English

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Etymology

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situation +‎ -ism

Noun

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situationism (countable and uncountable, plural situationisms)

  1. (psychology) A school of thought which holds that personality is more influenced by external factors than by internal traits or motivations.
  2. (politics) A mid-20th-century offshoot of Marxism, influenced by avant-garde art movements.
    Coordinate term: Lettrism
    • 1989, Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces, Faber & Faber, published 2009:
      The situationists meant to define a stance, not an ideology, because they saw all ideologies as alienations, transformations of subjectivity into objectivity, desire into a power that rendered the individual powerless: “There is no such thing as situationism,” they said for years.

Usage notes

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Members of the political movement avoided the term situationism and referred to it by the name of the founding organization, Situationist International (SI).

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Translations

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Further reading

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