This study takes as its subject the body of theory and criticism developed by Guy Debord during his years as the founder and only permanent member of the Situationist International (1957-1972), an artistic and political avant-garde based in Paris. Though scholarship about Debord and the SI has steadily grown in size and quality since the late 1980s, much of it until recently has been governed by a reductive opposition between the group's putative early "artistic" phase and later "revolutionary" orientation, that does little justice to both the historical development of the group and to the complexity of Debord's cultural criticism. This study will therefore focus on the trope of the "end of art" as resuscitated in Debord's work as a means of engaging with the dialectical relationship staged between the Western Marxist tradition and that of the European historical avant-gardes, especially Dadaism. / Cette étude porte sur l'ensemble des théories et des critiques développées par Guy Debord comme fondateur et unique membre permanent de l'Internationale Situationniste (1957-1972), un groupe d'avant-garde artistique et politique basé à Paris. Bien que les recherches sur Debord et l'IS ont augmenté régulièrement en quantité et qualité depuis la fin des années 1980, la majorité de ces études ont été gouvernées par une opposition réductrice et putative entre la phase "artistique" originelle du groupe et son orientation "révolutionnaire" subséquente, qui ne fait justice ni au développement historique du groupe, ni à la complexité de la critique culturelle de Debord. Ce mémoire se concentre sur la problématique de la "fin de l'art" ressuscitée par l'œuvre de Debord afin d'engager une relation dialectique entre la tradition marxiste occidentale et celle des avant-gardes européennes, surtout le dadaïsme.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.32372 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Stark, Trevor |
| Contributors | Christine Ross (Internal/Supervisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | French |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of Art History and Communications Studies) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | Electronically-submitted theses. |
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