997, p. S.I. 2006, p.42; Debord 2006, p.

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Hegelianism's focus on Hegel's association of consciousness, time and dialectics I'll discuss at length in chapter one; nor is it to deny that related notions of self- determination and self-constitution can also be discerned in the more obvious influen of Hegel,^17 Marx,^18 Lukács^19 and Lefebvre.^20 Rather, it is to suggest that the Frenc milieu of the 1950's and 60's furthered an emphasis on those aspects of Hegel and Hegelian Marxism, and that as a result Debord effectively came to found the existenti view that “one is what one does”^21 (Heidegger) not upon phenomenology, but rather upon a model of dialectical interaction between subject and object. This brings us back to his claim that the subject is both 'negative' and 'one with time', which I quoted above: for as that subject abolishes what exists by creating itself and its world anew through its own actions, and insofar as it comes to know itself through that process, both the subject and its world – qua their continual differentiation – are cast as inherently historical. Th brings us to the sense in which a denial of self-determination – brought about through the restriction of such options and the imposition of set, predetermined experiences – would constitute not only a denial of the self, but also a separation of that self from it own lived time. It also leads us to Debord's Hegelian association of history and self- consciousness: for if one is and knows oneself through what one does, then abdicating autonomy over one's actions not only involves a divorce from one's own history, but also an absence of self-consciousness. Thus, just as Hegel wrote that “the slave knows not his essence ... and not to know himself is not to think himself,”^22 Debord held th “the more [the spectator] contemplates ... his own unthin understands his own existence and his own desires.”^23 Whilst this owes a great deal to Marx's early discussions of alienated labour, it also exhibits the influence of Lukács' History and Class Consciousness (an influence

(^17) “An individualcannot know what he is until he has made himself a reality through action” (Hegel

(^18) 149);

r nd . 20 life consists of a sort of constellation of actions and powers (capacities)” 83 p.23; 2006, p.

1977, p.240). For the young Marx, “Objective man ... [is] the outcome of man's own labour” (Marx 1988, p. “As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production” (Marx 2000, p.177; quoted in S.I. 2003, p.81; Debord 2006, p.1134). Against those who would argue for an 'Althusserian break', similar points can be found in Marx’s 'mature' work: “Labou is ... a process between man and nature ... Through this movement he acts upon external nature a 19 changes it, and in this way he simultaneously changes his own nature” (Marx 1976, p.283) “To posit oneself, to produce and reproduce oneself – that is reality” (Lukács 1971, p.15). “An individual can imagine himself to be a nebula (a cloud) of virtualities (possibilities). ... The processes of his practical 21 (Lefebvre 2008, p.112). 22 Heidegger 1962, p. 23 Hegel 2005, p.xlii Debord 1995,

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audience through the radical groups of the 1960's,^27 the S.I. came to be adopted more cultural and artistic milieu from the late 70's onwards. The exhibition of Situationist work in the late 1980's^28 laid the basis for the art-historical and visual cultural readings that would later proliferate,^29 and which fostered the assumption that Debord's 'images' and 'representations' could be read in a simplistically visual regi This lent the theory to its adoption by proponents of media studies, which in turn facilitated its connection to 'postmodern' notions of 'simulacra' and 'hyperreality'.^30 When coupled to the decidedly unfashionable status of Hegelian philosophy over the last few decades, these trends can be seen to have led to the denigration of the ide make Debord's theory fully comprehensible. In fact, Jappe's Guy Debord , which addresses Debord's Hegelian Marxism, remains the sole major work to treat the latter in detail. This thesis is undoubtedly indebted to Jappe’s text, and given the latter’s intere in Debord’s Hegelianism it’s significant to note that Debord himself described it in a letter as “the best-informed book about me”.^31 Yet whilst Jappe brings this dimension of Debord's theory to the fore, he does so largely in terms of the influence of Lukács; and whilst he certainly recognises Debord's interests in time and strategy, he does not pursu the manner in which they cohere, or how they might relate to his Hegelianism.^32 Since the publication of Jappe's book writers on Debord have at least been obliged to make reference to the latte’s Hegelianism;^33 others have addressed it more explicitly, a a ted greater detail.^34 The topic does however remain largely unexplored. As a result, Debord's own observation that “one cannot fully comprehend The

(^27) The Castoriadis-influenced Solidarity group, who remained critical of the S.I.’s departure from labour issues, were important in this respect. They were however by no means alone: Rebel Worker , having

in its second issue; the editors and others would go on to form the S.I.'s 28 oston ICA's in 1988-9 (see Black 1994 holson Smith 2004). nd Kellner 2000 and Plant 1992.

33

34

sewitz, and presents positions on Debord’s use of Hegel that are close to my own in some

expressed Situationist sentiments (such as recommending Lautréamont and Blake as “precursors of the theory and practice of total revolution” (King Mob 2000, p.8)), evolved into Heatwave , which featured Situationist material short-lived English section. The exhibition "On the Passage of a Few People Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time" toured between the Centre Georges Pompidou and the London and B 29 for commentary; see also Clark and Nic 30 e.g. Beller 2006, Crary 2001, Jay 1994 31 See for example Best a 32 Debord 2008, p. See the discussion in the introduction to the third part of this thesis. One might think here of the flurry of Debord biographies that appeared around the millennium: Hussey, for example, acknowledges that the theory's “first influence was Hegel” (Hussey 2002, p.216), and Bracken writes that “Hegel is ... central to Debord's thought” (Bracken 1997, p.83). Moinet (1977) explicitly connects the spectacle to Hegelian philosophy; Turner (1996) provides an extremely useful and admirably concise overview of Debord’s links to Korsch, Lukács and the young Marx; Grass (2000) also comments on the connection to Korsch, identifies a further correspondence with Clau respects.

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Society of the Spectacle without Marx, and especially Hegel”^35 continues to ring true. Kaufmann for example, who admits somewhat disarmingly that “the enthusiasm shown ... for Debord the theoretician^36 often leaves me ... sceptical”,^37 informs us on a page that contains no less than nine rhetorical questions (“Do we know exactly what means by spectacle? Can we know?”, etc.),^38 that Debord's most famous work is “an enigma”.^39 Yet by far the most prevalent error – as widespread as its following formulation is crude – is encapsulated by a frustrated Jean-Pierre Voyer: he “u to bed late, hoping to find an idea in Guy Debord's book”; he came to the conclusion that “there are none”; he thus contends that “when Debord pompously writes 'e hing that was directly lived has withdrawn into a representation', the prick i simply saying that we see posters of naked women pushing brands of cigarettes.”^40 Traces of this simplistic reading can be discerned throughout much of the existing literature. Beller for example is close to the mark when he tells us that the theory “is merely a reformulation in visual terms of Lukács analysis of commodity reification”,^41 but he conflates 'visual terms' with visual phenomena;^42 and just as Belle only half-grasps the spectacle's connection to the commodity, so too does Hussey fall short of its connection to alienation: he correctly notes that Debord is doing something “rather more nuanced” than “simply attack[ing] the obvious visual manifestation modern society”, but he believes this to be describing the ways in which tho unite, as in ideology, “the fragmented aspects of modern life”.^43 Dauvé is more successful, yet he too tends to identify the spectacle with fads, fashion and entertainment: “as capital tends to ... parcelize everything so as to recompose it with t help of market relations,” he writes, “it also makes of representation a specialized sec of production”; as a result, “wage-workers are ... stripped of the means of producing

36

ebord's statement does however make it clear that ion of theory from practice.

6, p.

42 o s that “the visual” for Debord is “the paramount field of capital exploitation” 217

(^35) Debord 2004a, p. Kaufmann is no doubt drawing on Debord’s claim “The petty people of the present age seem to believe that I have approached things by way of theory, that I am a builder of theory” (Debord 2003, p.147, 150; 2006, p.1350, 1353-4). The context of D 37 his target is the separat 38 Kaufmann 2006, p.xi 39 Kaufmann 2006, p. 40 Kaufmann 200 41 Voyer 1998 Beller 2006, p. This pertains to Beller's use of the notion of an 'attention economy', within which things accrue value via the attention paid to them. Beller makes extensive use of The Society of the Spectacle in relation t this model: he contend 43 (Beller 2006, p.278). Hussey 2002, p.