Recovering public memory: politics, aesthetics and contempt

Recovering public memory: politics, aesthetics and contempt

It's the weekend – leisure time. It's the interlude when, Guy Debord contends, the proletarian is briefly free of the 'total contempt so clearly built into every aspect of the
organization and management of production' in commodity capitalism; when workers are temporarily 'treated like grown-ups, with a great show of solicitude and politeness,
in their new role as consumers.' But this patronising show turns out to be another form of subjection to the diktats of 'political economy': 'the totality of human existence falls under the regime of the 'perfected denial of man'.' (30). As Debord suggests, even the creation of leisure time and space is predicated upon a form of contempt: the 'perfected denial' of who we, as living people, really are in the eyes of those who presume the power to legislate our
working practices and private identities.