The Revolution of Everyday Life
Encyclopedia
The Revolution of Everyday Life is a 1967 book by Raoul Vaneigem
, Belgian author, philosopher and former member of the Situationist International (1961-1970). In French the title of the work was more elaborate: Traité du savoir-vivre à l’usage des jeunes générations, or Treatise on Living for the Younger Generations. John Fullerton & Paul Sieveking
, the first translators of the work into English, chose this alternative title. Though later translators such as Donald Nicholson-Smith prefer the original French title, publishers generally insist upon the latter title, by which it has become well-known in the English-speaking world.
The book was, along with Guy Debord’s
Society of the Spectacle, one of the most significant major works written by members of the Situationist International (1957-1972).
The book takes the field of "everyday life
" as the ground upon which communication and participation can occur, or, as is more commonly the case, be perverted and abstracted into pseudo-forms. The author considers that direct, unmediated communication between "qualitative subjects" is the 'end' to which human history tends - a state of affairs still frustrated by the perpetuation of capitalist modes of relation and to be "called forward" through the construction of situations. Under these prevailing conditions, people are still manipulated as docile "objects" and without the "qualititive richness" which comes from asserting their irreducible individuality - it is toward creating life lived in the first person that situations must be "built" . So to speak, it is the humiliation of being but a "thing" for others that is responsible for all the ills Vaneigem equates with modern city life - isolation, humiliation, mis-communication - and toward creating new roles that flout stereotyped convention that freedom comes.
translation (Rebel Press, 2003):
Part One: Power’s Perspective
The Impossibility of Participation: Power as the Sum of Constraints
The Impossibility of Communication: Power as Universal Mediation
The Impossibility of Realisation: Power as Sum of Seductions
Survival and False Opposition to it
Part Two: Reversal of Perspective
Raoul Vaneigem
Raoul Vaneigem is a Belgian writer and philosopher. He was born in Lessines . After studying romance philology at the Free University of Brussels from 1952 to 1956, he participated in the Situationist International from 1961 to 1970...
, Belgian author, philosopher and former member of the Situationist International (1961-1970). In French the title of the work was more elaborate: Traité du savoir-vivre à l’usage des jeunes générations, or Treatise on Living for the Younger Generations. John Fullerton & Paul Sieveking
Paul Sieveking
Paul R.A. De Giberne Sieveking is a British journalist and former magazine editor.Until 2002, Sieveking was co-editor of the magazine The Fortean Times with its founder Bob Rickard. He joined the UK-based "Journal of the Unexplained" in 1978...
, the first translators of the work into English, chose this alternative title. Though later translators such as Donald Nicholson-Smith prefer the original French title, publishers generally insist upon the latter title, by which it has become well-known in the English-speaking world.
The book was, along with Guy Debord’s
Guy Debord
Guy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...
Society of the Spectacle, one of the most significant major works written by members of the Situationist International (1957-1972).
The book takes the field of "everyday life
Everyday Life
Everyday Life is the first solo album made by Life MC of the British Hip Hop group Phi Life Cypher....
" as the ground upon which communication and participation can occur, or, as is more commonly the case, be perverted and abstracted into pseudo-forms. The author considers that direct, unmediated communication between "qualitative subjects" is the 'end' to which human history tends - a state of affairs still frustrated by the perpetuation of capitalist modes of relation and to be "called forward" through the construction of situations. Under these prevailing conditions, people are still manipulated as docile "objects" and without the "qualititive richness" which comes from asserting their irreducible individuality - it is toward creating life lived in the first person that situations must be "built" . So to speak, it is the humiliation of being but a "thing" for others that is responsible for all the ills Vaneigem equates with modern city life - isolation, humiliation, mis-communication - and toward creating new roles that flout stereotyped convention that freedom comes.
Contents
Contents of the Donald Nicholson-SmithDonald Nicholson-Smith
Donald Nicholson-Smith is a translator and freelance editor, interested in literature, art, psychoanalysis, social criticism, theory, history, crime fiction, and cinema.. Born in Manchester, England, he was an early translator of Situationist material into English. He joined the English section of...
translation (Rebel Press, 2003):
- Translator’s Preface
- Author’s Preface to the First French Paperback Edition
- Introduction
Part One: Power’s Perspective
- Chapter 1: The Insignificant Signified
The Impossibility of Participation: Power as the Sum of Constraints
- Chapter 2: Humiliation
- Chapter 3: Isolation
- Chapter 4: Suffering
- Chapter 5: The Decline and Fall of Work
- Chapter 6: Decompression and the Third Force
The Impossibility of Communication: Power as Universal Mediation
- Chapter 7: The Age of Happiness
- Chapter 8: Exchange and Gift
- Chapter 9: Technology and Its Mediated Use
- Chapter 10: Down Quantity Street
- Chapter 11: Mediated Abstraction, Abstracted Mediation
The Impossibility of Realisation: Power as Sum of Seductions
- Chapter 12: Sacrifice
- Chapter 13: Separation
- Chapter 14: The Organization of Appearances
- Chapter 15: Roles
- Chapter 16: The Fascination of Time
Survival and False Opposition to it
- Chapter 17: Survival Sickness
- Chapter 18: Spurious Opposition
Part Two: Reversal of Perspective
- Chapter 19: Reversal of Perspective
- Chapter 20: Creativity, Spontaneity, and Poetry
- Chapter 21: Masters Without Slaves
- Chapter 22: The Space-Time of Lived Experience and the Rectification of the Past
- Chapter 23: The Unitary Triad: Self-Realisation, Communication, Participation
- Chapter 24: The Interworld and the New Innocence
- Chapter 25: You Won’t Fuck With Us Much Longer!
- A Toast to Revolutionary Workers
External links
See also
- AnarchismAnarchismAnarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
- Council CommunismCouncil communismCouncil communism is a current of libertarian Marxism that emerged out of the November Revolution in the 1920s, characterized by its opposition to state capitalism/state socialism as well as its advocacy of workers' councils as the basis for workers' democracy.Originally affiliated with the...
- Guy DebordGuy DebordGuy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...
- Situationist International
- Society of the Spectacle
- May '68
- Raoul VaneigemRaoul VaneigemRaoul Vaneigem is a Belgian writer and philosopher. He was born in Lessines . After studying romance philology at the Free University of Brussels from 1952 to 1956, he participated in the Situationist International from 1961 to 1970...