Whose land are you on? What to know about the Indigenous Land Back movement
Land thrives in Indigenous hands, and there are real, tangible ways you can help return what was stolen by colonizers from tribes across North America. Indigenous scholar Lindsey Schneider addresses the ill-gotten legacy of settler colonialism with an introduction to the Land Back movement: the push to return stewardship of the Earth to its rightful guardians and restore balance to ecosystems for generations to come.Read transcript
This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxMileHigh, an independent event. TED’s editors chose to feature it for you.
Lindsey Schneider is a descendant of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. Her research focuses on settler colonialism, the environment, and the diverse ways in which tribal nations peoples in the US and Canada have navigated legal and political barriers in order to sustain their relationships with the land.
About TEDx
TEDx was created in the spirit of TED’s mission, “ideas worth spreading.” It supports independent organizers who want to create a TED-like event in their own community.
Club Q co-owner Nic Grzecka is embrace by mourners outside of the Colorado Springs City Hall where a rainbow flag was draped over the building on November 23, 2022 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The flag was hung in honor of the victims of a shooting at Club Q, an LGBTQ+ club where a gunman opened fire on November 19th, killing 5 and injuring 25 others. (Photo: Chet Strange/Getty Images
We can’t stop tolerating hate until we realign ourselves with what it means to be alive, for which South Africans have a term: ubuntu: “I am because you are.”
I stroke the killer’s hatred and certainty, knowing the answer we all ache for—why?—will not be forthcoming.
Yes, there was another mass shooting the other day, at Club Q in Colorado Springs. A young man clothed in body armor entered the nightclub carrying an assault rifle and started shooting as a drag queen danced. In maybe two minutes he killed five people and wounded, according to some accounts, 18. Then a patron risked his life, tackled the shooter, held him immobile till police arrived.
“Places that are supposed to be safe spaces of acceptance and celebration should never be turned into places of terror and violence.”
Five people killed, a few more critically injured. This time the minority group targeted—”the enemy”—was the LGBTQ community.
Hatred, guns, “permission.”
In that sense, yes, America is the land of the free: free to imagine an enemy . . . free to project your own self-hatred outward, onto a specifically defined group of people and sculpt them into the enemy, perhaps with the help of others, especially via social media. We are also free, for the most part, to purchase guns, including assault rifles, and lots of ammo, and plan an attack—at a church, a school, a grocery store, a nightclub, whatever.
To actually carry out that attack, well, that’s illegal, maybe even illegal plus. It could be both murder and a hate crime. The mayor of Colorado Springs, according to the New York Times, “said the shooting ‘has all the appearances of being a hate crime,’ but he said that investigators were still combing through the gunman’s social media history and doing interviews to determine a motive.”
Somehow that matters. Why it matters is beyond me, as though killing someone with prejudice is worse than just killing someone. And it’s not as though there’s a serious national interest in eliminating hatred of particular groups. My God, there’s political gold in many forms of hatred, LGBTQ people being one such easily targeted group.
Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, for instance, who tweeted remorse about the Club Q shooting and said the victims and their families “are in my thoughts and prayers,” had, until then, been a notorious tweeter of anti-LGBTQ blather, making the fact-free case that they were “sick, demented” people bent on “grooming” innocent children to become gay—kind of in the same way. it seems, that refugees, according to Donald Trump, not only take our jobs but are often rapists and murderers. Create an enemy, get a following! (And guns are just for self-defense.)
This is the context in which we live. And the context is getting increasingly volatile, according to the Gun Violence Archive. This year so far, there have been 601 mass shootings (a “mass shooting” defined as at least four people being shot or killed) “in nearly every corner of the nation.” In 2021, there were 690 of them. In 2019, the total was a mere 417.
There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear . . .
And the U.S. justice system is in well over its head. Order is created from the bottom up, not enforced from the top down. But how? If nothing else, it’s time to start becoming aware of what we already know. Just ask Joe Biden.
In the wake of the Club Q shooting, he made this official statement: “Places that are supposed to be safe spaces of acceptance and celebration should never be turned into places of terror and violence.”
He added: “We cannot and must not tolerate hate.”
OK, fine. Yada, yada. The developed, militarized world has no idea what this means, except in some imaginary way. In essence, “how do we stop tolerating hate?” is the very question the shooter himself, and all those who came before him, posed, in a totally personalized way. How do we, how do I, truly value life—my life as well as yours?
Excuse me, Mr. President, maybe we should ask South Africa about this. We can’t stop tolerating hate until we realign ourselves with what it means to be alive, for which South Africans have a term: ubuntu: “I am because you are.”
Or as Desmond Tutu put it: “My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in what is yours.”
And now we need a national stopping point, as we let this truth transform us. What it took for South Africa to awaken were the horrors of apartheid—the brutal, legal devaluing of the lives of most of the country’s population—which, after decades of protest, much of it met with violence, was finally dismantled in the early 1990s. A national holiday commemorating the end of apartheid, Human Rights Day, is celebrated every March 21. This is the date, in 1960, when the Sharpeville Massacre occurred, when police in an area south of Johannesburg opened fire on 4,000 protesters, killing 69 of them, including women and children. Many of the victims were shot in the back.
“The Sharpeville Massacre that killed 69 people is central to this public holiday as it reminds us of the cost to enforce human rights,” writes Bongiwe Beja. “Understanding how humans ought to be treated becomes imperative in ensuring that such events never happen again. Ubuntu shows us a way of acting humanely toward each other and can be a pivotal guide for society as we celebrate and enforce (our) human rights.”
She then states a stunning truth, declaring that all manner of social hell, including hate-spurred violence, needs to be “countered with a positive response from civil society—guided by Ubuntu.”
This will never be a perfect world. This will never be a world without conflict. But let’s pause in this moment, calm ourselves, set down our hatred and look each other in the eyes. I am because you are.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Robert Koehleris an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. Koehler has been the recipient of multiple awards for writing and journalism from organizations including the National Newspaper Association, Suburban Newspapers of America, and the Chicago Headline Club. He’s a regular contributor to such high-profile websites as Common Dreams and the Huffington Post. Eschewing political labels, Koehler considers himself a “peace journalist. He has been an editor at Tribune Media Services and a reporter, columnist and copy desk chief at Lerner Newspapers, a chain of neighborhood and suburban newspapers in the Chicago area. Koehler launched his column in 1999. Born in Detroit and raised in suburban Dearborn, Koehler has lived in Chicago since 1976. He earned a master’s degree in creative writing from Columbia College and has taught writing at both the college and high school levels. Koehler is a widower and single parent. He explores both conditions at great depth in his writing. His book, “Courage Grows Strong at the Wound” (2016).Contact him or visit his website at commonwonders.com.
If this card comes up to represent a person, she will be a gentle, romantic individual with high levels of intuition. The Princess of Cups is compassionate and caring, warm and responsive. She is at peace with her emotional nature, often highly creative and artistic. She has a certain fragility, particularly when coming into contact with the harsher realities of everyday life, and will not always cope well with conflict. In her world, tranquillity and harmony are highly valued.
If, as often happens with the Princesses of the deck, the card comes up to represent a change in events, then the interpretation broadens out somewhat. For instance, the Princess of Cups will sometimes come up to indicate forthcoming pregnancy. The card also appears to indicate a woman falling in love.
And if the card applies to a state of mind, then it will indicate heightened perception, and tells you to listen carefully to the voice of your own intuition, and to follow through on any ideas which arise from it.
The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution in 1972.[1] The intellectual foundations of the Situationist International were derived primarily from libertarian Marxism and the avant-garde art movements of the early 20th century, particularly Dada and Surrealism.[1] Overall, situationist theory represented an attempt to synthesize this diverse field of theoretical disciplines into a modern and comprehensive critique of mid-20th century advanced capitalism.[1]
Essential to situationist theory was the concept of the spectacle, a unified critique of advanced capitalism of which a primary concern was the progressively increasing tendency towards the expression and mediation of social relations through objects.[1] The situationists believed that the shift from individual expression through directly lived experiences, or the first-hand fulfillment of authentic desires, to individual expression by proxy through the exchange or consumption of commodities, or passive second-hand alienation, inflicted significant and far-reaching damage to the quality of human life for both individuals and society.[1] Another important concept of situationist theory was the primary means of counteracting the spectacle; the construction of situations, moments of life deliberately constructed for the purpose of reawakening and pursuing authentic desires, experiencing the feeling of life and adventure, and the liberation of everyday life.[1][2]
The situationists recognized that capitalism had changed since Karl Marx‘s formative writings, but maintained that his analysis of the capitalist mode of production remained fundamentally correct; they rearticulated and expanded upon several classical Marxist concepts, such as his theory of alienation.[1] In their expanded interpretation of Marxist theory, the situationists asserted that the misery of social alienation and commodity fetishism were no longer limited to the fundamental components of capitalist society, but had now in advanced capitalism spread themselves to every aspect of life and culture.[1] They rejected the idea that advanced capitalism’s apparent successes—such as technological advancement, increased productive capacity, and a raised general quality of life when compared to previous systems, such as feudalism—could ever outweigh the social dysfunction and degradation of everyday life that it simultaneously inflicted.[1]
When the Situationist International was first formed, it had a predominantly artistic focus; emphasis was placed on concepts like unitary urbanism and psychogeography.[1] Gradually, however, that focus shifted more towards revolutionary and political theory.[1] The Situationist International reached the apex of its creative output and influence in 1967 and 1968, with the former marking the publication of the two most significant texts of the situationist movement, The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord and The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem. The expressed writing and political theory of the two aforementioned texts, along with other situationist publications, proved greatly influential in shaping the ideas behind the May 1968 insurrections in France; quotes, phrases, and slogans from situationist texts and publications were ubiquitous on posters and graffiti throughout France during the uprisings.[1]
Etymology and usage
The term “situationist” refers to the construction of situations, one of the early central concepts of the Situationist International; the term also refers to any individuals engaged in the construction of situations, or, more narrowly, to members of the Situationist International.[2] Situationist theory sees the situation as a tool for the liberation of everyday life, a method of negating the pervasive alienation that accompanied the spectacle. The founding manifesto of the Situationist International, Report on the Construction of Situations (1957), defined the construction of situations as “the concrete construction of momentary ambiances of life and their transformation into a superior passional quality.”[3]Internationale Situationniste No. 1 (June 1958) defined the constructed situation as “a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitaryambiance and a game of events”.[2] The situationists argued that advanced capitalism manufactured false desires; literally in the sense of ubiquitous advertising and the glorification of accumulated capital, and more broadly in the abstraction and reification of the more ephemeral experiences of authentic life into commodities. The experimental direction of situationist activity consisted of setting up temporary environments favorable to the fulfillment of true and authentic human desires in response.[4]
The Situationist International strongly resisted use of the term “situationism”, which Debord called a “meaningless term”, adding “[t]here is no such thing as situationism, which would mean a doctrine for interpreting existing conditions”.[2] The situationists maintained a philosophical opposition to all ideologies, conceiving of them as abstract superstructures ultimately serving only to justify the economic base of a given society; accordingly, they rejected “situationism” as an absurd and self-contradictory concept.[5] In The Society of the Spectacle, Debord asserted that ideology was “the abstract will to universality and the illusion thereof” which was “legitimated in modern society by universal abstraction and by the effective dictatorship of illusion”.[6]
History
Origins (1945–1955)
The situationist movement had its origins as a left wing tendency within Lettrism,[7][8] an artistic and literary movement led by the Romanian-born French poet and visual artist Isidore Isou, originating in 1940s Paris. The group was heavily influenced by the preceding avant-garde movements of Dadaism and Surrealism, seeking to apply critical theories based on these concepts to all areas of art and culture, most notably in poetry, film, painting and political theory.[3] Among some of the concepts and artistic innovations developed by the Lettrists were the lettrie, a poem reflecting pure form yet devoid of all semantic content, new syntheses of writing and visual art identified as metagraphics and hypergraphics, as well as new creative techniques in filmmaking. Future situationist Guy Debord, who was at that time a significant figure in the Lettrist movement, helped develop these new film techniques, using them in his Lettrist film Howlings for Sade (1952) as well as later in his situationist film Society of the Spectacle (1972).
By 1950, a much younger and more left-wing part of the Lettrist movement began to emerge. This group kept very active in perpetrating public outrages such as the Notre-Dame Affair, where at the Easter High Mass at Notre Dame de Paris, in front of ten thousand people and broadcast on national TV, their member and former Dominican Michel Mourre posed as a monk, “stood in front of the altar and read a pamphlet proclaiming that God was dead”.[9][10]André Breton prominently came out in support of the action in a letter that spawned a large debate in the newspaper Combat.[11][12]
In 1952, this left wing of the Lettrist movement, which included Debord, broke off from Isou’s group and formed the Letterist International, a new Paris-based collective of avant-garde artists and political theorists. The schism finally erupted when the future members of the radical Lettrists disrupted a Charlie Chaplin press conference for Limelight at the Hôtel Ritz Paris. They distributed a polemic entitled “No More Flat Feet!”, which concluded: “The footlights have melted the make-up of the supposedly brilliant mime. All we can see now is a lugubrious and mercenary old man. Go home Mister Chaplin.”[13] Isou was upset with this, his own attitude being that Chaplin deserved respect as one of the great creators of the cinematic art. The breakaway group felt that his work was no longer relevant, while having appreciated it “in its own time,” and asserted their belief “that the most urgent expression of freedom is the destruction of idols, especially when they claim to represent freedom,” in this case, filmmaker Charlie Chaplin.[14]
During this period of the Letterist International, many of the important concepts and ideas that would later be integral in situationist theory were developed. Individuals in the group collaboratively constructed the new field of psychogeography, which they defined as “the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment (whether consciously organized or not) on the emotions and behavior of individuals.”[2][15] Debord further expanded this concept of psychogeography with his theory of the dérive, an unplanned tour through an urban landscape directed entirely by the feelings evoked in the individual by their surroundings, serving as the primary means for mapping and investigating the psychogeography of these different areas.[16] During this period the Letterist International also developed the situationist tactic of détournement, which by reworking or re-contextualizing an existing work of art or literature sought to radically shift its meaning to one with revolutionary significance.
During the first few years of the SI’s founding, avant-garde artistic groups began collaborating with the SI and joining the organization. Gruppe SPUR, a German artistic collective, collaborated with the Situationist International on projects beginning in 1959, continuing until the group officially joined the SI in 1961. The role of the artists in the SI was of great significance, particularly Asger Jorn, Constant Nieuwenhuys and Pinot Gallizio.[21]
Asger Jorn, who invented Situgraphy and Situlogy, had the social role of catalyst and team leader among the members of the SI between 1957 and 1961. Jorn’s role in the situationist movement (as in COBRA) was that of a catalyst and team leader. Guy Debord on his own lacked the personal warmth and persuasiveness to draw people of different nationalities and talents into an active working partnership. As a prototype Marxist intellectual Debord needed an ally who could patch up the petty egoisms and squabbles of the members. When Jorn’s leadership was withdrawn in 1961, many simmering quarrels among different sections of the SI flared up, leading to multiple exclusions.
Internationale situationniste
The first major split was the exclusion of Gruppe SPUR, the German section, from the SI on 10 February 1962.[22] Many different disagreements led to the fracture, for example; while at the Fourth SI Conference in London in December 1960, in a discussion about the political nature of the SI, the Gruppe SPUR members disagreed with the core situationist stance of counting on a revolutionary proletariat;[23] the accusation that their activities were based on a “systematic misunderstanding of situationist theses”;[22] the understanding that at least one Gruppe SPUR member, sculptor Lothar Fischer, and possibly the rest of the group, were not actually understanding and/or agreeing with the situationist ideas, but were just using the SI to achieve success in the art market;[22][24] and the betrayal, in the Spur #7 issue, of a common agreement on the Gruppe SPUR and SI publications.[25][26]
The exclusion was a recognition that Gruppe SPUR‘s “principles, methods and goals” were significantly in contrast with those of the SI.[27][28] This split however was not a declaration of hostilities, as in other cases of SI exclusions. A few months after the exclusion, in the context of judicial prosecution against the group by the German state, Debord expressed his esteem to Gruppe SPUR, calling it the only significant artist group in (Germany) since World War II, and regarding it at the level of the avant-gardes in other countries.[29]
The next significant split was in 1962, wherein the “Nashists,” the Scandinavian section of the SI led by Jørgen Nash, were excluded from the organization. Nash created the 2nd Situationist International.[30]
Political period (1963–1968)
By this point the Situationist International consisted almost exclusively of the Franco-Belgian section, led by Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem. These members possessed much more of a tendency towards political theory over the more artistic aspects of the SI. The shift in the intellectual priorities within the SI resulted in more focus on the theoretical, such as the theory of the spectacle and Marxist critical analysis, spending much less time on the more artistic and tangible concepts like unitary urbanism, détournement, and situgraphy.[31]
During this period the SI began having more and more influence on local university students in France. Taking advantage of the apathy of their colleagues, five “Pro-situs”, situationist-influenced students, infiltrated the University of Strasbourg‘s student union in November 1966 and began scandalising the authorities.[32][33] Their first action was to form an “anarchist appreciation society” called The Society for the Rehabilitation for Karl Marx and Ravachol; next they appropriated union funds to flypost “Return of the Durruti Column“, Andre Bertrand‘s détourned comic strip.[33] They then invited the situationists to contribute a critique of the University of Strasbourg, and On the Poverty of Student Life, written by Tunisian situationist Mustapha/Omar Khayati was the result.[33] The students promptly proceeded to print 10,000 copies of the pamphlet using university funds and distributed them during a ceremony marking the beginning of the academic year. This provoked an immediate outcry in the local, national and international media.[33]
The Situationists played a preponderant role in the May 1968 uprisings,[34] and to some extent their political perspective and ideas fueled such crisis,[34][35][36] providing a central theoretic foundation.[37][38][39][40][41][42] While SI’s member count had been steadily falling for the preceding several years, the ones that remained were able to fill revolutionary roles for which they had patiently anticipated and prepared. The active ideologists (“enragés” and Situationists) behind the revolutionary events in Strasbourg, Nanterre and Paris, numbered only about one or two dozen persons.[43]
This has now been widely acknowledged as a fact by studies of the period,[44][45][46][47][48][49] what is still wide open to interpretation is the “how and why” that happened.[34]Charles de Gaulle, in the aftermath televised speech of 7 June, acknowledged that “This explosion was provoked by groups in revolt against modern consumer and technical society, whether it be the communism of the East or the capitalism of the West.”[50]
Quotations from two key situationist books, Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle (1967) and Khayati’s On the Poverty of Student Life (1966), were written on the walls of Paris and several provincial cities.[51] This was documented in the collection of photographs published in 1968 by Walter Lewino, L’imagination au pouvoir.[53]
Though the SI were a very small group, they were expert self-propagandists, and their slogans appeared daubed on walls throughout Paris at the time of the revolt. SI member René Viénet‘s 1968 book Enragés and Situationists in the Occupations Movement, France, May ’68 gives an account of the involvement of the SI with the student group of Enragés and the occupation of the Sorbonne.
The occupations of 1968 started at the University of Nanterre and spread to the Sorbonne. The police tried to take back the Sorbonne and a riot ensued. Following this a general strike was declared with up to 10 million workers participating. The SI originally participated in the Sorbonne occupations and defended barricades in the riots. The SI distributed calls for the occupation of factories and the formation of workers’ councils,[53] but, disillusioned with the students, left the university to set up The Council for the Maintenance of the Occupations (CMDO) which distributed the SI’s demands on a much wider scale. After the end of the movement, the CMDO disbanded.
Aftermath (1968–1972)
By 1972, Gianfranco Sanguinetti and Guy Debord were the only two remaining members of the SI. Working with Debord, in August 1975, Sanguinetti wrote a pamphlet titled Rapporto veridico sulle ultime opportunità di salvare il capitalismo in Italia (The Real Report on the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy),[54] which (inspired by Bruno Bauer) purported to be the cynical writing of “Censor”, a powerful industrialist. The pamphlet argued that the ruling class of Italy supported the Piazza Fontana bombing and other covert, false flag mass slaughter for the higher goal of defending the capitalist status quo from communist influence. The pamphlet was mailed to 520 of Italy’s most powerful individuals. It was received as genuine and powerful politicians, industrialists and journalists praised its content. After reprinting the tract as a small book, Sanguinetti revealed himself to be the true author. In the outcry that ensued[55] and under pressure from Italian authorities Sanguinetti left Italy in February 1976, and was denied entry to France.[56]
After publishing in the last issue of the magazine an analysis of the May 1968 revolts, and the strategies that will need to be adopted in future revolutions,[53] the SI was dissolved in 1972.[57]
The Spectacle is a central notion in situationist theory, developed by Guy Debord in his 1967 book, The Society of the Spectacle. In its limited sense, spectacle means the mass media, which are “its most glaring superficial manifestation.”[58] Debord said that the society of the spectacle came to existence in the late 1920s.[59][60]
The critique of the spectacle is a development and application of Karl Marx’s concept of fetishism of commodities, reification and alienation,[61] and the way it was reprised by György Lukács in 1923. In the society of the spectacle, the commodities rule the workers and the consumers instead of being ruled by them. The consumers are passive subjects that contemplate the reified spectacle.
As early as 1958, in the situationist manifesto, Debord described official culture as a “rigged game”, where conservative powers forbid subversive ideas to have direct access to the public discourse. Such ideas get first trivialized and sterilized, and then they are safely incorporated back within mainstream society, where they can be exploited to add new flavors to old dominant ideas.[62] This technique of the spectacle is sometimes called recuperation, and its counter-technique is the détournement.[63]
A détournement is a technique developed in the 1950s by the Letterist International,[7][8] and consist in “turning expressions of the capitalist system against itself,”[64] like turning slogans and logos against the advertisers or the political status quo.[65]Détournement was prominently used to set up subversive political pranks, an influential tactic called situationist prank that was reprised by the punk movement in the late 1970s[66] and inspired the culture jamming movement in the late 1980s.[64]
Anti-capitalism
The Situationist International, in the 15 years from its formation in 1957 and its dissolution in 1972, is characterized by a Marxist and surrealist perspective on aesthetics and politics,[67] without separation between the two: art and politics are faced together and in revolutionary terms.[68] The SI analyzed the modern world from the point of view of everyday life.[69] The core arguments of the Situationist International were an attack on the capitalist degradation of the life of people[3][70][71] and the fake models advertised by the mass media,[3] to which the Situationist responded with alternative life experiences.[3] The alternative life experiences explored by the Situationists were the construction of situations, unitary urbanism, psychogeography, and the union of play, freedom and critical thinking.[21]
A major stance of the SI was to count on the force of a revolutionary proletariat. This stance was reaffirmed very clearly in a discussion on “To what extent is the SI a political movement?”, during the Fourth SI Conference in London.[23] The SI remarked that this is a core Situationist principle, and that those that don’t understand it and agree with it, are not Situationist.
The SI rejected all art that separated itself from politics, the concept of 20th-century art that is separated from topical political events.[3][27] The SI believed that the notion of artistic expression being separated from politics and current events is one proliferated by reactionary considerations to render artwork that expresses comprehensive critiques of society impotent.[3] They recognized there was a precise mechanism followed by reactionaries to defuse the role of subversive artists and intellectuals, that is, to reframe them as separated from the most topical events, and divert from them the taste for the new that may dangerously appeal the masses; after such separation, such artworks are sterilized, banalized, degraded, and can be safely integrated into the official culture and the public discourse, where they can add new flavors to old dominant ideas and play the role of a gear wheel in the mechanism of the society of the spectacle.[3]
According to this theory, artists and intellectuals that accept such compromises are rewarded by the art dealers and praised by the dominant culture.[27] The SI received many offers to sponsor “creations” that would just have a “situationist” label but a diluted political content, that would have brought things back to order and the SI back into the old fold of artistic praxis. The majority of SI continued to refuse such offers and any involvement on the conventional avant-garde artistic plane.[27] This principle was affirmed since the founding of the SI in 1957, but the qualitative step of resolving all the contradictions of having situationists that make concessions to the cultural market, was made with the exclusion of Gruppe SPUR in 1962.[27]
The SI noted how reactionary forces forbid subversive ideas from artists and intellectuals to reach the public discourse, and how they attack the artworks that express comprehensive critique of society, by saying that art should not involve itself into politics.[3]
The construction of situations
The first edition of Internationale Situationniste defines the constructed situation as “a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and a game of events.”
As the SI embraced dialectical Marxism, the situation came to refer less to a specific avant-garde practice than to the dialectical unification of art and life more generally. Beyond this theoretical definition, the situation as a practical manifestation thus slipped between a series of proposals. The SI thus were first led to distinguish the situation from the mere artistic practice of the happening, and later identified it in historical events such as the Paris Commune in which it exhibited itself as the revolutionary moment. The SI’s interest in the Paris Commune was expressed in 1962 in their fourteen “Theses on the Paris Commune”.
The first edition of Internationale Situationniste defined psychogeography as “the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment (whether consciously organized or not) on the emotions and behavior of individuals.”[2] The term was first recognized in 1955 by Guy Debord while still with the Letterist International:
The word psychogeography, suggested by an illiterate Kabyle as a general term for the phenomena a few of us were investigating around the summer of 1953, is not too inappropriate. It does not contradict the materialist perspective of the conditioning of life and thought by objective nature. Geography, for example, deals with the determinant action of general natural forces, such as soil composition or climatic conditions, on the economic structures of a society, and thus on the corresponding conception that such a society can have of the world. Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, whether consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals. The charmingly vague adjective psychogeographical can be applied to the findings arrived at by this type of investigation, to their influence on human feelings, and more generally to any situation or conduct that seems to reflect the same spirit of discovery.
— Guy Debord, Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography[15]
By definition, psychogeography combines subjective and objective knowledge and studies. Debord struggled to stipulate the finer points of this theoretical paradox, ultimately producing “Theory of the Dérive” in 1958, a document which essentially serves as an instruction manual for the psychogeographic procedure, executed through the act of dérive (“drift”).
In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there… But the dérive includes both this letting go and its necessary contradiction: the domination of psychogeographical variations by the knowledge and calculation of their possibilities.
SI engaged in a play-form that was also practiced by its predecessor organization, the Lettrist International, the art of wandering through urban space, which they termed dérive, whose unique mood is conveyed in Debord’s darkly romantic meaning of palindrome. Two excursions organized by Andre Breton serve as the closest cultural precedents to the dérive. The first in 1921, was an excursion to the Church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre with the Parisian Dadaists;[73] the second excursion was on 1 May 1923, when a small group of Surrealists walked toward the countryside outside of Blois.[74] Debord was cautious however to differentiate between the derive and such precedents. He emphasized its active character as “a mode of experimental behavior” that reached to Romanticism, the Baroque, and the age of chivalry, with its tradition of long adventures voyages. Such urban roaming was characteristic of Left Bank bohemianism in Paris.[75]
In the SI’s 6th issue, Raoul Vaneigem writes in a manifesto of unitary urbanism, “All space is occupied by the enemy. We are living under a permanent curfew. Not just the cops—the geometry”.[76] Dérive, as a previously conceptualized tactic in the French military, was “a calculated action determined by the absence of a greater locus”, and “a maneuver within the enemy’s field of vision”.[77] To the SI, whose interest was inhabiting space, the dérive brought appeal in this sense of taking the “fight” to the streets and truly indulging in a determined operation. The dérive was a course of preparation, reconnaissance, a means of shaping situationist psychology among urban explorers for the eventuality of the situationist city.
The Astrology Podcast • Nov 13, 2018: This is part 2 of our series on the meanings of the signs of the zodiac, where we cover the second half of the signs: Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. This is episode 180 of The Astrology Podcast, with astrologers Chris Brennan, Kelly Surtees, and Austin Coppock. The purpose of the series is to provide an in-depth take on each of the signs, which we spend about 20-30 minutes talking about each. At the top of the episode we discuss the difference between modern versus traditional rulerships, and then we launch right into the first sign, Libra.
The Astrology Podcast • Oct 15, 2018: A detailed overview of the meanings of the first six signs of the zodiac in astrology: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, and Virgo. This is the first of a two-part series on the symbolism of the zodiac where we spend about 20-minutes explaining each of the signs. Part 2 will be released sometime next month. This is episode 175 of The Astrology Podcast, and it features astrologers Kelly Surtees, Austin Coppock, and Chris Brennan. Our goal was to do a really deep-dive into the astrological symbolism of each of the signs, and this was meant as a followup to episode 64 of the podcast where we did the same for the seven traditional planets.
In his eighty-first letter to Lucilius, Seneca writes under the heading “On Benefits”:
You complain that you have met with an ungrateful person. If this is your first experience of that sort, you should offer thanks either to your good luck or to your caution. In this case, however, caution can effect nothing but to make you ungenerous. For if you wish to avoid such a danger, you will not confer benefits; and so, that benefits may not be lost with another man, they will be lost to yourself.
It is better, however, to get no return than to confer no benefits. Even after a poor crop one should sow again; for often losses due to continued barrenness of an unproductive soil have been made good by one year’s fertility. In order to discover one grateful person, it is worth while to make trial of many ungrateful ones.
True generosity, Seneca argues, is measured not by the ends of the act but by the spirit from which it springs. He writes:
Benefits, as well as injuries, depend on the spirit… Our feeling about every obligation depends in each case upon the spirit in which the benefit is conferred; we weigh not the bulk of the gift, but the quality of the good-will which prompted it. So now let us do away with guess-work; the former deed was a benefit, and the latter, which transcended the earlier benefit, is an injury. The good man so arranges the two sides of his ledger that he voluntarily cheats himself by adding to the benefit and subtracting from the injury.
In a delightful reminder that even the most serious of thinkers can regard themselves with a sense of humor, Seneca adds a remark he cheekily qualifies as “one of the generally surprising statements such as we Stoics are wont to make and such as the Greeks call ‘paradoxes’”:
The wise man… enjoys the giving more than the recipient enjoys the receiving… None but the wise man knows how to return a favour. Even a fool can return it in proportion to his knowledge and his power; his fault would be a lack of knowledge rather than a lack of will or desire.
In a sentiment which Henry Miller would come to echo two thousand years later in his reflection on the intricate balance of giving and receiving, Seneca considers the meaning of generosity and the proper object of gratitude:
Anyone who receives a benefit more gladly than he repays it is mistaken. By as much as he who pays is more light-hearted than he who borrows, by so much ought he to be more joyful who unburdens himself of the greatest debt — a benefit received — than he who incurs the greatest obligations. For ungrateful men make mistakes in this respect also: they have to pay their creditors both capital and interest, but they think that benefits are currency which they can use without interest. So the debts grow through postponement, and the later the action is postponed the more remains to be paid. A man is an ingrate if he repays a favour without interest.
At the heart of his message is the insistence that true generosity is not transactional and that gratitude, in turn, ought to be calibrated to the intrinsic rewards of the generous act rather than to the veneer of a transactional favor:
We should try by all means to be as grateful as possible. For gratitude is a good thing for ourselves, in a sense in which justice, that is commonly supposed to concern other persons, is not; gratitude returns in large measure unto itself. There is not a man who, when he has benefited his neighbour, has not benefited himself, — I do not mean for the reason that he whom you have aided will desire to aid you, or that he whom you have defended will desire to protect you, or that an example of good conduct returns in a circle to benefit the doer, just as examples of bad conduct recoil upon their authors, and as men find no pity if they suffer wrongs which they themselves have demonstrated the possibility of committing; but that the reward for all the virtues lies in the virtues themselves. For they are not practised with a view to recompense; the wages of a good deed is to have done it. I am grateful, not in order that my neighbour, provoked by the earlier act of kindness, may be more ready to benefit me, but simply in order that I may perform a most pleasant and beautiful act; I feel grateful, not because it profits me, but because it pleases me.
The Lord of Dominion is an important card when we consider our personal freedom of choice, for it relates to the way in which we live in accordance with our own Will, and the consequent results of this.
The card indicates that we are in charge of the way that our lives are unfolding, and that this happens in the fashion we had anticipated. It does not rule out the occasional nice surprise, nor obstacle, but it does promise us that we are in a state of mind which allows us to fulfil our needs and chase our destiny.
There’s harmony and contentment when we manage to achieve this position in life. Events take place in an ordered and positive fashion. Things unfold around us the way that we want them to. Everything goes according to plan.
In fact, this is probably a natural state for a healthy human being. The fact that we have to struggle so hard to achieve it, and then maintain it, is more a comment on the type of life we lead, than anything else.
When we can bring ourselves in harmony with the forces of our Universe, achieving our dreams becomes far more possible than at any other time. We attain harmony when we are centred and at ease with ourselves.
Careful planning is always important when this card comes up – again there is a need to order our future so that we know where we’re headed. And it’s also important to reconcile any uncertainty or confusion generated within us. Both of these actions will ensure that nothing interferes with the flow of our own Will out into the Universe.
On very rare occasions this card will come up with others like the Star, or the Priestess, to indicate periods of huge spiritual breakthrough. Make the best of them when they arrive!!
BB editor’s note to Prosperos Deans Emeriti Thane Walker and Al Haferkamp: “In the Lakota tradition, when somebody gets ill, the community says, ‘Thank you. Your illness represents some disfunction in our whole community because we are not separate. Your body is not separate from your mind and your mind is not separate from the rest of our minds. . . . So your illness represents some disfunction, some imbalance in our whole community. So your healing is our healing. How can we support you?’”
–Traditional indigenous way of looking at illness as shared by Gabor Maté
Democracy Now! Sep 16, 2022 In an extended interview, acclaimed physician and author Dr. Gabor Maté discusses his new book, just out, called “The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture.” “The very values of a society are traumatizing for a lot of people,” says Maté, who argues in his book that “psychological trauma, woundedness, underlies much of what we call disease.” He says healing requires a reconnection between the mind and the body, which can be achieved through cultivating a sense of community, meaning, belonging and purpose. Maté also discusses how the healthcare system has harmfully promoted the “mechanization of birth,” how the lack of social services for parents has led to “a massive abandonment of infants,” and how capitalism has fueled addiction and the rise of youth suicide rates. Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at https://democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET. Support independent media: https://democracynow.org/donate Subscribe to our Daily Email Digest: https://democracynow.org/subscribe
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Journalist Hadley Freeman interviewed Aries actor William Shatner when he was 90. She was surprised to find that the man who played Star Trek’s Captain Kirk looked 30 years younger than his actual age. “How do you account for your robustness?” she asked him. “I ride a lot of horses, and I’m into the bewilderment of the world,” said Shatner. “I open my heart and head into the curiosity of how things work.” I suggest you adopt Shatner’s approach in the coming weeks, Aries. Be intoxicated with the emotional richness of mysteries and perplexities. Feel the joy of how unknowable and unpredictable everything is. Bask in the blessings of the beautiful and bountiful questions that life sends your way.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Of all the objects on earth, which is most likely to be carelessly cast away and turned into litter? Cigarette butts, of course. That’s why an Indian entrepreneur named Naman Guota is such a revolutionary. Thus far, he has recycled and transformed over 300 million butts into mosquito repellant, toys, keyrings, and compost, which he and his company have sold for over a million dollars. I predict that in the coming weeks, you will have a comparable genius for converting debris and scraps into useful, valuable stuff. You will be skilled at recycling dross. Meditate on how you might accomplish this metaphorically and psychologically. GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Tips on how to be the best Gemini you can be in the coming weeks: 1. Think laterally or in spirals rather than straight lines. 2. Gleefully solve problems in your daydreams. 3. Try not to hurt anyone accidentally. Maybe go overboard in being sensitive and kind. 4. Cultivate even more variety than usual in the influences you surround yourself with. 5. Speak the diplomatic truth to people who truly need to hear it. 6. Make creative use of your mostly hidden side. 7. Never let people figure you out completely.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): In my dream, I gathered with my five favorite astrologers to ruminate on your immediate future. After much discussion, we decided the following advice would be helpful for you in December. 1. Make the most useful and inspirational errors you’ve dared in a long time. 2. Try experiments that teach you interesting lessons even if they aren’t completely successful. 3. Identify and honor the blessings in every mess. LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): “All possible feelings do not yet exist,” writes Leo novelist Nicole Krauss in her book The History of Love. “There are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written, or something else impossible to predict, fathom, or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges and absorbs the impact.” I suspect that some of these novel moods will soon be welling up in you, Leo. I’m confident your heart will absorb the influx with intelligence and fascination. VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Virgo author Jeanette Winterson writes, “I have always tried to make a home for myself, but I have not felt at home in myself. I have worked hard at being the hero of my own life, but every time I checked the register of displaced persons, I was still on it. I didn’t know how to belong. Longing? Yes. Belonging? No.” Let’s unpack Winterson’s complex testimony as it relates to you right now. I think you are closer than ever before to feeling at home in yourself—maybe not perfectly so, but more than in the past. I also suspect you have a greater-than-usual capacity for belonging. That’s why I invite you to be clear about what or whom you want to belong to and what your belonging will feel like. One more thing: You now have extraordinary power to learn more about what it means to be the hero of your own life. LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): It’s tempting for you to entertain balanced views about every subject. You might prefer to never come to definitive conclusions about anything, because it’s so much fun basking in the pretty glow of prismatic ambiguity. You LOVE there being five sides to every story. I’m not here to scold you about this predilection. As a person with three Libran planets in my chart, I understand the appeal of considering all options. But I will advise you to take a brief break from this tendency. If you avoid making decisions in the coming weeks, they will be made for you by others. I don’t recommend that. Be proactive. SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Scorpio poet David Whyte makes the surprising statement that “anger is the deepest form of compassion.” What does he mean? As long as it doesn’t result in violence, he says, “anger is the purest form of care. The internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect, and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for.” Invoking Whyte’s definition, I will urge you to savor your anger in the coming days. I will invite you to honor and celebrate your anger, and use it to guide your constructive efforts to fix some problem or ease some hurt. (Read more: tinyurl.com/AngerCompassion) SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sagittarian comedian Margaret Cho dealt with floods of ignorant criticism while growing up. She testifies, “Being called ugly and fat and disgusting from the time I could barely understand what the words meant has scarred me so deep inside that I have learned to hunt, stalk, claim, own, and defend my own loveliness.” You may not have ever experienced such extreme forms of disapproval, Sagittarius, but—like all of us—you have on some occasions been berated or undervalued simply for being who you are. The good news is that the coming months will be a favorable time to do what Cho has done: hunt, stalk, claim, own, and defend your own loveliness. It’s time to intensify your efforts in this noble project.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): The bad news: In 1998, Shon Hopwood was sentenced to 12 years in prison for committing bank robberies. The good news: While incarcerated, he studied law and helped a number of his fellow prisoners win their legal cases—including one heard by the US Supreme Court. After his release, he became a full-fledged lawyer, and is now a professor of law at Georgetown University. Your current trouble isn’t anywhere as severe as Hopwood’s was, Capricorn, but I expect your current kerfuffle could motivate you to accomplish a very fine redemption. AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “I stopped going to therapy because I knew my therapist was right, and I wanted to keep being wrong,” writes poet Clementine von Radics. “I wanted to keep my bad habits like charms on a bracelet. I did not want to be brave.” Dear Aquarius, I hope you will do the opposite of her in the coming weeks. You are, I suspect, very near to a major healing. You’re on the verge of at least partially fixing a problem that has plagued you for a while. So please keep calling on whatever help you’ve been receiving. Maybe ask for even more support and inspiration from the influences that have been contributing to your slow, steady progress. PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): As you have roused your personal power to defeat your fears in the past, what methods and approaches have worked best for you? Are there brave people who have inspired you? Are there stories and symbols that have taught you useful tricks? I urge you to survey all you have learned about the art of summoning extra courage. In the coming weeks, you will be glad you have this information to draw on. I don’t mean to imply that your challenges will be scarier or more daunting than usual. My point is that you will have unprecedented opportunities to create vigorous new trends in your life if you are as bold and audacious as you can be.
Consciousness, spirituality, biography, sexuality, androgyny, futurism, space, the arts, science, astrology, democracy, humor, books, movies and more
You complain that you have met with an ungrateful person. If this is your first experience of that sort, you should offer thanks either to your good luck or to your caution. In this case, however, caution can effect nothing but to make you ungenerous. For if you wish to avoid such a danger, you will not confer benefits; and so, that benefits may not be lost with another man, they will be lost to yourself.
