La fin des avant-gardes

What emerges first and foremost from debord's writings in 1968 is that the situationists' initial reaction to the May “events” was to interpret them as the first example of a spontaneous general strike in the context of what he called “overdeveloped capitalism”. Debord's position on this question is linked to his questioning of the status of the avant-gardes. at the time, Debord and those close to him sought both to conceptualise and to enact the end of the avant-gardes. And this included the Internationale Situationniste in its status as political, philosophical and artistic avant-garde. The article subsequently sets out to show that if the situationists did have any leverage on the events of May, it was insofar as they practised a maverick Marxism centred on the concept of alienation. This enabled them to conceptualise both the exploitation of the wage-earner and the condition of the consumer. Because they represent a comprehensive critique of capitalism and because, furthermore, they refuse to compromise on the revolutionary and worker dimension of the May-June 1968 moment, Debord's writings of the period enable us to grasp what, in the strict sense, remains beyond any opportunistic recuperation in these events

Communism, Protests, Social Movements · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Philosophy

• The Arab New Left and May ’68

  Laure Guirguis•Critical Historical Studies•2021

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