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The style of negation and the negation of style: the Anglicization of the Situationist International

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 17:53 authored by Sam Cooper
The writings of Guy Debord, central impresario of the Situationist International (1957–1972), have frequently been mistranslated by Anglophonic readers. This article investigates how critics and translators have struggled, specifically, with Debord’s style of writing, which he describes in Society of the Spectacle (1967) as a “style of negation.” After it establishes the theoretical basis and the history of the Anglophonic reception of Debord’s style, this article introduces the earliest English Situationist groups and their efforts to import Situationist practice to England by way of anglicizing its textual style. This article considers the different types of translation which have operated in this Anglicization. The English Situationist project jettisoned some necessary difficulties of Debord’s “style of negation,” but nonetheless sheds light on a lesser-known current of Sixties radical aesthetic practice and a moment in the troubled Anglophonic engagement with the Continental European avant-garde.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

The Sixties

ISSN

1754-1328

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Issue

1

Volume

6

Page range

65-81

Department affiliated with

  • English Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2014-07-22

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