Ultimately, any
sign or word is susceptible to being converted into something else,
even into its opposite.
Gil J Wolman
“Détournement” is not an enemy of art. The enemies of art are those who
have not wanted to take into account the positive lessons of the “degeneration
of art.”
Guy Debord
Détournement is the flexible language of anti-ideology.
Guy Debord, La société du spectacle §208
It is therefore necessary to conceive of a parodic-serious stage where the accumulation of detourned elements, far from aiming to arouse indignation or laughter by alluding to some original work, will express our indifference toward a meaningless and forgotten original, and concern itself with rendering a certain sublimity…
Les lèvres nues #8
Détournement not only leads to the discovery of new aspects of talent; in
addition, clashing head-on with all social and legal conventions, it cannot fail
to be a powerful cultural weapon in the service of a real class struggle. The
cheapness of its products is the heavy artillery that breaks through all the
Chinese walls of understanding. It is a real means of proletarian artistic education, the first step toward a literary communism.
Les lèvres nues #8
Détournement allows one to correct the past: one takes a
relatively well-known phrase and adapts it to one’s own criteria.
Raoul Vaneigem, Self-Portraits and Caricatures of the Situationist International
Détournement, which the situationists have defined as “communication that includes a critique of itself.”