deep into that darkness peering: a critique of the peculiar romanticism of the english situationists

7/28/2019 Deep into that darkness peering: A critique of The Peculiar Romanticism of the English Situationists

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Deep into that darkness peering: A critique ofThe Peculiar Romanticism of

the English Situationists

Romanticism! This is going to kill dad. He ran to his house, singing happily some gurgled crazy kidyell of

happiness.

--- Jack Kerouac, cityCityCITY

With the decline, from the late 1970s onwards, of the various tendencies towards social revolution,

situationist theory, the thought of the collapse of a world1, inevitably came to be abandoned. It

has since been picked up by artists, academics and other creatures of the dominant society, and

used for very different ends. Like any other unexploded ordinance, it first has to be disarmed. Artists

tend to do so by tearing a few of the first ideas and practices of the Situationist International (such

as the drive, dtournement and psychogeography) from their context of a practical critique of art

and capitalism, and ignoring everything that came later. Academics too may employ the same wilful

myopia. However, their abuse does not stop there. The academic critic must establish at least theappearance of superiority for his or her standpoint. To this end, the situationists may be reproached

for having failed to anticipate some currently fashionable academic absurdity, or just dumped into

whatever broad intellectual category (such as modernism or the avant-garde) represents failure

for the school of thought the critic belongs to. Or situationist theory may be changed from a

practical tool of revolutionary subversion into a narrow contribution to philosophy or social science,

a contribution to be dismissed or incorporated with equal condescension. Or some straw situationist

of the critics own imagining may be quickly conjured up and then suavely knocked back down. One

way or another, the message tends to be clear: dear oh dear, how very foolish it was of the

situationists to take on the practical project of suppressing capitalism and reinventing everyday life.

How much better to crawl on ones knees to a PhD, and then stay on ones knees as a licencedsupplier of broken graduates and tamed thought.

In this text I shall look in detail at just one example of the academic mistreatment of the

situationists, The Peculiar Romanticism of the English Situationists, an article by Sam Cooper (of the

School of English at University of Sussex) that recently appeared in The Cambridge Quarterly2, an

academic journal published by Oxford University Press. It has the novelty of discussing the English

section of the Situationist International and King Mob, two groups that have until now largely

escaped the predatory attention of the academics. Apart from this, the paper is a fairly ordinary

example of its genre. In other words, it is almost complete bullshit.

The English section of the Situationist International

Cooper begins with the English section of the Situationist International. In a footnote (footnote 9,

page 22) he says:

1Guy Debord and Gianfranco Sanguinetti, Theses on the Situationist International and its Time, 1972. In:

Situationist International, The Real Split in the International, London: Pluto Press, 2003, page 6.2Cambridge Quarterly, 2013, Volume 42(1), pages 20-37. A copy can be found at:

http://1000littlehammers.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/peculiar-romanticism-of-the-english-situationists.pdf.


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I shall refer to English, and not British, Situationist activity partly in concordance with that

groups identity, and partly to distinguish this activity from that of Alexander Trocchi, a Scot,

who was a British member of the SI before it established an English Section.

This leaves Ralph Rumney (a founder member of the Situationist International who was born in

Newcastle in 19343) unaccounted for. Never mind. Im sure few will notice.

Cooper argues that the English section sought to anglicise Situationist practice (page 22) by

attempting to reconstruct an English Romanticism that deployed something of its original radicality

in the present (page 23). He cites two items of evidence in support of this contention. The first

comes from the English sections text The Revolution of Modern Art and the Modern Art of

Revolution. According to Cooper:

Delinquent violence, the English Section asserts, is a spontaneous overthrow of the

abstract and contemplative role imposed on everyone. The phrase abstract and

contemplative role is clearly drawn from the SIs critique of spectacular society, in whichalienated representation has replaced direct social engagement. Yet the English Section

subtly alludes also to Wordsworths famous statement in his 1800 preface to Lyrical Ballads

that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.

He later adds:

The English Situationists definitely read him [Wordsworth], and, to judge by their

dtournement, did so closely (page 28).

However, the two passages that Cooper highlights have almost nothing in common apart from a

reference to spontaneity and the fact that the word spontaneous is followed by a three-syllable

word beginning with the letter o. This falls a long way short of demonstrating a deliberate

dtournement based on close reading. Consider, also, the two sentences that Cooper cites in their

entirety:

Delinquent violence is a spontaneous overthrow of the abstract and contemplative role

imposed on everyone, but the delinquents' inability to grasp any possibility of really

changing things once and for all forces them, like the Dadaists, to remain purely nihilistic4.

For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: and though this be

true, Poems to which any value can be attached were never produced on any variety ofsubjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also

thought long and deeply5.

If the English section hadhad Wordsworth in view, it could fairly easily have made its point about

the delinquents' failure to grasp any possibility of really changing things once and for all by way of

a modification of Wordsworths suggestion that good poetry requires not just the spontaneous

overflow of powerful feelings but also unusual organic sensibility and long and deep thought

3Ralph Rumney, The Consul, London: Verso, 2002, page 2.

4

See: http://www.notbored.org/english.html.5See: http://www.bartleby.com/39/36.html. Wordsworth repeats his assertion that poetry is the

spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings later in the Preface.


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(reader: try it). That the authors ofThe Revolution of Modern Art and the Modern Art of Revolution

did notdo so suggests to me that the Wordsworths Preface was not on their minds.

Coopers second piece of evidence is the English sections translation of the French text, De la misre

en milieu tudiant. Cooper claims that:

The English Section also takes a discreet liberty in translating the texts penultimate

sentence, in which the SI boasts of its own transgressiveness: Ici comme ailleurs, il sagit de

dpasser la mesure (roughly, Here as elsewhere, it is a question of exceeding the limit).

Rather than attempt a literal translation of this abstruse sentence, the English Section make

it echo an aphorism from William Blakes The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (begun 1790):

in revolution the road of excess leads once and for all to the palace of wisdom.

However, as Coopers own footnote self-defeatingly points out, the phrase Ici comme ailleurs, il

sagit de dpasser la mesure is the penultimate sentence not ofDe la misre en milieu tudiantbut

of a completely different text, Maintenant, LI.S., which appeared three years earlier in issue 9 of thejournal Internationale Situationniste

6. In his 1981 Situationist International Anthologythe American

Ken Knabb translated this sentence as Here as elsewhere, the road of excess leads to the palace of

wisdom7. Somewhere along the way Cooper has got these two borrowings from Blake confused.

All the same, the English sections translation of De la misre en milieu tudiant did introduce an

echo of Blake. Compare the following:

Les rvolutions proltariennes seront des ftes ou ne seront pas, car la vie qu'elles

annoncent sera elle-mme cre sous le signe de la fte. Le jeu est la rationalit ultime de

cette fte, vivre sans temps mort et jouir sans entraves sont les seules rgles qu'il pourra

reconnoitre (final two sentences of the French original8).

For proletarian revolt is a festival or it is nothing; in revolution the road of excess leads once

and for all to the palace of wisdom. A palace which knows only one rationality: the game.

The rules are simple: to live instead of devising a lingering death, and to indulge

untrammelled desire (English sections translation9).

Proletarian revolutions will be festivals or nothing, for festivity is the very keynote of the

life they announce. Play is the ultimate principle of this festival, and the only rules it can

recognize are to live without dead time and to enjoy without restraints (Ken Knabbs

translation10).

In his reflections on the English sections translation, Charles Radcliffe, a former member of the

section, says nothing about the text being used to forge an association with Romanticism, stressing

instead how the pamphlets Postscript sought to express the ideas differently for an English and

American audience, and allowed the English to continue to formulate an English Situationist

critique, one that emerged from observation of the apparently terminal socio-political-cultural

6See http://ubumexico.centro.org.mx/text/si/Internationale_situationniste_9.pdf.

7See: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/9.now.htm.

8

See: http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/fr/display_printable/12.9See: http://dumauvaiscote.pagesperso-orange.fr/tendays.pdf.

10See: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/poverty.htm#situation.


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collapse that surrounded us on all sides11

The present and not the past appears to have been on

their minds.

It also appears that the passage in the English sections translation that includes the borrowing from

Blake has, in comparison with the French original, extended festivity from the revolution itself to

the earlier process of revolt. And it seems to have inserted a different justification of festivity, a

justification that sees an indulgence in excess as the means of discovering and opening up the way

to revolution. Does this tell us something about the English section (is it, for instance, a harbinger of

King Mobs notions of revolutionary praxis)? More importantly, what practical relevance do these

matters have to the central question ofourtimes, that of how we as individuals can undermine our

own misery and alienation in this society? Merely pointing out that the English sections passage

about excess happens to be drawn from William Blakes Proverbs of Hell does not take us a whit

closer to answering that question.

Is there any other evidence that the English section had a profound interest in English Romanticism?

It would seem not. The Revolution of Modern Art and the Modern Art of Revolution repeatedly and

expressly mentions various predecessors, notably the Dadaists and the Surrealists, but it is silent

about the Romantics. So too is Heatwave, the journal in which Charles Radcliffe and Christopher

Grey participated prior to their admission in the Situationist International12

. But what about the

thought and conversation going on behind the scenes? In his recollections of his political life before

during and after the time when he was a member of the English section, Charles Radcliffe does not

allude to any especial interest in the English Romantics on the part of him or his comrades13

. What

did inspire him can perhaps be seen from the elements of issue six of Rebel Workerwith which he

unfavourably contrasts the Situationist Internationals theory and practice:

Blues, Jazz, Malcolm X, the Wobblies, Fourier, Buster Keaton, the Keystone Cops, Bugs

Bunny, Tom OBedlam, Beano, Marvel Comics, Ann Radcliffe, Poe, Edgar Rice Burroughs

Barsoomian pulp, Dr Syn, Sax Rohmers Fu Manchu, H.P. Lovecraft, Will Eisner, de Sade, the

IWW, William Blake, Gerard Winstanley, Abiezer Coppe, Gary Snyder, Huizinga, Norman O.

Brown, Simon Rodias Watts Tower, Maxwell Street, Surrealism and much much more.14

This hardly testifies to an overriding interest in English Romantic pastoralism. Indeed, while Blake is

included (having been praised in Rebel Worker for the extraordinary depth of his perception and

the prophetic surreality of his vision,15

as well as the truly subversive, anti-religious and liberating

message of his works) Wordsworth is not.

Dave Wise, who was subsequently a member of King Mob, has also written about the discussions

taking place at this time, saying:

11Charles Radcliffe, Two Fiery Flying Rolls: The Heatwave Story, 1966-1970. In Franklin Rosemont and Charles

Radcliffe (editors), Dancin in the Streets! Anarchists, IWWs, Surrealists, Situationists & Provos in the 1960s as

Recorded in the Pages of the Rebel Worker and Heatwave, Chicago: Charles H Kerr, 2005, page 374.12

See King Mob Echo: The English Section of the Situationist International, Edinburgh: Dark Star, 2000, pages

19-58.13

See Radcliffes Two Fiery Flying Rolls.14

Radcliffes Two Fiery Flying Rolls, page 378.15Franklin Rosemont, Souvenirs of the Future Precursors of the Theory and Practice of Total Liberation,

Rebel Worker 6, In: Dancin in the Streets!, page 196.


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Initially what resulted was a series of euphoric get-togethers in London ardently discussing

everything under the sun in flats, pubs and other venues. A meeting - if you like between

north and south - (to give a posthumous revision to Disraeli's book of the same name)

between us, Chris Gray, Don N Smith, Tim Clarke and Charles Radcliffe. In short, the English

section of the Situationists. There was nothing formal at all about these passionate

conversations and no thought of making groups, reconstituting ourselves etc and nothing

about organisational forms/structures and what have you. Nor did we discuss much about

our different survival situations us on the dole, them with some money or other. Mainly it

was all about what was unfolding in America the student rebellion and the urban

insurrections especially in Watts, Newark and Detroit, along with endless piecing together of

radical theory coming together from the best of the old world of art and politics - usually

emphasising their most destructive aspects. Marx smashing the street lamps in London's

Kentish Town, Durutti smashing up chairs as bourgeois domesticated articles and inevitably

the practical demolition of the world of art as conceived by the most aware artists,

especially Lautremont. We equally lauded anti-art measures deployed by people other thanartists. Insurgent anarchists were praised like when Bakunin hauled masterpieces from art

galleries hanging them on the barricades of 1848 knowing full well the military top brass

would balk at destroying priceless artefacts thus giving some protection to the insurgents.

[] Everybody was also reading voraciously at the same time anything from Hegel to Marx,

to Lefebvre to histories of the Spanish revolution of 1936 etc. A rapid coming together of

revolutionary knowledge and thought from all over was kind of quickly assembled and in

haste. In retrospect, there was too much haste as the immanent pressure of the times

wasn't allowing much space for good, reflective digesting. A few years later we sadly realized

this was to prove a much more serious omission.

Of course we also passionately discussed the Situationists and their predecessors finding out

by word of mouth - from the horses mouth if you like - all the unknown history of post

second world war cultural and political subversion and how we could no longer separate the

two as they inevitably tended more and more to enmesh. Astonished, we heard about the

International Lettrist interventions in the 1950s particularly Michel Mourre's invasion of

Note Dame dressed as a priest incarnating a litany proclaiming God is Dead only to be set

upon by the Swiss Guards with swords drawn ready to hack him to pieces finally escaping

with some nasty cuts. Why had all this information been withheld from us was an initial

response and only confirmed what we'd felt deep down all our lives: England was a truly

conservative shit hole!16

This too suggests that the members of the English section had a very broad array of interests, of

which English Romanticism was at best a small part. Of course, the recollections that Radcliffe and

Wise have so far recorded may be incomplete. The fact remains, however, that the best accounts we

have of what was discussed offers no support for Coopers suggestion that the English section was

deliberately engaged in the reconstruction of English Romanticism.

16Dave Wise,A Critical Hidden History of King Mob:

http://www.revoltagainstplenty.com/index.php/recent/34-archivelocal/93-a-hidden-history-of-king-mob.html .


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Cooper also suggests that the English sections purported dalliance with English Romanticism had

something to do with its expulsion from the Situationist International:

when that group began to anglicise Situationist practice, it was deemed to have

compromised the SI and was expelled (page 22); and

Such irreverent treatment of the groups decrees, and such disrespect shown to the SIs

paranoid proprietorship of its genealogical identity, led to the English Sections expulsion,

after it had allegedly sided with the American anarchist Ben Morea in a dispute with the SIs

Raoul Vaneigem (page 25).

There is not the slightest reason to think that a disagreement about Romanticism played a role in the

expulsion of the English section. If the Situationist International had been unhappy with the

translation ofDe la misre en milieu tudiant, it would in all probability have demanded that it be

withdrawn, as it did with a translation of the same text by Tony Verlaan17

. But it did no such thing.

Indeed, it had earlier reproached Verlaan with having made his translation ofDe la misre en milieutudiantwithout consulting Donald Nicholson-Smith, who was one of the members of the English

section18

. It would hardly have done this if it was dismayed by the English sections translation. In

reality, the dispute concerning Ben Morea that did lead to the expulsion of the English appears to

have been the firstserious conflict between the English section and the other situationists. As Guy

Debord said at the time in a letter to Robert Chasse:

I must emphasize that, after our first discussion ended in an accord with Chris [Gray] and

[Charles] Radcliffe, we still were completely confident in the English situationists (which

seems quite normal to us), without in any manner ever controlling what they did in England.

And then, upon theirfirst intervention in a general debate, we found out that they truly didnot feel bound to have the same confidence in Raoul and the others! A useful lesson

19

(italics in the original).

The realreasons for the expulsion of the English section are perfectly clear. Following a meeting in

England between Guy Debord and the English situationists, in 1967 Raoul Vaneigem travelled to

America as the delegate of all the situationists20

. Veneigem was given a written mandate, which was

evidently to the effect that he should sound out how close to the situationists various possible

members and contacts in New York were. During his visit, he encountered Allan Hoffman, a member

of the Black Mask group, who proceeded to expound to him an astrological interpretation of

Vaneigems writings. Vaneigem refused to have anything more to do with him. He also refused tosee Ben Morea, a fellow member of Black Mask and an associate of Hoffman. After Veneigem

returned to Europe and delivered his assessment, the situationists wrote to Ben Morea. The letter21

,

which was signed by Guy Debord and Mustapha Khayati from the French section and Christopher

17See the letter from Guy Debord, Christopher Gray, Mustapha Khayati, Donald Nicholson-Smith and Rene

Vienet to Robert Chasse and Tony Verlaan dated 5 December 1967: http://www.notbored.org/debord-

5December1967.html.18

See the letter from Guy Debord, Mustapha Khayati, Donald Nicholson-Smith and Raoul Vaneigem to Tony

Verlaan dated 3 October 1967: http://www.notbored.org/debord-3October1967.html.19

Letter from Guy Debord to Robert Chasse dated 23 December 1967: http://www.notbored.org/debord-

23December1967.html.20Ibid.

21See: http://www.notbored.org/debord-5December1967a.html.


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Gray and Donald Nicholson-Smith from the English section, explained that The situationists have

always refused to have anything whatsoever to do with mystics [and] those who collaborate with

mystics. It also said: On a tactical level, you would seem to [be] overemphasising head-on activism

as a be-all & end-all. Morea was told that Further dialogue between us must depend on a written

reply to the questions raised above. His response offered no such reply: Morea wrote once again

to all of us saying that the reasons we had given were false pretexts and that the real dispute lay

elsewhere; he insulted our New York friends and this time questioned Vaneigems testimony.22

This

was the end of the matter as far as the French situationists were concerned. They expected the

English section to break off all contact with Morea. The English prevaricated. Letters were

exchanged. Vaneigem also visited London with Rene Vienet to give the English a first-hand account

of his experiences in New York and deliver an ultimatum23

. The French took the view that the

situationists could only properly repudiate their delegates public break with Morea if (a) the

collusion of Morea with the mystic [] was alleged calumniously or (b) such collusion need not be

sufficient reason for a public break in the name of the SI.24

The French did not accept that either

was the case. If the English section agreed, they must break with Morea. If they did not, the basis forany practical solidarity between them and the rest of the organization was gone, and they must

leave. They were unable to make the choice the circumstances made unavoidable. They were

expelled.

As well as failing to recognize the real reasons for the expulsion of the English section, Cooper is

blind to the real relevance of that expulsion. For instance, the situationists practices of breaking

with and expelling individuals continue to be misunderstood and disavowed25

. The result is an

avoidable vulnerability amongst many opponents of the dominant regime, especially to sheep in

wolves clothing. Consider the Occupy Movement. The economic crisis to which the movement was

a response has also heightened a burgeoning conflict between the neoliberals who use the state toserve the narrow interests of the corporate and financial elites and a loose coalition of left-liberal

administrators, academics, commentators and campaigners who consider that the state must have

regard to the wider interests of the economic system as a whole and introduce economic and social

policies that promote the long-term viability of capitalism. The entrenchment of the neoliberals in

positions of power, and their suicidal intransigence, has prompted some of these frustrated

reformers to take to the streets in the guise of opponents of the system. They were one of the forces

brought together within the Occupy Movement (they appear to have constituted a large proportion

of the inner circle of organisers and activists). For them, it was enough if the movement acted as

foot soldiers in actions that pressured the existing regime to change itself, or merely generated

reusable images of dissatisfaction. If the best elements of Occupy (the most profound

dissatisfactions, the ones that tend to go to the very heart of the dominant society) were to grasp

themselves and find an appropriate practice, they had to refuse the limitations of thought and action

22Situationist International, The Latest Exclusions, Internationale Situationniste 12, 1969:

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/12.exclusions.htm.23

See the letter from Guy Debord to Robert Chasse dated 23 December 1967:

http://www.notbored.org/debord-23December1967.html, and the Situationist Internationals Circular to all

Sections dated 21 December 1967: http://www.notbored.org/debord-21December1967a.html.24

See the letter from Guy Debord to Donald Nicholson-Smith and Christopher Gray dated 16 December 1967:

http://www.notbored.org/debord-16December1967.html.25For a justification of such measures, see Situationist International, The Ideology of Dialogue, Internationale

Situationniste 10, 1966: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/10.dialogue.htm.


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the reformers sought to impose. Sooner or later, they had to refuse to give the reformers any voice

in their decisions. That is, they had to break with them and expel them from their assemblies,

something they could not do unless and until they tore away the ideology of tolerance and diversity

that is the contemporary antithesis of the situationist practice of concretely breaking with

apologists for any aspect of the present social order.26

The particular reasons for the expulsion of the English situationists also touch on central issues of

our time. Overemphasising head-on activism as a be-all & end-all, for instance remains a pathology

that afflicts many anti-capitalist groups. The consequences can include the brow-beating dominance

of the physically reckless or suicidal, and a convenient relocation of revolutionary praxis away from

individuals own everyday entanglements and collaborations with alienated society. As for the

opposition to mysticism, in 1967 the critique of religion was an essential precondition for all

criticism, as the effects of the New Age mysticisms entertained by the American counter-culture

demonstrated. It continues to be so today in those situations in which religion retains some

substantive influence. In North Africa, the uprisings of the Arab Spring have all failed to suppress

separate power and take economic and social decisions into their own hands. Instead, they have

contented themselves with watching the existing rulers fall and hoping for salvation from their

successors. Is religious belief in part responsible? After all, abolishing everything that exists

independently of individuals is hardly consistent with the notion of divine power that Islam projects

over humanity. Does acceptance of the separate power of the divine tend to keep the believer from

the rejection of the alienation of the individual on which the refusal of separate secular power

depends, with the result that he or she is reduced to the treadmill of cheering in and jeering out the

endless series of proponents of justice and equity that separate politics throws up?

There is also the question of friendship. In his recollections of the expulsion of the English section,

Dave Wise observes:

Ben [Morea] was inevitably very upset about Vaneigem and started raving on in letters

about the man of letters disposition he put across accusing him of not knowing anything

about those at the bottom of the pile and street life in general. This created quite a dilemma

in London as Chris Gray and Don N Smith in particular wanted to keep all the newfound

friendships here alive and kicking. Knowing our friendliness with Ben Morea they didn't want

to cause too many upsets before things had really kicked in in terms of doing something

together. Presumably because of their prevarication they were excluded from the

Situationists and the rest, as they say, is history. It was a major factor though that never

came out in the officially recognised reasons for the exclusion as put out by the French

section.27

More recently, when it emerged that a member of the ultra-left group Aufheben had helped develop

crowd control techniques for the police, a number of libertarian communists in the United Kingdom

declined to condemn his actions and sever their relations with him in part because he was a friend.

In response, Sam FantoSamotnaf has provided an excellent critique of traditional notions of

26

The Latest Exclusions: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/12.exclusions.htm.27Dave Wise,A Critical Hidden History of King Mob:

http://www.revoltagainstplenty.com/index.php/archive/34-archivelocal/93-a-hidden-history-of-king-mob .


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friendship28

. Much more can and must be said about the evasions, premature pseudo-satisfactions

and paralyses of contemporary friendship. Cooper does not begin to say it. Nor does he take up the

expulsion of the English section as an informative case study of how the road to hell is paved with

good friendships. He avoids the whole question. He just ploughs straight on with his monomaniac

pursuit of an empty hypothesis.

King Mob

Cooper next examines King Mob. He points out that a translation from Vaneigem it published

referred to Romanticism, and that the group included quotations from Blake and Coleridge in its

graffiti (he cannot refrain from pedantically mentioning the spelling error in the latter). He then

quotes a passage from The End of Music (which he attributes to Dave and Stuart Wise). He

comments:

The Wises explain King Mobs use of Romanticism as, in the first instance, iconoclasm and

aggravation. In a later account, David Wise is a little more candid, and concedes that KingMob actually attempted a revival through appreciative critique of English Romanticism.

However, in the very later account that Cooper cites, Wise explains the nature ofThe End of Music:

It may be said we've written about King Mob before in The End of Music so why repeat the

exercise? Well yes, apart from the fact the latter text was never meant to be published

seeing it was merely a somewhat hastily cobbled together draft handed around to a few

people in 1978 for comment and additions. Three or so years we found out the text had

been published by a group in Glasgow, which had been tied up with the formerly excellent

Castoriadis influenced group, Solidarity. We literally had no knowledge that the text was

being printed and moreover the name of David Wise had been supplied as author, which

wasn't fully accurate. Part of it contained some kind of critical potted history of King Mob.

On seeing the pamphlet for the first time, one of us asked for it to be pulped simply because

it was merely some provisional notes strung together which initially had seen the light of day

based mainly on conversations - which were quite exhilarating at the times during day to day

work plastering, tiling, carpentry etc - on small building sites in East London mainly between

ourselves and Nik Holliman who was later to produce The Sprint; c/o BM Chronos. One or

two others, in different, mainly pub based scenes, had also made pertinent points which

were jotted down but, basically, a name couldn't be put to it. A transcriber maybe, as it was

nothing more than a product of collective, passionate yet democratic conversation (in thereal and as yet unrealised sense of the term). Moreover, the people in Glasgow had altered

sentences and captions - some were even created - and one or two things deleted in that

editorial control freakism which is such a baneful cancer on our times and which has

subsequently been applied to most of our texts not published by ourselves.29

To see any supposed shortcomings insuch a textas down to a lack of candour on the part of the

Wise brothers is careless scholarship or deliberate calumny. But it serves Coopers interests to

28See the section Frayed Threads of Friendship in Cop-out The Significance of Aufhebengate:

http://dialectical-delinquents.com/?page_id=9.29David Wise,A Critical Hidden History of King Mob:

http://www.revoltagainstplenty.com/index.php/archive/34-archivelocal/93-a-hidden-history-of-king-mob .


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present Wise as a dubious witness. For although it is clear that King Mob were aware of and used

the Romantics, it seems the group unfortunately focussed on the wrong ones. Cooper wishes to

present Wordsworth and his Preface as the prime Romantic influence on the group. Yet the groups

graffiti, as Cooper points out, drew on Blake and Coleridge. Also, as Cooper does notmention, their

text Two Letters on Student Power reproduced an extract from a letter from Coleridge (about

DorothyWordsworth) under a picture of a topless woman30

. This is bad enough for Coopers thesis

but worse comes from Dave Wises recollections of King Mob. For example, he records that:

Although most of our conversations where we discussed past events and figures had to do

with other countries, particularly France, rebel figures, as we've suggested, were particularly

plucked out from English literature. Regarding the Romantics, the main emphasis was on De

Quincey and Coleridge though not from the revolutionary angle which Hazlitt in the 1830s

and Artaud in the 1940s had railed against the traitor Coleridge. Hardly surprising, as for

our time our biased emphasis had more to do with modern drug taking habits with more

than a sympathetic ear applied to the opium habits of both Coleridge and De Quincey. Not

for nothing had the latter made that memorable statement embarking on Saturday night

pre-derives through the old urban rookeries east of Tottenham Court Rd in London

swallowing his laudanum alongside workers and artisans: I identified with the poor not

through their miseries but through their pleasures.

[]

There was also a streak in other King Mobbers too which wanted to actively realise some of

that macabre, sinister, grotesque but nonetheless fascinating side of English Romanticism

and its fall out that was crystallised in Frankenstein and Dracula, and earlier on in the novels

written by Monk Lewis and especially,(and specifically) Walpole's Castle of Otranto. 31

Cooper does not feel it necessary to discuss this contribution from a source he has depicted as

unreliable. He passes over it in complete silence.

If Cooper passes over the available evidence in this way, how does he establish the alleged primacy

of Wordsworth? He invokes the groups reading of Wordsworth(page 26), a reading that is said to

be close (page 28). In support he says (page 26):

An early King Mob text, for example, speaks of the necessity to move from the Situationist

SALON down to Skid Row, to speak in the language of the streets. The statement echoes

dtournes, perhaps Wordsworths claim to have forgone poetic diction in favour of the

language of men.

As before, there is not the slightest reason to see King Mobs words as a deliberate play on

Wordsworth. The phrase language of the streets is actually used to describe the new

revolutionary language of the American Motherfuckers group. Later on the page that Cooper

quotes from, the article expressly connects this new language with certain precursors:

30See King Mob Echo: The English Section of the Situationist International, Edinburgh: Dark Star, 2000, page 89.

31

From: http://www.revoltagainstplenty.com/index.php/archive/34-archivelocal/93-a-hidden-history-of-king-mob.


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The Motherfuckers real importance was that they were trying to create this new

revolutionary language at once Lautreamonts poetry made by everyone and Boehmes

sensual speech.32

There is no mention of Wordsworth at all. As with the English section, King Mobs inconveniently

broad range of interests and influences is swept under the carpet.

The Romantic Situationist International

At this point, Coopers argument takes an unexpected turn. Having previously argued that it was the

Romanticism of the English situationists that distinguished them from the Situationist International,

Cooper now suggests that the theory of the Situationist International had important things in

common with Romanticism all along. One parallel he sees between Wordsworth and the Situationist

International is that:

like Society of the Spectacle, his Preface [to the Lyrical Ballads] offers an aesthetic theory

and a reflexive explication of how that aesthetic theory has been applied to its own

articulation.

An aesthetic theory? This notion is soon joined by that of an aesthetic ideology (page 29). Debord

and other situationists may have distanced themselves from aesthetics, for example by arguing that:

Of all the affairs we participate in, with or without interest, the groping quest for a new way

of life is the only thing that remains really exciting. Aesthetic and other disciplines have

proved glaringly inadequate in this regard and merit the greatest indifference.33

The revolutionary alteration of the present forms of culture can be nothing less than thesupersession of all aspects of the aesthetic and technological apparatus that constitutes an

aggregation of spectacles separated from life. [] [T]he revolutionary project [] can in no

case produce an aesthetics because it is already entirely beyond the domain of aesthetics.

The point is not to engage in some sort of revolutionary art-criticism, but to make a

revolutionary critique of all art.34

Aesthetics, that secular substitute for the religious otherworld.35

This fragmentary opposition can then only withdraw to an aesthetic position and harden

rapidly into a dated and ineffectual aesthetic in a world where it is already too late for

aesthetics as has happened with surrealism, for example.36

32King Mob Echo: The English Section of the Situationist International, Edinburgh: Dark Star, 2000, page 113.

33Guy, Debord, Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography, Les Lvres Nues 6, 1955:

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/urbgeog.htm.34

Guy Debord, For a Revolutionary Judgment of Art, Notes Critiques: bulletin de recherche et dorientation

rvolutionnaires 3, 1962: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/breathless.htm.35

Situationist International, Geopolitics of Hibernation, Internationale Situationniste 7, 1962:

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/7.hibernation.htm.36

J.V. Martin, Jan Strijbosch, Raoul Vaneigem and Ren Vinet, Response to a Questionnaire from the Centerfor Socio-Experimental Art, Internationale Situationniste 9, 1964:

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/9.artquestions.htm.


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They may also have repudiated ideology, contending that ideology is the intellectual basis of class

societies37

and the situationists do not put forward any ideological principles.38

The academic,

however, simply forces situationist theory and practice into the ordinary categories of bourgeois life

and thought that are the foundation of his life and work. He reduces them to dead grist for his

academic mill.

Be that as it may, the key similarity that Cooper postulates between Wordsworth and the

Situationist International has to do with what he calls the possibility of authentic experience

(page 28).

He explains that Wordsworth held to the conception of an inherently good human nature from

which people are distanced as society becomes more civilised and sophisticated (page 29). More

specifically

Nature, as the physical correspondent of that universal human nature, figures in the

Preface as the source of authentic experience. Rustic lives allow a closer proximity to thatsource of authenticity, and a rustic aesthetic allows for its representation with minimal

mediation. Wordsworth radicalism is here literal: a return to the roots, to radix (pages 29-

30).

According to Cooper, Debord also relies on idyllic, even prelapsarian, conceptions of authenticity

(page 30). In his view:

The dichotomy that Wordsworth establishes between a rustic life that is experienced in all

its richness and a more sophisticated life that has lost its immediate connection with nature

is echoed by a distinction made by Debord in the first thesis ofSociety of the Spectacle. In

societies dominated by modern conditions of production, writes Debord, life is presented

as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded

into a representation. The title of the first chapter of Debords text heralds the spectacle as

the culmination of separation. Like Wordsworth, Debord associates authenticity with that

which is experienced directly, without mediation (page 30).

In effect, As Rancire has recently remarked, the SIs critique of the spectacle is based in the

Romantic vision of truth as non-separation (page 32). For Cooper, this can be seen as a form of

vitalism:

For the SI, positive representation in an era of spectacle only perpetuates alienation. The SI

feared that if it were to represent positively that which it deemed authentic, such

representations would inevitably be co-opted by the spectacle, divested of their authentic

content and circulated as mere images; the inauthentic sign would replace the authentic

signified. The Situationist Attila Kotnyi encapsulated the SIs position when he proposed:

We are against the dominant conditions of artistic inauthenticity we know that

[our artistic] works will be coopted by society and used against us. Our impact lies in

37Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 1967, thesis 212: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/9.htm.

38Italian Section of the Situationist International, 1969: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/inshort.htm.


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the elaboration of certain truths which have an explosive power whenever people

are ready to struggle for them.

The evasiveness of Kotnyis phrase certain truths, like Debords everything that was

directly lived, confirms the normative basis of the SIs critique of spectacle, which Benjamin

Noys has recently described as its vitalism, its retention of a ground of reality as positivity

at odds with its professedly negative critique. That vitalism is, I believe, its principal

Romantic inheritance.

This is all so much nonsense. Just because the culmination of separation, a culmination that comes

about when the images detached from every aspect of life merge into [] a separate pseudoworld

that can only be looked at,39

is criticised, it does not follow that the degrees of separation that

preceded it are considered beyond critique. Nor does it imply that there ever was an historical

period in which separation did not exist, let alone one that sustained an everyday life to which we

might wish to return. In the same way, a critique of the specific mediation of social relations by

ubiquitous images that the spectacle now imposes does not rest upon a categorical rejection of

anything that might broadlybe called mediated. It also does not mean that onlyrelations that are

spectacular in nature are the object of situationist critique.

Situationist theory is not an abstract philosophy or metaphysic of unmediated experience. It is a

practical critique ofallof the particularalienations and false separations that cause the poverty of

everyday life now. It contains not just a critique of the spectacle but also of (amongst other things)

the hierarchical power and alienated labour from which the spectacle arises in conditions of

commodity abundance40

. It also includes a critical view of the past41

and itspre-spectacularmiseries.

Not even the most prelapsarian societies tend to inspire nostalgia, at least on Debords part. As

Debord stressed at the conference at which the Situationist International was founded:

Reacting against the alienation of Christian society has led some people to admire the

completely irrational alienation of primitive societies. But we need to go forward, not

backward. We need to make the world more rational the necessary first step in making it

more exciting.42

After the dissolution of the Situationist International, he also said in a letter to Daniel Denevert:

It is true that, on one side of current revolutionary ideology [rvolutionnarisme], there is an

aspect of longing for the golden age that is not formally enunciated, but which one can

detect, for example, in many pages by [Raoul] Vaneigem. One must critique it, especially if

one estimates that the current (deteriorating) conditions of life can reinforce this emotional

reaction (which becomes almost frankly ideological in the ecological current of the

American Left). The loss of life is a quite real phenomenon (for example: anyone who has

lived in Paris for the last 20 years can testify to a loss of the town), but obviously it only

39Thesis 2 ofThe Society of the Spectacle: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/1.htm.

40See, for example, theses 26-34 ofThe Society of the Spectacle: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/1.htm.

41See, for example, thesis 25 and chapter 5 ofThe Society of the Spectacle:

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/index.htm, and Raoul Vaneigem, Basic Banalities (Part 1),

Internationale Situationniste 7, 1962: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/7.basic1.htm.42Guy Debord, Report on the Construction of Situations and on the International Situationist Tendencys

Conditions of Organization and Action, 1957: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/report.htm.


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exists within the very heart of a form of life that is already fundamentally absent. In [The

Society of the] Spectacle, I evoke the two or three past eras in which one can recognize a

certain historical life and [also] the limits of these eras. Considered coldly, it appears that

theres not too much to lose in the entirety of the old world.43

Situationist theory is the thought ofcontemporarydissatisfaction. It arises from, and speaks to, the

possibilities for a completely new life to which the development of todays capitalism has

inadvertently given rise, and the modernized miseries that are precisely brought about by the

squandering of those possibilities on work, surveillance, control, inconsequential chatter, cancerous

urbanism, the banalization of nature, and all the other horrors of a world imperiously dominated by

an economy blindly developing for itself. The historical solution it discerns lies in the revolutionary

creation of a self-managed individual and collective life. That is, social life and the means to produce

the human world must be taken into our hands in their entirety, and the whole of the space and

time of everyday life recreated in accordance with what we desire. This is not a return to the past.

Outside of certain previous moments of revolutionary struggle from which situationist theory has

learned, this transformed world is unprecedented, and perhaps could not have been sustained in full

until modern production and knowledge developed to the point where the best of what they in

principle offer could be appropriated by and for a liberated life. And until alienated society has been

suppressed and superseded (after which it will simply be redundant), situationist theory is merely an

evolving tool of combat. Its function is to help the individual understand her collaboration with her

own alienation, and to determine for herself the practical steps she might usefully take against that

alienation in the particular circumstances in which she finds herself. Except in the hands of enemies,

it does nothing else.

What on earth has all this do with Wordsworths fantasies of an imagined rural past? What, one

might whimsically ask, has Wordsworths pastoral idyll to do with Eduardo Rothes notion that we go

into outer space as masters without slaves reviewing their domains: the entire universe pillaged for

the workers councils?44

It is only by giddily ascending to a completely useless and uninformative

level of abstraction that these radically dissimilar things can be associated with each other. This is a

game by and for fools.

What about Rancires assertion that the situationist critique of the spectacle is based in the

Romantic vision of truth as non-separation? Does this assist Cooper? No. Rancires entire

argument consists of these two sentences:

In fact, the theoretical foundations of the critique of the spectacle are borrowed, via Marx,

from Feuerbachs critique of religion. The basis of both critiques consists in the Romantic

vision of truth as non-separation.45

There are at least three problems with Rancires argument. First, he fails to show that Feuerbachs

critique of religion managed to pass through Marx to the situationists unscathed by Marxs criticism

43Letter from Guy Debord to Daniel Denevert dated 26 February 1972: http://www.notbored.org/debord-

26February1972.html. We shall touch on Raoul Vaneigem below.44

Eduardo Rothe, The Conquest of Space in the Time of Power, Internationale Situationniste 12 , 1969:

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/12.space.htm. Today, we may wish to consider a little less pillaging and a littlemore conservation of finite resources.45

Jacques Rancire, The Emancipated Spectator, London: Verso, 2009, page 6.


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of it in the Theses on Feuerbach46 and elsewhere. Second, he fails to show where and how the

critique of the spectacle are based on Feuerbachs critique. Third, he fails to show that the

Romantics actually held a vision of truth as non-separation and what precisely it consisted of. At

every stage it assumes what it should prove. It is wholly devoid of merit. One would expect no better

from a philosopher intent on demonstrating that there is no contradiction between the critique of

the spectacle and the quest for a theatre restored to its original essence.47

Cooper also relies on Benjamin Noys reference to the Situationist Internationals retention of a

ground of reality as positivity. However, the passage Cooper cites is a summary of a position that

Noys goes on to rejectin the next paragraph onwards. For instance, Noy says:

First, we have to note that this dismissal of Debord and the SI rests on the treatment of

politics, or anti-politics, as philosophy. A specific (political) assault on particular mediations

(of the state and of capital) is treated as a (philosophical) attack on representation itself. This

is what then supposedly leads this thought into bad metaphysics, as it can only navely posit

some underlying true alternative to the reign of representation. In aiming to destroy all

mediations one has to posit some unmediated point from which to mount this critique. T. J.

Clark and Donald Nicholson-Smith make the point that: We shall never begin to understand

Debords hostility to the concept representation, for instance, unless we realize that for

him the word always carried a Leninist aftertaste. Contra Nancy, it is not a matter of a

violent attack on representation itself for the sake of some Rousseauist fantasy of dancing

round the social may-pole, but a general assault on political mediation that threatens leftism

as much as capital.48

Cooper wholly fails to answer these criticisms49

. At the same time, he ignores the suggestion in Noys

summary that the situationists purported vitalist metaphysics is said to be most self-evident in

the work of Raoul Vaneigem, such as when, in The Book of Pleasures (1979), he posits the force of

real life pushing through, under my very feet (page 97). However confusedly, there is something

in this. What is more, it can have important practical consequences, notably in the form of a

subjectivism that wants the realisation of all existing desires, including those desires which belong

to the spectacle,50

for which reason it was criticised decades ago by certain situationists. However,

Cooper fails to recognize differences between the continental European situationists. He is also

unlikely to be troubled by the prospect of taking up spectacular desires. After all, where does his

wish to chisel out a niche in academia for himself with papers such as The Peculiar Romanticism of

the English Situationists come from, if not from the spectacles representations of what is good and

what is inescapable?

Coopers final contention in this connection is that the evasiveness of Kotnyis phrase certain

truths, like Debords everything that was directly lived, confirms the normative basis of the SIs

46See http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm.

47Page 7 ofThe Emancipated Spectator.

48Benjamin-Noys, The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory, Edinburgh:

Edinburgh University Press, 2010, page 98.49

Alas, after making one or two good points, Noys immediately descends into absurdities of his own.

Thankfully, these are beyond the scope of the text.50Jol Cornuault, Some Reflections on Subjectivism and Intellectualism, 1977. In: Revolutionary Theory for

Beginniners (Pure and Applied): Three Situationist Texts, London: BM Combustion (1978), page 7.


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critique of spectacle. In effect, Cooper has converted brevity into evasiveness. In doing so, it ignores

some obvious reasons for this brevity.

Kotanyi was in fact speaking at an internal conference of the Situationist International. The

conference, which was held in Gteborg in 1961, was an important moment in the clash between

the revolutionary faction of the Situationist International and the reactionary elements within the

organization who wished to associate situationist practice with artistic work. The revolutionary

position was first defended by Raoul Vaneigem, who amongst other things argued that:

The existing world, in both its capitalist and its supposedly anticapitalist variants, organizes

life in the form of spectacles. . . . The point is not to elaborate a spectacle of refusal, but to

refuse the spectacle. In order for their elaboration to be artistic in the new and authentic

sense defined by the SI, the elements of the destruction of the spectacle must precisely

cease to be works of art. There is no such thing as situationism, or a situationist work of art,

or a spectacular situationist. Once and for all.

Such a perspective means nothing if it is not directly linked to revolutionary praxis, to the

desire to change life (which is not at all the same as merely changing the bosses of existing

occupations).

Dieter Kunzelmann and Jrgen Nash were sceptical. The question had also been raised of whether

any of the experimental films on which several members of the Scandinavian section had worked

could properly be termed situationist. According to the published report of the conference (the

document from which Cooper himself quotes):

Kotnyi responds to Nash and Kunzelmann: Since the beginning of the movement there

has been a problem as to what to call artistic works by members of the SI. It was understood

that none of them was a situationist production, but what to call them? I propose a very

simple rule: to call them antisituationist. We are against the dominant conditions of artistic

inauthenticity. I dont mean that anyone should stop painting, writing, etc. I dont mean that

that has no value. I dont mean that we could continue to exist without doing that. But at

the same time we know that such works will be coopted by the society and used against us.

Our impact lies in the elaboration of certain truths which have an explosive power as soon as

people are ready to struggle for them. The movement is only in its infancy regarding the

elaboration of these essential points. It has yet to attain the degree of purity found in

modern explosives. Until we attain this purity, i.e. this necessary degree of clarity, we cannotcount on the explosive effects of our approaches to everyday life and to the critique of

everyday life. I urge you not to forget that our present productions are antisituationist. The

clarity that comes from recognizing this fact is indispensable for attaining any greater

clarification. If we sacrifice this principle, Kunzelmann would be right in a negative sense: the

SI would be unable to attain the most meager power.51

Kotnyi was, therefore, briefly contrasting, for the purposes of an internal discussion, two basic

notions of situationist practice: the production of artistic works and the elaboration of certain

51Situationist International, The Fifth SI Conference in Gteborg, Internationale Situationniste 7, 1962:

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/7.conf5.htm.


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explosive truths (making petrified conditions dance by singing them their own tune, to borrow a

phrase from Ken Knabb). Moreover, as his subsequent words show, Kotnyi was of the view that

further clarification of these truths was required, and that this could only be attained by a

recognition that the present productions by situationists were antisituationist. Given this context

and this position, his failure to elaborate on the certain truths is understandable. For him, neither

the truths themselves nor the necessary conditions for their elaboration as yet existed. To allow that

elaboration to take place, the organization has to make the choice to repudiate the notion of

situationist art, which was precisely what he was proposing to the situationists that they do. It is

simply absurd to see some element of evasiveness in this.

As for Debord, the perfunctory nature of his phrase everything that was directly lived expresses

not evasion but indifference. What is important is the world that exists now that the spectacle has

come into being, and its suppression.

The unity it presents is divided

Finally, having established to his own satisfaction that both the Situationist International and the

English Situationists were related to Romanticism, Cooper once again pulls the two apart (pages 36-

7):

Perhaps the English Situationists deemed Debords negative-dialectical mode of exposition

to be the stumbling block in the SIs anglophonic reception, the target of the accusations of

intellectualism. When they decided that the crucial unit of the SIs analysis was its attention

to youth revolt and delinquency, and when they proceeded to develop a textual practice of

role-playing and even hyperbolising that anti-sociality a lumpen aesthetic analogous to

Wordsworths rustic one the English Situationists reproduced Wordsworths faith thatauthenticity can be identified and represented, that positive representation is not

necessarily spectacular or alienating. They attempted to transpose the core political content

of the SIs critique of spectacle into a distinctly English literary tradition, but in severing the

SIs political analysis from its aesthetic one, in articulating the former by way of a Romantic,

affirmative, and positivistic mode of exposition, the English Situationist aesthetic practice

became diametrically opposed to that of the SI.

The distinction that Cooper draws here, between a Situationist International that is anxious to

present itself as wholly negative and English Situationists who more inclined to positive depictions, is

specious.The English Situationists tended to praise the delinquents for their subversiveness not theirauthenticity.

52The Situationist International equally did not hesitate to identify and applaud the

tendencies toward revolutionary subversion it saw in the world. For example, it concluded its

Address to Revolutionaries of Algeria and of All Countries53

with the following:

52See the section The Real Avant-Garde: The Game-Revolt of Delinquency, Petty Crime and the New Lumpen in

the English Sections text The Revolution of Modern Art and the Modern Art of Revolution:

http://www.notbored.org/english.html.53

Situationist International, Address to Revolutionaries of Algeria and of All Countries, Internationale

Situationniste 10, 1966: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/10.address.htm. See also, amongst others, The BadDays Will End, Internationale Situationniste 7, 1962: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/7.baddays.htm, The

Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy, Internationale Situationniste 10, 1966:


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Long live the comrades who in 1959 burned the Koran in the streets of Baghdad!

Long live the workers councils of Hungary, defeated in 1956 by the so-called Red Army!

Long live the dockers of Aarhus who last year effectively boycotted racist South Africa, in

spite of their union leadership and the judicial repression of the Danish social-democraticgovernment!

Long live the Zengakuren student movement of Japan, which actively combats the capitalist

powers of imperialism and of the so-called Communist bureaucracies!

Long live the workers militia that defended the northeastern districts of Santo Domingo!

Long live the self-management of the Algerian peasants and workers! The option is now

between the militarized bureaucratic dictatorship and the dictatorship of the self-managed

sector extended to all production and all aspects of social life.

Furthermore, to the extent that the English Situationists didattempt to level a critique of the

spectacle by way of supposedly spectacularised forms; a critique that was based on the affirmation

of images of authenticity (page 37), did this have its roots in Wordsworths rustic aesthetic, or

something else? Just what was Romanticisms legacy for King Mob? In the case of the quotations

that King Mob used in its graffiti (Coleridges A grief without a pang, void, dark, drear, a stifled

drowsy grief and Blakes The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction), there is no

sense of the positive. One phrase serves as rather a good description of the state to which the

dominant society often reduces us, while the other reflects King Mobs insistence on a visceral

detestation of this society. As for the opium habits of both Coleridge and De Quincey and the

macabre, sinister, grotesque but nonetheless fascinating side of English Romanticism that Dave

Wise says were attractive to elements of King Mob, perhaps it was thought that drugs and the

monstrous might open the way to a new and more desirable life. There may also have been some

element of positivity in King Mobs bringing together of Coleridges rather chaste description of the

charms of Dorothy Wordsworth and a modern representation of a brazen woman. Neither,

however, obviously has anything to do with Wordsworth or a hankering after the authentic.

Something else was being done with these selected fragments of Romantic thought. What was it?

Cooper is too busy building a career out of nonsense to shed any light on this question.

Above and beyond these issues of historical accuracy and completeness, the central poverty of

Coopers work rests in his utter failure to address any of the real practical questions raised by the

matters through which he blunders. Why, for example, did the delinquents fail to develop the

effective revolutionary contestation the English Situationists hoped they would; and what can be

done to reverse this continuing failure today?54

Also, what were the practical consequences of King

Mobs role-playing and hyperbolising [of] anti-sociality? Did those tactics reflect or anticipate

new features of the very spectacular society the group sought to attack?55

In general, what lessons

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/10.Watts.htm, and theses 115-18 of Guy Debords The Society of the Spectacle:

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/4.htm.54

For a few thoughts from me, see my Nothing Burns in Hell: On Delinquents and Respectable Citizens:

http://zinelibrary.info/files/Nothing%20Burns%20in%20Hell.pdf55For analysis of this, see Dave Wise,A Critical Hidden History of King Mob:

http://www.revoltagainstplenty.com/index.php/recent/34-archivelocal/93-a-hidden-history-of-king-mob.html .


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must be learned from the experiences of the English section and King Mob? What refinements of

refusal can contemporary dissatisfaction draw from them? Cooper is silent. There is no profit in such

questions for him.

In relation to Romanticism in general, what ultimately matters is whether and how its legacy

supports the dominant society and therefore destroys life, and whether and how it might be used to

undermine that society and therefore liberate life. Can it serve as a new North-Western Passage to

the supersession of art, and thence to a new revolution, as Dave and Stuart Wise suspect?56

Cooper

has nothing to say about this either.57

Of course, Cooper may protest that such questions are not within the remit of academia. So much

the worse for academia and academics. It merely shows that part of the academic role is to talk

twaddle about irrelevancies for the benefit of power.

Wayne Spencer

May 2013. Slightly added to in June 2013.

No Copyright. Use in any way you wish.

The author can be contacted at [email protected].

56See, for example, Stuart Wise, Reflections on English and German Romanticism and the Revolt of Poetic

Form: http://www.revoltagainstplenty.com/index.php/recent/1-recent/163-stuart-wise.html .57

Indeed, throughout his highly-selective characterization of the English Situationists he is also silent abouttheir interest in and commitment to the realization and suppression and art, even though it was one of the

main subjects of their writings.

deep into that darkness peering: a critique of the peculiar romanticism of the english situationists

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