Debord defines the spectacle as a social relation, not a mere collection of images

Evidence

No work, however, has more presciently captured the political economy of images, visibility, and representation under modern capitalism than Guy Debord’s (2002 ) hugely influential Society of the Spectacle. … In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all life presents as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation… . The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 300

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the core Debord thesis this chapter will build on: the spectacle as a social relation, not a collection of images.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s ongoing interest in how financialization and media reshape social imagination — the spectacle is the historical antecedent to today’s financialized image-economy. — connects to: Debord theorized spectacle as commodity fetishism’s absolute fulfillment — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 549
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 300