Detournement as Pedagogical Praxis
by James Trier
2020-05-29 19:10:11
Detournement as Pedagogical Praxis
by James Trier
2020-05-29 19:10:11
The Situationist International (SI) was a Paris-based artistic and political avant-garde group that formed in 1957, went through three distinct phases during its existence, and dissolved in 1972. In 1967, SI leader Guy Debord published his book The S...
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The Situationist International (SI) was a Paris-based artistic and political avant-garde group that formed in 1957, went through three distinct phases during its existence, and dissolved in 1972. In 1967, SI leader Guy Debord published his book The Society of the Spectacle, which presents his theory of how âthe Spectacleâ (i.e., the Capitalist system in its totality) works endlessly (though not always successfully) to transform people into spectators whose sole purposes are to consume commodities and to live de-politicized, passive, isolated, and contemplative lives. To challenge and subvert âthe Spectacle,â Debord and his SI associates theorized and practiced the anti-spectacular critical art they called âdetournement,â which entails reusing existing artistic and mass-produced elements to create new combinations or ensembles. As Debord wrote in 1956, detournement has the potential to be âa powerful cultural weapon in the service of real class struggle.âIn this edited book, the authors contribute chapters about how they created their own detournements and used them as central audio-visual texts in critical projects that they designed and carried out in a variety of pedagogical situations. Most of the projects involved preservice teachers in teacher education courses, and the anti-spectacular purposes include challenging Hollywoodâs problematic representations of Native Americans, subverting the racist stereotypes of Latin@s in a popular childrenâs book, and critiquing the neoliberal agenda of the charter school movement. This book offers readers detailed accounts of pedagogical projects that can serve as examples of the critical possibilities of detournement.
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