Podcasts Technology Astral Codex Ten Podcast Your Book Review: The Society Of The Spectacle

Your Book Review: The Society Of The Spectacle

Published: July 23, 2022, 2:36 p.m.

Finalist #11 in the Book Review Contest

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-the-society-of-the

[This is one of the finalists in the 2022 book review contest. It\u2019s not by me - it\u2019s by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done, to prevent their identity from influencing your decisions. I\u2019ll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you\u2019ve read them all, I\u2019ll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked - SA]

Introduction \xa0

\u201cThe Society of the Spectacle will make no sense if the reader feels there is nothing fundamentally wrong with contemporary society.\u201d\xa0

Guy Debord was a Marxist theorist and founding member of the Situationist International, among other things.\xa0 Like all great thinkers worth their salt, he was an embittered alcoholic who took his own life in despair. [1]

Published in 1967, The Society of the Spectacle is his magnum opus and lasting legacy. It unfolds in staccato bursts, almost like a book of aphorisms.\xa0 The writing is pithy and poetic, albeit with the occasional lapse into the meandering, circular prose so typical of critical theory.\xa0 This makes it extremely readable, particularly for a work of political philosophy.\xa0 One downside of his style is that he tends to state his points in just-so fashion. We\u2019ll have to do some of the legwork for him to flesh things out.

Strap in, boys - we\u2019ve got a bumpy road ahead of us.