The Situationist International in Britain by Sam Cooper - 9781138680456

Name: The Situationist International in Britain by Sam Cooper - 9781138680456
Brand: Sam Cooper

Sam Cooper

This book tells, for the first time, the story of the Situationist International\u2019s influence and afterlives in Britain, where its radical ideas have been rapturously welcomed and fiercely resisted. The Situationist International presented itself as the culmination of the twentieth century avant-garde tradition \u2014 as the true successor of Dada and Surrealism. Its grand ambition was not unfounded. Though it dissolved in 1972, generations of artists and writers, theorists and provocateurs, punks and psychogeographers have continued its effort to confront and contest the \u2018society of the spectacle.\u2019 This book constructs a long cultural history, beginning in the interwar period with the arrival of Surrealism to Britain, moving through the countercultures of the 1950s and 1960s, and finally surveying the directions in which Situationist theory and practice are being taken today. It combines agile historicism with close readings of a vast range of archival and newly excava.