Making Space for Freedom: The situationist Guide to Protesting = Crear espacio para la libertad: la guía situacionista para protestar

Abstract

AbstractUsing Guy Debord’s reaction to the Watts Rebellion of 1965 as a starting point, this article considers Situationism as an agonistic approach to power. The prime focus is on the spectacle, as it should be: by collating every force of production with every product of capitalism, Debord depicts the spectacle as a monopoly of spatial production, even in those spaces that ostensibly reject it. Out-of-focus, in the background and off-camera, those opposed to the spectacle are building an alternative social model as they ought to be, where freedom and economics are cooperatively achieved. I illustrate this dialectic with riots and protests that have occurred in the Spring of 2020, both claiming freedom from within the spectacle.