The Situationist International: Forty Years On

Lepper, John

doi:10.1080/08854300.2011.647415

Cited by 2 publications

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“…However, Boyle and Haggerty (2009, 262) tend to focus on the visual and theatrical aspects of mega-event governance and the convergence of state and business interests in using mass media to display an "appearance of absolute security". As with much of the secondary literature on Debord, and the Situationist International more generally, this focus on the visual and media downplays the radical and Marxist content of his work: his core concepts of reification and the commodity are ignored, and so too is the demand for self-management and the transformation of everyday life (see Leeper 2012). For Debord (1994, 12), spectacle is not "a collection of images but rather a social relationship between people that is mediated through image".…”

Section: Security Privacy and Pacificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socialist Studies, Volume 9, Number 2 (Full Issue)

Studies¹

2013

SS/ES

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Section: Security Privacy and Pacificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socialist Studies, Volume 9, Number 2 (Full Issue)

Studies¹

2013

SS/ES

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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‘Clearly Blown Away by the End of the Morning’s Drama’: Spectacle, Pacification and the 2010 World Cup, South Africa

McMichael¹

2013

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The massive security assemblages surrounding major sporting events and political summits embody two layers of spectacle. On the one hand, security operations are central to the governance of entertainment and media imagery. Simultaneously these security measures are profoundly theatrical and calibrated for the maximum visual impact: the spectacle of security itself. Some critical thinkers have described this dual spectacle as indicative of a contemporary state-corporate obsession with image and perception management, an obsession which detracts from ‘valid’ security concerns. By contrast I argue that spectacle and theatricality are in fact highly functional components of the pacification projects of state and capital. With reference to Guy Debord’s conception of ‘spectacle’, this article highlights how mega-events reveal, in highly dramatised form, the logic of pacification. Using the 2010 FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) soccer World Cup as a case study, the article demonstrates how police and military power are mobilised to secure accumulation, to enforce social control and to extend the power and arsenal of the state security apparatus. What is truly spectacular about mega-event security is not just the incorporation of media templates into the working of state forces. Rather, the rhetoric and concept of security itself becomes a form of spectacular power as it serves to both obscure and justify how mega-events are ultimately projects of class power.

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The Situationist International: Forty Years On

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Socialist Studies, Volume 9, Number 2 (Full Issue)

Socialist Studies, Volume 9, Number 2 (Full Issue)

‘Clearly Blown Away by the End of the Morning’s Drama’: Spectacle, Pacification and the 2010 World Cup, South Africa

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