détourn

present singular third person détourns · participle present détourning · participle past détourned · past détourned

1. To subject to detournement; to reuse (elements of mainstream media) to produce a subversive message.

   […] to détourn clothing, with all its strong emotional connotations.

   2009, David Evans, Appropriation, page 39

   3 more examples

   […] to détourn one popular style of the day — novels full of adventurous youth engaging in promiscuous sex — this second novel should détourn another : the style known as nouveau roman (“new novel”).

   2019, James Trier, Guy Debord, the Situationist International, and the Revolutionary Spirit, page 199

   […] to détourn and subvert mainstream game structures and culture, whereby détournement comes to be understood as "an overturning of the established order; an unforeseen activity within the institution, utilizing its tools[…]"

   2023, Astrid Ensslin, Literary Gaming, page 127

   Viénet wanted critique to détourn new forms, including comics, chick lit, cinema, pirate radio, porn. […] the low theorist should know not only how to détourn some Hegel but also some code, […] As Lefebvre shows, many of the tactics that worked, if only for a time, were themselves détournements of romantic game plans. Here are some techniques for discovering the way into the total semantic field that they détourned, alone or in combination: alcohol (Debord), opium (Trocchi), psychosis (Chtcheglov), mania (Spur), synaesthesia (de Jong), fatigue (the dérive), obsession (Constant), love (Bernstein), revolution (May '68), solitude (late Debord).

   2024, McKenzie Wark, Leaving The Twentieth Century: Situationist Revolutions, page 159