Review of Ken Wark's 'The Beach Beneath The Street' & 'The Spectacle of Disintegration'

Wark’s two books work sequentially, although they also loop around the same figures and concepts. They could be treated as histories of the Situationist milieu and its aftermaths, but to do so would miss entirely what makes them such compelling and, at times, hilarious reading. Wark does not set out to write a conventional scholarly account of the Situationists. As he reminds us at numerous moments, his work has no claim to originality. He does emphasise some of the more neglected figures associated with the movement, but what really drives The Beach Beneath the Street and The Spectacle of Disintegration is their impatience with contemporary cultural and intellectual institutions that, for all of their posturing, are largely complicit with the prevailing political order. Wark is himself a Professor of Culture and Media at the New School in New York City, and while I am guessing that the New School isn’t as obviously neo-liberal as many other universities in the U.S., the sense of him writing angrily about institutional conditions he knows all too well is partly what gives his work its verve and energy.

Low Theory

+

Totality For Kids