'Workers must become dialecticians': Alienation, class and praxis in Guy Debord's La Société du Spectacle (1967)

In light of the archives – les fonds Debord – recently made available to scholars by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, this thesis re-examines the intellectual lineage of Guy Debord’s seminal work, La Société du Spectacle [SduS] (1967). It presents an analysis of the ways in which Debord interpreted and employed the fundamental concepts of Western Marxism. While Debord has been viewed as a peripheral figure in the history of Western Marxism in France, SduS demonstrates the profundity of his engagement with that tradition, and his attempt to overcome its contradictions in order to produce a unitary, totalising critique of contemporary society.