Narrow Trails of Permanent Subversion Beyond the Spectacle of Solitude

Abstract

Few people would think of Guy Debord, the prophet of spectacular capitalism, as a magical realist, just as fewer again would see Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the prophet of magical realism, as a theorist of the society of the spectacle. In this article, I want to bring The Society of the Spectacle and One Hundred Years of Solitude together in a strange dialogue centering on two fundamental themes: (1) the nature of reality, and (2) the possibility for transformative politics. The four-decades unfolding since the publication of these two books (in 1967) has been marked by a spectacular solitude, and in saying this it's true that each book remains darkly pessimistic. In a way, both pinpoint the ‘68-generation's shortcomings as much as embody its utopian desires. On the other hand, with their almost-supernatural lucidity, their dazzling erudition and phantasmal and mystical ideas, each book also transmits a strange sort of optimism, a backdoor sense of hope, and offers another take on what our lives might be. Each shows us how reality can be represented differently, how more acute (and astute) forms of subjectivity can create a more advanced sense of realism, and a different type of objectivity—a more radical and active one. Each text, in a nutshell, equips progressives with the imaginative tools for staking out new narrow trails of permanent subversion.