Overview

No other art movement has so profoundly influenced radical politics as the Situationist International. But beyond the clichés about its purported leader Guy Debord, the ""society of the spectacle,"" détournement and dérive, lies a more complex story about key historical shifts in the composition of capital, work, labor, art, and revolutionary theory during the 1950s and 60s. With and Against reframes the history of the Situationist International as a struggle to come to terms with the then-emerging ideologies of cybernetics and automation. Through each of the book's four chapters, Dominique Routhier dissects Situationist pamphlets, documents, artworks, and objects that refract elements of a ""cybernetic hypothesis"": the theoretically hyperbolic belief that technological progress, computers and automation make class struggle and the idea of revolution obsolete. With equal attention to aesthetic detail and to the broader contours of political economy, this book serves as a critical intervention in art history as well a call to reconsider, more broadly, the contemporary lessons of the most political of all artistic avantgardes.

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9781804292556

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Evincing a breathtaking command of the broader historical context that informed the rise of the Situationist International during the age of automation and the birth of cybernetics, Dominique Routhier's innovative analysis transcends the discipline of art history, allowing us to link early 20thcentury avant-garde struggles against the alienated separation of art and labour with all the nuances of the SI imperative. Given our anxieties today about the impact of Artificial Intelligence on labour and art, Routhier's study could not be more timely. -- Abigail Susik, Willamette University, author of <i>Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work</i>

Author Information

Dominique Routhier is an art theorist and postdoctoral researcher currently employed at the University of Southern Denmark. His writings have appeared in Rethinking Marxism, Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, Boundary 2 online, and LA Review of Books, among other places.

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