Recuperation

Recuperation - Debord

As early as 1958, in the situationist manifesto, Debord described official culture as a "rigged game", where conservative powers forbid subversive ideas to have direct access to the public discourse. Such ideas get first trivialized and sterilized, and then they are safely incorporated back within mainstream society, where they can be exploited to add new flavors to old dominant ideas.^[14] This technique of the spectacle is sometimes called recuperation.^[15]

To survive, the spectacle must maintain social control and effectively handle all threats to the social order. Recuperation, a concept first proposed by Guy Debord,^[15] is the process by which the spectacle intercepts socially and politically radical ideas and images, commodifiesthem, and safely incorporates them back within mainstream society.^[15]More broadly, it may refer to the appropriation or co-opting of any subversive works or ideas by mainstream media. It is the opposite of détournement, in which conventional ideas and images are reorganized and recontextualized with radical intentions.^[15]

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Is Activism on social media a form of recuperation?

- The no-waste etc, a big part of the ethos of online social media is individual action rather than holding the TNCs to account.  

- The aestheticisation of activism is perhaps a way of making it more palatable. 

- Making things more aesthetic, more shareable in the eyes of social media platforms is maybe a sanitisation of the radical nature?

- When activist sentiments are sold back to us a 'sustainable products' > we don't need sustainable products we need less consumption

- Maybe the radical element of activism makes it exclusionary, maybe the toning down makes it more accessible but does activism need to be accessible or does it need to be effective. What is the priority. 

- Social media activism runs on the assumption that awareness is perhaps the most important facet to create change but maybe instead smaller groups of organised people/actions are needed.