In the 1960s and 1970s, all over the world, revolts broke out against the growing influence of merchandise and the state on all aspects of life. The situationists helped to forge the critical tools of this generalized uprising, alongside intellectuals and small groups influenced by Marxism and anarchism. But unlike the latter, they came not so much from the workers' movement as from the artistic avant-garde of the twentieth century: Dada, surrealism, and literalism. Artists broke the ban, half-rebels half-thugs, the situationists had met on the basis of a radical program: the denial of living conditions made to modern man, both in advanced capitalist societies than in so-called communist regimes, and the will to experiment with new forms of existence and community breaking with the established order. This book accurately analyzes the cultural roots of situationist theories and practices. It also explores their diverse and often contradictory posterity: between recovery and radicalization, on the side of postmodern intellectuals or contemporary art, among the strategists of the neocapitalist power as in the ranks of the rebels of today.