ABSTRACT
Situationist talk of the recuperation of dissent was intended to convey the subtlety and effectiveness by which criticism of the spectacle is enlisted in its support. It carried a stronger meaning than terms such as ‘integration’, ‘co-option’, or the ‘repressive tolerance’ identified by Marcuse,1 for although each of these expressed the way in which dissenting voices can be rendered harmless by their absorption into the spectacle, the notion of recuperation suggested that they are actually subject to processes of
inversion which give an entirely new and affirmative meaning to critical gestures. Represented in the spectacle, the vocabulary of revolutionary discourse is taken up and used to support the existing networks of power: the theory ‘that was developed by the strength of the armed people now develops the strength of those who disarm the people’.2 Change, self-management, and autonomy have become the prerogatives of the right; revolution, the realisation of dreams, and the possibilities of a transformed life are now the domain of the advertising industry.
