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What is a Situationist?
Internationale Situationniste #12 (September 1969)
Translated by Reuben Keehan
IN VIEW OF THE STRIKING — though hardly very surprising — arousal of interest in the SI, we should at this point specify the meaning of the term 'situationist' when it is used to describe an individual, taking into account our constant development over the last two years.
In the first and most precise sense of the term, a situationist is a member of the SI, taking part in all the deliberations and decisions of this organization and thus personally assuming a general co-responsibility.
Furthermore, individuals can no doubt be called and even call themselves 'situationist' if they agree with our principal theoretical positions; or because their personal goals are close to our style of expression and of life; or simply because, through participating in the subversive struggle, they have found themselves crudely and superficially qualified as such by different observers.
The precise sense and the broader sense should be correctly employed with the express condition of not confusing the two. Those who would like people to believe that they are members of the SI should only be treated with suspicion. As for everybody else who does not lead a practical undertaking in some part of the world organized with the SI, what can make the best revolutionaries 'situationists' is looking after themselves (and therefore looking after the mounting proletarian movement); this is what meets with our approval, as perspective and as method. It is not a matter of evoking us as a reference, but, on the contrary, of forgetting us a little.
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