(99) Debord on Waste

February 9, 2011 at 2:57 pm · Filed under Uncategorized and tagged: Boorstin, Debord, Image, Spectacle, Waste

Those who denounce the absurdity or the perils of incitement to waste in the society of economic abundance do not understand the purpose of waste. They condemn with ingratitude, in the name of economic rationality, the good irrational guardians without whom the power of this economic rationality would collapse. For example, Boorstin, in L’Image, describes the commercial consumption of the American spectacle but never reaches the concept of spectacle because he thinks he can exempt private life, or the notion of “the honest commodity,” from this disastrous exaggeration. He does not understand that the commodity itself made the laws whose “honest” application leads to the distinct reality of private life and to its subsequent reconquest by the social consumption of images.  (Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 198)

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