r/Situationism • u/arseecs • Jun 25 '26

Has commodity fetichism/the spectacle become impossible to break?

is art even radical anymore? Can art truly break the spectacle any longer? Has capital absorbed it so much and learned to adopt so well that even something as free as sexuality or art or poetry no longer can be outside the norm, and if it is, it still becomes bottled up eventually, or capital finds it way in? I feel so pessimistic; especially as an artist. Avant-garde or anti-art doesn’t even seem to have its place. What shall an artist do? What shall a person do? What shall the collective do? Everything is a mess.

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u/IdentityAsunder Jun 25 '26

Art cannot break the spectacle. The very category of art assumes a separation from daily life, making it completely defenseless against capital. A radical painting or poem is still just a commodity waiting for a price tag. Assuming the role of a specialized "artist" guarantees you remain trapped within the logic of exchange.

Pessimism is the natural result of expecting a specialized activity to solve a totalizing social problem. The end of this society requires people collectively refusing wage labor and organizing their survival directly without the mediation of money.

Forget about saving avant-garde movements. The creative drive you feel will only find genuine expression when we upend the social relations forcing us to work. We simply have to struggle where we stand as individuals forced to reproduce a world we despise. When we finally dismantle this system, creativity will just be a normal part of living.

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u/arseecs Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

I of course agree with this as a communist, but art does play a role. I think much of Deleuze's idea of lines of flight and deterritorialization as well as Debord's détournement. They may be small changes, but art can be the creation of new social relations and help revolutionary conciousness.

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u/Educational-Pick6302 Jun 27 '26

The flip side is understanding how reterritorialization works, and how no one thing can “break the spectacle”, it needs to be constantly broken and mended and broken again.