Book Announcement
Spectacular Logic in Hegel and Debord: Why Everything is as it Seems
by Eric-John Russell, foreword by Étienne Balibar
Available now in hardback from Bloomsbury Academic: www.bloomsbury.com/9781350157637/.
Please consider encouraging your institution’s library to purchase a copy.
There is also a free widget preview available for both the book’s introduction and Étienne Balibar’s foreword: https://bloomsburycp3.codemantra.com/viewer/6038b8f8e21b8400014cc099
About the book
Revisiting Guy Debord’s seminal work, The Society of the Spectacle (1967), Eric-John Russell breathes new life into a text which directly preceded and informed the revolutionary fervour of May 1968. Deepening the analysis between Debord and Marx by revealing the centrality of Hegel’s speculative logic to both, he traces Debord’s intellectual debt to Hegel in a way that treads new ground for critical theory. Drawing extensively from The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and Science of Logic (1812), this book illustrates the lasting impact of Debord’s critical theory of twentieth-century capitalism and reveals new possibilities for the critique of capitalism.
Praise for Spectacular Logic in Hegel and Debord:
“Eric-John Russell is a brilliant and ingenious young writer and critic who needs and deserves to be heard; it takes courage to listen. Find it.”
– Robert Hullot-Kentor, Founding Chair, Critical Theory and the Arts, School of Visual Arts, New York, USA
“Debord was at risk of getting reduced to a media theorist or an appendix to historical avant-gardes, fashionable and superseded at the same time. Russell’s book helps to put Debord in his right place in the history of critical thought, especially by pointing out his advancement of Hegel’s philosophy. By utilizing hitherto unpublished material from the Guy Debord archive at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Russell upholds with exacting detail and formidable prowess Debord’s concept of the spectacle as a critical theory of society.”
– Anselm Jappe, Professor of Philosophy, Accademia di Belle Arti di Sassari, Italy
“This book makes a serious and valuable contribution to the study of Debord’s work. It demonstrates that his theory of ‘spectacle’ is not just a critique of the mass media, but rather a nuanced Hegelian social ontology that echoes some of the Frankfurt School’s central concerns. Recommended.”
– Tom Bunyard, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Brighton, UK