In this paper, I explore Guy Debord’s analysis of race and racializing processes by closely examining the use of footage of the Watts rebellion in Debord’s film The Society of the Spectacle (1973), along with a close reading of Debord’s 1965 text on the uprising, “The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy.” Debord’s Marxist perspective on Watts understands the insurgents as potential revolutionary actors, primed for a “second proletarian assault against class society” (SotS, Thesis 47). To complicate Debord’s position, I look at the similarities and differences between his stance and the emergent theoretical paradigm of Afropessimism, which understands anti-black violence not as contingent upon capitalist alienation but instead as gratuitous violence required to uphold the figure of Humanity within civil society.
Articles by Heath Schultz
Heath Schultz is a research-based artist and writer. His work addresses questions of institutional critique, activism, contemporary politics, and the political efficacy of art. His writing has been published in the Journal of Artistic Research, Parallax, and the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, in addition to various DIY publications. His work has been shown at the New Zealand Film Archive, Auckland, New Zealand; Visual Arts Center, Austin; Experimental Response Cinema, Austin; and Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND, to name a few. He is an assistant professor of art at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. You can view his work at heathschultz.com.