Category Archives: Guy Debord

Narco-Geographies, Part III: Urban Speculation and Spectacle

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Teo Ballvé

(Final post in a three-part series, Part I, Part II)  The policies that have made Panama into a commercial and financial global entrepôt have also made this small country into an ideal beachhead for entrepreneurial narcotraffickers. The seemingly ethereal nature … Continue reading →

Posted in City, Development, Drugs, Elites, Guy Debord, Illegality, Political Economy, Spatiality, Spectacle | Comments Off on Narco-Geographies, Part III: Urban Speculation and Spectacle

Visualizing Space and Injustice in Palestine

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Teo Ballvé

In an old post about the potential political capacities of the infographic, I wrote: “If Guy Debord was right in highlighting that social relations between people are increasingly mediated by images and representations, then can the infographic be a popular … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Boundaries, City, Critique, Everyday Life, Guy Debord, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Maps, Media, Primitive Accumulation, Scale, Security, Spatiality, Spectacle, Territory, The State, Violence | Comments Off on Visualizing Space and Injustice in Palestine

Critchley Against Escapism

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

Simon Critchley’s “Mystical Anarchism” article in Adbusters argues against the escapism of communal utopian projects old and new: Perhaps such experiments lacked an understanding of politics as a constant and concrete process of mediation. That is, the mediation between a … Continue reading →

Posted in Guy Debord, Hegemony, Maps, Spatiality, Spectacle, Violence | Comments Off on Critchley Against Escapism

Afflicted Powers

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Teo Ballvé

Retort. 2005. Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in an Age of War. New Edition. London: Verso. Despite being a relatively short book, Afflicted Powers is a difficult one to summarize. Retort* sets for itself the immodest task of identifying the … Continue reading →

Posted in #Occupy, Everyday Life, Guy Debord, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Peace, Power, Primitive Accumulation, Spectacle, Terror, The State, Violence | Comments Off on Afflicted Powers

Against Spectacle? “Crises” and the Infographic

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

So there’s been a lot of interesting infographics published recently that help visually represent a host of contemporary issue and crises: from Euro Debt, U.S. income inequality, and the increasingly consolidated power of corporations and banks, to the Afghan quagmire … Continue reading →

Posted in #Occupy, Bandits, Critique, Elites, Everyday Life, Guy Debord, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Networks, Political Economy, Power, Spectacle, Violence | 2 Comments

Spectacle and the Production of Space

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

The Society of the Spectacle helps me pick up where I left off with my recent comments about the centrality of “fetishism” and “critique” in Henri Lefebvre’s work. Put simply, Guy Debord’s “spectacle” is Marx’s notion of fetishism writ large. … Continue reading →

Posted in City, Critique, Dialectics, Guy Debord, Henri Lefebvre, Karl Marx, Power, Spatiality, Spectacle | Comments Off on Spectacle and the Production of Space

Lefebvre, Fetish, Critique

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

I’d argue that the most important thread running through Henri Lefebvre’s entire work is the notion of fetishism. Almost everything that he worked on can be traced back to Marx’s ideas about the “commodity fetish.” When paired with the concept … Continue reading →

Posted in City, Critique, Everyday Life, Guy Debord, Henri Lefebvre, Karl Marx, Spatiality | 3 Comments