Spectacle and Politics: Is There a Political Reality in the Spectacle of Society?

In the terms established by Guy Debord, the theory of the spectacle is a critique of late capitalist society that diagnoses a form of depoliticization through isolation and a shift into mere role-playing as well as through the rule of totalizing image-based semblance. Drawing on the Latin notion of the spectaculum (theatre), the notion of the spectacle constructs an opposition between politics and theatre, in which a politico-ethical rejection of theatre as emblematic of the aesthetic is made explicit. ¹ It is important to note here that this rejection relies on the common understanding of theatre as an art of representation and an aesthetics of make-believe that is based on the separation between the action on stage and the beholding audience. This theatre in general is perceived as bad thing—it is ‘the stage of illusion that forbids action’ (Rancière, 2007, p. 272). Debord’s critical theory can therefore be placed in the lineage of a history of philosophical critique of aestheticization and animosity to this kind of theatre that stretches back as far as Plato, who made a distinction between imitating and engendering (hervorbringende) art. At the same time, the political potential of theatre is denounced indirectly, as Juliane Rebentisch showed in her book Die Kunst der Freiheit (2012, p. 272). As soon as the political community is staged and ‘breaks into spectacle and audience’ (Rebentisch, 2012, p. 18), she argues, politics is conceived as theatre that undermines the social binding of a collective where participation and affiliation define social and political practices. While the metaphor of theatre is used here to describe the alienation of politics, theatre itself is suspected of having a depoliticizing effect. In this line of argumentation politics and aesthetics are contrasted so that—to say it bluntly—politics is understood as a form of theatre that implies the existence of a spectator rather than being understood as an intercommunity of action. This latter form of politics goes along with a connotation of aesthetics that appreciates collaborative and participatory forms of action that constitutes a community as a performing body.