What do I need to know before starting Society of the Spectacle?

I have a hard time taking Debord seriously after reading a little about his "dérive" idea or whatever. "Walk around the city with some mates and then talk to some other mates who also walked around the city about how you felt!"

>>9934573

Do don't need to know much. One chapter of it is about the Russian revolution and how it became counter-revolutionary so a familiarity with the events of that along with a sense of common Marxist terminology might help you get that chapter more.

That chapter is not vital to understanding the book as a whole though, I get the sense that it was written more in response to the fact that people would naturally question as to how his ideas applied to the Soviet Union.

It is a dense read but is not very long. If you don't get something don't feel bad about rereading it. It's an interesting viewpoint that is worth understanding regardless of your political views. Debords ideas and many right-wing commentators critical of consumerism/modernity often express the same ideas in different terms.

>>9934591

>t. brainlet

>>9934573

You basically want two things: you want to be conversant in 19th & 20th European history up to Debord's time, and you want to be acquainted with Marxist terminology like the other anon said, /especially/ with basic ideas laid out in Capital V. I. For example, after the first section where he lays out his basic "dude spectacles lmao" framing theme, the very next (second) section, where he actually gets into cases, the meat of things, is entitled /The Commodity as Spectacle/. I am not a Debord pro but I feel very confident in saying that the reason why he ordered the text in this way is exactly because Marx starts out Capital, before anything else, by talking about the commodity. So he's aping Marx on purpose with this editorial choice. So Debord basically accepts and discusses Marxist categories at length and makes them fold into his new thing.

>>9934591
Sounds like psychogeography, actually

>>9936115
the derive is the creation of psychogeography

>>9936115
>>9936126
Yeah and psychogeography is a retarded nothing field created by retarded nothings in order to appear scholarly

>>9937384
Iain Sinclair's good sometimes

>>9934573
the greeks

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