Having had mixed success giving students Continental theory, I wonder what the response to Debord will be. My students tend to resist any essay that self-consciously deploys a style. It's part of their American Puritan heritage to believe that gauds of any kind reveal a fundamental lack of serious purpose. To write with style is ipso facto to bullshit. Thus, I suspect that Debord's fondness for chiasmus will be received much as they received Certeau's attraction to the aphorism. It will make Debord suspect.
I've been, though, having a great time researching unitary urbanism, with its practices of derive and detournement.sf0.org ought to be a great link for this class. I think next year I'll encourage students to do psychogeopgraphic maps of the college modeled on Debord's map of Paris. John Krygier has some interesting examples here.
Ultimately, I hope to leave time to discuss whether Web 2.0 alters Debord's analysis of the Society of Spectacle. He makes so much of the one-directional nature of the spectacle that it seems as if the reversal of that direction ought to be significant. True, it's hard to believe uploading videos of your cat drinking from the toilet will help liberate you from being mesmerized by the spectacle, but I suppose it makes almost as much sense as thinking that jumping from a roof to a parking garage will.
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