In Debord's terms, situationists defined the spectacle as an assemblage of social relations transmitted via the imagery of class power, and as a period of capitalist development wherein "all that was once lived has moved into representation".

[11][12] In 1972, Debord disbanded the Situationist International after its original members, including Asger Jorn and Raoul Vaneigem, quit or were expelled.

[14][15] After dissolving the Situationist International, Debord spent his time reading, and occasionally writing, in relative isolation in a cottage at Champot with Alice Becker-Ho, his second wife.

[22] In addition to these works he wrote a number of autobiographical books including Mémoires, Panégyrique, Cette Mauvaise Réputation..., and Considérations sur l'assassinat de Gérard Lebovici.

He criticized both the capitalism of the West and the dictatorial communism of the Eastern Bloc for the lack of autonomy allowed to individuals by both types of governmental structure.

Debord postulated that Alienation had gained a new relevance through the invasive forces of the 'spectacle' – "a social relation between people that is mediated by images" consisting of mass media, advertisement, and popular culture.

Debord's analysis developed the notions of "reification" and "commodity fetishism" pioneered by Karl Marx and Georg Lukács.

[25] Debord's analysis of "the spectaclist society" probed the historical, economic, and psychological roots of the media and popular culture.

Overall, Debord challenged the conventions of filmmaking, prompting his audience to interact with the medium instead of being passive receivers of information.

As a matter of fact, his film Hurlements exclusively consists of a series of black and white screens and silence with a bit of commentary dispersed throughout.

[27] Debord directed his first film, Hurlements en faveur de Sade, in 1952 with the voices of Michèle Bernstein and Gil Wolman.

Later, through the financial support of Michèle Bernstein and Asger Jorn, Debord produced a second film, Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps, which combined scenes with his friends and scenes from mass media culture.

Complete Cinematic Works (AK Press, 2003, translated and edited by Ken Knabb) includes the scripts for all six of Debord's films, along with related documents and extensive annotations.

On 29 January 2009, fifteen years after his death, Christine Albanel, Minister of Culture, classified the archive of his works as a "national treasure" in response to a sale request by Yale University.

[28][29] The Ministry declared that "he has been one of the most important contemporary thinkers, with a capital place in history of ideas from the second half of the twentieth century.

[citation needed] He continues to be a canonical and controversial figure particularly among European scholars of radical politics and modern art.

[citation needed] In a critical appraisal written after Debord's death, Régis Debray characterized his work as derivative of Ludwig Feuerbach (asking, for example, "Had nothing, then, taken place in history and philosophy between 1841 and 1967?")