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Alienation and the Corporate Takeover of Culture: Guy Debord’s Theory of the Spectacle

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Abstract:

In 1967, Guy Debord published his landmark analysis of the “spectacle.” Building on Marxian theories of reification and alienation, the spectacle reflects the citizen's passive spectacular relation to an economic and social world that appears as an overwhelming external, law-bound natural entity. Divorced from our creative praxis in constructing our social world, the individual is reduced to consuming corporate-supplied entrancing narratives that confirm us in our passivity even as they celebrate the freedom and meaningful lives of our Hollywood celebrities and governmental leaders. This paper explicates the theory behind Debord’s concept and critically assesses its deficiencies. The most serious defect is Debord’s adoption of a mass society perspective, which sees the population as atomized and culturally denuded, divorced from community and the cultural lifeworld. In part this theoretical defect reflects his underlying Marxian conception of social action as the individual objectifying his/her ideas in the natural world, while ignoring the ways in which communicative interaction is also important in constructing our social world.

Most Common Document Word Stems:

social (44), societi (39), debord (37), cultur (36), spectacl (34), alien (26), marx (23), action (18), becom (18), world (18), mass (17), theori (17), one (16), product (16), labor (14), imag (14), work (14), media (13), capit (13), individu (12), worker (12),

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Critical theory, culture, Marxism
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Name: American Sociological Association
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MLA Citation:

Kaplan, Richard. "Alienation and the Corporate Takeover of Culture: Guy Debord’s Theory of the Spectacle" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, TBA, New York, New York City, Aug 11, 2007 <Not Available>. 2008-10-22 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p184885_index.html>

APA Citation:

Kaplan, R. L. , 2007-08-11 "Alienation and the Corporate Takeover of Culture: Guy Debord’s Theory of the Spectacle" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, TBA, New York, New York City Online <PDF>. 2008-10-22 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p184885_index.html

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In 1967, Guy Debord published his landmark analysis of the “spectacle.” Building on Marxian theories of reification and alienation, the spectacle reflects the citizen's passive spectacular relation to an economic and social world that appears as an overwhelming external, law-bound natural entity. Divorced from our creative praxis in constructing our social world, the individual is reduced to consuming corporate-supplied entrancing narratives that confirm us in our passivity even as they celebrate the freedom and meaningful lives of our Hollywood celebrities and governmental leaders. This paper explicates the theory behind Debord’s concept and critically assesses its deficiencies. The most serious defect is Debord’s adoption of a mass society perspective, which sees the population as atomized and culturally denuded, divorced from community and the cultural lifeworld. In part this theoretical defect reflects his underlying Marxian conception of social action as the individual objectifying his/her ideas in the natural world, while ignoring the ways in which communicative interaction is also important in constructing our social world.

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Document Type: PDF
Page count: 13
Word count: 3957
Text sample:
Alienation and the Corporate Takeover of Culture: Guy Debord’s Theory of the Spectacle Richard L. Kaplan Department of Sociology University of California Santa Barbara “In societies dominated by modern conditions of production life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.” -Society of the Spectacle1 Guy Debord who died in 1994 published La société du spectacle a manifesto of 221 theses on contemporary capitalist culture in France in 1967.
For a powerful discussion of he spectacle of the president see Bruce Miroff. "Monopolizing the Public Space: The President as a Problem for Democratic Politics " in Thomas E. Cronin (ed.) Rethinking the Presidency (Boston: Little Brown and Co. 1982.) 15 Which becomes the context for an essential loss of common sense or realisms says Hannah Arendt. 16 Cf. Orville Lee “Culture and Democratic Theory: Toward a Theory of Symbolic Democracy ” Constellations 5 (4) (1998) 433–55. 17 See


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