Zones of Control by Harrigan Pat; Kirschenbaum Matthew G.; Dunnigan James F. & Matthew G. Kirschenbaum

Author:Harrigan, Pat; Kirschenbaum, Matthew G.; Dunnigan, James F. & Matthew G. Kirschenbaum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2016-04-19T16:06:53+00:00

About the Author

Alexander R. Galloway is a writer and computer programmer working on issues in philosophy, technology, and theories of mediation. Associate professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, he is the author of several books on digital media and critical theory, mostly recently The Interface Effect (Polity, 2012). In 2008, he released Kriegspiel, a computer-based re-creation of Guy Debord’s 1978 The Game of War.

Notes

1 Negri was a victim of Italy’s draconian Reale law of 1975 and antiterrorist laws of 1979 and 1980, which among other things suspended habeas corpus, allowing for preventative detention of suspects for a period of three years and three months without trial.

2 I thank Richard Barbrook for bringing this letter to my attention.

3 Of course, play was at the heart of Debord’s work since the beginning. “The situationist project was ludic above all else,” writes one of his biographers. “Debord’s life revolved around games, seduction and warfare, provocation and dissimulation, labyrinths of various kinds, and even catacombs where the knights of the lettrist round table played a game of ‘whoever loses (himself) wins’” (Kaufmann 2006, 265). Debord’s interest in games coincided with his self-imposed exile to a small town in the center of France after the events of 1968. “I have long tried to lead a life of obscurity and evasion so that I may better develop my experiments in strategy,” he confessed in 1978. “My research results will not be delivered in cinematic form” (Debord 1999, 50). One may assume that “not in cinematic form” is a reference to the new ludic form of the Kriegspiel; a footnote reminds us that this was Debord’s last film.There is also an interesting overlap between the Situationist International and the work of Johan Huizinga, author of Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Constant Niewenhuys in particular was inspired by Huizinga, as evidenced in a late interview with Benjamin Buchloh in which the former Situationist architect aims to reconcile Huizinga and Marx: “It is not so difficult, I should think, to make a link between Huizinga and Marx.... Huizinga, in his Homo Ludens, was speaking about a state of mind, not about a new kind of humanity; of human being, but in a certain sense a state of mind, of certain temporary conditions of human beings. For instance, when you are at a carnival, a feast, a wedding party. Temporarily you become the homo ludens, but then the next day you can be the homo faber again” (Constant 2001, 24–25). The final phrase refers to the forward of Huizinga’s book in which he evokes, first, the classical notion of homo sapiens, followed by the modern, industrial (and one may assume, although Huizinga resists using the name, Marxian) notion of homo faber or “man the maker” (Huizinga 1950). Yet, Huizinga’s politics were more ancien régime than progressive revolutionary, a detail often overlooked in the frequent connections made between Huizinga and Situationism.

4 In fact, Debord had tinkered with the Kriegspiel in some form or another since the 1950s.

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