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Détournement á la Mode SituationistPraxis: History and Present of CulturalPolitical Resistance to the Psychologyof Advertising SpectaclePamela OdihPublished online: 02 Jan 2013.

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Detournement a la Mode SituationistPraxis: History and Present of CulturalPolitical Resistance to the Psychologyof Advertising Spectacle

Pamela Odih

According to neuromarketing advertising techniques, our brains are neurologi-cally segmented into differentially operating zones; consequently advertise-ments have to be aesthetically designed to communicate and activate preciseneural circuits. Neuroimaging technologies have reassured the allegoricalattestation of marketing legitimacy: efficacy of practice translates into thevividly surreal-coloured imagery of functional magnetic resonance imaging. Inthis brand, new cerebral hemisphere of marketing technology, the brain’s neu-ral processes provide the medium for advertising messages. Thus, visual mediaand aesthetics capable of generating convincing simulacra, depicting the mostspectacular variations in levels of neuron activity, are increasingly achievingcurrency. Interventions, by advertising creatives, into the realm of the artisticavant-garde, raise many fundamental questions about tendering the interiorityof human consciousness. This paper traces the history and presence of culturalpolitical encounters with the psychology of advertising spectacle. Primarilyinformed by the artist avant-garde of Situationist International (SI) (1957-1972), my definition of the advertising psychology spectacle refers to themediation of social relationships by the currency of advertising psychology. Inneuromarketing and advertising, the spectacle translates materiality, affectand embodiment into the sign-currencies of western capitalist commodity cul-ture. Resistance, to the recuperation of the artistic avant-garde into the spi-ralling vortex of the spectacle, can be traced back to SI and its challenges tothe meretricious spectacle of advertising psychology. Indeed, Situationists’praxis has relevance to an appreciation of Adbusters and their interrogation ofthe psychology of the advertising spectacle.

“First, we believe that the world must be changed … We know that suchchange is possible by means of pertinent actions” (Debord 1957/2004, p. 29).From 1957 to 1972, Situationist International (SI) interrogated a systemic

historical crisis, which was particularly frustrating revolutionary praxis. Revolu-tionary movements were struggling to contend the onslaught of Western

capitalism’s “rational control of new productive forces” and the international

JOURNAL FOR CULTURAL RESEARCH, 2013Vol. 17, No. 4, 323–357, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2012.752161

� 2012 Taylor & Francis

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expansion of capitalist consumerism (Ibid.). The political conservatism, ofpost-war 1950s Europe, was obfuscating this insidious centralization in the

exploitative economic infrastructure of capitalist society, conversely, thepolitical actions of international social movements had “only achieved scat-

tered half-successes” (Ibid., 29-30). Of significant concern, amongst, the intel-lectual left, was its enervated response to the technological reconstruction ofWestern capitalism, in the post-war era. Guy Debord, in his Report on the

Construction of Situations, propounded that “Capitalism is devising new formsof struggle … it is masking the nature of class opposition by means of various

reformist tactics” (Debord et al. 1957/2004, p. 30). Debord (Ibid.), particularlyfocused on the images and representations that paralleled a new tyrannical

code of production, in which the pre-eminent enchantment was the invertedadvertising spectacle of psychic life, cultural knowledge and experience.

In probing for a more incisive knowledge of the consumer Americanmerchandisers, in the 1940s, began to “explore the deep unconscious and sub-

conscious factors that motivate people” (Packard 1958, p. 24). By the 1950s,the use of psychoanalysis, to subliminally stimulate and “guide campaignsof persuasion”, had become “the basis of a multimillion-dollar industry” (Ibid.,

p. 3). Packard (1958), in the Hidden Persuaders describes how, in their explo-ration of “the deep unconscious”, advertising creatives “were searching not

only for insights but also, to use one common phrase, ‘triggers of action’”(Ibid., p. 24). During that time, Fordist corporate capitalism was threatened

by a crisis of accumulation. In this context “a fundamental shift occurred inthe preoccupation of people in executive suites” (Ibid., p. 21). Packard

perceptively notes how executive planners enthused and promoted the com-mercial shift “from being maker-minded to market-minded” (Ibid.). The hypeat management conferences was the new “marketing revolution” and the best

methods “to stimulate consumer buying, by creating wants in people that theystill didn’t realize existed” (Ibid., p. 21). In its efforts to commercialize

Freud’s “id” so as to meet demands for the rationalization of persuasion, thehypnotic spell of advertising was, increasingly, ascribed the capacity to sublim-

inally stimulate acquisitive desire. Given Surrealism’s aesthetic explorationinto a deeper level of consciousness, it was inevitable that selling the id trans-

lated into the seduction of Surrealism.This paper introduces the artistic avant-garde of SI (1957-1972) and details

the Situationist resistance to the nascent psychology of the advertising “spec-tacle”. I identify this expeditious trajectory of Situationist artistic revolution,as providing the antecedent praxis for the contemporary veneration of SI, i.e.

the avant-garde magazine Adbusters. Both artistic movements are linked bytheir piercing cultural political interrogation of the psychology of the advertis-

ing “spectacle”. According to Adbusters led by Culture Jam author Lasn (2000,p. xiii), everyday life is being invaded by “brands, products fashions, celebri-

ties, entertainments – the spectacles that surround the production ofculture”. Lasn (2000) is renowned for his insistence that the creative human

spirit and wonderment of “authentic life” is being corrupted by capitalism’s

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disingenuous promise of fulfillment through “a perverted sense of cool”.According to Lasn (2000), in contemporary American society, social belonging

is achieved through a kind of “Huxleyan ‘Soma’”, in which, the “heavily manip-ulative corporate ethos” of “cool” fuels an addictive, insatiable desire, for

anything that signifies unruffled style (Ibid., p. xv). In global capitalist com-modity culture, the insatiable desire for American cool, is translating into a“global pandemic”, in which “Communities, traditions, cultural heritages,

sovereignties, whole histories are being replaced by a barren American mono-culture” (Ibid., p. xiv). Although Lasn’s extravagant pronouncements of the

pandemic spread of a narcissistic American cool, at times appears to premoni-tion the inevitable descent of Western capitalist society into a dystopia, he

proposes the possibilities of redemption achieved through the salvation ofhuman agency and the realization of “moments of truth”. In these spontaneous

instances, human beings realize the contradictions and futilities that besetcapitalist economic relations of production. Moments of truth are ignited “by

any spontaneous, individual act, or any act of mass-media detournement”(Ibid., p. 108). Lasn’s advocacy for detournement echoes the preeminentpraxis of SI. Such synergies are not coincidental for Kalle Lasn; for he aligns

the history and the present of Adbusters with the revolutionary vision of Situa-tionist International. As Lasn (2000) expresses it “The Situationists intuited

how hard it would be to hang on to one’s core self in a ‘society of spectacle’,a world of manufactured desires and manipulated emotions” (ibid:xvi). Indeed,

clear parallels do link these two movements; of significance is their sharedintention to “devalue the currency of the spectacle” (Ibid., p. 108).

The “spectacle” as defined by Debord (1967/2006) refers to an advancedstage in capitalist production, in which “social relationship between people[has become] … mediated by images” (Ibid., p. 12). Technological and artistic

developments in advertising media, during this era, interchanged with the spec-tacle’s activity, as capitalism sought to ameliorate the subversive challenge of

the artistic avant-garde. The central theme of SI was to challenge the “recuper-ation”, during the 1940s-1960s, of avant-garde art into the spiralling vortex of

the advertising psychology spectacle. Avant-garde art challenged the transcen-dence of the human spirit presupposed in the rationalization of the political

economy and descent of humanity into the tumultuous destruction of the Sec-ond World War. In its concern for spiritual liberation, the avant-garde derea-

lised rational knowledge and logic. Thus, the surrealist revolt against bourgeoisart deployed the unconscious realm of the human psyche as a means of inte-grating “art into life praxis” (Rasmussen 2006, p. 6). Surrealism’s aesthetic

invocation of the fluidity of desire opposed the capitalist dialectic of commod-ity culture. Such themes also resonated with Dada, as both avant-garde move-

ments endeavoured to render “visible the institutional status of art” and shift“the boundaries between art and life praxis” (Ibid.). But, by the 1940s, Surreal-

ism’s belief in realizing art as life praxis had become recuperated by the swirl-ing vortex of the advertising psychology spectacle. As Debord (1967/2006, pp.

132-133) eloquently describes in his book The Society of the Spectacle,

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As soon as art – which constituted that former common language of socialinaction – establishes itself as independent in the modern sense, emergingfrom its first, religious universe to become the individual production ofseparate works, it becomes subject, as one instance among others, to themovement governing the history of the whole of culture as a separatedrealm.

Given that the spectacle corresponds with technological developments in the

world production of “autonomous image” (Ibid., p. 12), the “visible negationof life” (Ibid., p. 14) by advertising spectacle requires the transcendence of art

“in a historical society where history is not yet directly lived” (Ibid., p. 135).Such issues are examined in this paper’s critical analysis of the history and thepresent of the psychology of the advertising spectacle. The first part of this

paper identifies continuities between Lasn’s (2000) account of “the Ecology ofthe Mind” and the concerns advanced in the 1940s-1960s, by avant-garde

artists about the incorporation of Surrealism into commercial advertisingmedia and culture. Of significance is the artistic praxis of “detournement”.

According to Debord (2006) “detournement itself mobilizes an action capableof disturbing or overthrowing any existing order …” (Ibid., p. 146). Despite

Debord’s dissuading grandiose acclaim, detournement continues to suggest aframework of radically subversive challenge to the insatiable convergence of

cultural life into the psychology of advertising spectacle. Indeed, as discussedin the latter part of this paper, clear trajectories link Guy Debord’s Situationistpraxis of detournement and the cultural politics of the anti-capitalist social

movement Adbusters. Suffice to say that this paper highlights an ongoing dia-logue between: SI; the culture jamming praxis of Adbusters and the fractural

forms of the psychology of advertising spectacle.

Advertising the Human Psyche

Lasn’s (2000) Culture Jam contains an intriguing chapter entitled “The ecologyof mind”. It highlights the ways in which “media spectacles have colonized our

mental environment” (Ibid., p. 11). The advertising industry features promi-nently as a key technology perpetuating the inexhaustible yearning for a pres-

ent-orientated consumer culture which, is “crowding out history and context”(Ibid.). Here and elsewhere, Lasn convincingly argues that the spectacle is inti-

mately related to emotional management and reinforces the commandingappeal of commercial advertising. As Lasn (2000, p. 13) expresses it:

Layer upon layer of mediated artifice come between us and the world until weare mummified. The commercial mass media are rearranging our neurons,manipulating our emotions, making powerful new connections between deepimmaterial needs and material products. So virtual is the hypodermic needlethat we don’t feel it. So gradually is the dosage increased that we’re notaware of the toxicity.

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According to Lasn (2000, p. 12), these processes “relatively speaking” are “allvery new – too new for its effect on the species to be fully known”. This is

because “we’re still adjusting to the all-pervasive media” (Ibid.). In the insatia-bly commodifying mass-mediated popular culture of Western capitalism, the

specific singularity of advertising messages has long since given way to a raucoushail of avaricious pursuits. Indeed, it has been observed that corporate advertis-ing in one of the most expansive psychological projects in Western capitalism:

This flood of psycho-effluent is spreading all around us … The adspeak meansnothing. It means worse than nothing. It is “anti-language” that, whenever itruns into truth and meaning annihilates it. (Lasn 2000, p. 21)

It is notable that in recent years, the cumulative target of advertising tech-nologies has been: the isolating imperative to colonize the consumer psyche and

instantiate the advertising psychology spectacle. The latter phenomenon refersto the mediated modalities of psychology, aesthetics, advertising technologies:

Their cumulative effect is to erode our ability to empathize, to take socialissues seriously, to be moved by atrocity. They inure us to the suffering (or joy)of other people. They engender an attitude of malaise toward the things thatmake us most human. We pretend not to care as advertisers excavate the mostsacred parts of ourselves, and we end up actually not caring. (Lasn 2000, p. 23)

One of the earliest attempts to link the phenomenon of advertising psychol-

ogy with the rationalization of production, in the new age of mass society,is advanced in Packard’s (1958) Hidden Persuaders. It documents an era, in

American merchandising, in which advertising signified an appeal to a deeperlevel of consciousness. In the 1950s, the promotional endeavours of Americanmerchandisers grappled with the task of knowing the illusive consumer. Despite

the truly massive impact of institutional advertising, Fordism’s regime of accu-mulation required an industrial approach to the production of desire and the

construction of self-identity. With some ambivalence, marketing reactedagainst its orthodox idea of the consumer as pragmatically sensible, rationalis-

tic and self-disciplined. In its retreat from simplified models of human needs,marketers re-examined their rationalist rhetorical strategies and advertising

practice. As Packard describes “They wondered why on earth customers act theway they do. Why do they buy or refuse to buy given products?” (Ibid., p. 24).

Developments in psychology offered some explanation to these superficiallytransparent external contradictions of consumer behaviour. Psychologists wereachieving significant advances in the exteriorization of inner psychical reality.

Consequently, advertisers in seeking guidance from psychological consultants“found themselves trying to understand and explore the deep unconscious and

subconscious factors that motivate people” (Ibid.). It seems indisputable thatadvertisers were not only preoccupied with deciphering real motivations, but

also concerned to reveal the “triggers of action” (Ibid.). Advertisers sought to

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reanimate deeper motivations and “the triggers would be needed once the realmotivations were diagnosed” (Ibid.). To this end, advertisers consulted with

the leading psychologists, of this era. Of significance was Clyde Miller’s book,entitled The Process of Persuasion. He encouraged astute persuaders to exploit

the ambiguities and mystery of images and words (Packard 1958, p. 24). Havinggained comprehension of deeper motivations, triggered response patterns canbe “established in terms of persuasion” (Ibid.). Advertisers could then

“persuade people in wholesale lots” (Ibid.).By the 1950s, the use of psychoanalysis, to subliminally stimulate and “guide

campaigns of persuasion”, had become “the basis of a multimillion-dollar indus-try” (Ibid., p. 3). Packard extensively documented the frenzied competition,

between advertising creatives (“symbol manipulators”), eager to apply masspsychoanalysis so as to stimulate demand for commodities by appealing to

people’s psychic instincts and emotions. During that time, Fordist corporatecapitalism was threatened by a crisis of accumulation. In this context, “a funda-

mental shift occurred in the preoccupation of people in executive suites” (Ibid.,p. 21). Packard perceptively notes how executive planners enthused and pro-moted the commercial shift “from being maker-minded to market-minded”

(Ibid.). Despite their superficial familiarity with psychology, the hype at man-agement conferences was the new “marketing revolution” and the best methods

“to stimulate consumer buying, by creating wants in people that they still didn’trealize existed” (Ibid., p. 21). In its efforts to commercialize Freud’s “id” so as

to meet demands for the rationalization of persuasion, the hypnotic spell ofadvertising was, increasingly, ascribed the capacity to subliminally stimulate

acquisitive desire. And advertisers were increasingly assuming the language ofpsychoanalysis. Indeed, Packard (1958, p. 25) notes as follows the evolution,amongst advertisers, of a three-dimensional perspective of the consumer:

The first level is the conscious, rational level, where people know what is goingon, and are able to tell why. The second and lower level is called, variously,preconscious and subconscious but involves that area where a person may knowin a vague way what is going on within his own feelings, sensations, and atti-tudes but would not be willing to tell why … Finally, the third level is wherewe not only are not aware of our true attitudes and feelings but would notdiscuss them if we could. (Ibid., p. 25)

Exploring the consumer’s psyche at these three inter-related dimensions of

consciousness evolved into the science of Motivational Research. In essence,motivation research is premised on the idea that the consumer’s psyche isgoverned by irrational insecurities and erotic desires which take the form of

suppressed and repressed motives. Suppression and repression are attendantfeatures of the conscious and subconscious mind. It was presumed by these

early proponents of motivational theory that a causal link existed betweenintrinsic human drives and consumer behaviour. Whereby, human drives are

referred to as “the physical demands on psychic life” (Bocola 1999, p. 247).

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Motivations, in this sense, exist psychically within the level of consciousness,for “drives manifest themselves through striving and through aims” (Ibid.). A

clear indication of the translation of motivations into advertising discourse isprovided by the founding figure of Motivational Research Dichter (1964, p. 385):

The number of human motivations is limitless. Most of them play a role in the activ-ities of communication, such as selling, advertising and persuasions. Everythingthat is human is the subject and object of human action and thus of motivations.

Advertisers have to navigate the deepest recesses of the self in order toentice the consumer. The presence of the id, in the human psyche, wasbelieved to encourage in consumers an infantile predisposition to discerning

how something was communicated rather than why (Leiss et al. 1990, p. 144).Indeed, Dichter proclaimed that our basic motivations “have their explanation

in a protest against the very smoothness, cleanliness and freedom from frictionthat we daydream of as the ideal world” (1964, p. 2). Rational orderliness “are

deep-down threats to our desire for independence” (Ibid., p. 2). Consequently,consumers do not calculate the cost and benefits of products; rather, they are

easily persuaded by suggestion and image.Motivational advertising messages were designed to be “hidden persuaders”,

which have the propensity to stimulate a chain of responses. They should stim-

ulate attention, bombard consciousness, arouse central association and affectaction (Pope 1983). Given the emphasis of motivational advertising on the

unconscious human psyche, it is not surprising that creatives, seeking to invokedream-like images turned to Surrealism’s aesthetic exploration into a deeper

level of consciousness. Indeed, recent developments in the neurosciences,especially neuromarketing and neuropolitics, illustrate how selling the id has

translated into the seduction of avant-garde art; and this continues to provokeprofound concerns amongst the artistic avant-garde. Some indication of the

covalence between neuroscience and art is provided in Legrenzi and Umilta’s(2011) book entitled Neuromania; On the Limits of Brain Science. Neuromaniapartly examines the emergence of neuropsychology: i.e. “The study of the

neural bases of mental functions that play a role in, for example, economicphenomena” (Ibid., p. 10). Considerations of art and aesthetics as part of the

contemporary history of neuropsychology is supported by evidence of thecatalytic effect of inventions in neuroimaging technologies: from the 1970s,

computerized axial tomography has enabled the structural imaging of brainfunctions. The central intention of neuroimaging technologies “is to identify

the areas which selectively become active during any given task that requiresthe intervention of known mental functions” (Ibid., p. 17). Cerebral zones, inthe brain, are constituted by a congregation of neurons which rely upon a

constant source of glucose and oxygen transmitted through blood flow. It isevident that the greater the expenditure of oxygen and glucose, the higher

the level of brain activity. In recent decades, functional magnetic resonanceimaging (fMRI) has been used to observe the presence of hydrogen atoms

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circulating in blood as this indicates the expenditure of water, which isbelieved to indicate “a high level of neuron activity” (Ibid., p. 19). Continuous

with these developments is the tendency for neuropsychologists to usecoloured imagery, in the depiction of the brain’s neuron activity:

What in fact is represented is simply the result of a graphic device which trans-forms chance probability into colour and is then superimposed on a drawing ofthe brain. The use of attractive colours in neuroimaging has probably played acrucial role in their appeal to the public … It might be argued that evenexperts – neuroscientists themselves – are not immune to the siren voice ofthis attraction. Perhaps they too are fascinated by the colored drawings …(Legrenzi & Umilta 2011, pp. 26-27)

Certainly, the advances in neuroaesthetics and its attendant imaging of theneuron activities in the brain have stimulated “revival of the classic utopia of

reducing the mind to the functioning of the brain” (Ibid., p. 49). We are livingtoday in an age in which neuroscientific technology has lead to the advance-

ment: of neuroeconomics, neuroaesthetics, neuroethics, neuropolitics, neuro-marketing and even neurotheology (Ibid., p. 41). Contemporary research inneuropolitics is translating advances in the western tradition of political culture

into the aesthetic imagining of neuron processes in the brain. Connolly’s (2002,p. xii) Neuropolitics Thinking, Culture, and Speed provides a comprehensive

definition as thus: “By neuropolitics, then, I mean the politics through whichcultural life mixes into the composition of body/brain processes”. Of signifi-

cance is the neuropolitics’ focus on the extent to which visual images map ontothe neurobrain patterns. Alongside this has been the application of the neuro-

sciences to studies of consumption and consumer behaviour. Zurawicki (2010,p. vii) defines this application as “the foundation of the field of neuromarket-ing, which investigates the brain and neural reactions to stimuli related to

market exchanges”. In this sense, neuromarketing relates to the exploration ofcorrelations between neural processes so as to ascertain the neurological condi-

tions that impel certain forms of consumer behaviour. As Legrenzi et al. (2011,p. 78) state, neuromarketing is a venture “to apply what we know about the

neural correlates of decisions and emotions to traditional marketing techniques… the ‘neuro-’ prefix is used to enhance the time-proven techniques of market-

ing, and of the psychology of sales and advertising communication”. The centralidea is that the brain is divided into operational zones which function in differ-

ent modes; therefore, advertising communications and marketing practicesneed to be designed so as to best maximize their relevance to the specific“neural circuit” they intend on activating (Ibid.). Aesthetics is a vibrant trajec-

tory of research development in neuromarketing and this has mainly focused onneurologically coding the human experience of advertising visual media. Thus,

Zurawicki (2010, p. 212) describes how invariably the data extracted from brainmonitoring makes transparent the three dimensions of the audience member’s

visual experience of the neuroaesthetically designed advertisement:

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First, it records the valence of the emotional reactions: favourable vs. adverse,illustrating the approach/withdrawal tendencies. This represents the “likeabil-ity” scale. Second, it measures the scope of arousal –intensity of feelings regard-less of whether they are positive or negative in nature – and may indicate howthe form of communications influences persuasion. Finally, it reflects the mentaleffort expended when the consumer is exposed to stimuli and highlights thecognitive influence upon the formation of attitudes. (Zurawicki (2010, p. 212)

Significantly, advances in the technological application of neuroscienceenables scientists to make increasingly grandeur claims to precision in the tim-ing of neural processes. This is evident where Zurawicki discusses the use

of technology to map attention and memory so as to approximate real timeaudience viewing of advertising:

Depending on the technology used and the position of the electrodes if theEEG helmet is used, the third stream of observations measures the attention(e.g., words) or memory. When applying this approach to (pre)testing commer-cials, it is critical to track the neural response with the speed analogous to thechanges in and within the scenes. (Zurawicki (2010, p. 212)

The evaluation of time implied in the afore quotation highlights an interest-

ing emerging feature in the application of neurosciences to advertising: thatis, the creation of cultural economies of time (Odih 2007). Indeed, Zurawicki

(2010, p. 212) identifies the potential commercial viability of measuring: theaffect of the individual scenes of the commercial and evaluating whether they

coincide with the expectations of the business model. According to Zurawicki(2010, p. 212), where this is applied effectively, it is possible to ascertain

whether “the information recalled from video ads is a function of the lengthand complexity of successive scenes … then by lengthening some and shorten-ing others even by a fraction of a second, the memory of key elements can be

significantly strengthened” (Ibid.). Additional applications reside with thevisual display of advertisements, whereby based on the analysis of neural

responses to advertising imagery:

… advertisers can determine which picture from the commercial would makethe most engaging billboard. Coupled with the eye-tracking, the researchersmay determine where exactly the person is looking at any moment and mapthe sequence of her gazes. Naturally, the technique allows for testing thereactions to the alternate presentations of the message, use of differentcharacters etc. Zurawicki (2010, p. 212)

By implication, the ability to map biography against the audience member’s

neural experience of the advertisements lends itself to market segmentation.When segmenting consumer markets, marketers invariably identify objectivefactual information that enables the clustering of groups according to shared

biographical, geographical and demographic characteristics. The imperative isthat market segments are inclusive of members’ characteristics and exclusive

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of variations from the normative segmenting strata. It is evident that neuroa-esthetics is increasingly being applied to the segmentation of consumer

markets as follows:

And as in the case with the traditional survey-based approaches studying thebrain responses to the ads helps to underscore the distinction between varioustarget groups (in consideration of such factors as demo-and psychographics).Consequently, it is easier to select the most receptive target or attempt tomodify the execution of the communication to better reach the chosen one.Zurawicki (2010, p. 212)

In a fascinating account of artistic expression and the neural processes ofaudience members, Zurawicki (2010, p. 75) discusses the differing responses

to: “ugly pictures” and “beautiful pictures”. Evidently, beautiful artistic pic-tures stimulate reactions in the anterior cingulate cortex “and the parietal cor-

tex which are associated respectively with the reward and the spatialattention” (Ibid., p. 75). Conversely, “ugly pictures in turn evoked reactions in

the motor cortex – the meaning of that reaction being wide open to interpre-tation (perhaps suggesting a physical evasion)” (Ibid.). While this is an interest-

ing pronouncement, what is of particular significance is the links that are thenmade to the artistic avant-garde and surrealist art. According to Zurawicki(2010, p. 75):

The real-life experience and memories provide a framework against which theaesthetic perceptions are categorized. What happens when the conventionalsetting in which the appealing objects/image gets replaced by the atypicalone? Inspired by the great surrealist artist – Rene Magritte – famous fordepicting ordinary objects in non-traditional contexts, art experience wasdesigned to trace the neuronal ramifications of the “misplaced beauty”. …However, the out-of-context setting contributed to a much greater polarizationof opinions, i.e., more extremely positive and negative and less indifferentjudgments. This highlights the difference between the more conservative andthe more creative mind frame of individual subjects. At the same time, theprefrontal areas proved significantly more engaged when objects were shownin the non-traditional context. Hence, the pre-established logic of “where thethings belong” is invoked when the very novel arrangements are presented foraesthetic judgments. Also, the context in which a picture appears sometimesleads us to imagine things which are not there. For example, with vague back-ground, we have a lot more opportunities to fill in the missing data than in thecase of a bright, clear background; so we are apt to “see” images that areconsistent with that scenery. (Zurawicki 2010, pp. 75-76)

Zurawicki’s (2010, pp. 75-76) book Neuromarketing provides an important

example of how the discipline of marketing is currently incorporating theartistic avant-garde into the spiralling vortex of the psychology of advertising

spectacle. In recent times, resistance to these practices has been advanced bythe exemplaries of anti-capitalist artistic avant-garde: Culture Jammers. Lasn

(2000) defines culture jamming as localized, everyday processes of disrupting

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capitalist commodity circuits. Continuous with culture jamming is the processof “demarketing”, i.e. a process of obstructionist intervention in marketing

messages, technologies and practices, so as to render ironic their ideologiesand disrupt commercial intentionality. As Lasn (2000, p. 164) expresses it:

“Demarketing: unselling the consumer society; turning the incredible power ofmarketing against itself”. Central to the praxis of demarketing is the intentionto render “uncool” the spectacle of advertising; a process Lasn (Ibid., p. 181)

describes as “uncooling the spectacle” through drawing together the metame-mes of demarketing and bringing ‘the culture jammers’ revolution together”

(Ibid.). According to Lasn (2000) “uncooling the spectacle” has a precise meth-odology; for it commences with “a methodical, systematic social marketing

campaign” rooted “at the personal level” and then rhizomatically expands inscope (ibid:181). As Lasn (2000, p. 181) further describes:

We bein by demarketing our bodies, our minds, our children. Then we join withlike-minded jammers to demarket whole systems. We go after our chief socialand cultural rituals, now warped beyond recognition by commercial forces, andtry to restore their original authenticity … Voters demand that election adver-tising be replaced with televised town hall-type meeting in which the candi-dates face the electorate directly. Athletes refuse to endorse unethicalcompanies … artists, writers and filmmakers work on product marketing as wellas social marketing campaigns … We reverse the spin cycle. We demarket ournews, our entertainments, our lifestyle and desires – and eventually, maybeeven our dreams. (Lasn 2000, p. 181–183)

By stressing the political role of artists, Lasn is endeavouring to designatesome conciliation between the remarkable anti-capitalist political aesthetics

of Adbusters and the mighty political challenge of the post-war avant-garde.Indeed, to fully appreciate the cultural–political challenge of the contempo-rary artistic avant-garde, it is necessary to examine a first wave of resistance

to advertising psychology spectacle, presented by Surrealism and Dada in theimmediate post-war years.

“Spectacle” and the Seduction of Surrealism

In the early twentieth century, Surrealism, like other movements in the artisticavant-garde, campaigned for the advancement of the proletariat and the eradi-

cation of capitalism. Surrealism’s political turn markedly departed from theavant-garde’s preoccupation with subverting norms of representation. Thepolitical engagement of Surrealism aimed to cultivate the revolutionary poten-

tial of the human psyche. To this end, Surrealism also broke with classical art’sdichotomy separating reality from the realm of imagination. Surrealism dared

to visualize the “infinite expansion of reality” (Balakian 1987 1986, p. 14). Itappealed to the evocation of a “truth” beyond realism, “a kind of sur–realism”

a term engendered, in 1917, by the writer Guillaume Apollinaire, (quoted in

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Bradley 1997, p. 6). Apollinaire was a poetic artist fascinated by the fantasticand keen to devise a means for transcending the abstract rationality of capital-

ist society and its penetration into the quotidian of everyday life. For surreal-ists, modern industrial society created a sterile rationalistic world. Surrealists

denounced the artificial relations between humans and objects in capitalistsociety. As Breton (1924/1972, p. 72:3) stated “Man that inveterate dreamer,daily more discontent with his destiny, has trouble assessing the objects he has

been led to use”. Confined within the logic of capitalism, objects constrain“what is most fragile in life – real life” (Ibid.).

Arising from the alternative romantic notion of “poetry”, surrealists drewtheir philosophical inspiration from the metaphysics and mysticism that shaped

human life, prior to the affects of enlightened civilization. Despite idealizingthe romantic imagination of a period undiminished by the scope of technologi-

cal endeavour, Surrealism was not mournfully nostalgic for the past. Rather, itaudaciously used the spirit of romanticism, to challenge the affects of the hab-

its of rational commercial calculation, on the inner life of human beings. Tothis end, the human desire for metaphysical catharsis was prioritized, in thework of the surrealist artists, over the realist invocation of a harmonious world

undisturbed by the primitivism of the human psyche.From 1924 onwards, surrealist art cultivated “a poetic application of Freudian

psychology” (Debord 2004, p. 32). In its reluctance to seek recourse to religion,as a platform for its mysticism, Surrealism’s creative optimism for the infinite

transcendence of material reality aligned with Freud’s account of the uncon-scious (Balakian 1986, p. 125). And this synergy crystallized in Andre Breton’s

Manifeste du Surrealisme published in 1924. Breton delved into the psychogen-esis of the human unconscious. Centuries of civilizing change, have marginal-ized metaphysical comprehension and “banished from the mind everything that

may rightly or wrongly be termed superstition or fancy” (Breton 1929/1972, p.10). Civilization is envisaged by Breton as the fall from nature. It signifies a dis-

juncture in the synergy between the conscious nature of human beings andtheir unconscious imagination. In re-examining “a part of our mental world

which we pretend not to be concerned with any longer”, Breton becameobsessed with the unconscious (Ibid.).

The idea of the unconscious mind as a reservoir of explanations for the humanpsyche invigorated, Surrealism’s romantic desire to surrender revolutionary

practice to the re-enchanted passionate impulse of the imagination. “If thedepths of our mind contain within it strange forces capable of augmenting thoseon the surface, or of waging a victorious battle against them” (Ibid.), the poten-

tialities to be mobilized in the revolutionary cultivation of the mental worldwere exceptional in their scope and dynamism. Avant-garde art was uniquely sit-

uated in this respect. In the early twentieth century, the transgressive aestheticsand irrational imaginary of the avant-garde was permeating the rationalistic

modern world. Surrealism’s invocations of the human psyche pushed back thefrontiers of logical reality, so as to equip the alienated human subject with the

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emancipatory spirit “to break out of his prison and regain freedom” (Rasmussen2004, p. 373). To this end, Breton (1972, p. 26) defined Surrealism as follows:

SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes toexpress – verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner –the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by thought, in the absence of anycontrol exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.

Breton’s Manifeste du Surrealisme clearly discerns that Surrealism was nevermerely an aesthetic style. Rather, the Manifeste du Surrealisme ambitiously

sought to renovate equilibrium between the unconscious and conscious, whichhad become denatured by the rationalistic, mental regimentation of modern

technology and the tumultuous inhumanities of war. Unlike its predecessor, inthe genealogical gallery of avant-garde art (i.e. Dada), Surrealism’s creations of

anti-art, sought not to deliberately destroy the art of bourgeois culture. Rather,Surrealism endeavoured to integrate art into the realization of praxis in “every-

day life” (Debord 2004, p. 32). In doing so, Surrealism rendered visible modernistdichotomies separating art and politics. The absurdity wrought by the excessesof unencumbered rationalism had become manifest in the horrors of the First

World War. Cognizant of these atrocities, the ideological conviction of Surreal-ism wagered the unconscious imagination as a basis for its specific crusade to

shift “the boundaries between art and life praxis” (Rasmussen 2006, p. 6).Surrealism, in its pursuit of the re-enchanted life, placed emphasis on the

marginalized erudite values of intuition, metaphysics and mysticism. Instead ofdismissing these knowledges as delusional relics long since bypassed by the

technological evolution of Western civilization, Surrealism cultivated their reju-venation. It aspired for the “spiritual pendulum” to swing full-circle towards aromanticized embodiment of immaterial culture (Balakian 1986, p. 18). Once

effectively mobilized, the supernatural dimensions of human existence mightprovocatively encounter and revolutionize the human predicament. Thus, in its

quest to liberate the boundless possibilities of the human psyche, Surrealismproposed retrieving dreams from their marginalized parenthesis. For “it is, in

fact, inadmissible that this considerable portion of psychic activity (since … thedreams of sleep, is not inferior to the sum of the moments of waking) has still

today been so grossly neglected” (Breton 1929/1972, p. 11). In Breton’s articu-lation of Surrealism’s philosophy, there is no question of evading dreams, still

less of perpetuating the western cultural separation of dream-phantasmagoriafrom reality. Instead, it is a question of how to resolve the two apparently con-tradictory states and restore “the belief in the superior reality of … the omnipo-

tence of dream [and] the disinterested play of thought” (Ibid., p. 26).Breton translated Freudian psychoanalysis into psychic automatism, a tech-

nique for producing artistry directly from the deepest levels of the unconsciousmind. The emphasis was on the unconscious world of dreams and hallucinations

“dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason,exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern” (Breton 1929/1972, p. 26).

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Breton believed that the interplay of psychic automatism, manifest in thespontaneous actions of artists, was a means of short-circuiting the mind’s

rational apprehensions and delving into the artist’s unconscious alchemy oflanguage. In the resulting Surrealist prose artists, presumably, would release

the dynamic creative potential of their linguistic expression. For visual artists,psychic automatism translated into the cultivation of chance and “divertingobjects from their familiar functions or surroundings, through a more cosmic

perspective of life on this earth” (Balakian 1986, p. 14).While in psychic automatic painting, the unconsciousness of the artist is

revealed by the cultivation of serendipity and the unexpected juxtaposition ofirrational images, in “dream painting”, images painted with hallucinatory effect,

“refer to or reduplicate the condition of dreaming” (Bradley 1997, p. 32). InSalvador Dali’s La Persistance de la Memoire (Persistence of Memory), Surreal-

ism’s focus on dreams as a locus of irrational mental activity achieves one of itsmost spectacular forms. For,

Not only the physical characteristics of the composition, but also its colours andcoherence are subverted in Dali’s painting. The indicators of time – which formthe real subject of the painting – undergo a far-reaching transformation almostimpossible to grasp through the use of logic. It is not the forward movement ofthe watch hands but the melting of the watches themselves that shows thattime is slipping away. The ravages of time are also symbolised by the dissolvingsnail, the painter’s self-portrait. Meanwhile, the red watch besieged by antsand the skeletal tree on the far left of the picture are premonitions ofapproaching death. (Klingsohr-Leroy 2009, p. 38)

Despite its revolutionary fervour and bitter opposition to the stylization of

avant-garde aesthetics, Surrealism had tremendous commercial appeal foradvertising creatives. Part of the attraction of surrealism, was its ability to

draw otherwise mundane objects into a wonderful enchanting world of uncon-scious desire. Considered separately from, the ethical suspicion that subliminal

advertising galvanized, the playful reverie of surrealist aesthetics promised tostimulate the creative vigour of the unconscious human psyche withoutthe heightened discharge affect of public distrust. As Kahle and Homer (1988,

p. 250) express it in a paper entitled “Surrealism as nonverbal communicationin advertisements: a social adaptation theory perspective”:

The dreamlike nature of surrealistic ads may stimulate subconscious responsesin much the same manner as some early proponents of subliminal advertisingthought that it would work. Subliminal advertisements have not proven effec-tive … in part because stimulus intensity is too weak, and this same featurehas created widespread distrust of subliminal advertisements. Surreal adver-tisements, in contrast, have adequate stimulus intensity and sufficient visibilitythat the distrust of subliminal ads is overcome, and perhaps these surreal adsare more effective as well. Their novelty certainly should augment informationprocessing, and some types of surreal advertisements may influence subcon-scious processes as well.

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The promise of a revitalized appeal to the psychic realm of consumer behav-iour exhilarated the developing field of advertising psychology. By way of an

introduction into this era of advertising practices, let us consider the advertis-ing aesthetic evident in Figure 1.

In accordance with surrealist advertising artistry, the advertisement’s non-verbal expression links the irrational visions of the dream state with theconscious perceptions of commodities, through the invocation of chance effects

and juxtaposition of visual metaphors. Emerging from this encounter is the blur-ring of frontiers of logical reality; as unbridled imaginary springs forth to disrupt

the rationalized frameworks of everyday reality. Of particular significance isthe advertisement’s use of surrealist art’s key non-verbal mechanisms such as

Figure 1 Duracell Batteries 1940s. Reproduced by kind permission of Duracell: TheProcter & Gamble Company. Courtesy of the Advertising Archive (image number30518247)

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“isolation”, “paradox”, “hybridization” and “modification” (Kahle et al. 1988,p. 289). This is partly achieved because the advertisement in Figure 1,

illustrates the direct translation, into advertising imagery, of Salvador Dali’s“paranoiac-critical activity”. Indeed, the advertisement’s visual metaphors mis-

chievously subvert Surrealism’s key iconoclastic political interventions. Centrestage is a paranoiac sculptured clock, melting down a concrete podium. This fig-ure exemplifies, the surrealist “mechanism of modification” (Ibid.). Instead of

recording the passage of time, the melting clock embodies duration. Its depic-tion is, therefore, in line with the surrealist artistic practice of “modification”.

This is because, a principle aspect of the object has been changed “so that aproperty not normally associated with the object is introduced or some property

normally associated with the object is withdrawn” (Ibid.). Situated immediatelyafter the melting clock, is a radio with an ear positioned in place of an aerial.

The form of surrealist adaptation evident here is the method of juxtaposing“two familiar objects … to produce a ‘bewildering one’ in hybridization” (Ibid.).

Returning to the bizarre objects and events, positioned on the concrete plat-form depicted in the advertisement (Figure 1). Immediately after the radio is acurious event illustrated through the use of the surrealist technique of “con-

ceptual bipolarity”. According to Kahle and Homer (Ibid.), this technique “usesinterpenetrating images in which two situations are observed from a single

viewpoint, thus modifying spatio-temporal experiences”. With specific refer-ence to Figure 1, conceptual-bipolarity coincides with Dali’s method of depict-

ing, the delusions of irrationality. And this is in evidence, with regards to thebizarrely orchestrated address between the principal male figure, positioned

on the concrete podium, and the populace attentively inhabiting his eccentricspectacle. This scene disturbingly moves beyond the restrictions of traditionalsubjectivity. For the principal male character’s seeming abandonment of prag-

matic self-control denotates the reality, and fear, of humanity’s encounteringof irrational autocracy. In this sense, the advertisement’s visual culture,

crudely imitates Dali’s “paranoiac-critical method”, in its depiction of a corre-spondence between the irrational inner psyche and the conscious external

world of objects. As is the tradition of inferential mechanism of the surrealistadvertising genre objects are configured as beguiling mysteries anomalous from

their conventional setting. This is particularly evident, in the theme of “para-dox”, depicted in the advertisement’s right-hand corner. “Paradox” is a surre-

alist artistic mechanism that “uses intellectual antithesis” (Kahle et al. 1988,p. 249). Placed within the historical context of 1940s Fordism and technicaladvances in mechanical reproduction, the theme depicted in the advertise-

ment’s right-hand corner appears to interpolate with critical theory. Indeed,the image directly interpolates with the industrialization of culture thesis put

forward by Adorno and Horkheimer (1944) in their Dialectic of Enlightenmentand Walter Benjamin’s (1936) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Repro-

duction. Both of these intellectual works suggest paradoxes at the heart of theindustrial production of culture.

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One gains, from the advertisement in Figure 1, a similar sense of paradox.With this in mind, let us re-examine the imagery. Exhibited on a plinth: a

camera streams infinite photographic images. Curiously, the base of the plinthappears as though it is in the processes of crumbling. Indeed, the landscape is

etched with cracks, which semiologically operate as second order signifiers ofa pending degeneration of the scene. The “double images” (Kahle et al. 1988,p. 249), of the mechanically reproduced photographs spiralling into the infinity

of the landscape and the pending disintegration of the landscape encourage a“provocation of accidental encounters” (Ibid.). Rather than resolving the fore-

boding sense of pending destruction, the image of the Duracell battery accen-tuates the sense of pending degeneration. This is partly achieved through the

mechanism of “isolation”, which “occurs when an object once situated outsideits own field is freed of its expected role” (Ibid.).

Positioned at the apex of converging, linear fissures and distanced far into thelandscape’s skyline, the isolated image of the Duracell battery is framed behind

an ancient Greek arch made of two weathered columns. Set within this cacoph-ony of curious images the juxtaposition of the Duracell battery is creative. For itencourages the provocation of perplexing questions concerning mechanical

reproduction, authenticity, objective reality and historical time. Here and else-where, the advertisement assumes fascinating pretensions in its commentary on

the human predicament. However, Dali’s paranoiac-critical method, “repre-sented a sustained challenge to modernist visuality itself, that is to say, to the

conception of the picture plane as a self-contained, self-regulating optical field”(Mostafa 2005, p. 217 quoted in Taylor 2008:12). Conversely, the advertisement

merely traverses the rugged endless plane of emulative commodity capitalism.Indeed, when located within the context of advertising history, the developmentof surrealist art, as an avant-garde aesthetic, paralleled transformations in capi-

talist production.

Avant-garde Resistance to Advertising’s Seduction of Surrealism

The prospect that people could be subliminally persuaded by visual and audi-

tory stimuli of, which they were largely unaware, provoked the apprehensionsof the left-wing artistic avant-garde. In a Situationist International paper enti-

tled “The struggle for control of the new techniques of conditioning” theapplication of psychological techniques to motivation research is presented asa development in the “experimental study of the mechanisms of behavior” (I.

S. 1958). At that time, there was evidence to suggest that experiments withsubliminal stimulation were attempts to develop undetectable forms of con-

trol; operating beneath the level required for conscious resistance (Ibid.).Advertising’s experiments with subliminal stimuli, for persuasive purposes,

appeared to correspond with a new economic regime intent on harnessingknowledge of the human psyche to the rationalization of capitalist production.

The argument for the existence, in the 1950s, of subliminal advertising was

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passionately articulated as evident in this extract from Internationale Situa-tionniste published in 1958:

autonomous images are cut into a film; appearing on the screen for no morethan one twenty-fourth of a second, they are seen by the eye but not regis-tered consciously. (I.S. 1958, p. 9)

It is clear from this observation that the breadth of critique presented bythe artistic avant-garde itself dictated going beyond “the whole humanistic,

artistic and juridical conception of the inviolable and unalterable personality”(Ibid.). The fact that many, amongst the artistic avant-garde, were “only toohappy to see it go” these developments in subliminal techniques also involved

the corrosive expropriation of “free” artistry and particularly the ingenuity ofthe Surrealist movement.

Of concern, amongst the intellectual left, was capitalism’s “partial annex-ation of new values” and in doing so, its ability to recuperate revolutionary

challenges (Debord 2004, p. 30). Indeed, it was observed that, “the rulingideology arranges the trivialization of subversive discoveries, and widely circu-

lates them after sterilization” (Ibid., p. 31). A fundamental disruption to thepolitical economy of the sign had to be effected. Surrealism’s radical rejectionof bourgeois art had shaped the cultural political terrain of the avant-garde

and played an important role in attacking bourgeois civilization. Nevertheless,Surrealism’s revolutionary potential dissipated by the 1930s and this paralleled

“the rise of an Americanised consumer society” (Rasmussen 2004, p. 380).Within this rapidly changing context, it became clear that “the conditions of

possibility of the revolution had changed” (Ibid.). It was this realisation thatprovoked left-wing intellectuals, during the 1950s, to interrogate the

“collapse” of the artistic avant-garde. Of particular significance was thepublication by Debord (2004, pp. 33-34), of the Report of the Construction of

Situations, in which he stated:

The error that is at the root of surrealism is the idea of the infinite wealth ofthe unconscious imagination. The reason for the ideological failure of surrealismwas its having wagered that the unconscious was the long-sought chief power oflife.

…

Resisting an apparently irrational society in which the rupture between realityand still loudly proclaimed values was carried to ridiculous lengths, surrealismmade use of the irrational to destroy that society’s superficially logical values.The very success of surrealism played a big part in the fact that the former’sideology, in its most modern aspect, has renounced a strict hierarchy of artifi-cial values, but makes open use, in its turn, of the irrational and of surrealistsurvivals at the same opportunity. The bourgeoisie must above all avert a newdeparture of revolutionary thought. It was conscious of the threatening natureof surrealism. It enjoys certifying, now that it has been able to disperse it intostandard aesthetic commerce, that surrealism reached the furthest point of

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disorder. It thus cultivates a manner of nostalgia for surrealism, at the sametime that it disparages all new enquiry by automatically reducing it to surreal-ist deja vu, i.e., to a failure that for it can no longer be questioned by anyone.Rejection of the alienation of the society of Christian morality led a few mento a respect for the fully irrational alienation of primitive societies, that’s all.It is necessary to go further and rationalize the world more, the first conditionfor making it exciting.

Dada Challenge to the Rise of Advertising Spectacle

Part of the SI’s praxis involved linking the specific conditions of the decline of

avant-garde art to the totality of alienation in Western capitalist society. Thisinvolved locating signs of “forgotten desires – images of play, eccentricity,

secret rebellion, creativity and negation” in Dada; considered to be thetwentieth century’s most revolutionary avant-garde art movement (Marcus

2004, p. 4). Indeed, Debord (2004) in his Report of the Construction of Situa-tions focuses significantly on Dada so as to illustrate how each stage of avant-garde resistance is foreclosed by a “quick break-up when the incapacity to

change the real world profoundly enough leads to a defensive withdrawal intothe very doctrinal positions whose inadequacy had just been revealed” (Ibid.,

p. 32). Debord, then, proceeds to describe Dada’s progression through this tra-jectory. We are informed that established in Zurich and New York in the early

twentieth century, Dada expressed a reaction to the hostilities of nation statesand the insanities of the First World War. Philosophically, Dada ridiculed wes-

tern confidence in the teleological progression of science for those ideologieshad contributed to the destruction and mayhem of the First World War. To this

end, Dada bombarded logic with bizarre exhibitions of anti-art. The Dadaartists expressed their sense of futility of reality through the advocacy ofnihilistic disdain. According to one of the iconoclastic figures of Dada – the

Rumanian poet, Tristan Tzara – philosophically, Dada signified “nothing”(Bowness 1972, p. 151). Such nihilistic detestation was an appropriate response

to the death and inhumane destruction of the First World War and the ineffec-tive creative expressionism of bourgeois art.

Dada’s provocative style markedly contrasted with the traditional goal ofbourgeois aesthetics. Often considered synonymous with bourgeois individual-

ism, the art of the nineteenth century co-existed with schemas of social divisionthrough which, the complexities of class-based inequalities were neutralized.Art galleries, were aesthetically pleasing pictorial spaces, seemingly removed

from the conspicuous material wealth of bourgeois existence. As a means ofameliorating the materiality of social inequality, public art exhibitions were

perfectly suited to the propagation and transmission of bourgeois ideology.Bourgeois notions of art, profess that, “the degree of aesthetic success is ….

measured by a beauty inseparable from duration, and tending even to lay claim

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to eternity” (Debord 1958/1997, p. 90). To this end, bourgeois art evokes apolitical conservatism in which, the formal properties of art merely “report on

sensations” (Ibid.). In contrast, the initiators of Dada in Zurich in 1916 and Paris,New York in the 1920s were committed to interrupting the values and social

relations of Bourgeois society; “whose bankruptcy had just become so glaringlyevident” (Debord 2004, p. 32).In the search for unforeseen modes of expression, the topography of Dada,

momentarily constellated in Zurich in 1916, which on the 1st February was hostto the inauguration of Cabaret Voltaire. Cabaret theatre was, at this time in

European cities, an immensely popular art form. In a bid to interpolate thepopular zeitgeist with Dada’s radical ideas, the writer Hugo Ball established

the Cabaret Voltaire as a space to subvert the divisions through which rationalart was propagated. It was a tabula rasa for the primal language of art and in

doing so, became a magnet for eccentric artistic revolutionaries. Some indica-tion of this revolutionary reverie is evident in the following extract from

Huelsenbeck’s history of Dada published in Hanover in 1920:

The Cabaret Voltaire were all artists in the sense that they were keenly sensitiveto newly developed artistic possibilities … In that period, as we danced, sang,recited night after night in the Cabaret Voltaire, abstract art was for us tanta-mount to absolute honor. Naturalism was a psychological penetration of themotives of the bourgeois, in whom we saw our mortal enemy, and psychologicalpenetration, despite all efforts at resistance, brings an identification with thevarious precepts of bourgeois morality. (Quoted in Read 1986, pp. 116-177)

To a degree the Cabaret Voltaire reinvigorated the revolutionary artistry of

the Italian Futurists, which during 1909-1913 invoked “an exceedingly oversim-plified use of the idea of technological progress” (Debord 2004, p. 32). Despitetheir opposition to the pro-military fervour and technological optimism of

Futurism, the Dadaist Cabaret Voltaire performers adapted Futurist experimen-tal poetry (parole in liberta). Hugo Ball reformulated parole in liberta into the

spirit of Dada and created “phonetic” poetry in, which “words jostled rudi-mentary linguistic fragments” (Hopkins 2004, p. 6). Dada perceived pre-war art

as bound-up with decadent bourgeois values, and, thus, “if poetry was synony-mous with refined sensibility, they would wrench it apart and reorientate it

towards babble and incantation” (Ibid., p. 7). Similarly, if artwork was synony-mous with the quintessence of cultivated taste, Dada anti-art would assemble

ready-made objects, thus parodying the Futurist enthusiasm for technologyand bourgeois capitalism’s faith in progress. Most notoriously, MarcelDuchamp, in 1917, presented a men’s urinal, signed “R Mutt” and entitled

Fountain, to the exhibition of the New York Society of Independent Artists.Duchamp’s disregard for the rejection, by the exhibition, of his installation

Fountain, highlighted the underlying intension of the ready-made artwork. For,as an everyday utilitarian object, raised to the status of art by mere virtue of

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its display in a gallery, Duchamp’s Fountain had succeeded in provoking thedefinition of art beyond its limits.

Arising from the uncompromisingly “abstract” art performances of HugoBall’s Cabaret Voltaire, the cacophony of phonetic poetry and the brutish tem-

perament of Dadaist anti-art forms, emerged a new art ethic expressed in termsof a profound incredulity to the real brutality and insidious symbolic violence ofwar. Unsurprisingly, Dada resounded most passionately against propagandist

justifications of war and zealously condemned traditional conceptions ofcultural expression, which assumed a belligerent, differential nationalist atti-

tude. To this end, Dada’s “historical role was to have dealt a mortal blow tothe traditional conception of culture” (Debord 2004, p. 32). As a group, Dada-

ists were united in their commitment to dialectic of negativity, directedtowards the liberation, of art, from the tyranny of rational orthodoxy. Indeed,

in their efforts to transgress the limits of art, Dadaists propagated the beliefthat authentic artwork necessitated its own negation. Ironically, this paradoxi-

cal exigency would inevitably fate Dada to witness the self-transcendence of itsown existence. Intent on allegorically re-enacting the psychic upheaval causedby the First World War, the interim war years was characterized by poor simula-

cras of previous anti-art experiments. Once heralded as daringly innovatory,Dada had by this time “merely repeated itself and had ended up as a mocking

compensation for an alienated life” (Rasmussen 2004, p. 370). On furtherreflection, Dada’s initial demise was, in part, assured by its ambivalent antipa-

thy towards the craft of commerce. Its key figures during the era of CabaretVoltaire sought the vexatious past of art and were opposed to the omnipresence

of the commodity sign in bourgeois art. As with the avant-garde performance ofthe Cabaret Voltaire, the figurative and narrative performance of gallery exhib-ited Dada artistry, ridiculed the rhetoric of authentic art. But in their spectacu-

lar negation of the commodity sign, Dada’s political manifestations soonbecame ensnared by a changing commercial orientation in the art world. Dada’s

fracturing and fragmentation of form together with its pronounced “seeking thesigns of authenticity through the denial of commercialism” provided advertising

creatives with a vibrant reservoir of “visual signs of distinction, evocative andauratic, signs that would move the customer to choose one product over

another” (Simmons 1999, pp. 122–123).Rather than a symptom of the relentless extension of the commodity form,

Dada’s inability to transcend the commodity was complicated by its failure toconsistently assert a transcendent non-commodity status (Ibid., p. 143).Indeed, it has been observed that “through its exhibition strategies … Berlin

Dada presented a theorization of the commodity and the increasingly powerfulrole of advertising in its valorization” (Ibid., p. 144). In his account of the

commodity character of Berlin Dada, Simmons (1999, pp. 145-146) identifiescontradictions between their anti-commercial stance and the adoption of

advertising phantasmagoria. In detailed accounts of early twentieth century,Dada artistic practices, Simmons details how the self publicizing techniques of

Berlin Dada movements “stressed the pure exchange value of the artistic

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commodity and suggested that it was a mirror or simulacrum reflecting thedesires of the consumer, brought to the surface and exploited by the means of

publicity and advertising” (Ibid., p. 145). The issue of whether Berlin Dadaactually succeeded to transcend the commodity is left largely unsolved in Sim-

mons’ account, but what is clear is that “Dada turned to the techniques ofadvertising in order to problematize the commodity and its signs, and to pointto the collusion of the forces that served to maintain advertising’s allure and

power over society” (Ibid., p. 146 and Sobieszek 1988).

Lettrist Movement as Dada’s Political Transcendence

Despite Dada’s descent into a mere parody of its revolutionary fervour, art his-torians concede that the innumerable mysteries and verity of Dada’s character-

izations, continue to, reverberate through the canons of the artistic avant-garde. As Debord (2004, p. 32) observes in his Report on the Construction of Sit-

uations:

… it is certain that the Dadaist spirit has determined a part of all the move-ments succeeding it; and that an aspect of negation, historically associatedwith Dadaism, must end up in every subsequent constructive position as longas those positions manage to resist being swept up by the force of social condi-tions that would impose the mere repetition of crumbling superstructures,whose intellectual verdict has long since been declared.

Perhaps the most notorious of Dada’s earliest protege and inheritors of itshedonistic, irreverent spirit, was the Lettrist Movement. Guided by the vision

of Jean-Isidore Isou, the Lettrist Movement emerged in Paris during the imme-diate aftermath of the Second World War. With its roots firmly entrenched in

the struggle over the legacy of Dada, Isou engaged, divergent strands of theavant-garde, in a megalomaniacal artistic project based on the “the will to

create … [i.e.,] … the narcissistic idea of autogenesis and complete (self) mas-tery” (Rasmussen 2004, p. 369). Isou believed that the will to self-creation isthe momentum that propels the progression of art. In the spirit of Ex nihilo,

homo autotelus, art auto-generates through a phase amplique and after reach-ing its zenith experiences a phase ciselant and then violently disintegrates into

its constituent parts (Ibid.). Isou applied this generational process to the gene-sis, disarray and eventual self-implosion of Dada. Having experienced a “phase

ciselant”, Dada’s legacy became focused on an interrogation of the forms andtechniques that constitute the medium of art itself. To this end, Isou ascribed

to himself the responsibility for establishing a new language of art (hence thetitle the Lettrists). In Paris, during the 1940s, the Lettrists set about subjectingcultural media to either a phase amplique or a “phase ciselant” depending on

the established maturity of the media. This translated into a “complete oppo-sition to all known aesthetic movements, whose continual decay it precisely

analyzed” (Debord 2004, p. 40).

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Historical records, give little sense of the richness of Lettrist activities,however, it is possible to piece together an irreverent vivacity, “intending the

uninterrupted creation of new forms in all spheres” (Ibid.). It is noted,however, that Lettrists carried out numerous Dadaist feats of cultural sabotage

as part of its “salutary agitation between 1946 and 1952” (Ibid.). An often,sited episode of cultural sabotage was effectively accomplished in Paris onEaster Sunday in 1950. Just prior to the High Mass at Notre-Dame Cathedral in

Paris, a small group of Lettrists entered the sacristy of the cathedral’s privatechambers. Having invaded the secluded chambers, they detained a priest and

donned the priest’s clerical vestments. Audaciously, the group ascended themain pulpit. It is reported that after a moment’s silence, the Lettrist robed in

clerical vestments, addressed the congregation with a salutatory Freres Dieuest mort before proceeding to benignly “discuss the implications of this conclu-

sion” (Gray 1996, p. 6). After a short while, the congregation sensed foul playand chased, the renegade cultural saboteurs, through the cathedral and into

the street, where the Lettrist was forced to surrender to the police.On 29 October 1952, the Lettrist’s conviction for revolutionary cultural

sabotage was profoundly tested resulting in an irrevocable ideological caesura.

This tipping point was ignited by a Lettrist protest that disrupted a press con-ference for Charlie Chaplin’s film Limelight. After the anti-fascism enthusiasm

of the post-Second World War era, American political culture returned to theparanoid anti-communist atmosphere of the 1930s. At the peak of the rekin-

dled anti-communist suspicion, the silent-screen legend, Charlie Chaplin, hadbeen declared a subversive. Having experienced a fury of indignation and criti-

cism for his pro- Soviet Union politics, Chaplin had in the late 1940s and early1950s attempted to disassociate from his “red cred” political association. On29 October 1952, Chaplin was giving a press conference in Paris at the Ritz

hotel, to support his latest film release Limelight. The press conference was,however, abruptly interrupted by protestors raucously shouting and scattering

flyers that were headed with the statement “No more flat feet” (Rasmussen2004, p. 368). The protestors were Lettrists keen to challenge Chaplin’s genre

of artistic avant-garde, which they claimed had become a poor apology for thealienating experience of capitalist society. The episode precipitated an irrevo-

cable division between the different factions of the Lettrists. Isou distancedhimself, from the protagonists, and instead declared that the avant-garde

should align with “the homage everyone has rendered to Chaplin” (Jean-IsidoreIsou quoted in Harold 2007, p. 2). In riposte, the protestors, in the publicationCombat, criticized Isou’s servile adoration of celebrity stating that “we believe

that the most urgent expression of freedom is the destruction of idols, espe-cially when they claim to represent freedom” (as quoted in Harold 2007, p. 2).

Having reciprocated Isou’s rejection, the renegade protestors splintered fromIsou’s Lettrists and established a new avant-garde calling themselves L’Interna-

tionale Lettriste (Lettrist International). They argued that the artistic avant-garde had failed to challenge the virulent strain of Western consumer

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capitalism that was spreading through Europe and Isou’s, reverence for idolswas part of the hypocrisy of consumer capitalism.

As the Lettrists unravelled, the directorial lead shifted from Jean-Isidore Isouand crystallized around Guy Debord, the pioneer of L’Internationale Lettriste.

Born in 1931, Guy Dobord, father of L’Internationale Lettriste had alreadyachieved some critical acclaim as a master of subversion. Having assumed themantle of L’Internationale Lettriste Debord, in 1952, released his first film

Hurlements en Faveur de Sade (Merrifield 2005:26). This was an unconventionalfeature length film in which barely anything was featured. Lacking any narra-

tive, with prosaic voice overs variously announcing diatribes such as ‘There’s nofilm. Cinema is dead” (quoted in Merrifield 2005, p. 26). Its status as anti-film,

cinematic avant-garde was further enhanced by the inclusion of intermittentperiods of silence in which the audience was plunged into darkened frames. In

addition to anti-film denunciations of bourgeois cinema, Debord’s artisticavant-garde was intent on regenerating the ontology of immediate experience.

This also related to L’Internationale Lettriste’s interventionist practices, mostsignificantly derive, which involves purposive drifting through city spaces. As aform of free association derive offered the Lettrists the opportunity to recon-

ceive the dimensions of the city and create spatial relations that contravenedthe predominant rational solicitation of urban architecture. Ascertaining the

material gained from derive involved the use of psycho-geography, in whichexperiential data formed the basis of “new emotional maps of existing areas”

(Home 1996, p. 9).Psycho-geography’s emotional maps of the urban city, therefore, chal-

lenged the linear rationality of city planning. In doing so, it revealed theenormous potential of detournment (semantic reconfiguration of culturaltexts) as a mode of expression. Linking these interventionist strategies, was

a committed desire by the Lettrists, for a practical instantiation in, whichthe expression-content symmetry, uniting avant-garde political praxis and

consumerist capitalism, is broken and the dialectics separating the avant-garde from capitalism re-established (Andreotti 2000). Intend, Guy Debord,

criticized the Lettrist Movement, for “having generally accepted the idealistfallacy that aesthetic disciplines should take a new departure within a gen-

eral framework similar to the former one, [consequently] its productionswere restricted to a few laughable experiments” (Debord 2004, p. 40). Nev-

ertheless, Debord (1957/2004, p. 43), in his Report of the Construction ofSituations conceded that L’Internationale Lettriste was also progressingtowards “uncompromising discipline that led to an equally uncompromising

isolation and ineffectiveness, and that in the end favoured a certain opposi-tion to change, a decay of the spirit of critique and discovery”. Henceforth,

L’Internationale Lettriste sought to “eliminate sectarianism” which insti-tuted the invidious purging of its members, for this was now recognized as

standing “in the way of acting toward defined ends in unity with potentialallies, and … [preventing] the infiltration of similar organizations” (Ibid., p.

43). In its newly invigourated fervour for “genuine actions”, L’Internationale

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Lettriste adopted a more collaborative strategy towards its comrades acrossavant-garde art movements. It was this spirit of entente cordiale that par-

tially lead to L’Internationale Lettriste forming the basis of the SituationistsInternational.

SI Challenge to the Rise of Advertising Spectacle

SI was founded on the belief that “Art can cease to be a report on sensa-

tions and become a direct organization of higher sensations. It is a matterof producing ourselves, and not things that enslave us” (Debord 1958/1997,

p. 90). The SI was established in 1957 at Cosio d’Arroscia (Italian region Lig-uria). Its formation was based on the alignment of three pre-Situationist

groups: L’Internationale Lettriste, International Movement for an ImaginistBauhaus and London Psychogeographical Association (Gray 1996, Knabb 1981,

McDonough 1997, Wark 2007). From its inception, the SI was devoted toformulating a new revolutionary assault of consumer capitalist politicaleconomy (Wollen 1989). By the mid-60s, the Situationist project was appro-

priately identified with one principal explanatory concept, “the spectacle”.The concept of the “spectacle” refers to the displacement of embodied

social relations, by advanced capitalism’s extraordinary mediations ofimages, which are abstracted from the experiential basis of social life

(Debord 1967/2006).

Society of the Spectacle

Writing in 1967, Guy Debord recognized a systemic transformation in the dia-lectic and logic of the commodity form. The dominance of capital over labour

was permutating away from Marx’s labour theory of value and its attendanteconomically driven false consciousness. In Debord’s Society of the Spectacle,

we are encouraged to discern a radical caesura in commodity capitalism:

AN EARLIER STAGE in the economy’s domination of social life entailed an obvi-ous downgrading of being into having that left its stamp on all human endeav-our. The present state, in which social life is completely taken over by theaccumulated products of the economy, entails a generalized shift from havingto appearing: all effective “having must now derive both its immediate pres-tige and its ultimate raison d’etre from appearances”. (2006, p. 16)

According to Debord, the heightened fetishisation of commodities in moderncapitalist production has resulted in the reduction of capitalism into its spec-

tacularly ephemeral dimensions of exchange value. This inverted image, of thelogic of capital, is clearly expressed in Thesis One, of Society of the Spectacle

in, which Debord (2006, p. 12) states:

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THE WHOLE LIFE of those societies in which modern conditions of productionprevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that oncewas directly lived has become mere representation.

The word “spectacle” signifies a fantastic form of exhibition in, which

the audience’s perspective of the world is apprehended “a visible negation oflife – and as a negation of life that has invented a visual form of itself” (Ibid.,

p. 14). In the context of modern commodity capitalism, the accumulation ofadvertising images promises self-fulfilment through the consumption of mate-

rial and symbolic goods. Thus, in this model of social domination, industrialcapitalism’s alienating material labour has been replaced with the spectacle of“images detached from every aspect of life” (Ibid., p. 12). This erosion

of material life has been accelerated by the increasing capacity of moderncapitalist society to generate symbolic productions of colossal proportions. As

Debord (2006, p. 12) makes evident, “The tendency toward the specializationof images-of-the-world finds its highest expression in the world of the autono-

mous image…”. Debord skillfully positioned relevance, here, to the growth ofadvertising media:

If the spectacle – understood in the limited sense of those “mass media” thatare its most stultifying superficial manifestation – seems at times to be invad-ing society in the shape of a mere apparatus, it should be remembered thatthis apparatus has nothing neutral about it, and that it answers precisely tothe needs of the spectacle’s internal dynamics. (Ibid., p. 19)

Modern conditions of production, have transformed life in Western capitalist

societies, such that social reality now “presents itself as an immense accumu-lation of spectacles” (Ibid., p. 12). The code of signification governing the

spectacle is a logic of signs detached from everyday life and embodied socialrelations. Mediated by the blaze of the spectacle, social relations are appre-hended “in a partial way” as “a pseudo-world apart” (Ibid.). Thus, with irrefut-

able dispassion, Debord observes “the deployment of the power of thespectacle” as a defining feature of modern governance (Ibid., p. 8). For the

spectacle manifests Western capitalism’s monopolization of the sphere ofappearances and the integration of material life into an amorphous “universe

of speculation” (Ibid., p. 17). This eclipse of the real is absolutely fulfiled bythe fetishistic properties of the commodity. This is because the hegemony of

the spectacle corresponds with a historical moment in which consumption hasbecome an organizing principle of the modern world. As Debord states, “It isnot just that the relationship to commodities is now plain to see – commodi-

ties are now all that there is to see; the world we see is the world of thecommodity” (Ibid., p. 29).

The commodity, thus, designates the spectacle’s colonization of social lifeand transformation of “being” into the outcome of a combination of self-refer-

ential signs. It is only in light of this commentary that we can fully appreciate

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the degree to which Guy Debord’s work interpolated with the ideological fervourof the 1968 student movement. Revolutionary culture demanded intellectual rig-

our including the necessity to anchor heightened consciousness “in realencroachments on bourgeois power” (Barnett 1969, p. 44). In this sense, the

construction of revolution begins with concrete critical reflection in which “theoppressive force of bourgeois ideology” and its fetishism of commodities “mustbe understood and rejected in practice” (Ibid., p. 45). Indeed, it is a commonly

recognized fact that the revolutionary student movement directly challengedtwo co-coordinated dimensions of capitalist society “its legality and its ideol-

ogy” (Ibid., p. 44). A prominent mode of student insurrection involved negatingthese dimensions and replacing them with a radical form of “counter-legality

and revolutionary culture” (Ibid.). Commodities symbolized the monopolizingfervency of capitalism and anti-consumerism became the preferred instrument

of revolutionary change. It was in this context that advertising became a focalpoint of radical anti-capitalist dissension as is evident in the following extract

derived from Debord’s (2006, p. 13) Society of the Spectacle:

UNDERSTOOD IN ITS TOTALITY, the spectacle is both the outcome and the goalof the dominant mode of production. It is not something added to the realworld – not a decorative element, so to speak. On the contrary, it is the veryheart of society’s real unreality. In all its specific manifestations – news orpropaganda, advertising or the actual consumption of entertainment – thespectacle epitomizes the prevailing model of social life.

The SI’s anti-capitalism ethic raged against the spectacle of advertising, forit represented “capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image”

(Ibid., p. 24). One of the central objects of this revolutionary critique targetedthe predilection of the spectacle towards the “specialization of images-of-the-

world” and the manufacture of what Debord describes as “the autonomousimage” (Ibid., p. 12). In Debord’s analysis, the autonomous image operates to

reproduce the form of capitalist ideology, thus producing a situation in which“deceit deceives itself” (Ibid.). And this symbolic relation finds its highestmode of expression in the prevailing system of production, whose product is

alienation from embodied labour and the transformation of this principal ofwork “into a realm of nonwork, of inactivity” (Ibid., p. 21). For leisure is inex-

tricably tied to productive activity and is itself an artefact of capitalist produc-tion. In advanced capitalism, the manufacture of use-values has been replaced

by the reproduction of signs. The rise of sign-value has transformed the pro-ductive work of labour into a realm of non-productive work concerned with

the reproduction of signs. “There can be no freedom apart from activity”declared Debord, but the accumulative reproduction of signs designates a lossbecause “within the spectacle all activity is banned” (Ibid., p. 21). A corollary

of this process is that non-productive work “has been forcibly channeled intothe global construction of the spectacle” (Ibid., p. 22). Thus, a pre-condition

of anti-consumerist resistance required liberation from the tyranny of non-pro-ductive leisure (Barnard 2004).

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Detournement and the Art of Resistance to Advertising Spectacle

According to Guy Debord, the rise of the spectacle coincides with a deepeningcrisis in the artistic avant-garde. Divorced from embodied social experience,

the spectacle’s nexus of stultifying images ventures to unscrupulously pene-trate everyday life. From this position, the prospect of avant-garde art is at

best calamitous or at worst narcissistic. Conscious of the spectacle’s tactics ofappearances, the Situationists advanced detournement as the dialectical

antithesis of the capitalist “aesthetic”. As a form of praxis, detournementrefers to “the reversal of established relationships between concepts” (Debord1967/2006, p. 144). Epistemologically, the impertinence of detournement to

agitate powerful constellations of knowledge is testament to its revolutionarydenunciation of capitalist ideology. To this end:

The fact that the violence of detournement itself mobilizes an action capableof disturbing or overthrowing any existing order is a reminder that the existenceof the theoretical domain is nothing in itself, that it can only come to self-knowledge in conjunction with historical action, and that it can only be trulyfaithful by virtue of history’s corrective judgement upon it. (Ibid., p. 146)

To this end, detournement is the antithesis of transcendental meaning that

has been “torn away from its context, from its own movements, and ultimatelyfrom the overall frame of reference of its period and from the precise option

that it constituted within that framework” (Debord 2006, p. 146). Translatedas rerouting, detournement is a provocative rhetorical strategy which seeks to

destabilize the spectacle’s purchase on truth. As Debord (Ibid.) expresses it:

Detournement … is the fluid language of anti-ideology. It occurs within a typeof communication aware of its inability to enshrine any inherent and definitivecertainty. This language is inaccessible in the highest degree to confirmationby any earlier or supra-critical reference point. On the contrary, its internalcoherence and its adequacy in respect of the practically possible are what vali-date the ancient kernel of truth that it restores. Detournement founds itscause on nothing but its own truth as critique at work in the present.

Methodologically, detournement prescribes a specific logical application of

method. Given that the spectacle is a heightened accumulation of sensationalimages, a substantial challenge to this medium of capitalist seduction has to

rupture the heart of the spectacles dynamic. To this end, Debord and Wolman(1956/2006) formulate a “User’s Guide to Detournement”. Central to thisguide is bringing together of oppositional capitalist “signs”, so as to compel

reflections on the meanings of “their original contexts”. As they explain,“The mutual interference of two worlds of feeling, or the juxtaposition of two

independent expressions, supersedes the original elements and produces a syn-thetic organization of greater efficacy” (Ibid: 15). In advertising visual culture,

this parodistic method is sometimes deployed to satirize established relations

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within given sign systems. Cognizant of the capitalism’s recuperative applica-tions of parodistic method, Debord and Wolman (Ibid: 15–16) suggest that:

it is thus necessary to envisage a parodic-serious stage where the accumulationof detourned elements, far from aiming to arouse indignation or laughter byalluding to some original work, will express our indifference towards a meaning-less and forgotten original, and concern itself with rendering a certain sublimity.

In a continuation and refinement of their analysis, Debord and Wolman (Ibid.)provide instructions on the practice of detournement. At least part of the appli-

cation of this process involves contrasting between minor detournement anddeceptive detournement. The former refers to mundane signs, in which the jux-

taposition, and or alteration, interrupts the inconsequential meaning of eachdetourned element, thus enabling the cultivation of new meaning. Conversely,

deceptive detournement, refers to “the detournement of an intrinsically signifi-cant element, which derives a different scope from the new context. A slogan

of Saint-Just, for example, or a film sequence from Eisenstein” (Ibid., p. 16). Inpractice, an “extensively detourned” artefact will be constituted by examplesof both minor and deceptive detournement. In addition to these preconditions,

Debord and Wolman (Ibid: 16–17) detail the following laws of detournement:

It is the most distant detourned element which contributes most sharply to theoverall impression, and not the elements that directly determine the nature ofthis impression.

The distortions introduced in the detourned elements must be as simplified aspossible, since the main impact of a detournement is directly related to the con-scious or semiconscious recollection of the original context of the elements.

Detournement is less effective the more it approaches a rational reply.

Detournement by simple reversal is always the most direct and the least effec-tive.

If there is one resounding implication to be gleaned from Debord andWolman’s (2006) praxis of critical sabotage is its integration into the past and

present strategies of anti-capitalist resistance. As a model for making transpar-ent the spectacle’s alienating mediation of inter-subjective human relations,

detournement appeals to the cultural–political aesthetics of radical revolu-tionary movements. In the same way that detournement provided SI with acritical tactic for the denunciation of bourgeois decadence, so it has particu-

larly appealed to anti-capitalist movements seeking to challenge advertising’sfetishisation of commodities. In recent times, the anti-capitalist magazine

Adbusters has skillfully deployed detournement to reroute spectacular adver-tising mediations.

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Situated in Vancouver, Canada, Adbusters is a non-for-profit magazine pub-lished by the Media Foundation. Adbusters’ editorials describe the initiative as

“an ecological magazine, dedicated to examining the relationships betweenhuman beings and their physical and mental environment” (Adbusters 2012).

The principle aim of Adbusters “is to topple existing power structures andforge a major shift in the way we live in the 21st century” (Ibid. 2012a). Cen-tral to this philosophical vision is the praxis of creative intransigence, carried

out by Adbusters’ global network of “culture jamming” (Lasn 2000) artists,writers and avant-garde creatives. This political community of anti-capitalist

protestors are especially renowned for their detournement of advertising“spectacular images, environments, ambiences and events to reverse or sub-

vert their meanings … ” (Ibid., p. 103). In doing so, Adbusters’ objective is toculture jam the rhythm of spectacle long enough to evoke moments of truth in

which “the spectacle would be expressed in all its emptiness. Everyone wouldsee through it” and be persuaded to critically appraise capitalist relations of

power (Ibid., p. 108). For example, in a famous spoof of a Nike advertisementpublicized in 2000s, Adbusters’ anti-capitalist ethos translates into the culti-vated detournement of leading global capitalist brands.

The aesthetic and creative semiology of the Adbusters’ anti-Nike campaignexpresses the mischievous charm and revolutionary appeal of detournement.

Firstly, the force of the rhetorical artifact derives from its denunciation of theexploitative forms of labour which have paralleled the rise of global capitalism.

Indeed, the Adbusters advertisement is effective because of its most distantdetourned element the signifier “running”. According to Debord and Wolman

(2006, p. 16), “It is the most distant detourned element which contributes mostsharply to the overall impression, and not the elements that directly determinethe nature of this impression”. Advertising visual cultures relevant to Nike often

seek to transfer post-feminist ideals of liberation, work and equal opportunitiesonto their products designed exclusively for women. Hence, “running” signifies

the corporate work ambitions of women in a post-feminist order. Explicit in itsdetournement is the plight of women in the spatially disaggregated assembly

line of global capitalist manufacturing. Of direct significance to this Adbustercampaign is that the rapid development of industrialization in developing coun-

tries, coupled with the liberalizing agenda of the World Trade Organization(WTO), has encouraged many developing countries to become Export Processing

Zones (EPZ). This has invariably involved abandoning a strategy of state spon-sored “import substitution” (which focused on the substitution of importedgoods for their domestic production), for a system of export-led production.

Export production involves the liberalization of home markets, adumbratedwith such lucrative incentives as tax relief, access to cheap labour markets and

the lifting of regulatory restrictions on importing/exporting (Ho et al. 1996, p.390). In recent years, these inducements have encouraged the direct foreign

investments of trans-national corporation. Moreover, it can be observed thatthe simple technology, relatively inexpensive start-up costs, and scale econo-

mies have favoured clothing production in EPZ locations where labour

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expenditure is low. Analysts concur that clothing production within these EPZ ismostly carried out by females, indeed 80% of workers within the industry are

female and the vast proportion of this labour force is unskilled or semi-skilledlabour (Dicken 2007, p. 256). The level of skill coupled with insidious gender

divisions of labour often mean that “such workers are easily hired and fired andhave no protection over their working conditions” (Ibid., p. 258). Even wherecountries have a legal minimum wage “in some cases this is lower than a realis-

tic minimum living wage” (Allwood et al. 2006, p. x).According to Debord and Wolman (2006, p. 17):

The distortion introduced in the detourned elements must be as simplified aspossible since the main impact of a detournement is directly related to the con-scious or semiconscious recollection of the original contexts of the elements.

This form of detournement is particularly evident in the far right corner ofthe Adbusters anti-Nike spoof advertisement’s campaign imagery. Firstly, there

is the swoosh insignia of the Nike brand and then the signifier “NKE”. Thetrademark “swoosh” insignia of Nike appeals to the audience member’s “con-

scious or semiconscious recollection” (Ibid.). The logo is prominent as a self-referential sign. It has an irreverent free-floating dexterity with little directreference to the material world. Thus in the decontexualising realignment of

signs the Adbusters creatives display ingenuity akin to Debord and Wolman’s(1956/2006:15) proposition that: “The mutual inference of two worlds of feel-

ings, or the juxtaposition of two independent expressions, supersedes the ori-ginal elements and produces a synthetic organization of greater efficiency”. In

this process of detournment the original NIKE image is transformed in comiceffect; but “such humor is the result of contradictions within a condition

whose existence is taken for granted” (Debord and Wolman 2006:15). For thereconfiguration of the NIKE signs partakes in a “deceptive detournement”, in

which the “intrinsically significant element” of the NIKE signs’ self-referentialmeaning “derives a different scope from the new context” (ibid:16). The vividimpact of the detourned sign on our sensibility is therefore intensified because

the original meaning was itself self-referential, floating signification. As Debordand Wolman (2006:16) express is: “It is the most distant detourned element

which contributes most sharply to the overall impression, and not the elementsthat directly determine the nature of this impression” (ibid:16-17). The pres-

ence of the Nike swoosh in the anti-Nike spoof 2000s advertisement is, there-fore, effective as both a simply reversed detourned element and an

intervention into the signifying practices of the Nike brand. Here, and else-where, Adbusters assures SI’s political lineage.

Timely Reflections

The preeminent Situationist, Guy Debord adamantly believed, it was imper-

ative that revolution interrogated the normalizing centrifugal force of the

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Society of the Spectacle. Capitalism invades “authentic” social being, espe-cially the extent to which “the humanity of the commodity” infiltrates the

“worker’s leisure and humanity”, transforming the “totality of human exis-tence” into “the regime of the perfect denial of man” (Debord 2006, p.

30). Debord situates the political technology of art within this contextarguing that at the moment that art emerged as an independent form inthe modern sense, it became subject to “the movement governing the his-

tory of the whole of culture as a separated realm” (Ibid., p. 133). Art’sdeclaration of independence from the realm of embodied symbolic relations

marked the ’beginning of the end of art” (Ibid.). Debord, here, implies arelation between time and avant-garde art. Seemingly drawing on Thomp-

son’s (1967) account of time and the rise of industrial capitalism, Debord(2006, p. 104) argued that the victory of the bourgeoisie was the victory

of a profoundly historical time – the time corresponding to the economicform of production”. And the triumph of irreversible historical time was

achieved through its permeation of the productive process and with thedevelopment of capitalism mean the unification of irreversible time on aworld scale” (Ibid., p. 107). Art in this period of historical time is a neces-

sary alienation from the visible negation of authentic” existence. By way ofillustration Debord (2006, p. 135) describes how:

The very fact that such “recollections” of the history of art should havebecome possible amounts to the end of the world of art. Only in this era ofmuseums, when no artistic communication remains possible, can each andevery earlier moment of art be accepted – and accepted as equal in value –for none, in view of the disappearance of the prerequisites of communicationin general, suffers any longer from the disappearance of its own particularability to communicate.

The further diminution of art ensured by the reign of the spectacle isalso a function of time. This is because the spectacle’s inverted image of

society produces a “frozen time” (Ibid., p. 141). As ever more human rela-tions come to be mediated by the industrial production of autonomous

advertising images, so the social times of unmediated everyday relations,come to be displaced by the spectacles “reigning social organization of a

paralyzed history, of a paralyzed memory, of an abandonment of any his-tory founded in historical time” (Ibid., p. 114). In this situation, people

become distant observers of the spectacle’s mediated, fragmented inver-sions of human life. The spectacle’s frozen time is, therefore, the nemesisof a directly experienced human life. And this, Debord argues partially,

explains the demise of the subversive potential of Surrealism and Dada.Both artistic movements sought to agitate capitalism’s appropriation of the

experiential meaning of historical time. In Dada, this translated into theintention to “abolish art without realising it” (Ibid., p. 136). While

Surrealism’s dedication to the becoming of the psyche “sought to realize

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art without abolishing it” (Ibid.). The possibility of subversive artisticexpression, therefore, required a form of anti-art capable of escaping the

advertising spectacle’s colonization of a full-lived human life (Clark andDonald 1997). As Debord and Wolam (1956/2006, p. 15) describe in their A

User’s Guide to Detournement:

It is not just returning to the past which is reactionary; even “modern”cultural objectives are ultimately reactionary since they depend on ideo-logical formulations of a past society that has prolonged its deathagony to the present. The only historically justified tactic is extremistinnovation.

…

The literary and artistic heritage of humanity should be used for partisanpropaganda purposes. It is, of course, necessary to go beyond any idea ofmere scandal. Since opposition to the bourgeois notion of art and artisticgenius has become pretty much old hat, [Marcel Duchamp’s] drawing of amoustache on the Mona Lisa is no more interesting than the original versionof that painting. We must now push this process to the point of negatingthe negation.

According to neuromarketing advertising techniques, our brains are neuro-logically segmented into differentially operating zones; consequently, adver-

tisements have to be aesthetically designed to communicate and activateprecise neural circuits. Neuroimaging technologies have reassured the alle-

gorical attestation of marketing legitimacy: efficacy of practice translatesinto the vividly surreal coloured imagery of fMRI. In this brand new cerebral

hemisphere of marketing technology, the brain’s neural processes providethe medium for advertising messages. Thus, visual media and aestheticscapable of generating convincing simulacra, depicting the most spectacular

variations in levels of neuron activity, are increasingly achieving currency.Interventions, by advertising creatives, into the realm of the artistic avant-

garde raise many fundamental questions about tendering the interiority ofhuman consciousness. This paper has traced the history and present of cul-

tural–political encounters with the psychology of advertising spectacle. Pri-marily informed by the artist avant-garde of SI (1957-1972), my definition of

the advertising psychology spectacle refers to the mediation of social rela-tionships by the currency of advertising psychology. In neuromarketing andadvertising the spectacle translates materiality, affect and embodiment into

the sign-currencies of Western capitalist commodity culture. Resistance tothe recuperation of the artistic avant-garde into the spiralling vortex of the

spectacle can be traced back to SI and its challenges to the meretriciousspectacle of advertising psychology. Indeed, Situationists’ praxis has rele-

vance to an appreciation of Adbusters and their interrogation of the psy-chology of the advertising spectacle.

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