Guy Debord
[Writer and theorist, b. 1931, Paris, d. 1994, Champot, Upper Loire, France.]
Where the real world changes into simple images, the simple images become real beings and effective motivations of hypnotic behavior.
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In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.
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The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.
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In our society now, we prefer to see ourselves living than living.
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The spectacle is
capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image.
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Images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream, and the former unity of life is lost forever. Apprehended in a
partial way, reality unfolds in a new generality as a pseudo-world apart, solely as an object of contemplation. The tendency toward the specialization of images-of-the-world finds its highest expression in the world of the autonomous image, where deceit deceives itself. The spectacle in its generality is a concrete inversion of life, and, as such the autonomous movement of non-life.
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