Pseudocyclical time is a time that has been transformed by industry. The time based on commodity production is itself a consumable commodity, one that recombines everything that the disintegration of the old unitary societies had differentiated into private life, economic life, political life. The entire consumable time of modern society ends up

The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.

The spectacle is rooted in the economy of abundance, and the products of that economy ultimately tend to dominate the spectacular market and override the ideological or police-state protectionist barriers set up by local spectacles with pretensions of independence.

For it is one thing to recognize that something is inevitable, and quite another to put oneself in the service of that inevitability”

“Static societies” are societies that have reduced their historical movement to a minimum, that have managed to maintain their internal conflicts and their conflicts with the natural and human environment in a constant equilibrium. Although the extraordinary diversity of the institutions established for this purpose bears eloquent testimony to the

The real consumer has become a consumer of illusions. The commodity is this materialized illusion and the spectacle is its general expression.

The alienation of the spectator, which reinforces the contemplated objects that result from his own unconscious activity, works like this: the more he contemplates, the less he lives; the more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting

But the spectacle is not merely a matter of images, nor even of

images plus sounds. It is whatever escapes people’s activity, whatever eludes their practical reconsideration and correction. It is the opposite of dialogue. Wherever representation becomes independent, the spectacle regenerates itself.