Situationism and Performative Communication: The Counter-Conduct of Committed Indifference

Abstract

Foucault’s notion of counter-conduct offers an interesting and challenging way to reimagine dissent. This essay briefly examines how certain kinds of dissent are uniquely challenging to systems and institutions because they are not easily subsumed by the system or its perceived (or traditional) contraries. An important example of this kind of dissent was, in the twentieth century, the Dada, Surrealist, and Situationist movements, which don’t simply point (or conduct) people to a standard and easily imagined alternative to the prevailing hegemony, but seek to radically disrupt the way people see the world through different kinds of conduct which are fundamentally contrary to the prevailing order.