[Air-L] Open access book: The Spectacle 2.0: Reading Debord in the Context of Digital Capitalism

[Christian Fuchs]

New open access book
The Spectacle 2.0: Reading Debord in the Context of Digital Capitalism, 
edited by Marco Briziarelli and Emiliana Armano,
University of Westminster Press
"Critical Digital & Social Media Studies" book series (ed. C. Fuchs), 
Volume 5

Spectacle 2.0 recasts Debord's theory of spectacle within the frame of 
21st century digital capitalism. It offers a reassessment of Debord’s 
original notion of Spectacle from the late 1960s, of its posterior 
revisitation in the 1990s, and it presents a reinterpretation of the 
concept within the scenario of contemporary informational capitalism and 
more specifically of digital and media labour. It is argued that the 
Spectacle 2.0 form operates as the interactive network that links 
through one singular (but contradictory) language and various 
imaginaries, uniting diverse productive contexts such as logistics, 
finance, new media and urbanism. Spectacle 2.0 thus colonizes most 
spheres of social life by processes of commodification, exploitation and 
reification. Diverse contributors consider the topic within the book’s 
two main sections: Part I conceptualizes and historicizes the Spectacle 
in the context of informational capitalism; contributions in Part II 
offer empirical cases that historicise the Spectacle in relation to the 
present (and recent past) showing how a Spectacle 2.0 approach can 
illuminate and deconstruct specific aspects of contemporary social 
reality. All contributions included in this book rework the category of 
the Spectacle to present a stimulating compendium of theoretical 
critical literature in the fields of media and labour studies. In the 
era of the gig-economy, highly mediated content and President Trump, 
Debord’s concept is arguably more relevant than ever.

https://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/site/books/10.16997/book11/

https://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/site/books/series/critical-digital-and-social-media-studies/