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.
