guy debord kicks my complit class's ASS.

we learned about "structuralism" in class today, and how the europeans call what we call structuralism AND what we call post-structuralism structuralism. anyway, here's what guy has to say:

"In order to understand "structuralist" categories, one must keep in mind, as with every historical social science, that the categories express forms as well as conditions of existence. ust as one cannot appraise the value of a man in terms of the conception he has of himself, on cannot appraise- and admire- this particular society by taking as indisputably true the language it speaks to itself; "...we cannot judge such epochs of transformation by their own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must rather be explained in the light of the contradictions of material life..." Structure is the daughter of the present power. Structuralism is the thought guaranteeed by the state which regards the present conditions of spectacular "communication" as an absolute. Its method of studying the code of messages is itself nothing but the product, and the acknowledgement, of a society where communication exists in the form of a casecade of hierarchic signals. Consequently it is not structuralism which serves to prove the transhistorical validity of the society of the spectacle; it is on the contrary the society of the spectacle which serves to prove the cold dream of structuralism."

Snap!