‘By Every Hyper-Political Means’: Internationale Situationniste and the Review as Weapon

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the articulation of Situationist perspectives on art and politics with reference to the cycle of protest, surveillance, detention, scandal, repression and violence which accompanied the theoretical writings and practical activities of the Situationists. The Situationist International (SI) was, by design, a mercurial organization whose existence was marked by clandestine activity, conflict – internally and externally – scandal and subversion in multiple guises. The twin concepts of détournement [hijacking] and récupération [recovery] will be explored to show why the recourse to the terminology of war was more than a commonplace rhetorical trope for the SI. The group’s deployment of militaristic language reflects, first, the real-life attention the Situationists received from the forces of order and, secondly, an antagonism which underpinned their conception of political action. Their eponymous journal or review was not itself a privileged organ of the Situationist International, intellectually or aesthetically, but ‘heavy artillery’ which provided a convenient platform to become known to an active readership.