In this work the author suggests what is still vital in the Situationist legacy as well as how modern provocateurs have picked up the thread of those who dared to negate their contemporary world as a whole and imagine it anew.

Over fifty years after the Situationist International appeared, its legacy continues to inspire activists, artists and theorists around the world. Such a legend has accrued to this movement that the story of the SI now demands to be told in a contemporary voice capable of putting it into the context of twenty-first-century struggles. McKenzie Wark delves into the Situationists’ unacknowledged diversity, revealing a world as rich in practice as it is in theory. Tracing the group’s development from the bohemian Paris of the ’50s to the explosive days of May ’68, Wark’s take on the Situationists is biographically and historically rich, presenting the group as an ensemble creation, rather than the brainchild and dominion of its most famous member, Guy Debord. Roaming through Europe and the lives of those who made up the movement – including Constant, Asger Jorn, Michèle Bernstein, Alex Trocchi and Jacqueline De Jong – Wark uncovers an international movement riven with conflicting passions. Accessible to those who have only just discovered the Situationists and filled with new insights, The Beach Beneath the Street rereads the group’s history in the light of our contemporary experience of communications, architecture, and everyday life. The Situationists tried to escape the world of twentieth-century spectacle and failed in the attempt. Wark argues that they may still help us to escape the twenty-first century, while we still can.

Following his acclaimed history of the Situationist International up until the late sixties, The Beach Beneath the Street, McKenzie Wark returns with a companion volume which puts the late work of the Situationists in a broader and deeper context, charting their contemporary relevance and their deep critique of modernity. Wark builds on their work to map the historical stages of the society of the spectacle, from the diffuse to the integrated to what he calls the disintegrating spectacle. The Spectacle of Disintegration takes the reader through the critique of political aesthetics of former Situationist T.J. Clark, the Fourierist utopia of Raoul Vaneigem, René Vienet’s earthy situationist cinema, Gianfranco Sangunetti’s pranking of the Italian ruling class, Alice-Becker Ho’s account of the anonymous language of the Romany, Guy Debord’s late films and his surprising work as a game designer. At once an extraordinary counter history of radical praxis and a call to arms in the age of financial crisis and the resurgence of the streets, The Spectacle of Disintegration recalls the hidden journeys taken in the attempt to leave the twentieth century, and plots an exit from the twenty first. The dustjacket unfolds to reveal a fold-out poster of the collaborative graphic essay combining text selected by McKenzie Wark with composition and drawings by Kevin C. Pyle.

Ever get the feeling that life's a game with changing rules and no clear sides? Welcome to gamespace, the world in which we live. Where others argue obsessively over violence in games, Wark contends that digital computer games are our society's emergent cultural form, a utopian version of the world as it is. Gamer Theory uncovers the significance of games in the gap between the near-perfection of actual games and the imperfect gamespace of everyday life in the rat race of free-market society.

A double is haunting the world--the double of abstraction, the virtual reality of information, programming or poetry, math or music, curves or colorings upon which the fortunes of states and armies, companies and communities now depend. The bold aim of this book is to make manifest the origins, purpose, and interests of the emerging class responsible for making this new world--for producing the new concepts, new perceptions, and new sensations out of the stuff of raw data. "A Hacker Manifesto" deftly defines the fraught territory between the ever more strident demands by drug and media companies for protection of their patents and copyrights and the pervasive popular culture of file sharing and pirating. This vexed ground, the realm of so-called "intellectual property," gives rise to a whole new kind of class conflict, one that pits the creators of information--the hacker class of researchers and authors, artists and biologists, chemists and musicians, philosophers and programmers--against a possessing class who would monopolize what the hacker produces. Drawing in equal measure on Guy Debord and Gilles Deleuze, "A Hacker Manifesto" offers a systematic restatement of Marxist thought for the age of cyberspace and globalization. In the widespread revolt against commodified information, McKenzie Wark sees a utopian promise, beyond the property form, and a new progressive class, the hacker class, who voice a shared interest in a new information commons.

Up-to-date collection on the Situationist International, rethinking their relevance for today

It's not capitalism, it's not neoliberalism - what if it's something worse? In this radical and visionary new book, McKenzie Wark argues that information has empowered a new kind of ruling class. Through the ownership and control of information, this emergent class dominates not only labour but capital as traditionally understood as well. And it’s not just tech companies like Amazon and Google. Even Walmart and Nike can now dominate the entire production chain through the ownership of not much more than brands, patents, copyrights, and logistical systems. While techno-utopian apologists still celebrate these innovations as an improvement on capitalism, for workers—and the planet—it’s worse. The new ruling class uses the powers of information to route around any obstacle labor and social movements put up. So how do we find a way out? Capital Is Dead offers not only the theoretical tools to analyze this new world, but ways to change it. Drawing on the writings of a surprising range of classic and contemporary theorists, Wark offers an illuminating overview of the contemporary condition and the emerging class forces that control—and contest—it.

“A refreshing collection of essays that offers a range of critical and radical voices which are generally marginalized in the critical social studies ‘mainstream’ ... This collection is a good read with valuable insights that can impact teaching practice.”— Canadian Social Studies - Canada’s National Social Studies Journal - Volume 45 Issue 1

In this companion, a diverse, international and interdisciplinary group of contributors and editors examine the rapidly expanding, far-reaching field of mobile media as it intersects with art across a range of spaces—theoretical, practical and conceptual. As a vehicle for—and of—the everyday, mobile media is recalibrating the relationship between art and digital networked media, and reshaping how creative practices such as writing, photography, video art and filmmaking are being conceptualized and practised. In exploring these innovations, The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media Art pulls together comprehensive, culturally nuanced and interdisciplinary approaches; considerations of broader media ecologies and histories and political, social and cultural dynamics; and critical and considered perspectives on the intersections between mobile media and art. This book is the definitive publication for researchers, artists and students interested in comprehending all the various aspects of mobile media art, covering digital media and culture, internet studies, games studies, anthropology, sociology, geography, media and communication, cultural studies and design.

**Winner of a 2022 American Educational Studies Association Critics′ Choice Book Award** This extensive Handbook brings together different aspects of critical pedagogy in order to open up a clear international conversation on the subject, as well as pushing the boundaries of current understanding by extending the notion of a pedagogy to multiple pedagogies and perspectives. Bringing together contributing authors from around the globe, chapters provide a unique approach and insight to the discipline by crossing a range of disciplines and articulating common philosophical and social themes. Chapters are organised across three volumes and twelve core thematic sections: Part 1: Social Theories of Critical Pedagogy Part 2: Seminal Figures in Critical Pedagogy Part 3: Transnational Perspectives and Critical Pedagogy Part 4: Indigenous Perspectives and Critical Pedagogy Part 5: On Education Part 6: In Classrooms Part 7: Critical Community Praxis Part 8: Reading Critical Pedagogy, Reading Paulo Freire Part 9: Communication, Media and Popular Culture Part 10: Arts and Aesthetics Part 11: Critical Youth Pedagogies Part 12: Technoscience, Ecology and Wellness The SAGE Handbook of Critical Pedagogies is an essential benchmark publication for advanced students, researchers and practitioners across a wide range of disciplines including education, health, sociology, anthropology and development studies