First published in 1967, Guy Debord's stinging revolutionary critique ofcontemporary society, The Society of the Spectacle has since acquired acult status. Credited by many as being the inspiration for the ideasgenerated by the events of May 1968 in France, Debord's pitiless attackon commodity fetishism and its incrustation in the practices of everydaylife continues to burn brightly in today's age of satellite televisionand the soundbite. In Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, publishedtwenty years later, Debord returned to the themes of his previousanalysis and demonstrated how they were all the more relevant in aperiod when the "integrated spectacle" was dominant. Resolutely refusingto be reconciled to the system, Debord trenchantly slices through thedoxa and mystification offered tip by journalists and pundits to showhow aspects of reality as diverse as terrorism and the environment, theMafia and the media, were caught up in the logic of the spectacularsociety. Pointing the finger clearly at those who benefit from the logicof domination, Debord's Comments convey the revolutionary impulse atthe heart of situationism.

Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative as Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960s up to the present, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism and everyday life in the late twentieth cenlury. Now finally available in a superb English translation approved by the author, Debord's text remains as crucial as ever for understanding the contemporary effects of power, which are increasingly inseparable from the new virtual worlds of our rapidly changing image/information culture.

Yesterday, the police interrogated me at length about the journal and the Situationist organization. It was only a beginning. This is, I think, one of the principle threats that came up quickly during the discussion: the police want to regard the SI as an association in order to set about its dissolution in France. I protested, emphasizing that the artistic movement was never legally constituted by moral individuals in a declared association. Not being constituted, the SI cannot be officially dissolved, but they tried to intimidate us heavily. It seems they take us for gangsters! --from "Correspondence" This volume traces the dynamic first years of the Situationist International movement--a cultural avant-garde that continues to inspire new generations of artists, theorists, and writers more than half a century later. Debord's letters--published here for the first time in English--provide a fascinating insider's view of just how this seemingly disorganized group drifting around a newly consumerized Paris became one of the most defining cultural movements of the twentieth century. Circumstances, personalities, and ambitions all come into play as the group develops its strategy of anarchic, conceptual, but highly political "intervention." Brilliantly conceived, this collection of letters offers the best available introduction to the Situationist International movement by detailing, through original documents, how the group formed and defined its cultural mission: to bring about, "by any means possible, even artistic," a complete transformation of personal life within the Society of the Spectacle.

In his films Guy Debord (1931-1994) worked according to the following principle: do nothing you should, do everything you should not. Created between 1952 and 1978, all the films reflect this rule and confirm what he referred to as his "detestable ambition." Gathered in a single volume for the first time in German, this publication unites the texts of all of Guy Debord's films in a new translation: from his first film made in affiliation with the Lettrist group led by Isidore Isou, Hurlements en faveur de Sade (1952), an alteration of black and white sequences devoid of images; to works that originated in the course of his participation in the Situationist International, Sur le passage de quelques personnes a travers une assez courte unite de temps (1959) and Critique de la separation (1961); to the adaptation of his best known theoretical work, La Societe du spectacle (1973), followed by the response to his critics entitled Refutation de tous les jugements, tant elogieux qu'hostiles, qui ont ete jusqu'ici portes sur le film "La Societe du spectacle" (1975) and his resume, intended as an act of closure: In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978). Texts and images are true to the French original edition and complemented by a list of sources for the quotes, Debord's notes on his films, drafts of unrealized film projects, as well as the text of the TV documentary he coauthored, Guy Debord, son art et son temps (1994).

Guy Debord's silver-tongue-in-cheek autobiography mixes precision and pastiche in a whirlwind account of philosophy, exploit, and inebriation. From the stark professions of Volume I to the illustrated sequences of Volume 2, Panegyric confronts us with a figure who strategically, demonically tried to wrest life from the disabling modern 'spectacle.'

"Todo lo que una vez fue vivido directamente se ha convertido en una mera representacion." "La sociedad del espectaculo" proporciona una reinterpretacion del marxismo, sobre todo del concepto de fetiche de la mercancia aplicado a las condiciones del capitalismo contemporaneo. Guy Debord argumenta que la historia de la vida social se puede entender como la declinacion del ser en tener, y del tener en simplemente parecer. Esta condicion en la cual la realidad se ha substituido por su imagen representa el momento historico contemporaneo, cuando la mercancia completa su colonizacion de la vida social: las relaciones entre mercancias han suplantado las relaciones entre las personas y, en estas, la identificacion pasiva con el espectaculo suplanta la actividad genuina. El espectaculo no es una coleccion de imagenes, escribe Debord, en cambio, es una relacion social entre la gente que es mediada por imagenes.