McKenzie Wark
Author of A Hacker Manifesto
About the Author
Works by McKenzie Wark
The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International (2011) 164 copies, 4 reviews
The Spectacle of Disintegration: Situationist Passages out of the Twentieth Century (2013) 95 copies, 1 review
50 Years of Recuperation of the Situationist International (FORuM Project Publications) (2008) 36 copies
Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events (Arts and Politics of the Everyday) (1994) 27 copies
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Wark, McKenzie
- Birthdate
- 1961-09-10
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- Australia
- Birthplace
- Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia
- Places of residence
- Brooklyn, New York, USA
- Education
- Macquarie University (BA|1985)
University of Technology, Sydney (MA|1990)
Murdoch University (Ph.D|1998|Communications) - Occupations
- Media and Cultural Studies scholar
professor - Relationships
- Christen Clifford (Wife)
Robert McKenzie Wark (Brother) - Organizations
- The New School
Members
Reviews
I can’t believe it has taken me an entire month to read such a short book. I expected ‘The Beach Beneath the Street’ to be something along the lines of the very readable [b:Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune|22716641|Communal Luxury The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune|Kristin Ross|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1406511042s/22716641.jpg|42243876]. While that discussed the ‘everyday life and glorious times’ of the Communards, this claims to do the same with the Situationists. I hoped to gain insight into the philosophies and practises of the somewhat mysterious Situationists and their role in the upheavals of 1968. Having finally finished the book, I do not feel hugely enlightened on this front. This is undoubtedly in part because the Situationists do not seem to have had a coherent ideology (I don’t think the word is even mentioned in the book) and frequently splintered into grouplets. Although the word praxis is quite often mentioned, the actual activities of the Situationists appear to have largely involved publishing newsletters, quarrelling, and occasionally playing practical jokes. Perhaps I underestimate them, or perhaps I simply didn’t get along with Wark’s prose style. I found the second half easier going than the first, although I was never really carried along by it. The density of references proved gruelling when I hadn’t heard of them but rewarding when I had, not surprisingly.
Nevertheless, ‘The Beach beneath the Street’ does make interesting links between the Situationists and their antecedents (the Letterists) and their heirs (psychogeographers and purveyors of internet memes?). I liked the grounding of Situationism, if there was such a cohesive concept, in the urban spatial environment. The comparison between Marx and Jorn’s concepts of value was thought-provoking, especially Jorn’s subtle idea of ‘container form’. This carries an implicit critique of progress in terms of rising quantities of goods produced, at the expense of diversity in forms. As I’ve long intended to read [b:Critique of Everyday Life|1443432|Critique of Everyday Life|Henri Lefebvre|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1374000454s/1443432.jpg|1434077], I also found the discussion of Lefebvre’s work appealing. In particular, his take on Debord’s spectacle, which feels extremely relevant today:
Doesn’t that sound exactly like social media? On the other hand, I remain confused about the nature of détournement and increasingly convinced that such concepts may not be amenable to translation. Surely a definition in French would make more sense than this sort of thing:
Wark does end on a well-chosen note, though: ‘There may be no dignified exits left to the twenty-first century, the century of the flying inflatable turd, but there might be at least some paths to adventure. The unexamined life is not worth living, but the unlived life doesn’t bear thinking about’. Although it took quite a lot of effort and I remain largely befuddled by the Situationists, I found enough insight and novelty here to make this book worth persisting with. [b:Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune|22716641|Communal Luxury The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune|Kristin Ross|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1406511042s/22716641.jpg|42243876] is much friendlier to the reader, however.… (more)
Nevertheless, ‘The Beach beneath the Street’ does make interesting links between the Situationists and their antecedents (the Letterists) and their heirs (psychogeographers and purveyors of internet memes?). I liked the grounding of Situationism, if there was such a cohesive concept, in the urban spatial environment. The comparison between Marx and Jorn’s concepts of value was thought-provoking, especially Jorn’s subtle idea of ‘container form’. This carries an implicit critique of progress in terms of rising quantities of goods produced, at the expense of diversity in forms. As I’ve long intended to read [b:Critique of Everyday Life|1443432|Critique of Everyday Life|Henri Lefebvre|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1374000454s/1443432.jpg|1434077], I also found the discussion of Lefebvre’s work appealing. In particular, his take on Debord’s spectacle, which feels extremely relevant today:
Lefebvre calls the spectacle the great pleonasm, the Thing of Things. Thought in terms of totalising tendency, ‘it would be be a closed circuit from hell, a perfect hell in which the absence of communication and communication pushed to the point of paroxysm would meet and their identities would merge.’ What is real is known; what is known is what is real. The illusion of permanent novelty occludes the possibility of surprise. It is a world of incessant redundancy. Everything is always the same, only better. It makes the same special offer to everyone, all the time: ‘the faked orgasms of art and life’.
Doesn’t that sound exactly like social media? On the other hand, I remain confused about the nature of détournement and increasingly convinced that such concepts may not be amenable to translation. Surely a definition in French would make more sense than this sort of thing:
Détournement dissolves the rituals of knowledge into in an active remembering that calls collective being into existence. If all property is theft, then all intellectual property is détournement.
Wark does end on a well-chosen note, though: ‘There may be no dignified exits left to the twenty-first century, the century of the flying inflatable turd, but there might be at least some paths to adventure. The unexamined life is not worth living, but the unlived life doesn’t bear thinking about’. Although it took quite a lot of effort and I remain largely befuddled by the Situationists, I found enough insight and novelty here to make this book worth persisting with. [b:Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune|22716641|Communal Luxury The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune|Kristin Ross|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1406511042s/22716641.jpg|42243876] is much friendlier to the reader, however.… (more)
Written as a series of letters to various significant people in her life - an interesting form, but one that didn't provide much insight into how she came to feel she was a woman.
2020. Autofiction and theory mix in this memoir of gender and sexuality. I have never read so much about anal sex. The writing really carries you along though. I quite enjoyed it.
Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 25
- Also by
- 3
- Members
- 1,201
- Popularity
- #21,369
- Rating
- 3.6
- Reviews
- 13
- ISBNs
- 73
- Languages
- 8
In the foreword, McKenzie Wark says that the series editor approached them by the end of July 2021 to submit the book for the series by end of September '21, so the book was compiled in a frenzy, putting together pre-written and existing materials. New materials were written during the pandemic, so the book is all up-to-date about covid lockdowns that affected the scene.
Raving is a very honest and totally authentic book. Read it, even it is not your scene. The enthusiasm and authenticity should infect you, you will learn a lot, and Raving is a roller-coaster read.
Exhilirating !… (more)