Society of the Spectacle – Short Summary

The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point that it becomes images (Ch 1-p.17).

The world at once present and absent that the spectacle holds up to view is the world of the commodity dominating all living experience (Ch 2-p.19).

But the object that was prestigious in the spectacle becomes mundane as soon as it is taken home by its consumer and by all its other consumers (Ch 3-p.34).

The bourgeoisie came to power because it was the class of the developing economy (Ch 4-p.45).

The succession of generations within a natural, purely cyclical time begins to be replaced by a linear succession of powers and events (Ch 5-p.76).

With the development of capitalism, irreversible time has become globally unified (Ch p.85).

The time based on commodity production is itself a consumable commodity (Ch 6-p.88).

The capitalist need that is satisfied by urbanism’s conspicuous petrification of life can be described in Hegelian terms as a total predominance of a “peaceful coexistence within space” over “the restless becoming that takes place in the progression of time.”(Ch 7-p.95).

The end of the history of culture manifests itself in two opposing forms: the project of culture’s self transcendence within total history, and its preservation as a dead object for spectacular contemplation (Ch. 8-p.102).

This (reducing power to dealienating democracy) is possible only when individuals are “directly linked to universal history” and dialogue arms itself to impose its own conditions. (Ch 9-p.119)