"The same people who are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work are also arguing, singing, drinking, dancing, making love, holding the streets, picking up weapons and inventing a new poetry"
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Raoul Vaneigem, a leading voice of the Situationist International and author of The Revolution of Everyday Life (1967), captures a living contradiction. Industrial capitalism and bureaucratic routine drain vitality, turning workplaces into mechanized slaughterhouses where time, desire, and imagination are bled away. Yet the very people subjected to this slow death keep generating bursts of life: they argue and sing, drink and dance, make love, seize streets, take up arms when necessary, and create new forms of expression.
The image of being murdered slowly names more than economic exploitation. It is the erosion of subjectivity, the theft of hours, the dulling of senses in a world ruled by efficiency and spectacle. Against that, Vaneigem arrays acts that restore presence and agency. Singing and dancing are not trivial distractions; they are exercises in collective rhythm and joy. Making love signals an ethics of pleasure and reciprocity. Holding the streets makes private experience public, reclaiming space from traffic and commerce. Picking up weapons acknowledges that power often defends itself violently and that rebellion may become physical. Inventing a new poetry points to poiesis, creation itself: new language, gestures, and social relations that refuse the commodity logic.
The insistence on the same people matters. Those labeled victims are already authors of their own liberation. There is no need for a distant vanguard; everyday life contains energies of refusal and invention. Pleasure here is not escape but rehearsal, practice for a society organized around desire rather than scarcity and command. The contrast is not work versus leisure but imposed roles versus self-directed creation.
Written on the eve of the upheavals of 1968, the line fuses tenderness and militancy. It refuses the old revolutionary asceticism, insisting that joy and struggle belong together. Life does not wait for a future utopia; it erupts in the present, and in that eruption a new poetry of living begins to write itself.
The image of being murdered slowly names more than economic exploitation. It is the erosion of subjectivity, the theft of hours, the dulling of senses in a world ruled by efficiency and spectacle. Against that, Vaneigem arrays acts that restore presence and agency. Singing and dancing are not trivial distractions; they are exercises in collective rhythm and joy. Making love signals an ethics of pleasure and reciprocity. Holding the streets makes private experience public, reclaiming space from traffic and commerce. Picking up weapons acknowledges that power often defends itself violently and that rebellion may become physical. Inventing a new poetry points to poiesis, creation itself: new language, gestures, and social relations that refuse the commodity logic.
The insistence on the same people matters. Those labeled victims are already authors of their own liberation. There is no need for a distant vanguard; everyday life contains energies of refusal and invention. Pleasure here is not escape but rehearsal, practice for a society organized around desire rather than scarcity and command. The contrast is not work versus leisure but imposed roles versus self-directed creation.
Written on the eve of the upheavals of 1968, the line fuses tenderness and militancy. It refuses the old revolutionary asceticism, insisting that joy and struggle belong together. Life does not wait for a future utopia; it erupts in the present, and in that eruption a new poetry of living begins to write itself.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work |
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