Debord, Time and History

Tom Bunyard
Published in Historical Materialism, vol.19, issue 1, pp.3-36
The full text is available online at:
http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/156920611x564635

Abstract:
This essay reads Guy Debords theoretical work through its primary
philosophical and theoretical influences, and in doing so draws attention to his
concerns with time and history. These concerns are used as a means of
clarifying Debords theory of spectacle and of highlighting its virtues and
failings. The essay uses Debords remarks on subjectivity and temporality to
pursue the theoretical dimensions of his interest in strategy, and thereby
addresses his Hegelian Marxism via his comments on the relation between
strategy, history and dialectics. His concerns with temporality are, however,
also shown to pertain to the theory of spectacles shortcomings as an account of
capitalist society. The essay thus attempts to draw out some of the moreneglected foundational material upon which the theory of spectacle rests,
contending that the former may be of greater contemporary interest than the
latter.