First published in Internationale Situationniste #1, June 1958. Translated from the French. The following definitions were collectively authored by members of the Situationist International and represent the foundational vocabulary of their project — a lexicon designed not merely to describe but to operationalize a revolutionary practice of everyday life.
The Situationist International emerged in 1957 from the fusion of several European avant-garde groups: the Lettrist International, the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, and the London Psychogeographical Association. Founded at a conference in Cosio d’Arroscia, Italy, the SI positioned itself against both the commodification of art and the passivity of spectacle-driven consumer society. Its members — among them Guy Debord, Asger Jorn, Constant Nieuwenhuys, and Michèle Bernstein — sought to dissolve the boundary between art and life through the construction of situations: moments of life deliberately constructed for the purpose of reawakening and pursuing authentic desires.
The text reproduced below appeared in the inaugural issue of the group’s journal, Internationale Situationniste, and functions as a kind of operational glossary. Each definition is compressed, polemical, and precise — less a dictionary entry than a weapon. These terms would go on to shape not only the SI’s own practice but also the vocabulary of the May 1968 uprisings in Paris, punk culture, and contemporary political art. They remain essential reference points for anyone working at the intersection of aesthetics and direct action.
Definitions
Constructed situation. A moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and a game of events.
Situationist. Having to do with the theory or practical activity of constructing situations. One who engages in the construction of situations. A member of the Situationist International.
Situationism. A meaningless term improperly derived from the above. There is no such thing as situationism, which would mean a doctrine of interpretation of existing facts. The notion of situationism is obviously devised by antisituationists.
Psychogeography. The study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.
Psychogeographical. Relating to psychogeography. That which manifests the geographical environment’s direct emotional effects.
Psychogeographist. One who explores and reports on psychogeographical phenomena.
Dérive. A mode of experimental behavior linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances. The term also designates a specific uninterrupted period of dériving.
Unitary urbanism. The theory of the combined use of arts and techniques for the integral construction of a milieu in dynamic relation with experiments in behavior.
Détournement. Short for: détournement of preexisting aesthetic elements. The integration of present or past artistic productions into a superior construction of a milieu. In this sense there can be no situationist painting or music, but only a situationist use of those means. In a more elementary sense, détournement within the old cultural spheres is a method of propaganda, a method which reveals the wearing out and loss of importance of those spheres.
Culture. The reflection and prefiguration of the possibilities of organization of everyday life in a given historical moment; a complex of aesthetics, feelings and mores through which a collectivity reacts on the life that is objectively determined by its economy. (We are defining this term only in the perspective of the creation of values, not in that of the teaching of them.)
Decomposition. The process in which the traditional cultural forms have destroyed themselves as a result of the emergence of superior means of dominating nature which enable and require superior cultural constructions. We can distinguish between an active phase of the decomposition and effective demolition of the old superstructure — which came to an end around 1930 — and a phase of repetition which has prevailed since then. The delay in the transition from decomposition to new constructions is linked to the delay in the revolutionary liquidation of capitalism.
Editorial Note on Significance
The precision of these definitions belies their radical ambition. In fewer than five hundred words, the Situationist International established a conceptual framework that would outlast the organization itself. The SI dissolved in 1972, but its vocabulary — détournement, dérive, spectacle, constructed situation — has become foundational to fields as diverse as urban studies, media theory, tactical media, and contemporary art activism.
What makes these definitions particularly notable is their insistence on practice over theory. Each term points toward an action, not merely an idea. A constructed situation is not contemplated but built. A dérive is not imagined but undertaken. Psychogeography is not a philosophy but a study grounded in embodied experience. This orientation toward praxis — toward the concrete transformation of everyday life — remains the SI’s most enduring contribution to political art. The truth, as they insisted, is concrete.
