Spider

Spider (pronounced spahy-der)

(1) Any predatory silk-producing arachnid of the order Araneae, having four pairs of legs and a rounded un-segmented body consisting of abdomen and cephalothorax, most of which spin webs that serve as nests and as traps for prey.

(2) In non technical use, any of various other arachnids resembling or suggesting these.

(3) A cast-iron frying pan with three legs or feet once common in open-hearth cookery (now rare and applied more loosely; still used by chefs).

(4) A trivet or tripod, as for supporting a pot or pan on a hearth.

(5) In digital technology. digitally to survey websites, following and cataloging their links in order to index web pages for a search engine.

(6) In engineering, a skeleton or frame with radiating arms or members, often connected by crosspieces, such as a casting forming the hub and spokes to which the rim of a fly wheel or large gear is bolted; the body of a piston head; a frame for strengthening a core or mould for a casting.

(7) In agriculture, an instrument used with a cultivator to pulverize soil.

(8) Any implement, tool or other device which is some (even if vague) was resembles or is suggestive of a spider (sometimes as spider-like or spideresque).

(9) In nautical use, a metal frame fitted at the base of a mast to which halyards are tied when not in use.

(10) A drink made by mixing ice-cream and a soda (a fizzy drink such as lemonade) (mostly Australia & New Zealand).

(11) An alcoholic drink made with brandy and lemonade or ginger beer (mostly Australia & New Zealand and probably extinct although it still appears in some anthologies of cocktails).

(12) In slang, a person spindly in appearance (dated); also a popular nickname for those with the surname Webb.

(13) In slang, a man who persistently approaches or accosts a woman in a public social setting, particularly in a bar (also as bar spider).

(14) In snooker & billiards, a stick with a convex arch-shaped notched head used to support the cue when the cue ball is out of reach at normal extension; a bridge.

(15) In bicycle design, the part of a crank to which the chain-rings are attached.

(16) In drug slang, one of the many terms for heroin (an allusion to the web-like patterns on the arms of addicts into which the needle is poked).

(17) In music, part of a resonator instrument that transmits string vibrations from the bridge to a resonator cone at multiple points.

(18) In fly fishing, a soft-hackle fly (mostly southern England).

(19) In the sport of darts, the network of wires separating the areas of a dartboard.

(20) In mathematics, a type of graph or tree.

(21) In passenger transport, a early type of light phaeton (obsolete) and latterly a descriptor for a roadster (also as spyder).

(22) In photography and film-making, a support for a camera tripod, preventing it from sliding.

1380s: From the Middle English spydyr, spydyr & spither (the forms from mid-century were spiþre, spiþur & spiþer), from the Old English spīþra & spīthra (spider), from the Proto-West Germanic spinþrijō, from the Proto-Germanic spinnaną & spin-thon (“to spin”).  The Old English forms were akin to spinnan (to spin) and cognate with the Danish spinder (literally “spinner”) and the German Spinne and (mostly) displaced attercop (spider, unpleasant person) which was relegated to a dialectal term.  The root of the European form was the primitive Indo-European spen & pen (to draw, stretch, spin) + the formative or agential -thro.  The connection with the root is more transparent in other Germanic cognates such as the Middle Low German, Middle Dutch, Middle High German & German spinne and the Dutch spin (spider).  The loss of -n- before spirants is familiar in Old English (such as goose or tooth).  Spider is a noun, spidery and spideresque are adjectives, spidering is a verb and spidered is a verb & adjective; the noun plural is spiders.

Lindsay Lohan with Spiderman and spideresque offspring, Harper’s Bazaar photo shoot, Los Angeles, 2007.

Despite the ancient lineage, in the Old & Middle English there were more common words used when speaking of arachnids including lobbe (or loppe as Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1344-1400) would have it), atorcoppe (the Middle English attercop translates literally as “poison-head”), and (from the Latin aranea), renge.  Middle English also had araine (spider) which was picked up, via the Old French from the Latin word with the same spelling and, more poetically, in the Old English there was gangewifre (a weaver as he goes).  In literature, the spider was often a figure of cunning, skill, and industry as well as venomous predation.  In the seventeenth century, the spider figuratively represented venomousness and thread-spinning but also sensitivity to vibrations and the habit of solitary lurking, waiting for prey to fall into the web; quintessentially, the spider was an independent character.  The two-pack game of solitaire (patience) called spider dates from 1890 (still available in software), the choice of name thought owed to the resemblance of the layout of the decks in the original form of the game.  In zoology, the spider crab was first identified in 1710 (an applied to various species) while the spider monkey, so called for its long limbs, dates from is from 1764.  The noun spider-web in the 1640s replaced the more cumbersome spider's web from a century-odd earlier and the adjective spidery (long and thin) was first noted in 1823.

The Exorcist’s “spider walk” scene.

Based on the William Peter Blatty (1928-2017) novel The Exorcist (1971), the film version (1973) was directed by William Friedkin (1935-2023) and that it did not win the Best Picture Academy Award is a mystery explained only by the prejudices held at the time by those members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who cast ballots for The Sting (1973) a well-made but formulaic piece and hardly the a landmark like The Exorcist.  The “spider walk” scene was long the subject of speculation.  Not included in the original theatrical release, the director for years claimed it had never been shot and it was only when copies of the takes were found in the archives he admitted it had been done but that it couldn’t be used because the technology didn’t at the time exist to edit out the wires attached to a rail above which made the performance possible.  Subsequently, it was revealed the scene had been shot without use of the harness designed for the purpose because it was performed by an experienced stunt double with gymnastic training.  Apparently the director didn’t include it because he thought it appeared too early and disrupted the sequence which is interesting because structurally, The Exorcist is far from perfect.  The spider walk scene was included in the “director’s cut” editions released the next century.

Little Miss Muffet in Hell (left) and with MWC's (Motor Wheel Corporation) Spyder wheel (right).  Because the use by European manufacturers lent the spelling "spyder with a y" a tinge of the exotic, it was used in US commerce, MWC of Lansing Michigan dubbing one of their "jellybean style" wheels thus.  The wheel, produced in the early 1970s, used the then popular technique of combining a styled aluminun center with a chromed steel rim.  MWC's wheels were highly regarded for quality and the Spyder was produced for use with disc or drum brakes.  Note the latter day Little Miss Muffet's strategic positioning of the tip of the tongue. 

The 1550s noun tuffet (little tuft) was from the Old French touffel (the diminutive suffix -et replacing the French -el) which was a diminutive of touffe.  In English the word is obsolete except for the use in the nursery rhyme Little Miss Muffet which seems first to have appeared in print in 1805 although it (and variations) may have been circulating much earlier.  Etymologists believe Little Miss Muffet’s tuffet was a grassy hillock or a small knoll in the ground (a variant spelling of an obsolete meaning of tuft).  The latter-day use to refer to a hassock or footstool is an example of how (usually obscure) words can acquire meanings if erroneous definitions are often repeated and come to serve some purpose.  Tuffet for example became a favorite of antique dealers who are apt to call both footstools and low seats “tuffets”, a handy practice perhaps when provenance is doubtful.

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
There came a big spider,
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

Those whose fear of spiders (and other arachnids, such as scorpions and ticks) is so severe as to adversely affect normal life are said to be arachnophobic.  Although one of the most commonly described anxiety disorders, in the current edition (DSM-5-TR) of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), arachnophobia is not a diagnostic category but is classified as a sub-type of Specific Phobia, Animal Type, a clinical diagnosis typically described as “Specific Phobia, Animal Type (spiders)”.  The DSM’s criteria for a specific phobia include (1) marked fear or anxiety about a specific object or situation, (2) immediate fear response on exposure, (3) active avoidance or intense distress, (4) fear disproportionate to the actual danger, (5) persistence (typically 6+ months) and (6) and clinically significant impairment or distress.  So, one who merely is not fond of spiders would not meet the DSM’s criteria; the fear must be severe enough to impair functioning or cause substantial distress over at least six months.  The irony is that as well as most spiders being small, non-venomous and not at all anxious to attack humans, co-existing with them and their webs in most cases will improve quality of life by culling the insect population.  For those not convinced, arachnophobia can be treated by a number of therapies including (1) systematic desensitization (a gradual exposure to the source of the distress), (2) the adoption of “calming techniques” which can lower the distress response and (3) CBT (cognitive behaviour therapy), a structured, goal-oriented form of psychotherapy focusing on identifying and changing negative or dysfunctional thought patterns and behaviours.  The estimates vary but all research indicates well under 10% of the global population suffer arachnophobia to the extent a clinician would diagnose with women being significantly more affected.

Spider Phaeton, circa 1875, US.

There are cars called spider and spyder although, unlike many other natural or engineered creations which in some way resemble arachnids, these cars are almost always small roadsters which in appearance don’t look anything like their eight-legged namesakes.  The origin of the name lies in the horse & buggy era when a spider phaeton was a lightweight horse-drawn carriage intended for short-distance journeys and the design was intended to impress so there was often little protection from the elements beyond perhaps something to shade ladies from the sun.  Unlike some true “convertible” or “cabriolet” carriages, there were no side windows and the spider name was gained from the “spider”, a small single seat or bench for the use of a groom or footman, the name based on the spindly supports which called to mind an arachnid’s legs.  Quite where this style of coachwork was first seen isn’t known but they were certainly in use on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1860s and it’s not impossible the invention was both simultaneous and independent although there are sources which insist it was first seen in the ante-bellum US.  Historians of early transportation note also the similarity of the small seat with the "jump seat" and the later "rumble" or dicky (also as dickie or dickey) seats.

1931 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Spider Monza.

As engines (steam, electric and predominately internal combustion) made possible horseless carriages, in the earliest days the body-styles were carried over as were the designations which is why berlinas, cabriolets and phaetons appeared in the catalogues of the early automotive coach-builders.  However, the spider nomenclature seems to have for decades been forgotten, because although the ancillary seats still existed, the terms “dicky”, “rumble” and “jump” came to be preferred, each with its own etymological tale.  The revival of the name had to await the interwar years, Alfa Romeo in 1931 introducing the 8C, powered by 2.3, 2.6 & 2.9 litre stright-8s, the line continuing until 1939.  Many were touring cars but the Spider version was a sports car built for road and track, and 8C 2300 Spiders won the 1931 & 1932 Targa Florio road-race in Sicily and it was victory in the 1931 Italian Grand Prix which the factory honored with the "Monza", the GP car a shortened, lightweight version of the Spider.

1961 Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spyder, one of the few times the factory preferred Spyder to Spider.  To date, Ferrari's only Spyders have bee the 250 GT California (1957–1963), the 365 California (1966) and the 365 GTS/4 (Daytona, 1971–1973).  Other than those, its been Spiders or Cabriolets all the way.

Encouraged by the image Alfa-Romeo gained from the illustrious 8C Spiders, a few other cars emerged from Europe in the 1930s but it was in the post-war years the name became really fashionable, the economic boom and the availability of chassis suitable to carry the imagination of carrozzerias meant there was a concurrence of supply and demand for stylish roadsters, many of which carried the magic of the spider name.  Seemingly more glamorous still must have been “Spyder” because it was in the 1950s that roadsters called Spyder began to appear.  Quite why the “y” sometimes was preferred to the “i” has over the years attracted comment and speculation but the reason for the adoption remain obscure.  The idea it was to avoid legal action from Alfa-Romeo was soon discounted because, spider being a historic generic from coach-building (like sedan, limousine, cabriolet etc), it couldn’t be trade-marked or otherwise protected and Alfa-Romeo seems anyway never to have tried.  There was however a quasi-legal status granted to the spelling “spider” because in 1924, the (the apparently now forgotten) Milan-based National Federation of Body makers declared that was how it should be written, the speculation being that Il Duce (Benito Mussolini, 1883-1945; Duce (Leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943) wanted to make everything as Italian as possible and, there being no "y" in the alphabet, spider it was.  Of whether such matters much occupied the fascist mind, there seems no documentation and it does seem dubious; X, Y, W, J not appearing in the Italian alphabet either although many words in the languages include them.

1964 Chevrolet Corvair Monza Spyder Coupe.  Although it looks frumpy compared with the most accomplished re-styling of 1965, the original Corvair (1990-1965) was a modernist take on the US design language of the late 1950s and was restrained compared with some of what came off the drawing boards in the era.

In 1962 Chevrolet chose “Spyder” as the name for the high-performance version of the rear-engined Corvair, introduced in 1960 as a compact car with an emphasis on economy of operation with no pretentions of sportiness (although drivers would soon discover the sometimes quirky handling characteristics could make the things feel rather like certain racing cars).  Adopting the name for the turbocharged Spyder made sense because GM (General Motors) had from the state positioned the Corvair as a more “European” type of car although the irony was it made its debut at a time when across the Atlantic many manufacturers were for their next generation of mass-market machines pondering a switch from RE-RWD (rear engine-rear wheel drive) to FE-FWD (front engine, front wheel drive).  In the way Detroit was rather loose in the handling of nomenclature, the “Spider” package was available for the Monza versions both as a coupe and convertible; notably, it made the Corvair only the second passenger vehicle in series production to have been fitted with a turbo-charger, Oldsmobile F-85 Turbo Jetfire having been released a few months earlier.  The Oldsmobile venture was brief because the early implementation of the technology demanded rather more of drivers than US buyers had become accustomed to giving and anyway, despite the specification (turbocharged, all aluminium, 215 cubic inch (3.5 litre) V8) sounding tempting, on the road it was less than exciting and GM soon abandoned the engine (whether with forced aspiration or not).  The corporation came to regret that decision because the light, compact V8 would have proved a useful augmentation to their ranges in the troubled decades to follow.  As it was, in 1965 it sold the rights and tooling to Rover and the V8 would until 2006 provide stellar service to the UK industry.  Chevrolet in 1965 retired the “Spyder” name from the Corvair and replaced it with “Corsa”.

1965 Chevrolet Corvair Corsa Coupe (left) and 1967 Chevrolet Corvair 500 Sport Sedan (right).  The almost Italianesque lines of the second generation Corvair (1965-1967) were as fine as anything from Detroit in the 1960s but the damage to the car's reputation was done.  The four-door version was notable for being the only compact four-door hardtop the industry produced and uniquely, there was no companion model with a B-pillar. 

As an evocative name for a car, the Latin corsa (from the Ancient Greek κόρση (kórsē) (variously (1) in building, the uprights on the gate of a temple, (2) in anatomy the sides of the forehead (ie the temples) or (3) the hair on the temples)) wasn't encouraging as a noun because it meant “the outer strip in the molding about a door (a girder)”.  However, the Latin adjective corsa could (in the feminine) be used to mean “a Corsican” or “of or relating to Corsica” and that obviously was very European.  To emphasise that, “Corsa” exists in a number of Romance languages including Asturian, Catalan, French, Galician, Italian, Latin, Portuguese & Spanish.  There is nothing to suggest there was in the mid-1960s and market resistance to the name “Spyder”, the switch to “Corsa” made just to create the aura of “newness” at the time so important.  In 1965 that was a quality especially important for the second generation Corvair, the reputation of which (rightly) had suffered after the publication of Ralph Nader’s (b 1934) Unsafe at Any Speed (1965) which was a devastating critique on the safety standards of US-made automobiles, the dubiously implemented swing-axles on the very early Corvairs the emblematic case study.  Ironically, as well as being one of the loveliest designs of the era, the revised Corvair greatly was improved but by them the damage was terminal and the project doomed, the model lingering until 1969 only because GM didn’t wish it thought Nader had claimed a scalp.

Advertising was different in the 1970s.

MWC may not have wanted customers to associate its Spyder with the then recently cancelled Corvair but may have been encouraged by FoMoCo (Ford Motor Company) which as early as 1958 had borrowed the French spelling Galaxie for the top-trim option for its then full-sized Fairlane, the company in 1966 adding the 7 Litre option to the range.  Even then liters were not unknown in US English (especially among scientists and engineers) but they tended not to use the French spelling (although Pontiac used it to emphasize the distinctly "European" flavor of its short-lived (1966-1969) OHC (overhead camshaft) straight-six).  FoMoCo's marketing staff wouldn’t have deluded themselves by imagining use of “litre” would suggest to buyers there was anything remotely “French” about the Galaxie's biggest engine option (by 1966, French cars certainly weren’t built with 7 litre V8 engines) but it avoided a linguistic clash with Galaxie and anyway such things were then anyway part of the zeitgeist of commerce.  Then as now, New York City was no more representative of life in the US than were things south of the Mason-Dixon Line but cars were named for the whole country and just as wild creatures (cougar, mustang, barracuda etc) suited some segments, “Galaxie” in 1958 had been chosen because, post-Sputnik, it was the dawn of the “space age” with rockets and satellites suddenly part of the cultural milieu.  So it was a deliberate exercise in branding and not a linguistic accident, just as litre appealed because more than any other European nation, France was thought redolent with connotations of modernity and sophistication, making "Galaxie 7 Litre" a happy combination.

1971 Ford LTD Convertible with MWC's Spyder wheels.  The proliferation of smaller ranges (the pony cars and intermediates) meant the demise of the "sporty" versions of the full-size lines; among the Fords, the last big block V8 / 4-speed manual transmission combo was built in 1969 and the last LTD convertible would appear in 1972. 

A 1971 LTD is an improbable resting place for a set of MWC Spyders which presumably enjoyed an earlier life on another vehicle or perhaps several, certainly they were never a FoMoCo factory option.  The LTD began in 1965 as just another option for the Galaxie; it was a "luxury package" (ie letting the Galaxie fulfil the role for which in 1939 Mercury had been created).  Although in the 1930s & 1940s there had been various "Deluxe" & "Super Deluxe" Fords, it was when the Edsel venture played out over two and a bit seasons (1958-1960) that the real intra-corporate cannibalization began with Ford in the 1960s increasingly trespassing on what in marketing theory should have been Mercury's fenced-off turf.  Even when Mercury stumbled on its one bona fide hit (the 1967 Cougar), it wasn't long before there was a Ford emulating it and, to add insult to injury, at a lower cost.  Mercury did well to last until 2011 when FoMoCo grasped the excuse of the GFC (global financial crisis, 2008-2012) to shutter the brand.

The alpha-numeric juxtaposition also simplified the administration of the badgework because in 1966 & 1967, FoMoCo actually offered two very different versions of their 7 litre FE V8, the 427 (a famously powerful & robust beast with a stellar reputation on the circuits which was expensive, noisy, prone to being cantankerous and an oil burner) or the 428 (mild-mannered, smooth, quiet, cheap to build and offering prodigious low-speed torque), the choice at the dealership just a tick on the box for those with the cash of credit rating to afford the 427.  The market spoke, the sales breakdown between the 427/428 in 1966/1967 being 11035/38 and 1056/12.  So the 427 was retired from the full-sized line for 1968, a run 350-odd of a curious version with hydraulic valve lifters (intended originally for the Mustang) used in the Mercury Cougar, coupled exclusively to an automatic gearbox; for the 1968 Cougars, Ford decided there were just 427s & 428s and didn't bother with litres or liters.  Strangely, by then, the corporation would have had an excuse to stick with the French because in 1968 FoMoCo had three different 7 litre V8s in the showrooms, the 427 & 428 from the FE family and the 429 from the 385 series.  Fortunately, another 7 litre (the 430 from the MEL family) had been retired in 1966 after being enlarged to 462 cubic inches (7.5 litres).            

1955 Lancia Aurelia B24S Spider.

In Italy, the naming trend really took off in 1954 when Lancia introduced the B24 Aurelia Spider and soon Ferrari and other from Italy would follow although spyders would appear too, (including some from Ferrari & Lancia), and General Motors (GM), noted scavengers of European nomenclature (GTO, Grand Prix etc) shamelessly tacked Spyder onto the doomed Corvair, even for versions with a fixed roof.  North of the Brenner Pass, spyder has found favour, used by Porsche, Audi and BMW while in the Far-East, companies like Toyota and Mitsubishi, arch-imitators in style and perfectionists in execution have rolled out their own spyders.  Alfa-Romeo and Fiat however have stuck to spider, Lancia and Ferrari too seeming to have forsaken their youthful indiscretions and only using the original.

1967 Alfa Romeo 1600 Spider Duetto.

Although in continuous production between 1966-1993, it was only during the first three years the bodywork featured the memorable Osso di Seppia (Round-tail, literally "cuttle fish") coachwork.  After 1970, the Spider gained a Kamm-tail which increased luggage capacity and apparently also conferred some aerodynamic advantage but purists have always coveted the cigar-shaped original, despite it violating a few rules in the design handbook.  The Duetto name was the winning entry in a competition Alfa Romeo in 1965 conducted and in those days that meant running advertisements in newspapers (which people actually paid for and read) to which readers responded by cutting out and filling in the coupon, writing in their suggestion, putting it in an envelope on which they wrote the address, buying and affixing a stamp and putting envelope in mailbox.  Then, entering a competition took effort and commitment.  The company's directors liked "Duetto" because it summed up the romantic essence of a machine definitely built for a couple but unfortunately, for some legal reason relating to an existing trademark, it couldn't officially be used but for decades, among the cognoscenti,  the little roadsters have always been called Duettos.  To keep the tiresome lawyers at bay, when released at the Geneva Motor Show in March 1966, the car was released as the Spider 1600.

1980 (left) and 1978 (right) Lancia Beta Zagato Spiders.

Whatever its dynamic qualities, the Lancia Beta (1972–1984) tends to be remembered only for its extraordinary predilection for rusting, vying with the early Alfa Romeo Alfasuds (1971-1989) for the title of “most susceptible”.  The coupé (1973-1984) and shooting brake (1975-1984 and named HPE (High-performance Estate)) appear less affected by body-rot but the tainted reputation has meant these models have never attained the desirability of earlier Lancias like the exquisite Fulvia (1963-1976).  Tellingly, although convertibles tend in the collector market to attract a premium, not even the Beta Zagato Spider enjoys much of a following despite almost 10,000 having been produced in an era when new convertibles were becoming a rarity.  The Zagato Spider was more of a targa than a true convertible but was a clever design with both a removable targa-top atop the front seats and a folding rear-section, al la the early Porsche “soft window” Targas of the late 1960s.  The coach-building and design house Zagato has operated in Italy since 1919 and although there have been some nice creations, the operation has often been associated with the angular and the quirky, some designs simply weird.  Despite that, more than a century on, Zagato remains while others responsible for many sensuous shapes have come and gone. 

Robert the Bruce, colored engraving by an unknown artist (1797).

Robert I (Robert the Bruce, 1274–1329; King of Scots 1306-1329) was crowned King of Scots in 1306 and led Scotland to victory in the First War of Scottish Independence against the English.  Earlier though, he’d had his defeats and his spirits were said to be at a low ebb when after one disastrous battle, he was forced to take refuge in a cave.  Sitting in the cold, dark space, he noticed a small spider attempting to weave a web and time and time again, the little creature failed.  However, each time the spider fell, it climbed back up to try again until finally, the silk took hold and the web was spun.  From this, Robert was inspired to return to the fight and was victorious in the Battle of Bannockburn (1314), a triumph which turned the tide of the war and ultimately, in 1328. the independence of Scotland was won.

Bruce and the spider, by Bernard Barton (1784-1849)

FOR Scotland's and for freedom's right
The Bruce his part has played;--
In five successive fields of fight
Been conquered and dismayed:
Once more against the English host
His band he led, and once more lost
The meed for which he fought;
And now from battle, faint and worn,
The homeless fugitive, forlorn,
A hut's lone shelter sought.
 
And cheerless was that resting-place
For him who claimed a throne;--
His canopy, devoid of grace,
The rude, rough beams alone;
The heather couch his only bed--
Yet well I ween had slumber fled
From couch of eider down!
Through darksome night till dawn of day,
Absorbed in wakeful thought he lay
Of Scotland and her crown.
 
The sun rose brightly, and its gleam
Fell on that hapless bed,
And tinged with light each shapeless beam
Which roofed the lowly shed;
When, looking up with wistful eye,
The Bruce beheld a spider try
His filmy thread to fling
From beam to beam of that rude cot--
And well the insect's toilsome lot
Taught Scotland's future king.
 
Six times the gossamery thread
The wary spider threw;--
In vain the filmy line was sped,
For powerless or untrue
Each aim appeared, and back recoiled
The patient insect, six times foiled,
And yet unconquered still;
And soon the Bruce, with eager eye,
Saw him prepare once more to try
His courage, strength, and skill.
One effort more, his seventh and last!--
The hero hailed the sign!--
And on the wished-for beam hung fast
That slender silken line!
Slight as it was, his spirit caught
The more than omen; for his thought
The lesson well could trace,
Which even "he who runs may read,"
That Perseverance gains its meed,
And Patience wins the race.

Situationism

Situationism (pronounced sich-oo-ey-shuh-niz-uhm)

(1) A fork of Marxist political philosophy, a collection of (often abstract) theories used to build critiques of existing structures.  The overt political project emerged from the merging of a number of politically-minded, mid-twentieth century avant-garde art movement.  

(2) A theory in psychology which holds that personality and behavior is influenced more by external, situational factors than internal traits or motivations.

1955: A compound word: situation + ism.  Situation was from the early fifteenth century Middle English situacioun & situacion (place, position, or location), from Middle French situation, from the Old French situacion, from the Medieval Latin situationem (nominative situatio) (position, situation), the construct being situare (to locate, to place), from situs (a site, a position), thus situate +‎ -ion.  The Latin situs was from the primitive Indo-European root tkei (to settle, dwell, be home).  The meaning "state of affairs" was from 1710, extended specifically by 1803 to mean "a post of employment".  The suffix -ion was from the Middle English -ioun, from the the Old French -ion, from the Latin -iō (genitive -iōnis).  It was appended to a perfect passive participle to form a noun of action or process, or the result of an action or process.  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  The use in political philosophy technically dates from 1955 (as situation ethics) although its origins can be traced to (at least) the nineteenth-century beginnings of sociology.  It was first seen in applied psychology in 1968 (as situational ethics) with publication of a monograph by Walter Mischel (1930-2018) who in later writings displayed some ambivalence.  Situationism is a noun, situationist is a noun & adjective and situationally is an adverb; the noun plural is situationisms.

The Internationale Situationiste (Situationist International)

Formed in 1957, dissolved in 1972 and eventually more a concept than a movement, the Situationist International (SI) was a trans-European collective of avant-garde artists and political radicals envisaged as a fusion of art & revolutionary activism; although originally a loose structure, it was later noted for its rigidity and its core critique was of modern consumer society, particularly under advanced capitalism. Influenced by criticism that philosophy had tended increasingly to fail at the moment of its actualization, the SI, although it assumed the inevitability of social revolution, always maintained many (cross-cutting) strands of expectations of the form(s) this might take but, just as a world-revolution did not follow the Russian upheavals of 1917, the events of May, 1968 failed to realize the predicted implications; the SI can be said then to have died with the discursive output between 1968-1972 treated either as a lifeless aftermath to an anti-climax or a bunch of bitter intellectuals serving as mourners at their own protracted funeral.

SI art: The Change (1957), paint on hardwood by Ralph Rumney (1934-2002).

The SI’s origins were in the north-western Italian town Cosio di Arroscia where, during a conference, several experimental art movements resolved to merge, the most prominent being (1) the Lettrist International, (2) the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus and (3) the London Psychogeographical Association.  Tellingly, although many original members were focused on the imagery of art, the most influential figure was the French theorist Guy Debord (1931-1994) who had in left-wing circles become fashionable after the publication of a number of essays in which he argued modern capitalist societies had become dominated by what he called “spectacle”.  That was the thesis he most fully explored in his most famous work, The Society of the Spectacle (1967) which asserted: (1) social life had become mediated by images, media & commodities, (2) real human relations were being replaced by a passive consumption of representations and (3) individuals increasingly experienced life as spectators rather than participants.  What all this meant was Western society had become a system where appearance (depictions of a “construct of reality” which were simulacrums) had replaced lived experience.

SI Agitprop.

Despite the political slant, when formed, the SI certainly retained an identity as something artistic and although membership was erratic with factional alignments constantly shifting, there always was a strain which valued the art for its intrinsic qualities at least as much as for any utility as propaganda pieces; indeed, it was the notion of art abstracted from some purpose which was the SI's constant fault-line.  Those most influential in the early days of the SI had been much affected by the physical damage suffered by so many European cities during World War II (1939-1945) and especially the possibilities offered by re-building, thus the interest in concepts like unitary urbanism and psychogeography, essentially a response to the sociological aspects of the re-construction of those cities in the immediate post-war period.

SI propaganda: The Situationist Times 6: International Parisian Edition, Paris, December 1967.

The Situationist Times was an international, English-language periodical created and edited by Dutch artist Jacqueline de Jong (1939–2024), six issues published between 1962-1967.  Envisaged as a radical compendium encompassing Situationist tactics such as détournement and a printed form of dérive, the journals included essays, artwork, “found” images, and fragments of works concerned with such issues as topology, politics, and spectacle culture.  In the anarchist sprit of the collective, Ms De Jong insisted the periodical must be a “completely free magazine, based on the most creative of the Situationist ideas” and what appears on the pages does over the years show traces of the political and aesthetic schisms which would characterize the SI.  As well as the SI’s usual suspects, contributors included the English astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) who (inadvertently) coined the term “big bang” and the French writer Noël Arnaud (pen name of Raymond Valentin Muller (1919- 2003) of the school of pataphysics (one of the late nineteenth century’s more curious alternatives to orthodox science which may (as QAnon seems to have) begun as a joke but took on a life because it so appealed to people who “wanted it to be true”).  With the failures of the Parisian revolutionaries in 1968, SI’s historic moment passed and the seventh edition of The Situationist Times, (The Pinball Issue) remained incomplete and was not published although extracts of the content have appeared.

SI Art: Untitled (Peinture collective situationniste) (1961).

As was done with the SI's “pieces by the collective”, Guy Debord and Jeppesen Victor Martin (1930–1993) signed along with eight other artists; within two years all except Debord and Martin had been expelled so in that sense, no work better illustrates the creative tensions which rent the SI.  Those “cancelled” in some cases regarded their erasure from the SI rolls as a badge of honor and Debord couldn't have them burned at the stake or taken outside and shot (which had over the years been the fate of a few artists who displeased a dictator) so there was that.  

Prior to the formation of the SI, some of what had been written about the form the physical reconstruction of post-war Europe should take had attracted interest from political theorists, especially those in anti-authoritarian Marxist circles who would come to position themselves as the inheritors of western political liberalism, notably the Lettrist International (formed in 1952).  In the way the European left did things in the early post-war years, the SI was conceived as an even more radical collective movement which wholly would renounce any connection with high-art and deal instead with the functional business of psychogeography, dissolving rather than exploring the boundaries between life and art.  However, whatever might have been the purity of the founders' intentions, because what the SI produced was eye-catchingly visual, it attracted practitioners in many fields of art and an audience which enjoyed the supposedly subversive pieces as just another spectacle.  That was tribute to the striking posters but wasn’t something which best pleased the uncompromising activists who viewed art merely as something with a revolutionary political purpose; factions formed and any commonality of interest between the utilitarians and the artists proved insufficiently strong to maintain the SI as a unified movement.  From formation to extinction, inherently it was fissiparous although, while members could be kicked out of the SI, it didn't mean their work ceased and the Scandinavian Drakabygget group (noted for the memorably titled Journal for art against atomic bombs, popes and politicians) essentially ignored their expulsion and continued to exhibit and publish in the Situationists vein.

SI art: Industrial Painting (1958), monoprinted oil paint, acrylic paint & typographic ink on canvas by Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio (1902–1964).

Unrolled from a wooden spool and extending just over 75 metres (246 feet) Industrial Painting was one of a series of abstract works Pinot-Gallizio painted in this mode.  Unspooling in a swirl of blotches of colors, the idea was to recall the vibrancy of figures moving along a city’s streets and a deliberate limitation of the design was only some 9 metres (30 feet) could be displayed at one time, the idea being to emulate a journey in which much of what’s just been seen fades or vanishes from memory as the traveller proceeds along their path.  In an indication of the way the SI worked in an industrial age, Pinot-Gallizio made these works on his “painting machine” which he built with mechanical rollers attached to a long table.  What emerged was, in contrast to most of what came from “conveyor-belt” mass production, chaotic and wholly unique.

Modern situationist; modern spectacle: French content creator & author Léna Situations (Léna Mahfouf, b 1997), in Georges Hobeika (b 1962) black gown with inverted V-neckline (technically a wedge), Academy Awards ceremony, Los Angeles, March 2026.

Ms Mahfouf uses “Léna Situations” as an online pseudonym because that was the name of the fashion & lifestyle-focused blog she, as a teen-ager, created in 2012; it gained her a “brand identity” and was thus for some purposes retained in adulthood.  The blog would have seemed familiar to the members of the SI because her concept was sharing fragments of her life in different “situations” which might be defined by the place, the outfit worn or what was being experienced so was thus a series of spectacles, able to be understood as fragmentary relics of time & place or a series of narratives.  Using that model, platforms like Instagram have allowed just about everybody to become a situationist and while Debord didn’t live to see such things, he’d have recognized (if not approved) “social lives mediated by images, media & commodities”.

Charli XCX (stage-name of English singer-songwriter Charlotte Emma Aitchison (b 1992)) in a Christopher John Rogers (b 1993) white fit & flare dress with ruffled peplum, featuring a more conventional implementation of the V-neckline.

Ms Mahfouf's retention of a youthful online pseudonym is not unique, Charli XCX another example.  The star herself revealed the stage name is pronounced chahr-lee ex-cee-ex; it has no connection with Roman numerals and XCX is anyway not a standard Roman number.  XC is “90” (C minus X (100-10)) and CX is “110” (C plus X (100 +10)) but, should the need arise, XCX could be used as a code for “100”, on the model of something like the “May 35th” reference Chinese internet users, when speaking of the “Tiananmen Square Incident” of 4 June 1989, adopted in an attempt to circumvent the CCP's (Chinese Communist Party) “Great Firewall of China” censorship apparatus.  In 2015, Ms XCX revealed the text string was an element in her MSN screen name (CharliXCX92) when young (it stood for “kiss Charli kiss”) and, after appearing in the early publicity for her music, it gained critical mass so Charli XCX we still have.

SI art: Lettre à mon fils (Letter to my son, 1956-1957), oil on canvas by Asger Jorn (1914-1973).

What quickly coalesced as the core of situationist theory was the concept of the spectacle, an explanation of the mechanism of advanced capitalism’s modern tendency towards expression and mediation of social relations through objects and for structuralists it was a compelling model.  It was beyond a critique of materialism and might have been more effective had the SI been able to resist using the increasingly layered and complex language of the mid-twentieth century Marxist discourse, a sub-set of language which would come to delight academic deconstructionists but often baffled others.  As well as Debord’s writings, Belgium philosopher Raoul Vaneigem’s (b 1934) The Revolution of Everyday Life (1968) was a seminal work; in the riots of 1968, both proved influential, less as entire texts than as sources for the epigrammatic and graffiti-friendly phrases (Sous les pavés, la plage! (Under the paving stones, the beach!), L’ennui est contre-révolutionnaire (Boredom is counter-revolutionary) and Ne travaillez jamais (Never work!) among the most replicated) which appeared all over French cities during the uprising.  In that, the SI thus proved the primacy of objects in social relations (whether hegemonic or not) although the SI generally held that “situationism” was a meaningless term, a position necessitated by their inherent rejection of ideologies, all of which they dismissed either as useless utopian myths or constructed superstructures existing only to create the social controls required to serve the economic interests of a ruling elite.  Much of the history of the SI was one faction rejecting another; indeed, the SI’s transition from artistic to political movement was less organic than disruptive.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

The critique of the consumer society resonated strongly with student radicals who were the failed revolutionaries of 1968 but, remarkably for a crew which was so influential on mass-movements, the SI was always tiny (it wasn’t untypical for there to be fewer than two-dozen active members) with internal conflicts and expulsions common, Debord given frequently to banishing members he believed had compromised the group’s revolutionary aims, the worst sin of heretics apparently the creation of art which shocked by virtual of its appearance but did nothing to in anyway transform society; comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) might have called such transgressors “formalists”.  Neglected for decades, the concepts developed by the SI attracted renewed interest in the social media age as much of what they’d described suddenly seemed familiar.  Key SI concepts included (1) psychogeography (the study of how urban environments affect emotions and behaviour, (2) dérive (drift) in which a wander through a city was documented with illustrative images, (3) détournement (appropriating using existing cultural elements (advertisements, comics, artworks etc) and, in subversive ways, repurposing them to undermine their original ideological message) and (4) constructed situations which were “moments of life” (events, environments, experiences) created for no purpose other than breaking the passivity of everyday existence.  If all that sounds something like what may have appeared in the check-list used by the designers of Instagram, TikTok and such, it hints (1) the SI may have been onto something and (2) as US billionaire investor Warren Buffett (b 1930) put it when explaining the outcome of class warfare: “We won”.

A requiem for the SI: No Title (1975-1976), lithograph on paper by Constant Niewwenhuys (1920-2005).

Debord no more wanted the SI to be what would come to be called a “think tank” any more than he wanted an artist’s colony but certainly envisaged it as a theoretical vanguard rather than a conventional political organization, his view being that even if created as something “revolutionary”, such movements tended to be “captured” (ie absorbed into the very system they were created to subvert or at least oppose).  That was why the orthodox SI position was not to exhibit their works in galleries or museums because, in the spirit of Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) notion “the medium is the message”, once radical art was hung in such places, it became merely another commodity in the “spectacle”, dissenters accused of “recuperation” (a SI concept in which radical ideas had been neutralized and absorbed by mainstream culture).  So, members who were judged to have misunderstood or diluted Situationist orthodoxy (ie disagreed with Debord) were expelled, the rationale being what was valued in adherents was “quality rather than quantity”.  Although supposedly in the tradition of Marxist collective decision-making, Debord exercised extraordinary informal authority within the SI (despite the group officially rejecting hierarchy) and in practice, personally defined the SI’s theoretical parameters.  In a nice touch which would be familiar in places like the Soviet Union, the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea)) or the modern Republican Party’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) faction, the “culture of exclusion” was ritualized in the journal Internationale Situationniste which regularly would publish lists of those un-personed (including the reasons), the former members denounced in harsh language, the worst insults including accusations of “theoretical confusion” and the practicing of mere “pseudo-Situationism”; by the time of dissolution in 1972, the membership consisted of Debord and one remaining loyal soul.  The SI, at least in the more reductionist works, did create some genuinely interesting critiques of the post-war West and some of the early art was, if not exactly novel, certainly stark and compelling.  However, it remains hard to identify enough ideas to justify the volume of text produced and phrasing it in what was surely deliberately difficult language does suggest there was an attempt to conceal the repetition of thought.