situationist

A situationist is a person who embraces situation theory as developed by the Situationist International movement formed in Italy in 1957.  This was post-war when capitalism and mass consumerism were driving forces in society. The situationists, with their Marxist view of society, felt that people were being moulded to become individual consumers at the expense of their creativity and individuality.  They railed against the conforming aspects of the culture designed to facilitate consumerism.  They also felt that the urban environment was being constructed in a way that inflicted damage on the quality of human life.  There were was the obvious presence of advertising but there was also the commodification of events in our lives that made us passive recipients of experience. In order to recover ourselves as people with authentic desires and active creativity, we needed to construct situations that were our own.

One way to do this was to engage in détournement, that is, subverting the advertising of the capitalists into messages against their products.  We have had various examples of this over the years, particularly in relation to cigarette advertising.

The interest in the situationists has revived because we are now so dependent on the images that are flickering before us on all our various devices.  This barrage of imagery prevents us from having any time to ourselves to think our own thoughts.  An unplanned walk (free of all devices) with no purpose in mind except to be in the moment is a restorative process. A key word for the situationists was dérive meaning ‘drifting’.  Aimless strolls can allow us to be aware of the forces shaping us, and to liberate us from it so that we can find a new way of engaging that is authentic.

This brings to mind the 2023 new word silent walking.

By the way, do not be tempted to derive situationism from situationist as the name of the theory.  The situationists were opposed to ideologies anyway but felt that situationism in particular made no sense since it would mean ‘a doctrine for interpreting existing situations’.