One of the most exciting book manuscripts I have copy-edited recently is Dominique Routhier’s forthcoming With and Against: The Situationist International in the Age of Automation (Verso 2023). With finesse and precision, Routhier provides a history of the formation of the Situationist International (SI) that is framed “as a struggle to come to terms with the then-emerging ideologies of cybernetics and automation.” With and Against provides close readings of exhibitions, pamphlets, artworks, and other documents through which the SI confronted the “cybernetic hypothesis”: “the theoretically hyperbolic belief that technological progress, computers and automation make class struggle and the idea of revolution obsolete.” Not only illuminating in its fresh insights on one of the most significant avant-garde groups of the twentieth century, Routhier’s book will be an important contribution to any efforts to reckon with the relations between capital, technology, and domination into the twenty-first. For more information about this timely and engaging title, please see the Verso Books page for it here.
SOUTHWEST HUMANITIES 