The New Détournement

I. The Old Détournement

¶1. The Original Conception of Détournement

Détournement developed under the Situationist International (SI), though it has its origins proper in another organization founded by Guy Debord. The word itself meaning diversion or hijacking in french. The concept’s full description, which détournement is shorthand for, is “détournement of preexisting aesthetic elements:”1

[Détournement is] [t]he integration of present or past artistic productions into a superior construction of a milieu. In this sense there can be no situationist painting or music, but only a situationist use of those means. In a more elementary sense, détournement within the old cultural spheres is a method of propaganda, a method which reveals the wearing out and loss of importance of those spheres.2

The product of détournement is not the typical work of art; rather a reappropriation, and alteration, of an already given subject matter. The practice is essentially historical: “[t]he idea of pure, absolute expression is dead; it only temporarily survives in parodic form as long as our other enemies survive.”3 This “[re]construction of a milieu” thereby doesn’t aim at the production of new works as such, and instead exposes that which was of the medium, perhaps hidden, though new a context produced out of itself.

Détournement is weaponized dialectics: its structure is that of immanent critique, i.e., its goal is not the advertisement of some alternative but by presenting the other of the present qua the present. This may not appear so at a glance, but at heart it is dialectical. Dialectics requires conceptualizing the mess of positive elements as mutual opposites.

“This combination of parody and seriousness reflects the contradictions of an era in which we find ourselves confronted with both the urgent necessity and the near impossibility of initiating and carrying out a totally innovative collective action — an era in which the most serious ventures are masked in the ambiguous interplay between art and its necessary negation, and in which the essential voyages of discovery have been undertaken by such astonishingly incapable people.”4

Seeing the contradiction is the labor of critique, putting on the Zizekian sunglasses so to say. Here those seeing minor elements shine froth from their forgotten sedimentation. Objects contain their history, which the pseudo-circularity of the spectacle occults. Because of its historical and dialectical character, the history of its practice proves key to understanding the concept. The SI over the years wrote several works concerning a theory of détournement, even giving rules of sorts for guidance, but theses were descriptions of a practice in use. Being concretely dialectical in their use of the practice was the real matter at hand for Guy Debord and the SI, and such cannot be forgotten in lieu of an idealized account.

¶2. Historical uses of Détournement

Particular examples of détournement vary not only over the decades since its inception but within the SI itself. One of my favorite instances, for example, is the film “Can dialectics Break Bricks?” The film is originally a Korean anti-imperialist kung fu film, but it is détourned as an anti-bureaucratic critique. Its anti-imperialist origin is important to understanding the film, as the conflict between the Korean people and their Japanese oppressors is remixed as the conflict between the workers and the capitalist bureaucrats. These bureaucrats are not merely traditional capitalists but the Leninist, Stalinists, and Maoists, as well. The effective attack is the juxtaposition of these, self-titled, “anti-imperialists” with imperialists proper, which exhibits the counter-revolutionary nature of these revolutionary ideologies. In this manner, détournement is the act of remixing, of collage, wherein the disparate elements found in the world are brought together and revealing contradictions inherent to the subject.

Beyond their films, another exemplar of this is the work of Asger Jorn. His painting were re-paintings, a painting over, and painting with, something already made. His theoretical insights run counter to the instinct of the Romantics, who made art something wonderfully useless, and affirmed a thesis that rhymes with Walter Benjamin: “All works of art are objects and should be treated as such, but these objects are not ends in themselves: They are tools with which to influence spectators.”5 Acting in the wake of the loss of aura, for Jorn, the only task left was to finish painting off, the method: détournement. Paintings are to be remade, as was said, painted over. “Détournement is a game born out of the capacity for devalorization. Only he who is able to devalorize can create new values. And only there where there is something to devalorize, that is, an already established value, can one engage in devalorization. It is up to us to devalorize or to be devalorized according to our ability to reinvest in our own culture.”6 This utilization of the past, of what is valued, is the means by which the new is created. It is remix, its critique is the calcified art world.

The use of détournement has had a life outside the Situationist International, notably in the form of “culture jamming.” A prominent form of the practice was perpetrated by Adbusters, and by 90s anarchists in America.7 Adbuster’s goal was to make war with western consumer culture through the creation of spoof ads. There is, however, something rather trite and tired in these ads, for whatever spirit which animated them has moved on. Most of their images produce a groan these days, and they seemed to amount to little. The misstep in their use of détournement is quite obvious in retrospect.

¶3. Missteps and Limits in the Practice of Détournement

One of the laws of détournement states: “[d]étournement is less effective the more it approaches a rational reply.” Another states, “The distortions introduced in the détourned elements must be as simplified as possible, since the main impact of a détournement is directly related to the conscious or semiconscious recollection of the original contexts of the elements.” The turn to egoistic expression is the antithesis of détournement, but many of the radical pranks, banner drops, witty remarks painted on walls and billboards, the aforementioned spoof ads, etc., are exactly that. Détournement is for another, it is meant to play on the associations of the culture. Consider the spoof ad comparing brands and leaves of different trees made by Adbusters. This spoof utterly fails to critique consumerism; rather it speaks to the certain constructed notions in the 90s of “reconnecting” with nature. The spoof expresses this, and, in doing so, shows the absurdity of their desires. The logic of the brand is misapplied to nature. The result is an unintended self-mockery, for it critiques the contradiction in the late capitalist subject’s proposed authenticity not branding proper. The triumphant “gotcha” is a failed use of détournement. Each is a reactionary moment, the unreconciled lost past of spirits being prior to its being burdened with its being-other.

Détournement, however, even when properly executed, is subject to time. The results of détournement are not free from recuperation of counterbalancing negativity, as for instance the dadaist art of Marcel Duchamp and the avant-garde in general. The moment is its domain but, as it is independent of the world, it ultimately is subject to the same forces, i.e., the commodification of capitalism. The dialectic is not a linear supersession: it is a circular movement, a re-inscribing of the horizon. Détournement operates negatively with time and space, and, further, that in its dialectical character. it is a giving voice to the other side of what is already there. The reconciliation with negative cannot be forestalled, i.e., there is no permanent negative standpoint: the positive cannot and be separated from the negative and negative with the positive. There is no negative as such. The task is not to become un-recuperatable but to make poisonous art that creates space for the next hijacking.

II. New Horizons

¶4. Dialectical Détournement

Détournement is dialectical but what makes the notion not oxymoronic is an explicit reconceptualizing of it as a self-conscious activity in and for itself. Theorizing détournement as dialectical entails a thinking which thinks itself as a moment of its movement. The totality of the thinking is not the thinking but the thinking as negative towards itself as finite, unified negatively. Conceptual thinking is the thinking proper for this practice of détournement, for it is a thinking that knows that its negative is itself. Any act of détournement is only a moment of the general process of dialectal détournement. In a certain sense, this is critique but the issue in naming it such is that calling it critique would inflict it with a company I wish to denounce, namely opinionating posited as critique. This is immanent negativity, i.e., Hegelian thinking, which doesn’t critique from the outside but from the inside with the inside. To critique values qua other values is the mistake that lead to the death of Adbusters. The center of the hijacking and the hijacked is the negativity of each that sees one flow into the other. Each is a moment of the other, for the hijack is merely the expression of the othered moment. In this way, we are at constant play, but this play is not the repetition of the same but the increase in intensity, culminating in revolution.

The ironic play would seem in our age to be outdated according to some. The new sincerity at the start of the decade, and voices of Slavoj Zizek, Naomi Klein, David Foster Wallace, etc., would likely redouble their critique of irony in my proposed return. However, these objections are undialectical in their understandings. Capitalism does not hold anything outside of itself, it does not resist the following of one into the other, though it is subjected to the purposes of exchange. Whatever mood is the dominant flavor of the moment, it will be the tool of capitalism’s activity, both circulation and stabilization. Our new détournement of the matter of capitalism is not the positing of an opposite to the paradigm but is the disrupting of its spectacular effects thought hijacking its process. The extent of this practice can only be worked out in practice but what secures the new détournement is its explicitly dialectical form. We must resist the essentializing to one mode or critical jab. To formulate a permanent vantage point is a denial of the negative. To paraphrase Debord, we are to be serious in our play, and further, sincere in our negativity and ironic to finite: “[u]ltimately, any sign or word is susceptible to being converted into something else, even into its opposite.”8 Our work is the infinite work of being at home in the negative, not the work of chasing after some proposed endpoint.

¶5. Beyond the Reactionary Left

The history of the left has been the expression of a number of moments of capitalism, full stop. While the Marxist tradition is, in general, the most advance, for it is the closest to an immanent critique, still it failed to hold fast to this. Perhaps it is because Marx died, but we can call the second international as the deceleration that this line of thought had terminated. Yet even in the first international, the thought had been waning, for it is clear that materialist subjectivity was so underdeveloped that the second international economism could arise. The anarchists, coming out of the first, were the moral extremes of progressive liberalism in general, while the Marxists developed into the thinking of the new guilds. French materialism took over the dialectical thinking of the Germans, which then turned the world into a physics equation with a slapdashed moral teleology. The rest of the 20th century has been a struggle to overcome this thought, and, at the same time, fighting off and succumbing to nationalist thinking. Which, on the whole, has resulted in a repeat of lesser German social democratic thought in the form of Bernie, AOC, etc.

The project is not to posit an alternative or to create theosophical images of the future, this is, as Debord calls it, revolutionary ideology, or, as Marx would call it, Utopianism. The history of the left is an unconscious dialectic. Each moment has thought itself the true moment of overcoming, as if the negative was a faction among others. We are all moments of capitalism by which we all flow into each other through the negative. This is why the USSR, the paragon of revolution, resulted in state capitalism. Our activity has been just as much a moment of capitalism as wall street or the Pinkertons. Our mistake has been viewing struggle as real opposition instead of logical contradiction. Merely titling things as contradictions doesn’t mean anything, no matter what some MLM would belt out of their little red book. However, not all is lost, for in understanding our entire history we are set free. The left’s history expands beyond whatever moment is deemed the real left. Any desire to return to some prior moment is as reactionary as the fascists, the only difference being that of mood and propaganda.

The communist is the self-destructive capitalist, the self-conscious moment of spirit. Its future is beyond itself and it is not its to partake in. Marx called communism the movement to abolish the present state of things, which is to be taken literally. Communism is dialectical, but what this means is that it is the negative of the first, it is its other moment. Capitalism is self-destructive, as easily seen in the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, and it has two moments: the first is of the assurance of its permanency and the second is of the knowing of its temporarily. The knowing of the temporal, of the negative, is the reflective turn that begins with Hegel and continued with Marx. The left’s task is the perform the labor of the negative, to accelerate the contradictions.

III. New Event, New Theory

¶6. Hijacking Game Stop

The story goes like this, Melvin Capital shorted Game Stop’s stock and lost billions of dollars as users from /r/wallstreebets drove up the price by upwards of 1200%. The buying spree generalized in the last week of January, seeing Robinhood ban temporarily banning the trading of numerous shorted stocks targeted by the Redditors ($GME, $NOK, $AMC, etc.) and the shut down of the Reddit page. The excitement spread over all major social media platforms, and, despite the efforts of the white house to stop the automatizing process, the price continued to stay strong by the end of the week. Going around many people’s minds was the question: what did this mean? Numerous dry takes dismissed it as little more than nothing, often finding some moral defect in the retail traders. But among the banality of left Twitter arose a thought: détournement.

The entire scenario is thoroughly dialectical. The actions of the retail traders are not something that came from the outside but is the violence of capitalism on itself. Robinhood was the primary tool of this unconscious détournement. The creation of this app was not an olive branch offered to the petite-bourgeoisie and proletariat; rather its primary purpose is to aggregate the data of the users to sell to firms so that these firms could get marginally ahead of treads. The logic of the protocol was manichean. There was the realm of retail traders and other private individuals and that of the big firms, who constitute the bulk of stock market activity. Robinhood has a history of producing monstrous effects in the stock market, namely the so-called “infinite money cheat code.” And, at the beginning of 2020, there was major activity on the platform during the Coronavirus Crash as the markets burned. The contradiction is of the large firms, wherein the ups and downs of the stock market were understood as their exclusive domain. The issue lies in a reversal. The firms are not the market but are only one moment. In this one-sided understanding, they contradicted themselves, for their practices, i.e., using data from Robinhood, posits the other moments of the stock market. Further, in the completion of the dialectal circle, the activity of the firms was subjugated to its inessential other, us. The violence performed was only a result of their disavow, a mere product of the market.

¶7. Becoming Dialectical: The New Détournement

The Game Stop short squeeze is just the beginning, a contingent event which has exhibited a new spirit. Our play has thus far been trivial, at least since 68. The capitalist world has reawakened to its contradictions. The blind acts of consciousness spirit have outpaced its self-consciousness. These things must be brought into balance. The content of our thought is not generated by us but by capitalism, of which we then negatively labor away. But this new labor, the new détournement, is exactly that which until now has been missing. The left’s activity has been to fixate on some fallen moment, with the aim to reanimate the dead Eden. However much declaring someone to be a falsifier or modernizer occupies the time of leftists, it cannot make dreams into waking reality. The idea of perfection before the fall is ass-backwards, for it is only after the fall that salvation is possible. We must forgive the past of its imperfections and move on into the new day. We are just now taking the first steps into a new world, and so, with the new détournement, comes the need to refigure a set of guiding principles.

Be on the lookout for negative moments of capitalism. We are stuck in our historical moment, but the contradictions of capitalism alter this line in denying its moments. When the businessman walks down the street and sees a homeless man, he doesn’t understand that he is the reason that other is homeless on the streets. They think the homeless as other, something contingent, foreign. When their house burns down, they don’t think to blame their day job. The joining together of these opposed moments is to be our art

The positive effects are only accomplished in the alterations of space and time between the détourned elements. Détournement’s art is in the manipulation of space and time. We think the void, by which the finite positive elements are thought. The act brings violence upon the finite, ripping it open through its own contradictions. The effort of the détourned elements to survive the opposition of the negative is the positive effect of détournement. Only when capitalism is dead will its violence end.

The subject for which this is for is the capitalist subject. As a whole, the subject of our work is the whole of capitalism. Yet since there is no universal finite element. An act of détournement hasn’t failed if it is only understood by some segment of the population; rather it is only if the goal of the work as a whole takes only a moment of capitalism as its subject. Don’t be worry that a particular work doesn’t speak to everyone. If one is too particular, go in the opposite direction in the next. Be free. Have fun.

The new détournement is of the world. The task is to get around and under things. Anyone who wishes to practice the new détournement cannot hold onto their products as anything other than the past. Don’t be defensive, sublate the past! Take up the past and change it. Everything is fluid: all that is solid melts into air, including you.

A new horizon has been opened up. You are free to move beyond the bad infinity of the past. Be creative, be up to date, and distinguished at the same time. The left is over. You might as well finish it off. Détourn. Long live the left. You haven’t seen anything yet, just wait and see!

Notes

1https://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline///si/definitions.html

2https://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline///si/definitions.html

3http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/detourn.htm

4http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/3.detourn.htm

5https://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline///si/painting.html

6https://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline///si/painting.html

7Wikipedia provides an easy list of thing

8http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/detourn.htm