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Report on the Construction of Situations is the founding Manifesto of the Situationist International revolutionary organization.[1][2] The pamphlet was published by Guy Debord in June 1957,[3] and the following month the organization was founded in Cosio d'Arroscia, Italy.
The organization was founded by the fusion of three organizations: the Lettrist International, the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, and the London Psychogeographical Association.
The complete title is Report on the Construction of Situations and on the International Situationist Tendency’s Conditions of Organization and Action.
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Transcription
Hey guys, I'm Alex. Thanks for clicking, and welcome to this lesson on passive verbs with "that" clauses. Okay, this is going to help you in your debates, your arguments, and your academic essays. So this is for advanced learners who are either going into university, writing essays in high school, college, university -- any level of higher education. So here we have -- let's look at the three sentences first. And we can first notice a passive structure, so we have to understand what passive actually means and what a "that" clause is. So we have for example, "It was claimed by Copernicus that we lived in a heliocentric universe." "Heliocentric" means the sun is the center of the universe and everything else goes around the sun. So here we have "it was claimed". Now this is just a simple past passive sentence: "It was claimed." By who? By Copernicus, and here we have the "that" clause: "that we lived". Well, we do live, "in a heliocentric universe", okay? So first you have the passive construction, when you are talking about making an argument, or a claim, or a belief, a theory, and here we have the "that" clause, but what was claimed? What was believed? What was said "that we lived in a heliocentric universe" back in Copernicus's day. That's what he said. And we still do, and obviously do live in a heliocentric universe. Let's look at couple of more examples, two more sentences, and then we'll look at some academic verbs, common verbs that you can use in your academic essays. "It is thought that Michael Jordan was the best basketball player ever." So here you see the "it" structure again, you have "it", plus the verb "to be", plus the passive verb. "It is thought", by who? Here, you don't have to say "by" because it is thought by many people. It's obvious. You don't have to say by who in this situation. It is thought by many people. What is thought by many people? "That Michael Jordan was the best basketball player ever", okay? Same construction. Now let's look at the third example. "It is theorized that aliens built the pyramids." Who knows? Well, I think we do know. This is probably wrong. However, it is theorized -- there is a theory of conspiracy theorists. "It is theorized that aliens built the pyramids." Okay? So now that we have the structure: "it", plus the verb "to be", plus the passive verb, let's look at some academic verbs that you can use in these passive constructions and "that" clauses. So we have -- and you can work on the pronunciation, too -- so if you're having a debate with somebody; "allege", "assume", "believe", "claim", "fear", "feel", "hold", "postulate", "predict", "say", "theorize", and "think". Many of these verbs simply mean "it was said", "it was believed", to some degree. I know most of you probably know verbs like "believe", "say", "think", perhaps you even know "claim", but verbs such as "allege" or "postulate" or "hold", might be new to you. So in this situation let me give you some quick explanations about each of these higher level verbs that you can use, and that you can adapt and adopt for your own academic purposes. We have "allege". "Allege" is similar to "assume", okay? So this is something that a person said and they believed it, they assumed it to be true, okay? We can say "it was alleged by Copernicus", "it was claimed by Copernicus", "It was assumed by Copernicus", as well. Okay? "Claimed" -- if a person makes a "claim", they are saying that something is probably true, okay? So again just like we have here, "It was claimed by Copernicus", this is what he said. I know you understand "fear", "feel". "Hold" -- okay, if you know the verb "hold", you can probably imagine its use in an academic setting, or in a debate setting, in an argument setting. If I say, "It is held by many people that Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time.", they hold that belief to be true. They hold it close to them. Sorry about that, guys. I touched the microphone. Now "postulate", similar to "theorize" in this situation. They said a theory, okay? All right guys, that's it. That's all we have to say about this. So if you'd like to test your understanding of these academic verbs, which I hope you will use in your essays, in universities, in colleges, even in high school. They can make your work sound at that next level. If you want to test your understanding of this, and this structure in particular, you can check out the quiz on www.EngVid.com . Good luck and take care. Learn English for free www.engvid.com
Content
Revolutionary movement
Expressing the view of the national leaders of the previous organizations, particularly Jorn, Debord, Gallizio and Korun,[1] this report defines the main political aim of the movement as revolutionary:
First, we believe that the world must be changed. We desire the most liberatory possible change of the society and the life in which we find ourselves confined. We know that such change is possible by means of pertinent actions.
During the May 1968 general strike, the Situationists, against the unions and the Communist Party that were starting to side with the de Gaulle government to contain the revolt, called for the formation of workers' councils to take control of the factories, expelling union leaders and left-wing bureaucrats, in order to keep the power in the hands of the workers with direct democracy.[4]
The imbecilization of young people in families and schools
The imbecilization that young people undergo within their families and schools, has then a natural continuation in the "deliberately anticultural production" of novels, films, et cetera, conducted with the means of large-scale industry.[5]
In his 1961 film Critique of Separation, Debord returned on this topic adding:
The spectacle as a whole is nothing other than [...] the gap between the visions, tastes, refusals and projects that previously characterized this youth and the way it has advanced into ordinary life.[6]
In contrast, the sense of the Report on the Construction of Situations is to fulfill human primitive desires and pursue a superior passional quality. The main goal of the Situationist International is precisely the setting up of environments that favor such fulfillments.[7]
Official culture and the trivialization and sterilization of the subversive
For Debord, official culture is a "rigged game", where conservative powers forbid subversive ideas to have direct access to the public discourse, and where such ideas are integrated only after being trivialized and sterilized.[8]
Debord discusses the close link between revolution and culture and everyday life, and the reason why conservative powers are interested in forbidding them "any direct access to the rigged game of official culture." Debord recalls that worldwide revolutionary movements that emerged during the 1920s were followed by "an ebbing of the movements that had tried to advance a liberatory new attitude in culture and everyday life," and that such movements were brought to a "complete social isolation."[9]
Emptiness of an art separated from politics
Historically, revolutionary ideas have emerged first among artists and intellectuals. For this reason, artists and intellectuals are relegated into specialized, compartmentalized disciplines, defusing their revolutionary potential and imposing unnatural dichotomies such as the "separation of art from politics". Once artistic-intellectual works are separated from current events and from a comprehensive critique of society, they are sterilized and can be safely integrated into the official culture and the public discourse, where they can add new flavors to old dominant ideas and play the role of a gear wheel in the mechanism of the society of the spectacle.
One of the contradictions of the bourgeoisie [...] is that while it respects the abstract principle of intellectual and artistic creation, it resists actual creations when they first appear, then eventually exploits them. This is because it needs to maintain a certain sense of criticality and experimental research among a minority, but must take care to channel this activity into narrowly compartmentalized utilitarian disciplines, dismissing all comprehensive critique and research. In the domain of culture, the bourgeoisie strives to divert the taste for the new, which has become dangerous for it, toward certain degraded forms of novelty that are harmless and confused. [...] The people within avant-garde tendencies who distinguished themselves are generally accepted on an individual basis, at the price of vital renunciations: the fundamental point of debate is always the renunciation of comprehensive demands, and the acceptance of a fragmentary work, susceptible to multiple interpretations. This is what makes the very term avant-garde, which in the end is always defined and manipulated by the bourgeoisie, somewhat suspicious and ridiculous. ( pp.2-3 )
In his 1959 film On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time, Debord returned on this topic adding:
Knowledge of empirical facts remains abstract and superficial as long as it is not concretized by being related to the whole situation. This is the only method that enables us to supersede partial and abstract problems and get to their concrete essence, and thus implicitly to their meaning. [...] We can never really challenge any form of social organization without challenging all of that organization’s forms of language. [...] When freedom is practiced in a closed circle, it fades into a dream, becomes a mere image of itself.[10]
See also
Notes
- ^ a b Guy Debord, letter to Pinot Gallizio, April 4th 1958, Paris. (Letter preserved by association Archivio Gallizio in Turin)
Il Rapporto può essere presentato come l'espressione teorica adottata nella Conferenza di fondazione dell'I.S. a Cosio d'Arroscia; e si può dire che esprima il pensiero dei dirigenti dell'Internazionale, fra cui si possono soprattutto citare Korun (Belgio), Debord (Francia), Gallizio (Italia) e Jorn (Scandinavia). Così si avrebbe più l'immagine di un comitato responsabile, democratico, rispetto alla tendenza internazionale che abbiamo cominciato a formare.
- ^ Bandini (1977) pp.110-1
- ^ Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio (May 1958) introduction to the Italian edition of the Report on the Construction of Situations. Published in Turin by Notizie (1958).
- ^ The Beginning of an Era, from Situationist International No 12 (September 1969). Translated by Ken Knabb.
- ^ Debord (1957) p.2
- ^ Debord, Critique of Separation, subtitles translation by Ken Knabb
- ^ Debord (1957) Report on the Construction of Situations, section Toward a Situationist International
- ^ Debord (1957) pp.2, 10
- ^ Section 3 The Function of Minority Trends in the Period of Reflux
- ^ Debord, On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time, subtitles translation by Ken Knabb
References
- Bandini, Mirella (1988) [1977]. L'estetico, il politico. Da Cobra all'Internazionale situazionista 1948-1957 (in Italian). Ancone: Costa & Nolan. ISBN 88-7648-344-6. OCLC 42461565.
- Debord, Guy (2006) [1957]. "Report on the Construction of Situations". Situationist International Anthology. Berkeley, California: Bureau of Public Secrets (translated by Ken Knabb). ISBN 0-939682-04-4. OCLC 124093356.
Further reading
- Russel Hardin (2007) The Systemic Anticulture of Capitalism in Víctor Nee, Richard Swedberg (2007) On capitalism Stanford University Press, pp. 21–41
- James C. Scott 1976 The Moral Economy of the Peasant Yale University Press
- James C. Scott 1985 Weapons of the Weak Yale University Press
Editions and translations
- Original French text Rapport sur la construction des situations, Rapport sur la construction des situations
- English translations:
- by Ken Knabb (online)
- by Tom McDonough, published in Guy Debord and the Situationist International
- Italian translation: published by Nautilus.
This page was last edited on 18 July 2023, at 19:43