Guy Debord’s Politics of Communication: Liberating Language from Power 9781666931648, 9781666931655, 1666931640

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Guy Debord’s Politics of Communication

Guy Debord’s Politics of Communication Liberating Language from Power

Edward John Matthews

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2024 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-66693-164-8 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-66693-165-5 (electronic) ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To my wife, Tracey, who lets me sit on the couch with a cup of coffee and occasionally think out loud, and to my supportive family.

Contents

Prefaceix Acknowledgmentsxxi Introduction 1 1 Debord’s Poetic Prehistory (1949–1952)

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2 Debord and the Letterist International (1952–1957)

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3 Debord and the Situationist International (1957–1972)

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4 Debord’s Post-SI Period (1972–1979)

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5 Debord’s Final Years/Final Thoughts (1979–1994)

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Conclusions 213 Bibliography225 Index 233 About the Author

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This project, which seeks to identify and analyze Guy Debord’s politics of communication via published articles, essays, and personal correspondences, is a follow-up to my previous book, Arts and Politics of the Situationist International 1957-1972: Situating the Situationists (Lexington Books, 2021). In it, I contextualize Debord and the Situationist International (henceforth, also known as the SI) within a comprehensive artistic and theoretical framework that integrates the SI’s concepts, strategies, and practical activities with previous nineteenth- and twentieth-century critical thinkers, political activists, writers, artists, and poets. The framework traces the origins of the SI back to the poetic language games of French Symbolist poet, the anti-bourgeois and anti-capitalist tendencies of Dada and Surrealism, respectively, the revolutionary praxis of twentieth-century Hegelian-Marxism, and a form of critical Marxist sociology loosely associated with Henri Lefebvre and Lucien Goldmann. The SI characterized itself as engaged in a radical and total critique of the influence of late capitalism upon the modern world.1 During its tenure the SI had a difficult and often contradictory relationship with each of the aforementioned disciplines. In fact, mapping out a comprehensive archeology of the various influences that shaped the SI’s artistic and literary production should never be taken as an uncritical endorsement of these disciplines. Whether he was associated with the Letterist International (1952–1957, henceforth, also known as the LI) or with the SI (1957–1972), Debord had an ambivalent relationship with twentieth-century Western European avantgarde art movements as well as with nineteenth- and twentieth-century revolutionary political theories. One of the main tasks in this project will be to carefully untangle the relationship Debord actually did have with these various disciplines—even by way of criticism.

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Because this new project concentrates on Debord’s attempts to deal with the difficulties of overcoming alienation and communicating authentically within late capitalist society, it will be helpful if we regard these difficulties from a pragmatic or semantic point of view. Pragmatics is the study of language as it relates to the social and historical context of meaningful utterances, while semantics is a branch of linguistics that deals primarily with the creation of meaning. For our purposes, these two interrelated fields of study contain useful tools that will help us to conceptualize Debord’s politics of communication with more clarity and precision. These two complementary approaches also stand in stark contrast to structuralism and semiology, two aihistorical methodologies that Debord viewed with suspicion. He considered structuralists as little more than apologists for the spectacle as a dominating force in late capitalist society, and structuralism as itself utterly devoid of subjectivity, agency, intentionality, and historical context.2 Semiology for Debord belonged to a “specialized science of domination,”3 whose ideological end-goal was the complete commodification of the social world. We also need to call attention to the artistic and literary forms of Debord’s critical-dialectical statements as well as how the latter statements are received in a social and political context. In his various communications, Debord always sought to harness the critical power of the negative against the kind of simplistic and reductive advertising language that was increasingly seeping into everyday parlance. The negative is the energy of thought itself that is found in the difference between the pure I and its object (the social world).4 But the problem is that under the spectacle of late capitalism, the I is neither pure nor absolute; it is never in a position to enjoy a universal and concrete view of the social whole that is allegedly independent of legal or political authority. Adrift in the verbiage of transactional relationships, the pure I is reduced to a passive receptacle of the thoughts and suggestions of others. Language is subsumed under the imperative of commodity-fetishism. In his own communications, Debord sought to push back and refuse the reifying “language of manufacturing,”5 because he viewed it as a reductive expressive form that hampered individuals from developing their own independent thoughts. For Debord, trying to untangle the communicative from the political is a near-impossible task. Both are deeply interrelated. For Debord, the communicative is political. The complicated and hidden relationship between the communicative and the political is emblematic of a reductive (and equally hidden) relationship between speaking subjects and the dehumanized world of late capitalist society in which they live. As Alastair Hemmens points out in his essay on the SI, the potential for radical subjectivity (or a radically pure I) is central to the manner in which Debord seeks to fight against the suppression of human agency in our contemporary capitalist society.6 Individuals

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need to actively engage in social and political conflicts; otherwise, individuals become spectators in their own historical development. At the very least, social critics such as Debord need to show the world why it struggles in the first place. Consciousness-raising, brought about through self-awareness and self-understanding, not only allows individuals to become aware of flawed perceptions about the world, thanks in part to the hypnotizing power of the spectacle, but it also lifts the veil away from what Marx once called our “mystical consciousness.”7 In terms of establishing a revolutionary relationship between language and political action, Debord argues that a radical philosophy of language helps to articulate and engender theories of political action. For Debord, there is a conceptual link between the radical speaking subject and the resulting type of agency that engages in such actions. If successful, a radical philosophy of language theorizes a newer and more authentic communicative relationship between a speaking subject and their ability to create a new social space in search of meaning. To be clear, though, Debord never considered himself a philosopher,8 even though he believed that nineteenthcentury revolutionary theory had grown directly out of Marx’s own critical philosophy.9 Expressed as “concepts” regarding a politics of communication, Debord’s philosophy of language comes into being as an instrument of critical thought designed to address the failures of mid-to-late nineteenthcentury avant-garde poetry, early twentieth-century Dada10 and Surrealism, and twentieth-century Marxist orthodoxy. Through humor, irony, and radical juxtaposition, here expressed as forms of reflected consciousness, Debord’s politics of communication seeks to destroy the persistent illusion that scientific and technical advancements represent the highest achievements of human progress. Debord argues that it is through language that individuals participate in a self-created social-political world that they share with each other. Language is crucial to the social construction of reality, or what Cornelius Castoriadis calls the “imaginary institution” of society. Human relationships are expressed by necessity in and through language whenever social individuals live together and communicate with one another. However, if that is so, then we need to ask the following question that pertains to Debord’s theory of language: Does language construct social individuals and their corresponding social reality, or do individuals themselves create, as he instead argues, the very language that they require to define a more authentic social reality? The answer to this question defines Debord’s revolutionary project, Debord’s project is the struggle on the one hand between the insistence of spectacular capitalism to fix the meaning of language in order to construct passive consumers, and the desire of radical subjects on the other hand to create a fluid language that best reflects the infinite possibilities of everyday life.

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Granted, differences do occur whenever individuals act in a manner that goes against what Hannah Arendt identifies as an “already existing web of human relationships, with its innumerable, conflicting wills and intentions.”11 This same web of human relationships acts for Debord as a backdrop against which unique stories of individual utterances and actions take place. To be clear, it is the deliberate and intentional actions of agents who move against a web of reified human relationships that results in unique stories and linguistic expressions. Given their status as individual creations, individual utterances sometime manage to escape the reifying tendencies within consumer society. A central issue in Arendt’s view of human relationships is the possibility that the subject of an artistic product may not be the same as the subject who produces it. Like the alienated laborer, the artist/speaker can also find themselves alienated from the communicative products that they produce. Against this web of prefabricated, anonymous statements, continuously disseminated through advertising and pop culture, autonomous linguistic utterances struggle for validation. In theory, social media, for example, reflects an ideology of horizontalism, in which users have essentially changed the composition of the public sphere by being able to communicate with one another at the same hierarchal level.12 As we will see in chapter 1, Debord not only championed in his theoretical writings an ideology of horizontalism but also sought to reinsert the power of the negative (i.e., refusal) back into the communicative abilities of radical subjects. Unfortunately, the momentary heterogeneity that existed between users on social media was quickly overtaken by economic imperatives. Now, the most explicit example of homogeneity in social media is the TikTok version of karaoke, in which users silently sing and dance along to someone’s else words and music. The end result is not a celebration of radical subjectivity but rather an empty embrace of spectacular culture. Like Nietzsche, Debord believes that living fully and thinking critically are the only effective ways of expressing one’s will or intention: “It is belief that every event is a deed,” wrote Nietzsche, “[and] that every deed proposes a doer, it is belief in the ‘subject’.”13 Moreover, like Nietzsche, Debord understands that pure thought is itself the result of a radical activity that requires a conscious agent.14 The narrative unity of one’s own life cannot have meaning without agency or subjectivity. Hence, one of the main goals of Debord’s politics of communication is the re-introduction of radical subjectivity into the creation of meaning. Through radical subjectivity, literary or linguistic utterances intentionally disrupt, critique, and undermine the influence of late capitalism upon everyday language, especially the manner in which it is filtered increasingly through economic imperatives (e.g., commodification, reification, and so on). In speaking the language of refusal, Debord never forgot that the French pronoun “je” contains the echo of the noun “jeu,” which is why his artistic statements always express some degree of subversive glee.

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Debord’s notion of radical subjectivity consists of a two-pronged attack of desire and rejection. He desires a modern life filled with passion and adventure, but he also rejects the bland and narrow role late capitalist society had assigned him.15 Debord’s mission statement was to communicate to others the possibility of an utterly new form of human life that could profoundly undermine the spectacular economic structures of late capitalist society. To achieve this goal, Debord needed to abolish the boundary between art and life in order to change art into life and life into art. As art historian François Coadou points out in his introduction to a collection of Debord’s personal correspondences with Belgian Surrealist Marcel Mariën, Debord’s extensive re-thinking of the social world, into which traditional concepts of art and life find their primary justification and function, required nothing less than a total political revolution.16 This is why Debord was not only interested in the untapped revolutionary potential of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century avant-garde art and literature, but, more importantly, how such forms of cultural production could be re-applied—and brought to completion—in the advancement of political revolution around the world. Coadou argues that Debord deliberately added the term “International” to his two revolutionary groups in order to consciously align himself with Marx’s own International Workingmen’s Association (IWA, 1864–1876), as well as to call attention to the potentially international scope of his project.17 Like Marx before him, Debord was not aiming at a profound re-evaluation of the link between past and future, but rather a fulfillment of the pre-existing ideas of the past.18 In his overview of Debord’s selective readings of Marx, Lukács and Karl August Wittfogel, Anselm Jappe explains that, while Debord never considered himself an academic scholar in the traditional sense of the term, he had “a more ‘poetic’ (even ‘genial’) attitude, often quoting, from memory, those passages that most stood out to him.”19 Like Marx before him, Debord found that poetry and philosophy were closely intertwined.20 His historical source materials were never exclusively artistic, philosophical, or social-political. They were instead a thoughtful, interdisciplinary amalgamation of theory and practice that sought to resolve the central political dilemma of the early 1960s: re-inventing the global revolutionary imagination with regard to revolutionary movements in underdeveloped countries.21 Debord understood that the revolutionary spirit, once associated with late eighteenth-century French political history, had substantially dissipated following World War II, thanks in part to the “Glorious Thirty Years,”22 a period of remarkable postwar economic activity that ended in the mid-1970s. Any possibility of revolutionary thought in postwar France had to overcome social coercion, technological constraints, and economic complacency. As a result of modernization, automation, and financial incentives, the astonishing success of France’s postwar economic growth neutered the revolutionary

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power of the proletariat. Without a theoretical formula to explain and justify revolutionary praxis, Debord knew that rebellion in postwar France would be little more than an illusion used to counter the most miserable compromises with the status quo.23 For Debord, the more subjects are totalized within latecapitalist social institutions, the more they can only vicariously “flirt” with revolutionary activities. The social institutions of late capitalism not only continue to generate what yesterday seemed unbearable but also manage to create individuals who are capable of withstanding today greater and greater contradictions in their lives.24 In the end, individuals are incapable of formulating and communicating their dissatisfaction to others, which for Debord comes down to the same thing: the deterioration of morals and the loss of the pragmatic meaning of words capable of defining such a decline.25 The solution for Debord was twofold: first, create and foster a truly international revolutionary movement capable of radical subjectivity and, second, destabilize the relationship between a sign and its signification, in particular, the manner in which a sign refracts an ideological value.26 The radical revolutionary subject now uses language creatively, poetically, in order to express their own relationship to social reality. Using public platforms created firstly by the LI and then by the SI, Debord set out to conscientiously create an international revolutionary movement by not only making the groups’ theoretical and practical writings freely available to interested readers around the world, thus establishing an early example of “copyleft” publishing, but also allowing for supervised translations of the SI’s work into English, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and Arabic. Unfortunately, problems regarding poor or misguided translations of theoretical texts plagued both Debord (e.g., an inferior Italian version of The Society of the Spectacle first published by De Donato in fall 1968) as well as other members of the SI. Foreign translations had to be checked for accuracy, since inaccuracies would distort the theoretical meaning of the text.27 As an interdisciplinary and revolutionary thinker, Debord found himself in the 1960s on the cusp of postmodernism, while at the same time struggling to free himself from the theoretical prison-house of structuralism. As we mentioned earlier, Debord argued that the remedy to a complete absence in structuralism of human agency was the introduction of a radicalized notion of subjectivity. As expressed through language and cultural activity, radical subjectivity would transcend the idealized or pure I associated with traditional nineteenth-century Idealist philosophy, as well as the fragmented, decentered subject associated with the bourgeois psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan. Debord’s radical speaking subject would be primarily concerned with selfhood, absolute individual freedom, and creativity. As Hemmens explains,

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[Debord and the] Situationists saw these philosophical perspectives [i.e., structuralism, semiotics, existentialism] as forms of capitalist ideology to the extent that they tended to reduce subjective agency and objectify certain aspects of contemporary social conditions to the point of denying that revolution was possible, and perhaps even worse, because they tended to claim that ideology and the state were necessary forms of social mediation.28

Early on, Debord was particularly interested in encountering social reality by means of artistic strategies such as dérive (“purposeful drifting”), détournement (“detouring” or the art of citation without quotation marks), and psychogeography (i.e., the awareness of specific conscious or unconscious affects of the geographical environment on the emotions and behavior of individuals).29 While dérive and psychogeography are designed to reconfigure different subjective relationships to social reality,30 this project, given that it is primarily concerned with language and communication, will focus instead on the artistic and cultural possibilities of détournement as originally defined by Comte de Lautréamont in Poésies I (1870). Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It closely grasps an author’s sentence, uses his [sic] expressions, deletes a false idea, replaces with the right one.31

What makes détournement a critical and revolutionary tool, especially as it relates to Debord’s politics of communication, is the way it crashes headlong into all kinds of social and legal conventions, including issues of plagiarism and the re-appropriation of original sources. The artistic medium for détournement is endless: every kind of signifying practice can be détourned. In fact, Debord appears less concerned with creating uniquely original artistic statements than he is with re-appropriating ready-made objects or ideas disseminated by “spectacular” culture and combining them in ways that might bring forth an abject rejection of the contemporary social world. In this sense, he is a bricoleur who re-constructs and re-arranges ready-made materials in order to bring to fruition what has not yet been seen or heard before. Debord and the Situationists consistently argued that the aim of revolutionary action in the cultural sphere was always to undermine and destroy constricted, reified notions of everyday life under late capitalism. Rather than passively consume cultural products that perpetuate the uncritical illusion that technological advancements benefit all of society and not just the status quo, individuals well-versed in détournement instead actively break through this veneer and exploit the disjunction between the production of consumer art and the original notion of artistic activity as a superior cultural action. As Debord explains, détournement transcends the notion of correcting a signifying practice or

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simply integrating diverse fragments into a collage: “one can also alter the meanings of those fragments in any appropriate way, leaving the imbeciles to their slavish reference to ‘citations.’”32 In his brief introduction to a collection of translations of Debord’s cinematic works, Ken Knabb explains why the use of détournement makes Debord’s films at once innovative and provocative.33 Debord’s critique of late capitalism is predicated on a very particular use of citation without quotation marks. Debord does not simply juxtapose disparate elements for humorous or shocking effect; instead, he creates out of these disparate elements an entirely new coherent entity that succeeds in criticizing both the existing capitalist world and its own contradictory relationship to that social world.34 Today, examples of this type of artistic production include culture jamming or “hijacking” (which also corresponds to the French term “détournement”), art activism and, in relation to computer systems, ‘hacktivism.’ So, what can readers gain from viewing Debord’s revolutionary politics of communication from a critical and interdisciplinary perspective? First, it allows for a better understanding of how he advanced from briefly embracing a neo-Dadaist Letterist position in the early 1950s to developing an anarchic revolutionary political position throughout the 1960s. Moreover, Debord’s increasingly radical politics resulted from constant interactions, or “dialogues,” with other likeminded individuals both locally and around the world. These included leftist French intellectuals known as Socialisme ou Barbarie, the German artistic group Spur, an assembly of Japanese revolutionary students known as Zengakuren, a group of Mexican students associated with the Spanish-language journal, Reforma Universitaria, along with artists, writers and theorists in Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, and the United States. Following the conclusion of the SI, Debord continued to correspond with likeminded French and Italian writers and theorist including Georgio Agamben, Michel Bounan, Annie Le Brun, Jean-François Martos, Jean-Jacques Pauvert, Paolo Salvadori, Gianfranco Sanguinetti, and Jaime Semprun. Second, it emphasizes to us the need to engage with theorists and philosophers from different disciplines who can contextualize Debord’s critical/ dialectical attacks on the bureaucratic language of late capitalist society. Speaking as a member of the SI, Debord agreed that critical truths contain a dangerous, explosive purity: “[the SI’s] impact lies in the elaboration of certain truths which have an explosive power as soon as people are ready to struggle for them.”35 The violent imagery is not accidental. As we will see, the desire for critical truth requires the application of an explicitly Nietzschean form of aesthetic violence against implicitly violent tendencies that infect the reified, bureaucratic language of surveillance capitalism, or what Jacques Derrida calls “the violence of forgetting.”36 The desire for critical truth for Debord is nothing less than a violent provocation aimed at

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terrorizing a literary and cultural community that continues to validate an intentionally false reflection of late capitalist society. NOTES 1. Pascal Dumontier, Les Situationnistes et Mai 68 théorie et pratique de la revolution (1966-1972), (Paris: Ivrea, 1995), 39–41. 2. Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, translated and annotated by Ken Knabb (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2014), sec. 196, 201, 202. 3. Ibid., sec. 42. 4. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A. V. Miller with Analysis of the Text and Foreword by J. N. Findley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 19, 21. 5. Debord, letter to Morgan Sportès (January 13, 1989) in Correspondance, volume 7, janvier 1988 – novembre 1994, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 2008), 67. 6. Alastair Hemmens, “Radical Subjectivity: Considered in its Psychological, Economic, Political, Sexual and, Notably, Philosophical Aspects” in The Situationist International: A Critical Handbook, edited by Alastair Hemmens and Gabriel Zacarias (London: Pluto Press, 2020), 252. 7. Karl Marx, The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an Introduction by Saul K. Padover (Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1979), 32. 8. Debord, letter to Jean-François Martos (December 11, 1984) in Correspondance volume 6 janvier 1979-décembre 1987, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 2006), 296. 9. On the crucial difference between Marx’s own critical/dialectical philosophy and Marxism as an unyielding orthodoxy, see Michel Henry, Marx I une philosophie de la réalité (Paris: Gallimard, 1976) and Marx II une philosophie de l’économie (Paris: Gallimard, 1976). English translation Marx A Philosophy of Human Reality, translated by Kathleen McLaughlin (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983). See also Reiner Schürmann, Reading Marx on Transcendental Materialism, edited by Malte Fabian Rauch and Nicholas Schneider (Zurich: Diaphanes, 2021). 10. Despite his relentless critique of twentieth-century avant-garde art movements, Debord still felt that Dada was more important as an art movement in itself than its specifically “French” postwar interpretation and reception. Situationists often spoke of Dadaist activities in positive terms and in terms of a “permanent praise.” See Debord, letter to Marc Dachy (7 September 1988) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 37. 11. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, second edition, Introduction by Margaret Canovan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 184. 12. Sebastian Sevignani, “Digital Transformations, and the Ideological Formation of the Public Sphere: Hegemonic, Populist, or Popular Communication?” in Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 39(4), 2022, 91–109.

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13. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, a new translation by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, edited by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), sec. 550. 14. Nietzsche, Between Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, translated with commentary by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), sec. 17. 15. François Coadou in Debord, Lettres à Marcel Mariën, edited with an Introduction by François Coadou (Paris: Le Nerthe, 2015), 2. 16. Ibid., 6. 17. Ibid., 7. 18. Marx (1979), 32. 19. Anselm Jappe, “Debord’s Reading of Marx, Lukács and Wittfogel: A Look at the Archives” in The Situationist International: A Critical Handbook, edited by Alastair Hemmens and Gabriel Zacarias (London: Pluto Press, 2020), 19. In his essay, Jappe also mentions how Debord organized his reading notes using record cards (or, what used to be known as “recipe cards”); those cards were then placed inside folders bearing titles such as “Marxism” or “Philosophy, Sociology.” Presently, Debord’s working notes are being compiled under the title of “La Librairie de Guy Debord” and published by Éditions L’Échappée. So far, Debord’s personal reading notes have been published under the following titles: Stratégie (2018), Poésie, etc. (2019), and Marx Hegel (2021). 20. Marx (1979), 5. 21. Debord, letter to Béchir Tlili (September 8, 1963) in Correspondance volume 2: september 1960 – décembre 1964, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 2001), 256. 22. The trente glorieuse refers to thirty years of Keynesian government policies coupled with Fordist business practices of mass production and mass consumption. 23. Debord, letter to Daniel Joubert ( May 13, 1964) in Correspondance volume 2 (2001), 291. 24. Jaime Semprun, Encyclopédie des Nuisances Discours Préliminaire (November 1984) (Paris: Éditions de L’Encyclopédie des Nuisances, 2009), 12. See also Byung-Chul Han, Psycho-Politics Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power (London: Verso, 2017), 14–15. 25. Semprun (2009), 12. 26. V. N. Vološinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, translated by Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 10. 27. Debord, letter to Edmund Buchet (December 4,1968) in Correspondance volume 3: janvier 1965 – décembre 1968, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 2010), 298. 28. Hemmens in Hemmens and Zacarias (2020), 255. 29. Debord, “Report on the Construction of Situations” in Situationist International Anthology, revised and expanded edition edited and translated by Ken Knabb, (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2006), 39. 30. We will examine the relationship of dérive and psychogeography to Debord’s politics of communication in greater detail in chapter 2.

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31. Comte de Lautréamont, Poésies I in Maldoror & the Complete Works of the Comte de Lautréamont, edited and translated by Alexis Lykiard (Cambridge: Exact Change, 2011), 240. 32. Debord and Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement” in Knabb (2006), 15. 33. Knabb in Debord, “Introduction” in Guy Debord Complete Cinematic Works: Scripts, Stills, Documents, translated and edited by Ken Knabb (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2003), vii. 34. Ibid. 35. SI Collective, “The Fifth SI Conference in Göteborg” in Knabb (2006), 115. 36. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 37.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the staff and students in the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at Western University for their continued support in this ongoing project on Guy Debord and the Situationist International (SI). I was initially given an opportunity to present a thirteen-week graduate course on Debord and the SI at the Centre in winter 2021. The valuable queries, questions, comments, and concerns offered by students brought about an opportunity for me to revisit Debord’s work in greater detail and begin this new project. Thanks to Christopher Paul, I was able to present preliminary findings in the form of a conference paper at the Centre in March 2022. Further questions and comments allowed me to refine and clarify my initial findings. I wish to thank the staff at Lexington Books, in particular, Judith ­Lakamper, assistant editor Mark Lopez, along with Rachel Kirkland and Jayanthi C ­ hander for their indispensible assistance in guiding this project to its completion. Special thanks to Nathalie Beul Vandenburghe at Gallimard and Veronique Heron at Fayard for their diligence in securing foreign rights to publish the numerous citations that appear in this book. I also wish to thank Ken Knabb for permission to cite from the Situationist International Anthology, The Society of the Spectacle, and from Debord’s cinematic works. I especially wish to thank Alice Debord (Becker-Ho) for permission to cite from Guy Debord’s invaluable personal letters, without which this project could not have been completed and published in its final form.

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In Guy Debord: Revolution in the Service of Poetry (2001), sociologist Vincent Kaufmann argues that Guy Debord’s comprehensive critique of alienation in late-capitalist society includes what he calls “a politics of communication.”1 Debord’s critique of boredom and alienation became increasingly vital during the second phase of the radicalization of the Situationist International (SI). The second phase began, more or less, with the end of the Algerian War in March 1962 and ended with the General Strike of May 1968. It was Debord’s desire to maintain an autonomous association of potentially revolutionary subjects who would use ordinary language to communicate social and political issues with each other, rather than at or to each other. In the context of radicalized and autonomous subjectivities, individuals communicate in the “native” language of real life, or what Marx calls the language of reality.2 Compared to the national language spoken by an urban population, or the academic language of scholarly matters, revolutionaries speak the popular language of the day, or what Alice Becker-Ho calls the common language.3 This distinction is crucial. In a traditional linguistic context, a “native” language (i.e., having an indigenous origin or growth) is usually contrasted with a “borrowed” language (i.e., terms used by the speaker of one language that originate from a different language). For our purposes, the notion of a “borrowed” term holds a critical difference: Borrowed terms do not come from a foreign language but emanate directly from the reified language of manufacturing and advertising. Speaking subjects live under pervasive forms of technological, legal, and bureaucratic authority as well as differing types of political power. Under such conditions, the endgame of a politics of communication is the conscious articulation of a different praxis of freedom and the opening up of new modes of social-cultural existence. This new mode of social-cultural existence is for 1

2

Introduction

Debord the re-discovery of what Saint-Just once identified in 1791–1792 as a social state of authentic human relationships.4 This new mode of existence also provides a “Northwest Passage” toward an unnamed, potential future that is not always-already-there. As Kaufmann points out, and we will explore this point in greater detail, Debord’s politics of communication exists within a larger “poetics of revolution.”5 Debord himself did not change from being a writer-poet-filmmaker to becoming a revolutionary; instead, he allowed his disposition as a writer-poet-filmmaker to become revolutionary. Compared to Saint-Just’s description of a social state, the modern political state is an aggregate of relationships between social individuals, in particular, uneven relationships of power and authority that some individuals wield over others. It is in this heterogeneous context that Debord’s politics of communication directly addresses disenfranchised, marginalized, or even subaltern groups who have neither a voice in public policy planning nor substantial agency in their daily lives. The hope for Debord is that new forms of organization and communication will inexorably lead to new forms of historical subjectivity. To be clear, the term politics has a wide range of secondary meanings that include cunning, artifice, inventiveness, contrivance, machination, or subterfuge. These secondary meanings point us toward Machiavelli’s famous novel The Prince (1532), whose titular character seeks to justify the use of immoral means to authoritarian ends by disguising them as modern political theory. Machiavelli’s ability to tear away the veil that hides unethical political machinations makes him an important radical philosopher for Debord. However, rather than rely on artifice and contrivance to communicate, Debord instead views Machiavelli as an expert in exposing the hidden truths of political conflicts. Neither Machiavelli nor Debord seek to pay lip service to an idealized program of pure revolution.6 Machiavelli’s political thinking is revolutionary only to the extent that he regards social and political conflicts as opportunities ripe for exploitation by forceful personalities. Interestingly, although Machiavelli’s understanding of political machination was an important source of inspiration for Debord during the 1960s, he rarely referred to him by name in his published writings.7 On the contrary, he appeared to think about him strategically in terms of a given situation that can be undermined or exploited for political gain. For example, in July 1966 Debord pointed out that the most effective way for interested individuals to reveal the hidden truths of the SI was not to reread Machiavelli or Karl Kautsky, but simply to apply the group’s own theoretical principles to questions of practical activity.8 In other words, learn by asking, then doing, not the other way around. The conditional “truth” of Debord’s practical activities has never been obscured behind a host of abstract theoretical formulas; instead, it forms part of a total critique of modern life grounded in primary questions of communication, or what Debord calls a “theory of dialogue.”9 It is worth noting that in the

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3

last twenty years of his life, Machiavelli became an increasingly important figure in Debord’s strategic thinking. According to his widow Alice BeckerHo, Debord shifted the focus of his theoretical attention during the post-SI period from the original triumvirate of Hegel-Marx-Lautréamont to that of Thucydides-Machiavelli-Clausewitz.10 In theory, the desire for Debord to authentically “dialogue” with other likeminded individuals is evident throughout many of his written correspondences with personal and professional acquaintances. In the summer of 1957, for instance, when the SI first amalgamated with members of CoBrA (1948–1951) and Debord’s own Letterist International (LI) (1952–1957), Debord was still hoping to enter into a substantive dialogue with the Belgian artist Robert Wyckaert and the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (1954–1957), a group that had temporarily arisen out of the breakup of CoBrA.11 However, interest in continuing an “arts” wing within the SI seem to dissipate by 1962 when the group decided to reconstitute itself along more explicitly political lines. In “The Ideology of Dialogue,” published a few years later in Situationist International #10 (March 1966), Debord and the SI were already calling attention to the disparity between the authentic and honest exchange of ideas and what the group called “fake dialogue.”12 Debord had little patience for apologists of the present socio-cultural order, especially those who unknowingly behaved as “the leading representatives of the culture and politics of submission.”13 Such individuals included structuralists, semioticians, full-time academics, and anyone else who was still integrated within the capitalist system. Debord did not think much of their fields of study either. Structuralism in particular was for him “thought underwritten by the state.”14 It was “the daughter of present power.”15 Rather than engage with traitorous defenders of the status quo, Debord felt that the way out of pseudo-dialogue and pseudo-collaborations was to work with individuals who understood the advantages of autarky and radical selfmanagement. What Debord and the SI meant by radical self-management was the equitable and free organization of “joint projects”16 initiated by selfdisciplined individuals. Debord was not looking in the 1960s or 1970s for individuals who were themselves searching for a new revolutionary messiah, especially since he never presented himself to others as some kind of revolutionary guru or Pope.17 Instead, he was hoping to join responsibly with other likeminded individuals to follow through with theoretical formulas based on revolutionary forms of communication and to act upon communal social aims. It was not in Debord’s “job description” to define the wants and needs of others, but rather to help them articulate their own authentic and innate human desires. At the heart of this theoretical position is the notion that individuals need to learn to correctly identify and distinguish authentic human desires from those generated in and through the spectacular-commodity

4

Introduction

matrix of an unliveable world. “Capitalist consumption imposes a general reduction of desires by its regular satisfaction of artificial needs,” wrote Debord (and Pierre Canjeurs) in 1960, “which remain needs without ever having been desires—authentic desires being constrained to remain unfulfilled (or compensated in the form of spectacles).”18 During his time with the SI, Debord regularly broke ties with apologists and egoists seeking to use their ephemeral association with the revolutionary group for alternative ends. He steadfastly refused to let himself get sidetracked with theoretical ideas or practical activities that ran contrary to his own stated convictions and goals.19 The struggle between “authentic” and “fake” dialogue represented for Debord the struggle between articulating a Machiavellian “truth” that informs a given social or cultural condition and the explicit resistance against its eventual disappearance into the reifying tendencies of capitalist culture. The need for completely free and non-judgemental speech20 continued to inform both his own as well as the SI’s revolutionary praxis until its dissolution in 1972. As early as 1961, Debord maintained the possibility of entering into equitable and open relationships with other revolutionary groups because he understood that the SI could not exist for very long outside the burgeoning context of other international revolutionary political movements. What mattered most to Debord regarding dialogue was the continuing self-realization of the SI, as well as attempts to overcome its own sense of self-isolation from other groups.21 This is why keeping the door open to potential dialogue was important to Debord and to the group, both in France and within the larger context of international revolutionary factions. In the early 1960s, the SI was neither an established “power” within capitalist society nor seeking to become one. In the context of international revolutionary movements, and we shall return to this point shortly when we discuss the figure of the contemporary thinker, Debord knew that no one could remain a purely intellectual entity who is “critical” of society and yet remain isolated from it. Debord sought to merge the SI with other revolutionary groups with the hope that a truly international federation could be predicated on the basis of open self-criticism without illusions22 and that agreements could be achieved under such conditions. The SI struggled throughout its tenure to not only achieve a degree of practical coherence between theory and praxis but also to realize this goal while maintaining an international federation of individual chapters across Western Europe, England, and the United States. However, by 1960, the notion of national autonomy enjoyed by each faction was eventually abandoned in favor of a “Conseil Central”23 (Central Council) based in Paris. (The autonomous model would not be reinstated until late 1968.) In 1962, the French faction, “directed” by Debord himself, oversaw the implementation of a unitary critique of modern life that needed to be disseminated through a new mode

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of organization. What that organization might look like became an unresolvable issue for the group. While still remaining steadfastly antihierarchical and antibureaucratic in structure, the main focus at that time was on trying to come up with a way to communicate to others a radically new form of revolutionary critique. Debord understood that articulating and implementing this new mode of revolutionary critique as propaganda would require new modes of revolutionary communication. The two were intertwined. Reflecting upon the difficulties the SI faced in properly addressing the question of revolutionary forms of communication, Debord later admitted in 1972 that transforming an ongoing theoretical struggle against the dominant ideology into a ­practical revolt was ultimately a matter of putting literally any SI theory to some kind of practical use. Our task first and foremost is to create an overall critical theory and (therefore inseparably) to communicate it to every sector already objectively involved in a negation which remains subjectively piecemeal. Further definition, experimentation, and long-term work around this question of communication constitutes our most important, real activity as an organised group. The shortcomings on this score serve to sum up all our shortcomings (as a group). Everything else is mere chatter.24

Given that our interest is centered on exploring Debord’s politics of communication, we need to clarify how the epithet “politics” is used by Kaufmann to qualify a peculiar approach to communication and how this methodology fits within Debord’s penetrating critique of late capitalism. We should begin by identifying what this attribute is not by distinguishing a politics of communication from the unrelated (though similar sounding) field of “political” communication. Unlike Debord’s own politics of communication, which encompasses the precarious existence of a complex of linguistic relationships maintained between social individuals living under pervasive political authority and within inequal distributions of economic wealth, political communication, properly so-called, refers exclusively to the dissemination of political ideas and opinions propagated by public policy officials, various socio-political institutions, as well as adjunct institutions such as corporate media. Rather than concentrate on the legitimacy of written, spoken, or visual communications in a public sphere (e.g., on the legitimacy and accountability of truth claims), political communication focuses on gains or losses as they relate to political goals. Unlike Debord’s politics of communication, which stresses that it is only in and through native language that speaking subjects constituted their own social reality, political communication, on the other hand, represents the dissemination of political discourse only as it relates to the ability to influence political ideas, individual actions, or public opinion.

6

Introduction

It regards the diffusion of such discourses uniquely in terms of means-ends relationships between political ideas and their implementation. Nothing else enters into its purview. Political communication ignores the fact that language is an “instrument” of communication that enables social individuals to position themselves as speaking subjects within the social state. Political communication is concerned only with the political content of such communications. The existence of “political” communication begs the following question: If Émile Benveniste is correct in stating that language alone is the basis of reality,25 and that language is the primary instrument of communication, then is not “political” communication tantamount to false communication? For one thing, its goal is not to establish a dialogue between two or more autonomous subjects but simply to facilitate a top-down, means-ends monologue between sender, receiver, and message. In addition, political communication subsumes social reality under political imperatives that unethically favors the sender of the message rather than its receiver. The monological nature of “political” communication appears to be the target of Debord’s comment in the Society of the Spectacle (1967): “If the administration of this society and all contact between people has become totally dependent on these means of instantaneous communication, it is because this ‘communication’ is essentially unilateral.”26 Debord returns later in the same text to a similar theme in section 192. The spectacular consumption that preserves past culture in congealed form, including co-opted rehashes of its negative manifestations, gives overt expression in its cultural sector to what it implicitly is in its totality: the communication of the incommunicable. The most extreme destruction of language can be officially welcomed as a positive development because it amounts to yet one more way of flaunting one's acceptance of a status quo where all communication has been smugly declared absent.27

Despite the fact that the SI maintained an autonomous federation for only a brief period of time before opting for a central councilist model in 1962, Debord was nonetheless insistent that hierarchical, monological relationships established by the authoritarian institutions of neoliberal capitalism needed to be forcibly replaced by authentically dialogical,28 horizontal relationships between autonomous social groups. What may not have worked out on a practical level between the SI and other autonomous revolutionary groups still needed to be attempted on a theoretical level in society. As a result, social individuals authentically and autonomously communicating with one another in a dialogical manner and using “native” language to create their own unique meanings became part of Debord’s attempts to radically transform everyday social life.

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To be clear, Debord’s view of language as a socially constructed system of signs is part of a trajectory in literary theory that reaches back to mid-twentieth-century Russia. In Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (1929), V. N. Vološinov argues that in the unity of social life, “each field of ideological creativity has its own kind of orientation toward reality and each refracts reality in its own way.”29 What Vološinov is describing here is the social-semantic dimension of language, or what he calls the “multiaccentuality”30 of the ideological sign. Unlike Saussure’s claim that language is merely a socially consensual (i.e., unquestioned) system of normative forms, multiaccentuality instead refers to the openness of signs to more than one interpretation. For Debord, the meaning of a sign can—and must—be ideologically contested. Vološinov’s view of the “open” sign lies at the heart of Debord’s politics of communication. Moreover, and this is the point that matters most to our understanding of Debord’s view of language, the social-political context in which a sign appears changes its evaluative accent. “Contexts do not stand side by side in a row, as if unaware of one another,” writes Vološinov, “but are in a state of constant tension, or incessant interaction and conflict.”31 It matters who gets to assign meaning to a particular sign. Presently, social contexts are not horizontal but vertical: they exist in a value-laden, hierarchical, top-down relationship. Each stratum may have its own ideological realm but, according to Debord, the dominant one is the diffused ideology of spectacular capitalism. Compared to the concentrated spectacle of the dictatorial personality, the diffused spectacle is the realm of false choices and false desires, or what Debord calls “the Americanisation of the world.”32 Debord’s description is particularly rich because it refers not only to the one-way exportation of American pop culture to global markets, thus undermining indigenous cultural production, but, more importantly, to the American dream of a place without boundaries and where everything seems to be possible. Within the linguistic uniformity of the diffused spectacle, a continual tension exists between the ideology of social-linguistic groups: for example, those of political discourse, the language of academics, the language of manufacturing, the national language of the urban population, native or “indigenous” language, and subaltern jargon. In The Dialogic Imagination (first published in 1975), a collection of essays written between 1937 and 1941, Mikhail Bakhtin’s pragmatic notion of dialogism is presented as a mode of thinking about the world that is dominated by a set of social, cultural, and political conditions that places every verbal utterance within a specific context. For Bakhtin, and later for Debord, there is a constant interaction between content and context—between what is said and under what conditions—that informs the full meaning of an utterance. In other words, the meaning of an utterance forms a part-whole relationship between the word and its social-historical context. For Bakhtin, “Every

8

Introduction

utterance participates in the ‘unitary language’ (in its centripetal forces and tendencies) and at the same time partakes of social and historical heteroglossia (the centrifugal, stratifying forces).”33 In this context, the subjective creation of meaning involves a struggle between the centripetal forces of the “language of manufacturing” and the centrifugal forces (i.e., the critical power of the negative) that undermine, destabilize, and contradict “official” discourse. A continual struggle ensues in language between the alreadyclosed meaning of a sign and its utterance is a given social-historical context. Debord’s politics of communication features autonomous speaking subjects who revolt against the relentless uniformity of authorial discourse by using “native” language to create their own semantic meanings. But there is also the need for a revolutionary struggle to replace the stratified hierarchical structure of spectacular society with authentically horizontal formations between social groups. In her writings on revolutionary activity in twentyfirst-century Argentina, Marina A Sitrin’s ideology of horizontalism presents a similar notion of autonomous “power” relations that exist in horizontal assemblies. In her 2012 book Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and Autonomy in Argentina, Sitrin describes autonomy as a way of distinguishing oneself and one’s movement from the state and other hierarchical groups and institutions; as a form of politics of self-organization, direct participation and a rejection of power as a thing; and as a “do it yourself” approach to politics and social organization.34 Sitrin recalls a conversion she had in 2004 with Emilio, a radical environmental activist whose notion of autonomy included self-sufficiency, web-like articulations, non-commercial exchange of goods, horizontal organizing, and direct democracy.35 What is particularly important for our purposes is Sitrin’s view of a “politics described in language [and] based on their social relationships rather than an overarching theory.”36 Sitrin’s observation is predicated on Debord’s earlier premise that language, meaning, and social context are inseparable, which, as we have seen, can itself be traced back to the literary work of Vološinov and Bakthin. More recently, Sebastian Sevignani’s exploration of the ideological formation of the twenty-first-century public sphere of digital communication echoes Debord’s critical understanding of the conflicts between hierarchical socialpolitical realms. In the digital sphere, top-down communication tends to be hegemonic and populist (i.e., “us vs. them”), while bottom-up messaging potentially leans toward digital activism such as “sousveillance” and politically motivated “hacktivism” (i.e., positive social change for all). Sevignani states that top-down populist communications usually involve a degree of pathos (i.e., emotional directness) that impacts listeners. The status quo, however, remains unchanged. To be clear, the emotional directness of a populist communiqué is not the same thing as the legitimacy that results from direct, multi-directional, and horizontal communication platforms such as a mobile

Introduction

9

phone or laptop.37 The rise of digital media platforms, argues Sevignani, “is first and foremost an economic-horizontal, not an ideological-vertical reintermediation.”38 What digital users today need to keep in mind is Debord’s original fear that the spectacle’s primary concern is always the eradication of historical knowledge in general,39 and how easily the recent past can be quickly buried and forgotten under a constant barrage of inane information. Writing in the inaugural issue of Situationist International #1 in June 1958, Debord compared the pervasive instrumental uses of political language by late capitalist interests (i.e., the proliferation of misinformation, disinformation, advertising, etc.) to the native use of language as a simple instrument of communication. Debord’s view is that native language is generated naturally between speaking subjects and free from means-ends relationship that are typical of instrumental rationality. Anything else is inauthentic communication. “If we have to arrive at authentic direct communication (in our working hypothesis of higher culture means: the construction of situations),” writes Debord, “we must bring about the destruction of all forms of pseudocommunication.”40 The destruction of pseudocommunication is necessary in order for speaking subjects to situate themselves in and through native language that more accurately reflects the values of their own social-economic realm and their precarious relationship to the dominant ideology. For Debord, the existence of native language is predicated on an immanent, living connection between speaking subjects and their social context. Within the limits of pseudocommunication, dialogue between speaking subjects is reduced in and through the authoritarian imperatives of economic and political institutions into a unilateral monologue (i.e., advertising, public policy statements, etc.) designed to privilege passivity and conformity. Rather than “speaking with” integrated authoritative institutions (i.e., the bureaucratic apparatus), social individuals are “spoken to” in a vertical and monological relationship that is emblematic of everyday life under the algorithmic bubbles of surveillance capitalism. The end-result of this type of institutionalized, monological mediation upon language is a complete lack of authentic communication. For Debord, to speak and live poetically with one another requires that we destroy all forms of false communication that hinder the potential of language to escape meaning. In its place, the poetic expressiveness of language should once again be allowed to speak of the infinite, the indefinite, and the indeterminate. Poetic language must make ideas dangerous again.41 In the period leading up to the second phase of the SI, Debord felt that the rediscovery of the revolutionary potential of avant-garde poetry would merge with the re-emergence of an avant-garde revolutionary praxis. To be clear, Debord was not speaking here of individual poems per se, but rather the art of speaking “poetically.” Words are assigned poetic or imaginative qualities

10

Introduction

(i.e., their individual sound and connotative power). But Debord also sought to transpose the poetic “function”42 found in literature into a social context. When used in a revolutionary context, the poetic function would no longer serve the needs of poetry or literature but instead bring into being something that had not existed before. The hope was that free expression would lead to a free society. In fact, Debord’s understanding of the creative use of poetic language is perhaps closer to poiesis, that is, using native language to bring into being something new and unforeseen. In such a context, speaking subjects use words and phrases that escape already fixed meanings in order to “play” inside the unpredictable space that is suddenly created between expression and understanding.43 For Debord, it was “now a matter of a poetry necessarily without poems.”44 In order to properly understand the historical and theoretical aspects of our object of study, we are going to examine Debord’s politics of communication in relation to four different historical periods. These include, firstly, his brief flirtation/fascination with Isidore Isou and his Letterist group (1949–1952), followed by his time with the LI (1952–1957), then with the SI (1957–1972), and, lastly, his post-SI writings and personal communications (1972–1994) with contemporary theorists and likeminded writers who sought to continue exploring many of the themes originally discussed by Debord’s in his own theoretical writings. Although this study is biographical, we need to provide the reader with a conceptual analysis of Debord’s politics of communication. Debord’s early interest in the avant-garde influenced many of the unique characteristics that foreshadow his development as a revolutionary thinker. But as much as biographical detail is important in mapping out Debord’s intellectual development, we must remain mindful that the relentless movement of history following World War II (i.e., the pervasiveness of twentieth-century bureaucratic capitalism in social life) necessitated a continual re-evaluation of these early avant-garde influences. Revisiting and re-assessing these early influences will constitute a substantial part of this project. Chapter 1 focuses on the various personal communications established between Debord and his friend Hervé Falcou. We are very fortunate to have access to these personal correspondences, with some going as far back as 1949 when Debord was facing an uncertain postwar future as a late adolescent with a poetic disposition. These early correspondences display a remarkable degree of concision, honesty, and self-deprecating humour, mixed together with a healthy dose of adolescent melancholy, anarchic cynicism, and quiet anger. What is perhaps most evident in these early documents is that Debord is already displaying clearly recognizable personality traits that remain throughout his personal and intellectual life. Even at this early point in his intellectual development, Debord was already an advocate of anti-aesthetic poetic terrorism. Nonetheless, Debord also felt the need to establish what Kaufmann calls

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“authentic forms of communication.”45 Clarity, concision, and consistency were paramount concerns. Disagreements between Debord and associates often hinged on the latter’s inability to speak with any degree of clarity or to establish a consistent theoretical position on given matters. Chapter 2 examines Debord’s public statements regarding language and communication while he was a member of the LI between 1953 and 1957. Although he was never an official member of the Letterist group, Debord still had to extricate himself out from under Isou’s “dictatorial”46 control; in so doing, he took with him the left-wing faction47 of the Letterists to form the LI (1952–1957). This second period is also characterized by Debord’s initial encounter with a struggling writer-poet named Ivan Chtcheglov (alias Gilles Ivain). Along with Hervé Falcou and, to a lesser degree, Isou himself, Chtcheglov was a transformative figure who deeply impacted Debord’s early intellectual development. According to recently published historical and biographical studies,48 Chtcheglov should be considered as the first individual in Debord’s orbit of friends to theorize both dérive and psychogeography in his iconic 1953 essay “Formulary for a New Urbanism.” The twin strategies of dérive and psychogeography, originally outlined in Chtcheglov’s poetic essay, were further developed by Debord during his time with the LI. Dérive and psychogeography are also characteristic of the first phase of the SI between 1957 and1962. What we also need to keep in mind is that, while Chtcheglov may have considered himself to be a full-time member of the LI, he was never formally asked by Debord to join the SI. As a result, Chtcheglov’s ghostly presence seems to hover both in the background of the LI as well as the SI’s early incarnation. Chapter 3 examines Debord’s published essays between 1957 and 1972 that view language and communication within the larger purview of late capitalism and pervasive forms of bureaucracy. Granted, problems regarding language and communication appear only secondarily in essays such as Attila Kotányi’s “Gangland and Philosophy” (1960), Debord’s “Perspectives for Conscious Changes in Everyday Life” (1961), as well as the SI’s “Instructions for an Insurrection” (1961) and “Address to Revolutionaries of Algeria and of All Countries” (1966). In these essays, language and communication are critically examined through the lens of Western Marxist social theory and international revolutionary activities. While the aforementioned studies are insightful and instructive in terms of their historical analysis of the relationship between ideology and communication in a revolutionary context, we will concentrate mainly on Debord’s “All the King’s Men” (1963) and how ideas presented in this particular text are elaborated in other essays by SI members. These include Raoul Vaneigem’s “Basic Banalities (Parts I and 2)” (1962–1963) and Mustapha Khayati’s “Captive Words” (1966). While “All the King’s Men” is a key text in Debord’s understanding of language

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Introduction

and ideology, all four documents deal explicitly with a conviction held by all members of the SI that the problem of language lies at the heart of all struggles either for the abolition or the maintenance of social alienation: language and subjectivity are inseparable from revolutionary struggles writ large.49 Chapters 4 and 5 examine the period between the dissolution of the SI in April 1972 and Debord’s suicide in November 1994. The main source of information for these two chapters are Volumes 5, 6, and 7 of Guy Debord: Correspondance (Fayard, 2005–2008) which contain personal letters that describe Debord’s new theater of operations. We will also avail ourselves of articles, essays, and books published in the final two sections of Debord’s Œuvres (Works).50 The most critical aspect regarding Debord’s post-SI period was his re-evaluation of the term “terrorisme” and how its original anti-aesthetic signification translated poorly (read dangerously) in the face of Western Europe police states who viewed all revolutionary activities as acts of terror. On the publishing front, however, Debord’s “legacy” as a radical theorist appeared more secure. In July 1975, Champ Libre publishers collected all twelve issues of Situationist International and published them as a single title; Fayard then re-published the entire library a second time in 1997. In November 1985, all twenty-nine issues of Potlatch were assembled and published by Gallimard and featured a new preface written by Debord. In May 1988, twenty years after the infamous student insurrection, Debord published Commentary on the Society of the Spectacle and dedicated the book to the memory of his recently murdered friend and publisher Gérard Lebovici. Fayard published Debord’s “autobiography” Panegyric, first volume in July 1989 and then posthumously published Panegyric, second volume in 1997. Finally, Debord’s last book, Cette mauvaise réputation (This Bad Reputation), which was published by Gallimard in October 1993. In the Conclusion, we will revisit key ideas and theories and link them to contemporary inquiries regarding communication as an instrumental tool that works on behalf of a neoliberal capitalist organization of life. The relationship between communication, power, and instrumental rationality, especially, the manner in which “words work—on behalf of the dominant organization of life,”51 will be re-introduced into present-day discussions regarding contemporary social, political, and cultural theories on language. By setting up an open exchange between Debord’s politics of communication and contemporary critical theories on language, we will accomplish two goals. The first will be to align Debord’s work, presently situated on the margins of cultural history, with contemporary developments in critical social theory. The subjects that concern critical theorists today are similar to those that initially troubled Debord back in the late-1950s and throughout the 1960s. As Jean-Luc Nancy points out in his 2008 re-assessment of the General Strike of May 1968, this “68 thought,” as he calls it, is not just the

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utopian thought of a few fringe intellectuals such as Debord, “but a feeling, a disposition, indeed a habitus or ethos that entered into public consciousness and ways of thinking.”52 Along with moving Debord out from the margins of cultural history and toward a more generalized history of twentieth-century social and political theory, our second goal will be to argue that some contemporary critical theories have their genesis in the interdisciplinary work of Debord and the Situationists. We advocate for a re-assessment of Debord and the Situationists, but we must do so as they themselves did—critically. In order to conceptualize Guy Debord’s politics of communication, we will address five different areas of interest that work together to create a comprehensive understanding of how language and communication function critically to undermine the integrated spectacle. While some theories and strategies associated with Debord may not always appear fully formed, at least he tried to comprehend his own time in thought. Debord was explicit in his understanding of the movement of history, as well as movement in history. We have tried to do the same. While Debord may have understood the movement of history better than anyone else in the explicitly anti-historical period following World War II, he nevertheless admitted that the SI still had too little understanding of history.53 While they are rarely identified and discussed by present-day thinkers, the reader will be able to identify in contemporary concepts and theories of communication indelible traces of Debordian and Situationist concepts. Debord once stated that the SI is like radioactivity: No one talks about it much, but we detect traces all over the place, and it lasts a long time.54 As a courageous contemporary of the revolutionary fervor of the 1960s, Debord held his gaze firmly upon political events in order to comprehend his own time in thought, even if he knew that he could not escape it completely. In the words of Giorgio Agamben, “the contemporary is he [sic] who firmly holds his gaze on his own time so as to perceive not its light, but rather its darkness.”55 Agamben’s contemporary figure never truly “belongs” to their time, but neither do they try to adjust to its demands. Precisely because of his anachronistic relationship to culture and society, Debord was in an ideal position to grasp his own time in thought. What Debord gazed upon was much darker, more pervasive, and more sinister than others were willing to admit. In a letter to Nicole Debrie dated December 26, 1988, Debord described the awareness he was already feeling toward his own dark times: “I understand in any case that an already rather dark character [poet and writer Céline] saw everywhere around him, and not without reason, a really very dark time, which, by the way, is getting even worse before our eyes.”56 What Debord was staring into is what James Bridle has called the “New Dark Age”57 and what Franco Berardi has termed the “the Age of the Dark Enlightenment.”58 In hindsight, we can see that the social-political transformation of the 1960s

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Introduction

went well past the eighteenth-century radical French Enlightenment’s initial call for common sense “utility” and the search for a “truth” devoid of religious superstition. In his memoirs, early LI member Jean-Michel Mension remembers sitting and discussing the state of the world with Debord as they shared a liter (or two) of wine; “We pulled the world apart and put it back together again—and I imagine there was more of the former than the latter.”59 Their early conversations centered on the best way to destroy the social world in which they found themselves trapped: “With Guy there was the search for an answer, the will to go beyond revolt.”60 Upon further reflection, though, Mension discovered Debord’s sense of nostalgia; while he may have had a sad and pessimistic view of the future of the world, Debord still strongly believed “in the possibility in turning the world upside down.”61

NOTES 1. Vincent Kaufmann, Guy Debord: Revolution in the Service of Poetry, translated by Robert Bononno (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 150. 2. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, no translator given, edited by S. Ryazanskaya. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998), 42, 44. 3. Alice Becker-Ho, L’Essence du Jargon (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 33. English translation The Essence of Jargon, translated by John McHale, Introduction by Roger Farr (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2015), 59. 4. Antoine Louis de Saint-Just, “De la nature” in Œuvres completes, edition established and presented by Anne Kupiec and Miguel Abensour (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), 1045. 5. Kaufmann (2006), 150, my emphasis. The social state is the relationship of individuals to one another. 6. Guy Debord, letter to Mario Perniola (6 April 1969) in Correspondance volume 4 janvier 1969-décembre 1972, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 2004), 54. 7. Over forty pages are devoted to Machiavelli and his commentators in La Librairie de Guy Debord: Stratégie (Paris: Éditions L’Échappée, 2018). These include numerous passages still in the original Italian, including the following citation taken from a private letter written by Machiavelli to an unnamed Lord dated August 3, 1510: “It would be the safest way there was without having to turn the world upside down,” 239. Unfortunately, we cannot say with certainty what “it” refers to. 8. Debord and Gianfranco Sanguinetti, “Appendix 3: Guy Debord’s report to the seventh SI Conference in Paris (excerpts)” in The Real Split in the International: Theses on the Situationist International and its Time, 1972, translated by John McHale (London: Pluto Press, 2003), 134. 9. Ibid., 133, 134.

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15

10. Alice Becker-Ho, “Preface” to Correspondance volume 5 janvier 1973 – décembre 1978, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 2005), 7. 11. Debord, letter to the Belgian section (March 13, 1958) in Correspondance volume 1 juin 1957 – août 1960, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1999), 73. English translation, 94. On the remarkable period leading to the formation of the Situationist International in 1957, see Documents Relatifs à la Fondation de L’Internationale Situationniste 1948-1957, edited by Gérard Berreby (Paris: Allia, 1985). 12. Situationist International, “The Ideology of Dialogue” in Situationist International Anthology (revised and expanded edition), edited and translated by Ken Knabb (Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2006), 230. 13. Ibid. 14. Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, translated and annotated by Ken Knabb (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2014), sec. 202. 15. Ibid. 16. Situationist International, “The Ideology of Dialogue” in Knabb (2006), 230. 17. Debord, letter to Thierry Lévy (March 30, 1984) in Correspondance volume 6 janvier 1979-décembre 1987, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 2006), 260. 18. Debord and Pierre Canjuers, “Preliminaries Toward Defining a Unitary Revolutionary Program” in Knabb (2006), 389. 19. Situationist International, “The Ideology of Dialogue” in Knabb (2006), 232. 20. Debord, “Le commencement d’une époque” in Internationale Situationniste #12 (September 1969), 3. 21. Attila Kotànyi and Raoul Vaneigem, “Programme élémentaire du bureau d’urbanisme unitaire” in Internationale Situationniste No. 6 (August 1961) (2021), 18. 22. Debord, letter to André Frankin (February 19, 1961) in Correspondance volume 2 (2001), 74. 23. L’Internationale Situationniste, La Quartrième Conférence de L’I.S. à Londres in L’Internatione Situationniste No. 5 (December 1960), 22. 24. Debord and Gianfranco Sanguinetti, The Real Split in the International: Theses on the Situationist International and its Time, 1972, translated by John McHale (London: Pluto Press, 2003), 133. 25. Émile Benveniste, Problème de linguistique Générale, 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), 259. 26. Debord (2014), sec. 24. 27. Ibid., sec. 192. 28. Mikhail Bakhtin. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, edited by Michael Holquist, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987), 426. 29. V. N. Vološinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, translated by Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 10–11. 30. Ibid., 23. 31. Ibid., 80.

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32. Debord, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, translated by Malcolm Imrie (London: Verso Books, 1998), 8. 33. Bakhtin (1987), 272. 34. Marina A. Sitrin, Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and Autonomy in Argentina (London: Zed Books, 2012), 9. Once again, despite discussion regarding autarky, autonomy, and self-sufficiency and how they relate to earlier revolutionary political strategies, there is no mention in Sitrin’s book of either “Guy Debord” or the “Situationist International.” 35. Ibid., 117. 36. Ibid., 85. 37. Sebastian Sevignani, “Digital Transformations and the Ideological Formation of the Public Sphere: Hegemonic, Populist, or Popular Communication?” in Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 39(4), 2022, 100. 38. Ibid., 104. 39. Debord (1998), 13–14. 40. Debord, “Theses on Cultural Revolution” in Knabb (2006), 54. 41. Situationist International, “Our Goals and Methods in the Strasbourg Scandal” in Knabb (2006), 272. 42. I. R. Titunik, “Appendix II: The Formal Method and the Sociological Method (M. M. Baxtin [sic], P. N. Medvedev, V. N. Vološinov)” in Russian Theory and Study of Literature in Vološinov (1973), 182–183. 43. This sentiment is the gist of Linda Hutcheon’s argument in Irony’s Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony (London and New York: Routledge, 1994). By 1985, however, Debord had completely given up on the potential for irony as a writing strategy in revolutionary texts. “Our era,” he wrote to Jaime Semprun and his friends, “through stupidity and lack of culture, and even more profoundly through its mechanical manner, no longer conceives of anything but a positive adhesion to all that is there; it hardly understands irony; and, tendentially, is losing its dimension and its concept.” See Debord, letter to Friends of the Encyclopedia of Nuisances (September 16, 1985) in Correspondance, volume 6: janvier 1979 – décembre 1987, edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 2006), 339. 44. Debord, “All the King’s Men” in Knabb (2006), 151. 45. Kaufmann (2006), 151. 46. The moniker “Dictature” appears on the front cover of the first issue of the group: La Dictature lettriste, no 1, Cahier d’un nouveau régime artistique, 1946, (Paris: Réédition Cahiers de l’Externité, 2000). At the bottom of the same cover is the following authoritative phrase: The Only Contemporary Avant-Garde Movement. https://gallica​.bnf​.fr​/ark:​/12148​/bpt6k32815091#. 47. Debord, “Préface” to Potlatch (1954-1957), Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 8. 48. See Ivan Chtcheglov, Écrits retrouvés, edited by Jean-Marie Apostolidès and Boris Donné (Paris: Allia, 2006) and Jean-Marie Apostolidès and Boris Donné, Profil Perdu (Paris: Allia, 2006). 49. Debord, “All the King’s Men” in Knabb (2006), 149. 50. The final two sections of Debord’s Œuvres are entitled “Nouveau Théâtre d’Opérations, 1972-1988” and “Encore Plus Inaccessible, 1988-1994.”

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51. Debord, “All the King’s Men” in Knabb (2006), 149. 52. Jean-Luc Nancy, The Truth of Democracy, translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 10. 53. Debord and Sanguinetti (2003), 64–65. 54. Debord, letter to Michel Prigent (December 7, 1979) in Correspondence volume 6 janvier 1979 – décembre 1987, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 2006), 45–46. 55. Giorgio Agamben, What is an Apparatus? and other essays, translated by David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 44. 56. Debord, letter to Nicole Debrie (December 26, 1988) in Correspondance volume 7 janvier 1988-novembre 1994, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 2008), 56. 57. James Bridle, New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future (London: Verso Books, 2018). 58. Berardi (2018), 44. 59. Jean-Michel Mension, The Tribe, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2001), 39. 60. Ibid., 41. 61. Ibid., 126.

Chapter 1

Debord’s Poetic Prehistory (1949–1952)

This chapter critically examines early personal communications between Guy Debord and Hervé Falcou, a young friend who was born in 1934 in Cannes but then moved to Paris in the late 1940s to study literature and philosophy. The main purpose of this chapter is to identify unique personal and professional characteristics that establish Debord’s intellectual development, those very same characteristics that eventually led him to become a revolutionary poet-writer-filmmaker. The reason for starting at this early point in Debord’s intellectual life is to illustrate how his politics of communication develops in tandem with his burgeoning revolutionary demeanor. In these early correspondences, we can already notice how the historical failure of avant-garde poetry to maintain a permanent state of revolutionary rage is interpreted negatively by the young Debord, and how his own sense of rage is placed at the heart of a new theoretical stratagem designed to revolutionize everyday life. For Debord, the revolutionary transformation of everyday life is contingent on a “poetic” interpretation of social existence. The hope is that a cultural revolution of this kind will initiate the unfolding of a non-hierarchical, non-antagonistic, and harmonious social space in which to think and reflect in substantial ways. We are very fortunate to have access to these personal correspondences, with some letters going as far back as when Debord was an anxious eighteenyear-old facing what he viewed as a marvellously tragic era.1 In an early poem entitled “Limites,” for example, Debord symbolizes the post-World War II era as a series of “solar” images: of suns that remain, of the rotting of past suns, of the victorious revolutions that always happen in the past, and, finally, dreams of exploding suns.2 Accessing these prose poems is important to our understanding of his intellectual development because they represent what sociologist Vincent Kaufmann identifies as Debord’s poetic 19

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prehistory.3 Debord’s “prehistorical” correspondences give us an invaluable window into the daily life of a young intellectual who evolved from being a poet-filmmaker to becoming a revolutionary poet-filmmaker. Reading these hand-written letters is like watching a cultural revolution unfold in slow motion, with its relentless fits and starts, its moments of radical doubt, and its missed opportunities. What is perhaps most remarkable is that the young Debord of 1949–1952 already exhibits clearly recognizable personality traits that he will maintain throughout his intellectual and personal life. What does change, however, is the historical context in which these personality traits are displayed. Even at an early age, we can already see that Debord felt the need to maintain what Kaufmann identifies as “authentic forms of communication”4 and the desire to dialogue with other like-minded individuals. Clarity, concision, and consistency defined the tone of Debord’s personal and professional correspondences. Compared to today’s quickly written (and forgotten) e-mails and direct messages, the ancient art of letter-writing seemed to be for Debord one of few remaining ways for individuals to communicate with one another with an uncensored degree of clarity and honesty. In fact, Debord recognized only later in the early 1950s that abandoning the act of prose writing was a dishonest and nihilistic gesture predicated on a desire to simply collaborate artistically with other revolutionaries.5 I compare today’s so-called letter writers with those from a half-century ago because, according to Debord, advanced industrial society has managed to “atomize people into isolated consumers and to prohibit communication.”6 Compared to today’s “keyboard” warriors, who often comment anonymously behind a wall of acronyms and emojis, letter writers typically take the time to carefully formulate their thoughts. Letter writers take the time to select the most appropriate words with which to express their innermost thoughts, and then allow others to take the time to read and reflect upon the content of said letter before responding in kind. One of the great ironies of so-called social media is that it actually corrodes sociability by heightening political differences and isolating groups of individuals within an algorithmic echo chamber of like-mindedness. Social media platforms such as TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat, or Instagram heighten mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-harm, and even suicidal thoughts. Given his concern regarding narrowing forms of communication available to atomized individuals living in postwar industrial society, Debord would likely have been mortified—but not surprised—at the pervasiveness of social media platforms in the twenty-first century, especially those that capitalise on users’ reductive reliance on acronyms, emojis, and other forms of digital shorthand.7 By comparison, a typed or handwritten letter has the potential to bypass capitalism’s restrictive tendencies toward isolation and a negative self-image by reconnecting individuals on a deeper,

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interpersonal level. Of course, the ability to reconnect with individuals is contingent on not having one’s correspondence stopped at the border by customs or intercepted by the police, which is a situation that Debord often had to deal with throughout his adult life.8 As mentioned above, this chapter centers on a critical examination of Debord’s early personal correspondences written between 1949 and 1952. While some of these letters also appear in the collection of Debord’s writings entitled OEuvres (Works,Gallimard, 2006), the original, hand-written documents are reproduced as facsimiles in Le Marquis de Sade a des yeux de fille de beaux yeux pour faire sauter les ponts (The Marquis de Sade Has Girls’ Eyes Beautiful Eyes for Blowing Up Bridges, Arthème Fayard, 2004). These youthful exchanges are filled with deeply personal revelations (“Youth has lost its joy!”),9 political slogans, newspaper cut-outs, meaningless doodles, and half-finished drawings. This early period also includes the time Debord tried to project his first avant-garde film, Howls for Sade, on June 30, 1952, but the premiere audience became so confrontational that the screening was cut short after only twenty minutes. An earlier version of the film was privately exhibited in April 1952 but later abandoned after Debord was unable to secure the rights to many of the images he was hoping to use in the film. Debord’s revised film was finally presented in full on October 13 of the same year at a Ciné-Club in the Latin Quarter of Paris.10 Both versions were created under the early influence of a neo-Dadaist Letterist movement designed to further a revolutionary cinematic upheaval. At that time, Debord was particularly influenced by Isidore Isou’s Venom and Eternity (1951) and Gil J Wolman’s L’Anticoncept (1952).11 Debord’s youthful letters implicitly outline a kind of “career objective” that influenced the development of his intellectual life, namely, a cultural revolution contingent on the liberation of the creative potential of all social individuals. Here, the radical potential of avant-garde poetry that Debord and Falcou shared with one another is given new meaning and placed at the heart of a theoretical stratagem to revolutionize everyday life. With a cultural revolution of this kind, the notion of a central, restrictive (i.e., hierarchical) governance becomes peripheral.12 Acts of creativity are no longer channeled into traditional artistic means but instead become part of a larger revolutionary reimagining of everyday life. This “revolutionary” sense of everyday life is promoted through a radical re-valuation of artistic creativity that gives rise to the “poetry” of everyday life. Even at this early point in his life, Debord’s goal is to transcend the imaginary division between art and life by making everyday life artistic, creative. Art and life merge into a single entity in order to realize revolutionary practices that privilege innovative behaviors, thoughts, and desires. The functional characteristics of avant-garde poetry (i.e., radical syntax, defamiliarization, words with multiple meanings, figurative language,

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descriptive imagery, and so on) are now realized in and through the very materiality of human existence, thus making urban social space the privileged realm of its manifestation.13 What was once associated only with poetic language is now expressly aligned with self-conscious human behavior. As early as 1950, Debord had already decided that the modern world might become more tolerable if individuals could be allowed to live the freest life possible, unrestricted from the entanglements of bourgeois pettiness and the restrictive economic options available to them under late capitalism. Conjuring up an almost-Nietzschean notion of spiritual freedom,14 Debord argued that we must forcefully apply the clearing fire of language15 in order to make revolution.16 Yet, the following year, Debord was ready to dismiss the revolutionary potential of avant-garde poetry—even though he still believed at that time that he possessed, for better or worse, a rather poetic sensibility.17 What made him change his mind? It appears that Debord concluded that nothing could be said that could not also be done.18 In other words, social actions speak louder than words. As we will see, Debord’s politics of communication, as well as his avant-garde revolutionary thinking, were already beginning to develop over and against the larger purview of what he would later identify as capitalist culture.19 From Debord’s point of view, a capitalist culture is utterly incapable of speaking the native language of authentic human life, that is, the self-creation of meaning between two individuals. The only way to destroy the “dead” language of manufacturing is to utterly transform everyday social life, along with the need for such an inert language, and, in so doing, change the world. The desire for Debord to enact a revolutionary transformation of everyday life remained a lifelong goal and had its genesis in the informal thoughts found in his letters to Falcou. What does Debord mean by “culture” and why does he describe it as capitalist? Before we answer the second question, let us try to answer the first by defining what it means to speak of culture. Traditionally, there are two main interpretations of culture. There is, firstly, the aesthetic domain of arts and literature (and the relationship between the two). Secondly, there is an anthropological sense of a way of life predicated on a complex interplay between moral values and the symbolic dimension of social actions.20 If we combine these two interpretations, we can see that society contains a stratified hierarchy of meaningful structures within which human actions (including art) are produced, perceived, and interpreted, and without which meaning cannot exist.21 Along with these two explanations, there is also the German concept of Bildung, or the notion of personal education and cultivation. Early nineteenth-century German Idealist thinkers such as Hegel viewed Bildung as the realm of objective mind and Spirit. He also saw the role of education and personal development in terms of a dialectical and historical interaction between thought and self-consciousness. Bildung is not unlike the ancient

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Athenian cultural ideals expressed through paideia, which is characterized by an interaction between historical processes by which a person’s character is formed and intellectual processes by which that same individual symbolically constructs ideals of human personality.22 However, throughout the nineteenth century, the rarefied, aesthetic domain of French arts and literature (or “high culture”), along with the symbolic sphere in which individuals characterize and explain human life to each other, underwent a corrosive devaluation at the hands of capitalist interests. Writing in 1846, for example, Charles Baudelaire viewed the term chic—that “hideous and bizarre word”—as a “modern monstrosity.”23 As an artistic term, chic simply denotes a “painting without reference to a model or to nature.”24 By grafting economic imperatives onto cultural production, the original bourgeois view of artistic virtue was debased and rendered puerile: “Parisian life is rich in poetics and wonderful subjects,” wrote Baudelaire. “The marvellous envelops and saturates us like the atmosphere; but we fail to see it.”25 By the end of the nineteenth century, the profitable marketing of cultural products, along with developments in political democracy and popular education, forced the final collapse of the rarefied, aesthetic domain of arts and literature into the realm of “mass culture” (or, in German culture, kitsch). Mass Culture even developed new media of its own: radio, the movies, comic books, detective stories, science fiction, television.26 Along with chic, the term kitsch also has a relevant political history that needs to be briefly restated. In his essay “The Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” written in 1939 against the backdrop of the rise of Fascism in Western Europe, American art critic Clement Greenberg, while not opposed to “popular culture” per se, argued that “high culture” had been “appropriated by the totalitarian powers in the Soviet Union, Germany and Italy and turned into a spectacle for the masses, resulting in mesmerizing entertainment and psychic manipulation.”27 Greenberg believed that the successful cultural strategies of Hitler and Mussolini to wage war, with little opposition from their own people who supported the aggression (along with the deadly silencing of dissent and criticism), was the direct result of a “yearslong, carefully orchestrated campaign of propaganda.”28 By the middle of the twentieth century, the notion of Bildung as personal education and cultivation had been completely supplanted not only by the subordination of so-called high culture to the propaganda needs of the fascist war machine but also by the commodification of the aesthetic domain of arts and literature. This is the culture that Guy Debord inherited. As he wrote in 1957, The crisis of modern culture has led to total ideological decomposition. Nothing new can be built on these ruins. Critical thought itself becomes impossible as each judgment clashes with others and each individual invokes fragments of outmoded systems or follows merely personal inclinations.29

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Debord was certainly not the only theorist who interpreted the devaluation of “culture” through an economic lens. Social and literary critic Dwight McDonald pointed out in 1953: “Mass Culture is imposed from above. It is fabricated by technicians hired by business; its audiences are passive consumers, their participation limited to the choice between buying and not buying.”30 Following World War II, capitalist imperatives were presented as the only meaningful structuring agency in society from which to understand and gauge the “utility” of human behavior. As a result, capitalist culture achieved its desired goal by literally dominating all other aspects of human life. This was the integrated spectacle to which Debord alluded in his Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1992).31 From this point forward, social actions would be viewed and understood only through an economic perspective. The domains of arts and literature were stripped of their aesthetic and educational dimensions and then commodified. In a context of economic imperatives, even publishing a book on philosophy during the postwar era was an intellectual (and economic) gamble. Concluding the Preface to Philosophical Investigations in 1945, for example, even Ludwig Wittgenstein had to caution readers that I make [these writings] public with doubtful feelings. It is not impossible that it should fall to the lot of this work in its poverty and in the darkness of this time, to bring light into one brain or another—but, of course, it is not likely. I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. But, if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his [sic] own.32

Debord was not overly concerned with the view of culture as separate realms of human practice, with one realm dealing strictly with arts and literature and the other with ideas, education, and values. On the contrary, as an unwitting postmodernist, Debord supported removing the artificial distinctions between high and low culture in order to develop a more practical account of the interrelationship between creativity and the socio-economic conditions in which it is expressed. Nor was he troubled by the transformation of mass culture into what Dwight McDonald identifies as “a dynamic, revolutionary force, breaking down the old barriers of class, tradition, taste, and dissolving all cultural distinctions.”33 For his part, Debord’s early concept of culture is inextricably linked to a Marxian conception of conscious social existence. “The first premise of all human history,” writes Marx in The German Ideology, “is, of course, the existence of living human individuals.”34 Debord viewed the consciousness of social individuals not only as the awareness of living within a given economic situation (i.e., late capitalism) but also the possibility of radically altering social existence for the better. The desire to alter one’s existence can—and must—be realized in and through authentic cultural production.

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As a young man, Debord knew that his imminent future lay ahead, even if the present day was filled with emptiness and boredom.35 How he might successfully navigate out of adolescence and into adulthood would depend to a certain extent on his own fear of living and dying.36 During the pain of adolescence, the “agony of being”37 is never far below the surface: it is a time of sexual instability, the discovery of a world of ideas, the first contradictions between the temptations of freedom and adventure, and the need to start thinking about the future. Adolescence is an age when all things are possibilities, but there are no guarantees. “We will go further without ever advancing,”38 Debord once posited to his friend Hervé. Writing to Ivan Chtcheglov later that same year, Debord recalled how the opening verse of Apollinaire’s poem Toujours (“Always/We are going farther without ever advancing”)39 held for him a double meaning. It manifested a “psycho-urbanist” attitude marked by a sense of purposeful drifting. But Apollinaire’s verse also implies that, despite the refrain that “everything is possible,”40 there are no guarantees that one’s radical rethinking of revolutionary praxis might actually overcome the aesthetic limitations of either Dadaism or Surrealism and lead to a revolutionary re-imagining of everyday life. By re-aligning revolutionary praxis along an artistic-creative path, Debord’s end-goal was not simply happiness but total freedom and liberty: “Total LIBERTY is what we want.”41 How successful this venture might become was contingent on selecting the correct means of achieving it. As he explained to his friend Hervé in 1951, All actions are equivalent to each other; an action is equal in value to all other possible actions. Choice fatigue is merely spared by systematic arbitrariness.42

In the Preface to Œuvres, Kaufmann identifies Debord as one of the few thinkers in recent memory to have passionately and knowingly rejected the society of his own time.43 Debord viewed postwar society as ugly, boring, and alienating; as a result, he morally refused it, along with his own innocence, good conscience, and illusions.44 In his own words and deeds, Debord neither perfectly coincided with his own society, nor did he try to adjust himself to its demands. He was not satisfied with simply being a critical theorist of social and cultural institutions; on the contrary, he not only wished to reinvigorate the fading notion of a Western European avant-garde tradition for his own generation but he also hoped to preserve that tradition without having to compromise his own sense of absolute freedom. Debord was true “contemporary” in the sense that he held his gaze not to the light of his own time but rather its darkness. Even though he was considered by friends at that time as an even-tempered and a well-read theoretician,45 Debord was ready to embark in his early twenties on any kind of intellectual adventure that might “re-passion life.”46

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Debord was always willing to hold out hope for a better tomorrow.47 For Kaufmann, Debord’s timely meditations regarding his own time not only sparkle with “the art of life”48 but also with a readiness to engage in conflict, battle, and play. Debord was completely uninterested in anything that might hinder a state of absolute revolt. His adolescent thoughts bristle with a desire for aesthetic revolt, which Debord initiated in the early 1950s by viewing the very concept of aesthetics as “repugnant”49 and “decaying.”50 In a letter simply dated “Thursday night [June] 1953,” Debord admitted to Gil J Wolman that he didn’t really care much for the arts—even as an aesthetic sensation— but knew that the field of artistic production contained a few subversive and isolated types who might have some degree of power and influence regarding revolutionary matters.51 Beauty, he wrote in 1955, if not a promise of happiness, must be destroyed.52 What mattered most to the young Debord was the act of “making” history, since that is all the movement of history has ever been. For Debord, “Poetry has represented for me only one of the many MEANS OF BEING IMMORTAL . . . a duration beyond being.”53 Debord’s early view of avant-garde poetry—as a vehicle for accessing the “beyond” of being —set the stage for anti-aesthetic struggles waged on behalf of the Letterist International (LI) during the 1950s, then the Situationist International (SI) in the 1960s, and, finally, on an increasingly personal basis until his death in 1994. Kaufmann concludes that the importance of Debord as a postwar European intellectual can be found in this simple valuation: that, in an era marked by resignation, passivity, and compromise, Debord wished to show that it was still possible to think and act differently, even if it meant having to enter into conflictual relations with his own time and systematically defy it. Like Nietzsche before him, Debord believed that individuals needed history “for the sake of life and action.”54 Debord understood that individuals need to recognize that a critical comparison with the past not only affects a comprehension of the present but also opens up potential futures still unthought. Individuals “want to serve history,” writes Nietzsche, “only to the extent that history serves life.”55 As “a pupil of earlier times,”56 Debord tacitly understood Nietzsche’s point that a critical knowledge of history helps us to identify what we are suffering from today. In his study on Debord, Kaufmann points out that his subject’s early childhood was characterized by “silence and invisibility.”57 Throughout his life, Debord appears to have equated silence with negative situations: for example, a friend’s illness,58 the inability to communicate,59 a news blackout surrounding revolutionary activities in another country,60 a conspiratorial silence with the press regarding important matters,61 as forms of contemptuous62 or hostile63 silence, and, most importantly, as a deliberate strategy to avoid confrontation.64 Silence in all its forms implied for Debord the loss of a

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free and communicative public space in which individuals can speak honestly with each other and share ideas. For example, in a poem written by Debord in 1949, he describes a world in which “silent mouths cry out that words have been defeated”65 Yet, at the same time, Debord viewed poetry as an example of language’s excess rather than its lack or silence. Debord understood that only the subject’s voice can convert the poverty of language into the plenitude of discourse,66 provided the latter has not already been co-opted and commodified by capitalism. In the voice-over to his first film, Howls for Sade, Debord refers to himself as one of the “lost children”67 of the postwar era. In this context, the rich and provocative postwar imagery of lost children is worth exploring in more detail. There is, first of all, the cinematic allusion to Marcel Carné’s Children of Paradise, 1945, a romantic drama shot under difficult circumstances during the final two years of World War II. There is also the historical fact that wartime and postwar displacement broke up thousands of families across the European continent. Not surprisingly, clinical studies of war orphans yielded a wide range of emotional and mental health issues associated with abandonment: depression, anxiety, nervous agitation and violence, cynicism, a distrust of authority, and so on. The war had produced, according to historian Mark Mazower, “a generation of anti-idealists.”68 Finally, there was the 1945 law which created the Children’s Judge (juge des enfants), whose sole task it was to oversee less serious cases involving children. The judge could question witnesses, collect information regarding potential (or actual) criminal behavior, and order psychiatric reports. According to historian Sarah Fishman, the Children’s Judge occupied a central role in France’s postwar legal system, “not just judging, but also counseling, advising, warning, encouraging, and directing to other available resources both delinquent and ‘at risk’ children and adolescents.”69 While he himself wrote little regarding his own childhood, mutual friends attest to the fact that the young Debord was often ignored by his own family, both because of his father’s contagious disease (tuberculosis) and, following his death in 1935, his own mother’s indifference. Kaufmann believes that Debord likely buried the mental pain of parental alienation under a veil of silence and an outwardly melancholic disposition.70 Debord later admitted to his friend Hervé Falcou that he hated sleeping alone and was often “mysteriously touched”71 by certain literary passages, or by music on the radio that reminded him of songs his mother used to sing. Such a confession infers that Debord was acutely aware of the emotional power of unconditional love, even if he himself never managed to experience it directly. At this early age, Debord was already framing his interest in Surrealism as it related to acute emotional states, especially when mixed with love as a tonic against achieving a nearly pathological mental state. But the manic euphoria that

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accompanied the Surrealists’ amour fou was for Debord “valid only in a prerevolutionary period.”72 The volatility of amour fou still had to be subordinated to revolutionary or political ends. If one is going to invest in an intense form of love, then let it be in the manic euphoria of political action rather than an emotional investment one makes with another person. Sublimating all forms of love to political ends allows for a greater degree of self-control in relation to the object (or subject) in question. What matters here is not control over the object in question but rather self-control over the relationship one has with the object. Sublimation also allows us to retract loyalty and devotion to that object more easily by blaming social and political forces greater than oneself. Without trying to dabble in psychohistory’s tendency to try to answer the question “Why?” Kaufmann speculates that it was at an early age that Debord likely “learned to hide his tracks, to erase them, and to make use of writing only intermittently; that this was the art of not being followed.”73 In a notice written in November 1952 but not published until February 1953 in Letterist International No. 2, Debord sought to communicate in greater detail the so-called anti-aesthetic position he presented in Howls for Sade. For him, the very idea of “capitalist” art (i.e., art-as-commodification) being worthy of aesthetic contemplation is laughable. Why not let others try to decipher the secret behind such legitimate scandals.74 At that time, cinema offered to Debord radically new and dangerous forms of Beauty that could shatter the empty silence of the consuming masses. As the voiceover explains in Howls for Sade, “Arts begin, grow, and disappear because dissatisfied people break through the world of official expressions and go beyond its festivals of poverty.”75 Through his unique form of confrontational cinema, Debord was explicitly broadcasting to the art world that he was identifying with those “dissatisfied” individuals who were ready to transcend the festivals of poverty that pass for art and entertainment. To be clear, Debord was uninterested in building up a consistent theoretical “doctrine” or school of thought; he simply wished to continue working on his films in order to produce a body of work that could be interpreted as an “ever-shifting order.”76 To counteract consistency and predictability, Debord actively sought to live a more “fluid” and instinctual life. Writing to Falcou, Debord appeared intrigued by the notion of an “ever-shifting poem”77 that does not easily yield up its meaning and is always open to multiple interpretations. Could we live our life in the same fluid and ever-shifting way, he thought? An avant-garde poem is written and complete; yet it is also caught up in a perpetual transformation of meaning that is unconcerned with formal perfection. Inspired by the fluid transformative qualities of avant-garde poetry, Debord sought to pursue the selfsame immediate transformations of everyday life. As Hegel writes, simple immediacy in its true expression is “pure being.”78 Artistic expression such as poetry must be experienced

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immediately.79 The poetic word may be given but its incantatory power must still express a pure, immediate reality that transcends itself.80 To be clear, Debord spent the next few decades considering the second part of Hegel’s observation that immediate, unmediated knowledge is hopelessly inadequate for understanding the world; immediate knowledge must be transcended by more comprehensive forms of consciousness that value the notion that all of knowledge is mediated by concepts and only partly determined by sense-data. In his early twenties, Debord tried to view his own life as a kind of ever shifting poem, in that he tried to position himself in a state of perpetual transformation and always in pursuit of pure moments of immediate being. For Debord, positioning himself in a state of perpetual transformation meant living in a state of radical subjectivity. During the early years of the SI’s second phase (1962–1968), questions regarding the search for pure moments of immediate being constituted some of the most profound issues facing Debord and the Situationists.81 In 1966, he transformed the notion of living in a state of perpetual fluidity into a call to action: “LONG LIVE RADICAL SUBJECTIVITY!”82 Unfortunately, life for Debord in his early twenties was neither radical nor a celebration of the kind of alterity promised by the incantatory power of poetic language. On the contrary, Debord wrote to Falcou in 1950 that on his travels in the thickest shadows, where they could have lived happily ever after, there was no real freshness in the air. No one could sleep there, at least not easily.83 To amuse himself Debord engaged in scandalous behavior; he let off stink bombs in a Catholic library, as well as inside several businesses that had refused to sign the “Stockholm Appeal” petition calling for a ban on nuclear weapons.84 On a deeper psychological level and based on a recurring imagery, Debord appeared to feel truly disconnected from his own social environment. He recalled to Falcou a disturbing vision he once had. One fine day, he imagined himself entering a country where all the borders closed immediately behind him. For six months he tried to leave, but it was impossible. How would this trip end, he thought? He tried to forget everything, but instead found himself remembering more than if he had lived a thousand years.85 What is remarkable in Debord’s deeply personal letters to Falcou is that he expresses in the poetic language of Symbolist poets a radical disjunction between his inner fractured and potentially anarchic ego on the one hand, and an almost intentional misrecognition of an allegedly stable outside world on the other. At this early age, there seemed to be a lack of differentiation between what is internal (the ego) and what is external (reality). Debord appears to intentionally project a mental disposition of perpetual instability onto the surrounding social and cultural landscape. Debord was certainly not the first individual to view external reality in this manner. In the same

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way nineteenth-century French Symbolist poets mistook social alienation and anomie for a heightened sense of individualism,86 the young Debord was becoming increasingly aware that the ideology of postwar capitalism was slowly tearing apart the fabric of French society. He was also becoming aware that the dialectical construction of subjectivity included an important social-political component that was increasingly at odds with his notion of an ever-shifting poetic disposition. Debord was learning first-hand—through the radical language games of avant-garde Symbolist poetry—about the disconnection between an ever-shifting mental disposition and the ever conforming/ reifying pressures of late capitalism upon French society. To reject these reifying social pressures, everyday life for Debord would have to be characterized by a deliberate and perpetual revolt for the sheer sake of transformation: or, as he wrote to his friend Hervé, “DISORDER FOR DISORDER.”87 For Debord, dreams and waking life answer each other; they are two sides of the same mirror. “But I am in the mirror,” he thought. “I can neither pass to the other side, nor return to the real world from which I am still strangely absent.”88 Debord was hoping to achieve a balance between dreams and waking life in order to remedy his sense of disconnection and unhappiness.89 Here, the governing mental functioning of Debord’s pleasure principle was clear and insistent. He could not accept things as they were; he had to revolt.90 On the night of the first “official” projection of Howls for Sade, for example, Debord handed out a leaflet entitled “La nuit du cinema” (“The Night of Cinema”). In it, he revisits the image of the mirror as an instrument of truth and distortion. Human understanding is like a false mirror that distorts the true nature of things.91 The film screen for Debord is like a mirror that captures, freezes, and petrifies adventurers, pioneers, and visionaries, and renders them passive, inert, and reified. If radical cinema cannot transcend and destroy the litany of petrified images and go toward something deeper and more meaningful, then world of the cinema will no longer hold any interest for him.92 At the bottom of the leaflet, he adds that “WE MAKE REVOLUTION IN OUR LOST MOMENTS.”93 To recall, Debord began his intellectual and artistic revolution in the shadow of Letterist leader Isidore Isou, who was at the time exhibiting his own still-incomplete avant-garde film Treatise of Venom and Eternity outside “official” competition during the May 1951 Cannes Film Festival. (We will return to Isou’s film very shortly.) Writing to Marc-Gilbert Guillaumin, Debord recalls meeting Isou and agreeing to become involved in the exhibition of avant-garde films in Cannes—a city that he considered “already abandoned by God.”94 Following a nearly five-hour discussion with Isou at a neighborhood bar, Debord mentioned to Guillaumin that he made his friend Hervé admit that “Isou was a god.”95 In a letter dated earlier the same year,96 Debord had written to Falcou telling him that he and his friend Jacques Fillon

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had gone on the offensive in Cannes by writing “ISOU” throughout the city and on the four banks of La Croisette.97 Although we will examine the LI in more detail in chapter 2, we wish to point out that in Potlatch 23 (October 13, 1955) Debord returned to the tactical importance of graffiti as a provocative artistic-poetic strategy. Not surprising, poetic forms of graffiti attributed to Situationist thinking were characteristic of the student protests of May 1968. In “The Role of Writing,” Debord pointed out that the Letterists had stopped writing graffiti on public walls, even though he himself still felt that writing graffiti added to the intrinsic meaning to the surrounding environment. The problem for Debord was that the Letterists’ public defacement of property no longer communicated any kind of intrinsic meaning. It was graffiti for the sake of vandalism and shock value. For their part, the LI would revisit this artistic-poetic strategy in an effort to enhance the subversive effects of psychogeography.98 Although Debord’s relationship with Isou at that time was intense but short-lived, it is still worth considering the latter’s influence on Debord’s personal life and artistic development. To be clear, Isou had badgered festival officials—including poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau—to present his film in competition; the Committee eventually relented and, due mostly to Cocteau’s spiritual blessing, allowed Isou to show his film at the nearby Vox Theatre.99 At the time of the Cannes premiere, however, only the first third of the four-and-a-half-hour film had a completed image track.100 After the initial completed section was projected, the screen went blank, which further infuriated the already-hostile audience. The projector light was turned off and the audio track continued to play in the darkened theater. As a result, audience members were further agitated, and the screening was abruptly ended.101 The hostile reaction of the crowd pleased Debord greatly. In spite of the negative response from the audience, Isou had hoped to create an artistic scandal as historically important as the first performance of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in Paris in May 1913, or the initial screening of Luis Bunuel’s Surrealist short film Un Chien Andalou in June 1929. In the reality, however, descriptions of the scandalous reception to Isou’s film vary from a rioting audience to police officers using fire hoses on the crowd. As Andrew V. Uroskie points out in his study of Letterist cinema, “these ‘events’ were almost all exaggerated—if not concocted—for the sake of publicity.”102 The following year, the Letterists returned to Cannes to continue their intellectual (and often physical) assault on the bourgeois idea of celebrating the accomplishments of French cinema on the world stage. During the 5th Cannes Film Festival, the Letterists distributed a double-sided leaflet entitled “Down with French Cinema,” which promoted experimental Letterist films while, at the same time, proclaiming the end of traditional French cinema. The leaflet was intentionally denunciatory (“From now on, the cinema can

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only be NUCLEAR”)103 and inflammatory (“Letterists want to go beyond these ridiculous competitions of by-products between small illiterate traders or those destined to become illiterate. Their mere presence here kills them”).104 In the meantime, Debord himself was certainly not averse to “trolling” the French press, something he would continue to do throughout his life, and culminated in the publication of his final book Cette mauvaise reputation (This Bad Reputation, Gallimard 1993). While a very public debacle between Letterists and officials representing the 1952 Cannes Film Festival continued apace, Debord was busy mailing off provocative denunciations against journalists and film critics who dared to publish negative reviews of Letterist films and related activities. In a letter dated January 1952, for example, Debord insulted Libération film critic Simone Dubreuilh following her review of Isou’s first film: “You are horrible to look at, which should stop you from putting your big feet on intellectual matters.”105 Following the infamous “Chaplin Affair” at the Hotel Ritz on October 29, 1952 (more on that in chapter 2), Debord also threatened journalist Robert Chazal for not only insulting the newly formed LI but also for defending Charlie Chaplin’s most recent United Artists super-production of Limelight. If that was not enough, Debord also accused Chazal of taking bribes from United Artists to write a positive review of its latest film.106 Upon learning of Chazal’s defense of Chaplin’s film, Debord promised that, as soon as he returned from Brussels, he would punch him in the mouth. He assured Chazal that he would personally pay for the behavior of other like-minded journalists who had perfected “conformist cowardice and advertising admiration.”107 Such outbursts were indicative of Debord’s lifelong desire to rid the French press of its most representative “garbage.”108 Remarkably, between the two confrontational missives directed at French journalists, Debord still managed to take the time to write to none other than Pablo Picasso to familiarize him with a special issue of ION dedicated to experimental, avant-garde and Letterist cinema.109 Compared to hostile letters dispatched to film critics, the tone of Debord’s letter to Picasso was formal and respectful; he admired him as one of the greatest creators in painting and welcomed an opportunity to speak to him on the subject of Letterism.110 In the letters reprinted in Le Marquis de Sade, we can see that the young Debord is already planting the seeds that will eventually blossom into a life of cultural and anti-aesthetic revolt. What is perhaps most revealing in these youthful exchanges is the dreamy yet melancholic, you-and-me-against-theworld attitude that is expressed in numerous statements and daily observations. The main theme that weaves together these observations concerns the possibilities—and limits—of avant-garde poetry. Debord and Falcou loved to read and discuss Lautréamont; unfortunately, once he finished reading the

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latter’s entire œuvre, Debord threw away many of his own poems, including some that his friend had loved and admired.111 They also enjoyed reading and discussing the prose poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire, Arthur Rimbaud (“I like Rimbaud a lot now.”)112 Henri Michaux, Jacques Prévert, André Breton, and Louis Aragon, even if Debord himself was not particularly impressed by the work of the last three.113 Surprisingly, after having noticed in his friend’s poems a special kind of hope,114 Debord suggested to Falcou that he get in touch with either Breton or Isou. Debord was shrewd enough at this early age to set aside personal differences and exploit the possibility of using Breton and Isou to enter into the world of literature or cinema. Perhaps their greatest discovery was Baudelaire’s French translations of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories. It was actually Poe’s poetry and prose that first gave Debord a taste of the surreal. He also found Poe to be closer to Baudelaire in revolutionary spirit than Breton.115 Through his encounters with avant-garde poetry, Debord was already beginning to formulate uniquely original thoughts regarding the development and continuation of a revolutionary impulse in avant-garde literature. How closely these thoughts might align with a revolutionary impulse would ultimately depend on context, purpose, and goal. Perhaps more than any other reading experience, Debord and Falcou shared a love for the salacious writings of the Marquis de Sade and the revolutionary political philosophy of Louis Antoine de Saint-Just. As a contemporary of Sade, Saint-Just’s satirical and licentious epic poem, Organt (1789), written when he was only twenty years old, would have fascinated both Debord and Falcou. The “Preface” to Organt is comprised of a single sentence that would have caught his attention: “I’m twenty years old; I did wrong, I could do better.”116 In “Chant 1” of Organt, Saint-Just prefigures the sleepwalking citizens of the post-Revolutionary era, the debased and passive lumpen proletariat that Debord sought two centuries later to fire up with revolutionary fervor. Debord also likely found his own political justification for revolution in Saint-Just’s “The Spirit of the Revolution and the Constitution of France” (1791). The opening lines of the Avant-propos spoke directly to Debord’s burgeoning sensibility: “Europe is making great strides towards its revolution, and all despotic efforts will not stop it.”117 Because Saint-Just’s name is repeatedly mentioned by Debord over the next thirty years in published articles and essays, we may claim with some degree of certainty that he found in Saint-Just—and his revolutionary writings—a kindred spirit. But Debord was also aware of the specific historical context in which Saint-Just had sought to exploit the Revolutionary tenor of his own time. Debord never forgot his warning that “those who make half a revolution have only dug themselves a grave.”118 Despite the fact that he had done nothing (or almost nothing) with his life so far, there was always the possibility for Debord that opportunities could present themselves, even if his

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present situation was unacceptable to him.119 What Debord found most intolerable was the historical failure of avant-garde poetry to maintain a permanent state of revolutionary rage. Perhaps the sense of rage that had collapsed into the regularity of postwar avant-garde poetry could be given new life and placed at the heart of a theoretical stratagem to revolutionize everyday life. But how would he achieve this goal? What were his options? And was he possibly destined to make only half a revolution? In trying to overcome the limitations of avant-garde poetry by revolutionary means, Debord expanded the Letterists’ graffiti-writing strategy into what he called the “neo-poem,”120 a style of poetry detached from all aesthetic justifications and a precursor to Debord’s famous graffiti “Never Work” (“Ne Travaillez Jamais”). Debord confessed at that time to Falcou that he was already smitten by Isou’s anarchic view of poetic language. He urged Falcou to go and meet Isou and to “make sure he likes you.”121 Debord even underscores the words. To both men, the slightly older Isou seemed to be offer a temporary way out of the forest of tactical vagueness and confusion in which they found themselves. Debord was ready to absorb Isou’s radical views regarding the role of the poetic word; however, his own conclusions regarding the revolutionary power of poetry were quite different. In the same way Marx thought that “philosophy can only be realized by the abolition of the proletariat, and the proletariat can only be abolished by the realization of philosophy,”122 Debord concluded that “poetry will survive only in its destruction.”123 Although Falcou would later go on to become a literary critic and writer of political economy, Debord, on the other hand, did not have to wait long before acting on his master’s peculiar vision of the incantatory and purifying power of poetic language. In the short essay “Poetic and Musical Principles of the Letterist Movement,” published in the first issue of The Letterist Dictator: Notebook of a New Artistic Regime (January 1946), Isou outlines the task of modern avant-garde poet. The poetic work becomes a purification, a destruction. We try to chase away anything that has any correspondence to foreign elements. We look for metaphors, images, and rare and precise words, the shock of certain alternations that emerge out of these words. We seek to release the laws that exist within the depths of poetry itself.124

By the early 1950s, however, Debord found himself at an intellectual deadend. He wrote to Falcou that there was no longer any need to create literature because things were already going very badly: “And then where are you?” he asked.125 There were simply too many unresolved problems; faced with his limited options, he wrote to Falcou, “A soluble fish, that is our prison” (“NOTRE PRISON” is written in block letters).126 At first glance, “un soluble

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poisson c’est NOTRE PRISON” is a provocative statement that, like the aquatic vertebrate itself, needs to be better understood. “Un soluble poisson” is not an obscure French phrase (as far as I can tell), but more likely a reference to a short story written by Breton in 1924. “Soluble Fish” was intended to function as a poetic illustration of Surrealist literary theories outlined in his “Manifesto of Surrealism” (1924) and designed to bring the movement into being. Scattered among the thirty-two short vignettes are key themes long cherished by Surrealists—desire, love, women, dream-like states, and myths. Breton presents these key themes as poetic images freed from all forms of logical constraint. Quoting poet Paul Reverdy, Breton explains in his “Manifesto” that the image is a pure creation of the mind. It cannot be born from a comparison but from a juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be—the greater its emotional power and poetic reality.127

Now that we have identified the possible source of Debord’s sentiment, we must ask ourselves how he might have interpreted Breton’s titular animal. Was there something in Breton’s story that resonated in the nineteen-yearold who was unsure of his postwar prospects? Was it the lack of control with which he viewed his own life: “Looking back I no longer see clearly,” writes Breton, “it is as if a waterfall stood between the theater of my life and me, who am not the principal actor in it.”128 Was it the threat of a still-unknown future: “It is the sweet escape called the future, an escape that is always possible, that the stars that until now have bent down over our distress are resorbed.”129 Or was it simply the prison imagery that caught his attention; a prison is an institution that filled Debord with dread and fascination:130 If we are correct in stating that the soluble-fish-as-prison metaphor refers to a short story that he read as a young man, we may conclude that it is Breton’s general sense of violence upon logic, reason, aesthetic, and bourgeois sensibilities that likely spoke to Debord most directly. Although the Surrealists argued that a comprehensive cultural revolution was unsustainable, Debord still took to heart Breton’s initial call to action. In a lecture entitled “Political Position of Today’s Art” (April 1935), Breton suggests that “true poetry and art” are essential representations of “the power of emotion and the gift of expression.”131 The poetic expression of heightened emotional states, often coupled with an “exceptional sensitiveness,” manifests in individual poets “a violence proportionate to [their] genius.”132 In his early twenties, Debord was already thinking about the relationship between creativity and anti-aesthetic violence. In the essay “Letterists, Situationists and Avant-garde Terrorism” (2013),133 Gabriel Ferreira Zacarias examines three avant-garde groups formed after World War II and points out

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that the common denominator between them is Guy Debord. Zacarias’s essay explores how these groups utilize the terms “terror” and “terrorism” in the formulation of an anti-aesthetic revolt aimed at what Debord labels the “the transcendence of art.”134 As late as 1963, the transcendence of art was one of five directives compiled for an art exposition entitled “Destruction of the RSG-6” taking place on Saturday, June 22, 1963 at the Gallery Exi, Hunderupvej 78 in Odense, Denmark. The exhibition catalogue included Debord’s 1963 essay “The Situationists and the New Forms of Action in Politics and Art,” in which he advocated for the creative potential of social individuals in everyday life. The application of “creative” powers would be put to use not in the traditional service of art, but in raising existence to the level of “living” poetry. Even as late as 1967, Debord still believed that “the abolition and realization of art are inseparable aspects of a single transcendence of art.”135 Transcendence here must be understood in the Hegelian sense of “aufheben” or sublation. Aufheben has three interrelated senses, in which the object of study is (1) raised up or separated, (2) annulled or canceled, and (3) kept or preserved. Hegel was most interested in senses (2) and (3) because he believed that speculative philosophy could remove the object from its immediate surroundings through determinate negation (separating it out from the whole), and yet still preserved at a higher level. For Debord, art is (2) separated and canceled from the traditional realm of artistic production and (3) re-integrated into the higher realm of social and political life. Even during the SI’s early period (1957–1962), the transcendence of art referred to a re-integrated vision of art in and through politics; it did not mean the subordination of art into politics.136 Given the tone of these early correspondences, Debord appeared ready to dismiss the entire avant-garde enterprise and devise his own version of a twentieth-century radical art movement. Dada and Surrealism had failed to maintain a permanent state of revolution and to enact long-term cultural transformation. But Debord still hoped to become a part of that very same Western European avant-garde tradition (“THE DADA MOVEMENT MUST BE REMADE.”)137 He truly wished to be one of the “holy terrors”138 associated with avant-garde arts. But in wishing to do so, he still had to find a way to re-energize what Zacarias identifies in his study on Debord as “[the avant-garde’s] lost radicality”139 This radicality was the transformative impulse that would propel revolutionary activity into a permanent dialectic of outrage. Zacarias identifies how each new post–World War II avant-garde group sought to present itself as a more extreme version of its predecessor. It is in the context of aesthetic “extremism” that the twin notions of “terror” and “terrorism” must be carefully considered. Given how these terms have historically changed meaning over time, along with those in power who gets to assign those designations to others, Zacarias uses the terms as part of an

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overall rhetoric aimed at the Western European avant-garde tradition. In other words, the terms are applied to avant-garde artists such as Debord by way of similarity rather than actual practice.140 In the hand-written correspondences reproduced in Le Marquis de Sade, the word “terrorisme” appears several times and offers us a glimpse into Debord’s intellectual development, especially as he begins to inquire into the theoretical roots of Dada and Surrealism and how those origins informed Letterism’s own agenda. We also know that during his late adolescence Debord identified himself more as a Dadaist than a Surrealist.141 He admitted to Falcou to having read Isou’s Introduction to a New Poetry and to a New Music (Gallimard, 1947), even though he was ready to take or leave its theoretical position. For Debord, Isou’s theory was not nonsensical,142 as Falcou had originally concluded, but simply lacking any kind of ethical consideration on the part of the provisional extreme left.143 In the inaugural issue of The Letterist Dictator, Isou and his Letterist group seemed more concerned with addressing aesthetic rather than ethical matters that might result in revolutionary forms of behavior. Still, Isou’s introductory mission statement was designed to be read as a violent provocation aimed at the literary and cultural world: This first issue released at night in haste has, like a massacre, all the faults of a similar helping hand.  .  .  . More precise, with more regulated gestures, we will come back soon. Let this be an encouragement for some. And a threat to others.144

Because the Letterists were more concerned with aesthetic rather than ethical considerations, Debord soon figured out how to completely transcend the Letterist agenda. He announced to Falcou that he was already laying the groundwork for a manifesto “which would define a new poetry—apart from Surrealism and Letterism.”145 Debord would transcend Isou’s Letterists by favoring silence rather than words and direct action rather than aesthetics. To be clear, while direct action (whether violent or non-violent) is a term often associated with anarchism, Debord was using it here to refer to non-violent acts designed to frustrate cultural agencies from propagating messages in favor of the social and economic status quo. In doing so, direct action affirms the death of artistic creation for its own sake, an idea Debord knew that Isou held in high regard. All artistic manifestations would now fall under the new general category of propaganda (i.e., deliberate scandal and provocation) and understood as a by-product of direct action. While Debord appreciated avant-garde poets such as René Char,146 he was still inclined toward propaganda as a revolutionary form of artistic activity.147 All of these new forms

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of revolutionary activities Debord discussed in unpublished manifesto that he called the “MANIFESTO FOR AN ETERNITY OF VIOLENCE.”148 In his essay, Zacarias reminds readers that “terrorisme” is a synonym for radicalism and anti-aesthetic revolt, especially the type of radical and advanced forms of poetry that Debord was trying to re-valuate. In a five-page letter sent to Falcou entitled “POINT OF THE CENTURY: a revolution must be laconic,”149 replete with underlined words and crossed-out lines (including the phrase “TERRORISM SHALL FORM SECRET SOCIETIES”),150 Debord summarizes the main tenets of his manifesto: “Poetry no longer has the slightest reason to exist. Artistic creation is a derisory consolation I prefer to fuck. We reject everything: life and death, words, and time, especially time.”151 At the bottom of the first page of the letter, Debord adds that he is thinking of creating a terrorist cell that will be charged with gathering funds intended to put a price on the head of then-Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.152 In this context, we can see that the young Debord is already viewing anti-aesthetic “terrorism” as the last valid activity open to revolutionary individuals.153 To be clear, anti-aesthetic activities included scandals, provocations, graffiti (e.g., “Ne Travaillez Jamais”), and general debauchery. It did not include kidnapping, bloodshed and murder, attributes that would become much more problematic in Western Europe during the early to mid-1970s. Debord viewed himself as a revolutionary, not as a political terrorist or militant. In a footnote, he added the following statement: “The formal evolution of poetry ends with Letterism, where the arbitrary arrangement of letters beyond Isou marks the obligatory intervention of the Dada spirit (terrorism applied to language).”154 Isou viewed the endpoint of his own avant-garde project as the destruction of the signifying capacity of artistic language. For Debord, on the other hand, the destruction of poetic language was only the beginning. Thinking beyond Mikhail Bakunin’s notion that “the passion for destruction is a creative passion,”155 Debord felt that the end of poetic language would not only herald a new phase of artistic creation but an entirely new purpose for language. Debord showed Falcou an example of what he called a “terrorist poem,” which is a “neo-poem for holy terrors.”156 For Debord, the “neo-poem” has no formal or aesthetic values; on the contrary, it serves the singular purpose of inciting scandal and provocation. The creation of the “neo-poem” signals the destruction of the signifying capacity of poetic language not from Isou’s earlier form of aesthetic terrorism but from a new type of direct action that would take anti-aesthetic terrorism out into the streets. Direct action allowed Debord to overcome the Letterists’ own limited understanding of aesthetic terrorism. Debord was prepared to go beyond Isou by advocating “the SILENCE”157 and to reject all forms of artistic or poetic conventions. Taken together, these tactics would affirm “the death of the idea of artistic creation

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(so dear to my friend Jean-Isidore).”158 To be clear, while Debord was advocating for absolute freedom in the form of radical self-consciousness, he was also mindful of Hegel’s warning regarding the relationship between absolute universal freedom and terror: “Universal freedom,” wrote Hegel, “can produce neither a positive work nor a deed; there is left for it only negative action; it is merely the fury of destruction.”159 Along with the “neo-poem,” Debord also decided to turn his attention to cinema and to apply the same revolutionary tactics to experimental filmmaking. As a provisional Letterist in the early 1950s, Debord saw first-hand that both Isou and Gil J Wolman were already producing the kind of anti-cinema that he found very appealing as a new form of Dada-esque self-expression. Debord had found his calling and was ready to attack cultural production writ large. Howls for Sade, for example, is filled with jarring disjunctions between sound and image, and abrupt patches of silence, including a final twenty-fourminute section of silence that is held under a black screen. The goal of Howls is to advance the end of cinema: “There is no film. Cinema is dead. No more films are possible. If you wish, we can move on to a discussion.”160 The film only appears to conclude when Voice 1 states, “I have nothing more to say to you.”161 A few minutes later, the screen momentarily switches from black to white and Voice 2 states, “Like lost children we live our unfinished adventures.”162 The film goes dark and falls into complete silence one last time, and remains so for twenty-four minutes. In “Prolegomena to All Future Cinema,”163 a short essay published in April 1952 in Ion (managed by Letterist Marc, O), Debord explains how artists must react violently against an ethical order that is soon to become obsolete. It is precisely this attitude that allowed Letterist avant-garde films such as Isou’s Venom and Eternity to be interpreted as a sustained howl for a broken universe.164 Creative values must now be centered on conditioning the spectator, either through Debord’s model of tri-dimensional psychology (i.e., the destruction of prose rhetoric by censoring or suppressing words and phrases, the deliberate misalignment of audio and visual elements, and the fragmented use of spoken or written dialogue) or through the nuclear cinema of Marc, O. Although I have not been able to find a conclusive definition of Marc, O’s notion of “nuclear cinema,” I suspect that, following the detonation of two nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively, any object that is considered “nuclear” would have the capacity to destroy everything in its path. At the very least, Debord’s form of tri-dimensional psychology and Marc, O’s nuclear cinema, here considered as radically new forms of propaganda, are designed to institute new methods of amplified conditioning in the spectator. Yet, for Debord, “the arts of the future can be nothing less than disruptions of situations,”165 namely, the disruption of the passive spectator’s aesthetic gaze. Debord was already growing

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weary of the present state of avant-garde filmmaking (i.e., Isou’s disjunctive cinema) because it belonged to an era that he thought was already coming to an end. He was more interested in spontaneous direct action designed to disrupt social situations. While he was still under the influence of Isou and the Letterists, Debord seemed more interested in filmmaking than he was in writing.166 With the release of Howls for Sade in 1952, Debord felt that his cinematic statement represented one of the most important provocations in the history of cinema, especially the intentional manipulation of the reality-effect167 of cinema by means of a violent and disjunctive disorganization. In the Introduction to Guy Debord Complete Cinematic Works (2003), Ken Knabb writes that Debord’s cinematic works are closer in spirit and style to “subversive provocations” than to artistic works properly speaking. In his opinion, “they are the most important radical films ever made, not just because they express the most profound radical perspective of the last century, but because they have no real cinematic competition . . . his films are the only ones that have made a coherent use of the situationist tactic of détournement.”168 Following Howls for Sade, the future of the arts will be radical upheavals—or nothing. For the Letterists of the early 1950s, the manipulation/destruction of a photograph signified revolt. For Debord, the manipulation/destruction of the cinematic image was designed to call attention to the tendency of spectators to avert their eyes to the excesses of disaster.169 In his discussion of Debord’s provocative use of terms such as “terror” and “terrorism,” Zacarias argues that Debord’s model should be considered as Rimbaldian,170 in the sense that his film evokes a link between the prose poetry of French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud and contemporary anarchist thought. By the 1890s, a synergy of mutual appreciation existed between the two groups. Historian Pierre Aubery states in his study on the relationship between anarchy and Symbolist poets that, simply put, “people were symbolists in literature and anarchists in politics.”171 Debord’s deliberate insertion of anarchic behavior into the world of cinema succeeded in shifting the focus of cinematic production from an autonomous, finished product to a subjective, open process of spectators allowing for the creative development of meaning. The film’s indeterminacy, disjunctive form, and semantic plurality exemplifies some of the main tenets associated with contemporary poetry and literature discussed a decade later by Umberto Eco is his book The Open Work (Opera Aperta, Bompiani 1962). Howls for Sade was never a film to be passively consumed; it was instead designed to trigger thought and active consideration by destroying the traditional notion of passive, aesthetic contemplation. The use of silence, for example, creates a privileged space in which conscious reflection becomes possible. The manipulation of the very materiality of film (i.e., the radical disjunction between

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sound and image) not only destroys the bourgeois re-presentation of reality but also re-introduces to the spectator the immanent ambiguity of reality itself. Artistic creation now falls under the category of revolutionary praxis because it communicates through thought, action, and reflection a desire to transform the social world. For Debord, “Terrorist activity is the last valid one. We establish a morality around the sole idea of freedom.”172 The “neopoem” (i.e., scandals, provocations, inscriptions) became the first vehicle by which absolute artistic and creative freedom could be achieved. All forms of praxis expressed within the field of culture would now exist beyond all forms of aesthetic judgments. Revolutionary praxis would engage the spectator and creator together in a substantial dialogue regarding the meaning of an artistic statement. To conclude this chapter and turn our attention to Debord and the LI, we wish to point out that Zacarias is correct in stating that “le scandale” remained for Debord his most often used propaganda tool. Triggering a scandal on October 29, 1952 was how Debord would transition away from his association with Isou’s Letterist group and toward the LI. In doing so, Debord would finally be able to take his place as one of the “holy terrors” of the Western European avant-garde tradition, the very same tradition from which he was earlier ready to walk away. To be clear, scandals have a rich history in French culture. They include the near riots that allegedly followed the opening performance of Alfred Jarry’s avant-garde play King Ubu in Paris on December 10, 1896, as well as the aforementioned inaugural performance of Igor Stravinsky’s avant-garde ballet The Rite of Spring in May 1913. For Debord, the explosive, dangerous power of the proverbial “scandal” was the most effective means by which to not only distinguish himself from Isou’s Letterist group but, with the help of poet Serge Berna, launch his own LI group in October 1952. Debord and Berna joined forces with Michel Mourre, who had previously been responsible for the “Notre-Dame Affair,” a singular cultural event that highlighted the possibility of actively disrupting the religious dimension of the spectacle of capitalist culture.173 At Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris on April 9, 1950, Berna, along with the more radical left-wing members of the Letterist group, dressed up as Dominican monks and infiltrated an Easter Sunday Mass that was being broadcasted live on French television. Mourre climbed up to the rostrum and launched into a blasphemous sermon that declared the death of God: I accuse the Catholic Church of swindling. I accuse the Catholic Church of infecting the world with its funereal morality, of being the running sore on the decomposed body of the West. Verily, I say unto you: God is dead. We vomit the agonizing insipidity of your prayers for your prayers have been the greasy smoke over the battlefields of our Europe. Go forth, then, into the tragic and

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exalting desert of a world where God is dead and till this earth anew with your bare hands, with your PROUD hands, with your unpraying hands.174

Two years later, Debord, Berna, Wolman and Jean-Louis Brau initiated their own scandalous “Chaplin Affair” when they disrupted a press conference being held on October 29, 1952 at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. The French government wished to celebrate Charlie Chaplin’s accomplishments by awarding him the Légion d’honneur and honoring the release of his latest film, Limelight. In “Down with Flat Feet,” a short essay penned and printed by the fledgling group and distributed to unsuspecting reporters attending the conference, Debord and the LI attacked the idea of Chaplin as a relevant political and cinematic figure in the early 1950s. Their attack was precise and harsh: Because you said you were the weak and the oppressed, to attack you was to attack the weak and the oppressed, but behind your rattan cane, some already smelled the cop’s truncheon. . . . Go to bed, lazy fascist, earn a lot of money . . . die quickly, we will give you a first-class funeral. May your last film really be your last.175

Debord clearly understood how the “Notre-Dame Affair” of 1950 had placed Isou’s Letterist group on the defensive regarding radical agitation and other forms of avant-garde conduct. Intense public scrutiny that focused on the Letterists’ behavior led to a rupture within the group itself, with one side struggling to maintain a degree of “artistic” integrity, and the other side wishing to pursue even more radical forms of direct action. Immediately after the internal split within the Letterist group, the more radical wing left Isou to join Debord and form the LI. Following his own “Chaplin Affair,” Debord set to work building upon his initial “terror” campaign, the very same kind that he had alluded to in his personal correspondences with Hervé Falcou. More importantly, the “Chaplin Affair” inadvertently exposed Isou for who he truly was. In a letter initially published in Combat on November 1, 1952 and reprinted in Letterist International #1, December 1952, Isou disavowed the actions of his own associates and insisted that their behavior was no more than an expression of youthful bitterness.176 Shortly after Isou’s disavowal against the Chaplin fiasco, Debord and the LI made their radical intentions even clearer. In “Position of the International Letterist,” the LI acknowledged appreciating the significance of Chaplin’s work in his own time; today, however, the most urgent exercise of liberty is the destruction of idols, especially those who praise liberty.177 Chaplin may have been the direct target of the above statement, but it was also indirectly aimed at “the Letterist dictator” himself, Isidore Isou. Following the “Chaplin Affair,” Debord accused Isou of being as irrelevant in his own time as Chaplin was in the 1950s. The critical distance that Isou had taken regarding the actions of younger avant-garde

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groups betrayed an irreconcilable tensions between extremism itself and those who no longer believe in it, between anarchism and those who renounce the bitterness of youth, and between those over twenty and those under thirty.178 Reflecting upon the “Chaplin Affair,” Debord learned an important lifelesson regarding what individuals say versus what they do or, as he would later understand it, between “what they would like to do and what they can do.”179 Isou’s defensive response against members of his own Letterist group made it abundantly clear that he himself was not a true revolutionary who was prepared to engage completely in inciting cultural revolution. For Debord, Isou seemed more concerned with how he appeared to others. Any attention given to Isou had to be on his terms and had to focus exclusively on artistic production. It was one thing to tacitly support aesthetic revolt and destroy the signifying capacity of poetic language; it was an altogether different goal to actively transcend art by destroying it. From the perspective of meaningful direct action, Debord’s first film was both a calling card to the Letterist movement and an implicit “Fuck you!” to Isou. In a revised screenplay to Howls for Sade, Voice 1 exclaims, “And their revolts become conformisms.”180 Although he does not explicitly identify Isou by name, Debord contextualizes the statement by preceding it with other names that bear directly on the failure of the Letterists to move beyond the cafés of Saint-Germain-des-Près,181 or to show up at Cannes, determined to provoke a scandal, but only manage to draw attention to themselves.182

NOTES 1. Guy Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (1950) in Le marquis de Sade a des yeux de fille (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 2004), 57. 2. Ibid., Debord, “Limites,” 38. 3. Vincent Kaufmann in Debord, Œuvres, edition established and annotated by Jean-Louis Rançon in collaboration with Alice Debord. (Paris: Gallimard, 2006), 24. 4. Kaufmann, Guy Debord: Revolution in the Service of Poetry, translated by Robert Bononno (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 151. 5. Debord, “Un Pas en Arrière” (“One Step Back”), Potlatch No. 28 (May 22, 1955) in Potlatch (1954-1957) (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 263. 6. Debord, “Conscious Changes in Everyday Life” (1961) in Situationist International Anthology (revised and expanded edition), edited and translated by Ken Knabb (Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2006), 93. 7. In The Third Unconscious (London: Verso, 2021), Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi argues that one the by-products of the various lockdowns and forced isolations associated with the 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic is the amount of time individuals have spent online writing to each other (or no one in particular). For Berardi, the result is “an immense schismogenetic [i.e., the creation of opposing factions] poem”

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whose intention “is to produce the harmonic form of the mutation: absorbing the viral ritournelle [i.e., a tedious repetition] that provokes mutation, and the concatenating that ritournelle with the ritournelle of individuals, small groups, large crowds, social bodies, all collaborating to rewrite the poetical and computing software of social interaction” (12). Schismogenesis, a term originally associated with anthropologist Gregory Bateson, refers to symmetrical forms of rivalry and complementary forms of dominance and submission. What Berardi is pointing out in this passage is that the amplification of either type can reach a destructive stage that destroys both parties. 8. Although Debord’s personal correspondences are filled with instances of customs confiscating documents, personal letters, and press releases, I will provide only a single example. In a letter to Italian art critic and journalist Luciano Pistoi dated June 30, 1958, Debord pointed out that copies of “Rapporto sulla construzione delle situazoni” (the Italian translation of “Report on the Construction of Situations”) had not yet arrived and had likely been confiscated by customs without he being aware of it. Debord, Correspondance, volume 1 juin 1957-août 1960, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 1999), 107. English translation, 128. 9. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (1949) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 15, 17. 10. Jean-Louis Rançon in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 27. 11. In a letter to writer and film theorist Thomas Y. Levin dated April 24, 1989, Debord clarified that the name Gil J Wolman should be written without a period: at that time, Letterists wanted to overturn the spelling their own names. Debord, letter to Thomas Levin” in Correspondance volume 7 (2008), 83. 12. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (March 5, 1951) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 85. 13. Bertrand Cochard, “La poétisation de l’existence. Sur l’usage du terme « poésie » dans l’œuvre de Guy Debord” in Fabula, n° 18, “Un je-ne-sais-quoi de ‘poétique,’” dir. Nadja Cohen et Anne Reverseau, April 2017, http://www​.fabula​.org​ /lht​/index​.php​?id​=1919. 14. “Redeemed from the fire, driven now by the spirit, we advance from opinion to opinion, through one party after another .  .  . and yet we feel no sense of guilt,” Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, all too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, translated by R. J. Hollingdale, Introduction by Richard Schacht (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), sec. 637. 15. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (December 25, 1950) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 76. 16. Ibid., Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (1950), 56. 17. Ibid., Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (April 15, 1951), 90. 18. Ibid., Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (December 25, 1950), 76. 19. Debord, letter to Patrick Straram (October 30, 1960) in Correspondance volume 2 septembre 1960- décembre 1964, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 2001), 39. See also Debord and Pierre Canjeurs dated 20 July 1960, “Preliminaries Toward Defining a Unitary Revolutionary Program,” especially Section 1. Capitalism: A Society Without Culture” in Knabb (2006), 387–393. 20. See Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture” in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973).

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21. Ibid., 5–7. 22. Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, Volume 1: Archaic Greece The Mind of Athens, second edition, translated by Gilbert Highet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), ix. 23. Charles Baudelaire, “The Salon of 1846” in Selected Writings on Art and Literature, translated with an Introduction by P. E. Charvet (London: Penguin, 2006), 86. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid., 107. 26. Dwight McDonald, “A Theory of Mass Culture” in Diogenes, No. 3, Summer 1953, p. 12. 27. Jeanne Willette, “The Historical Culture of ‘The Avant-Garde and Kitsch,’ 1939 by Clement Greenberg,” posted on Art History Unstuffed, para. 3, my emphases. https://arthistoryunstuffed​.com​/the​-avant​-garde​-and​-kitsch​-1939/. 28. Ibid., para. 4. 29. Debord, “Report on the Construction of Situations” in Knabb (2006), 32. 30. Dwight McDonald, “A Theory of Mass Culture” in Diogenes, No. 3, Summer 1953, p. 13. 31. Debord, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, translated by Malcolm Imrie (London: Verso, 1998), 8. Debord distinguishes the integrated spectacle of France and Italy from the concentrated (political) spectacle of Russian and German, and the diffused (consumption) spectacle of the United States. 32. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), viii, my emphases. 33. McDonald (1953), p. 15. 34. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, no translator given, edited by S. Ryazanskaya (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998), 37. 35. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (April 15, 1951) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 89. 36. Ibid. 37. Bertrand D’Astorg, Introduction au Monde le la Terreur (Paris: Seuil, 1945), 68. 38. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (15 April 1951) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 89. 39. “Toujours” (“Always”), Guillaume Apollinaire, Selected Writings, translated with a critical Introduction by Roger Shattuck (New York: New Directions, 1971), 177. 40. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (1950) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 62, 65. 41. Ibid., Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (1951), 119. 42. Ibid., 116. 43. Kaufmann, “Préface” in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 9. 44. Ibid. 45. Jean-Michel Mension. The Tribe, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith (San Francisco: City Lights, 2001), 43, 108. 46. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (April 15, 1951) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 86.

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47. Ibid., Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (April 15, 1951), 87. 48. Kaufmann, “Préface” in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 10. 49. Letterist International, “Proposals for Rationally Improving the City of Paris” (October 1955) in Knabb (2006), 13. 50. Debord and Gil J Wolman, “A User’s Guide for Détournement” (1956) in Knabb (2006), 16. 51. Debord, letter to Gil Wolman” (Thursday night [June], 1953) in Correspondance volume 0 septembre 1951 – juillet 1957, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 2010), 27. 52. Letterist International, “Proposals for Rationally Improving the City of Paris” (October 1955) in Knabb (2006), 13. 53. ‘Debord, letter to Gil Wolman” (Thursday night, [June], 1953) in Correspondance volume 0 (2010), 28. 54. Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, edited by Daniel Breazeale, translated by R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 59, my emphasis. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid., 60. 57. Kaufmann (2006), 1. 58. Debord, letter to Pier Simondo (April 21, 1957) in Correspondance volume “0” (2010), 176. 59. Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (July 7, 1969) in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 96. 60. Debord, letter to Mustapha Khayati (Wednesday, December 15, 1965) in Correspondance volume 3 (2003), 101. 61. Debord, letter to Gallizio (Tuesday [April 15] 1958) in Correspondance volume 1 (1999), 88. English translation, 109. 62. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jorn (July 6, 1960), 349. 63. Debord, letter to Mustapha Khayati (Wednesday, August 10, 1966) in Correspondance volume 3 (2003), 158. 64. Numerous letters written during the summer and early fall 1970 reflect Debord’s growing frustration with the few remaining members of the Situationist International regarding the need to seriously discuss new theoretical directives for the group. From Debord’s perspective, the SI was a critical crossroad, especially given the outward appearance of a theoretical paralysis that had gripped its members and an under-developed sense of real autonomous activities. Remaining members were also deliberately silent or avoided critical conversations with Debord regarding the manner in which recent members had been dismissed for personal, arbitrary, or “abstract” reasons. In a seventeen-page communication to fellow members dated July 27, 1970, Debord ended with a simple request: “We will therefore still have to talk about all this, until the facts make it possible to be silent” (271). 65. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (1949) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 17. 66. “In this perspective, pronouns—like the other indicators but unlike the other linguistic signs referring to a lexical reality—are presented as ‘empty signs,’ which become ‘full’ as soon as the speaker assumes them in an instance of discourse. Their scope is to enact ‘the conversion of language into discourse’ and to permit the passage

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from langue to parole,” Giorgio Agamben, Language and Death: The Place of Negativity, translated by Karen E. Pinkus with Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 24. 67. Debord, screenplay for “Howls for Sade” in Œuvres (2006), 68. Ken Knabb translates the phrase as “Like lost children we live our unfinished adventures” See Guy Debord Complete Cinematic Works: Scripts, Stills, Documents, translated and edited by Ken Knabb (Oakland: AK Press, 2003), 11. 68. Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 222. 69. Sarah Fishman, “Crisis and Change in the Juvenile Justice System, 19341945” in Crisis and Renewal in France 1918-1962, edited by Kenneth Mouré and Martin S. Alexander (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 167. 70. Kaufmann (2006), 5. 71. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (April 15, 1951) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 88. 72. This sentiment not only introduces Debord’s short essay “Prolégomènes à tout cinema future” but is also heard on the soundtrack of Howls for Sade. See Knabb (2003), 8. 73. Kaufmann (2006), 5. 74. “Notice pour la Fédération français des ciné-clubs: Éclarissements sur le film Hurlement en faveur de Sade” in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 70. 75. Debord, “Howls for Sade” in Knabb (2003), 1. 76. Debord, letter to Asger Jorn (August 23, 1962) in Debord, Correspondance, volume 2 (2001), 154. 77. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (February 27, 1952) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 63. 78. G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, translated by A. V. Miller (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, Inc, 1993), 69. 79. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (February 27, 1952) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 63. 80. In “Introduction à 1930,” Louis Aragon argues that certain words possess “an incantatory power.” See La Révolution Surréaliste No. 12 (December 15, 1929) in La Révolution Surréaliste collection complete, edited by MM, Michel Carassou, Georges Goldfayn, Bernard Loliée, Pierre Naville and Dominique Rabourdin (Paris: Jean-Michel Place, 1975), 57. 81. Debord, letter to Uwe Lauson (April 23, 1963) in Correspondance volume 2 (2001), 216. 82. Debord, letter to Raoul Vaneigem ([End] February 1966) in Correspondance volume 3 (2003), 133. 83. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (1950) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 54. 84. Debord, Œuvres (2006), 32. On March 15, 1950, the World Peace Council approved the Stockholm Appeal which today continues to call for an absolute ban on nuclear weapons. In France, the appeal was initiated by the 1935 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Globally, the appeal has collected 400 million signatures, with 14 million in France.

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85. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (1950) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 55. 86. Charles Russell, “The Critical Reception of the Avant-garde,” in French as “La réception critique de l’avant-garde,” translated by Dina Weisgerber, Les avantgardes littéraire au XXe siecle, edited by Jean Weisgerber (Budapest: Akademiai Kiads, 1984), II Théorie, 1124. 87. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou, ( February 22, 1950) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 59. 88. Ibid., Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (1950), 56. 89. Ibid., Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (February 27, 1952), 62. 90. Ibid. 91. Francis Bacon alludes to a similar metaphor in his discussion of the Idols of the Tribe: “the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.” Francis Bacon, The New Organon and Related Writings, edited, with an Introduction, by Fulton H. Anderson (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1960), sec. XLI. 92. “La nuit du Cinéma” (October 13, 1952), in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 69. 93. Ibid. 94. Debord, letter to Marc-Gilbert Guillaumin ( September 23, 1951) in Correspondance volume “0” (2010), 13. 95. Ibid., 14. 96. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (June 24, 1951) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 102. 97. La Croisette is a major road in Cannes made up of a boulevard and promenade which runs along the beaches facing the Bay of Cannes. It is populated with numerous hotels, luxury shops and resort residences, as well as a major event and tourism center on the Côte d'Azur. It is most well-known for the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès, where the Cannes Film Festival is held yearly. 98. Debord, “Du role de l’écriture” (“On the Role of Writing”), Potlatch 23 (1 October 13, 1955) in Potlatch (1954-1957) (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 202. 99. Kaira M. Cabañas, Off-Screen Cinema: Isidore Isou and the Lettrist AvantGarde (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 22–23. 100. Ibid. 25. 101. Andrew V. Uroskie, “Beyond the Black Box: The Lettrist Cinema of Disjunction” in October 135, Winter 2011, 25–26. 102. Ibid., 26. 103. Letterists, “Finis le cinema français,” https://situationnisteblog​.wordpress​ .com​/2014​/09​/28​/fini​-le​-cinema​-francais​-1952/. 104. Ibid. 105. Debord, letter to Simone Dubreuilh (January 31, 1952) in Correspondance volume “0” (2010), 19. 106. Ibid., Debord, letter to Robert Chazal (November 1952), 20. 107. Ibid. 108. Ibid. The French term “ordure” means both “garbage” and “shit.” 109. There was an indirect link between Debord and Picasso. Romuald Dor was Debord’s professor of French, Greek and Latin in Nice during his 1948–1949 school

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year. Dor was also the curator of Musée d’Antibes; He was known to have invited Picasso to the work the Musée in 1946. See Debord, Œuvres (2006), 32. 110. Debord, letter to Pablo Picasso (Summer 1952) in Correspondance volume “0” (2010), 19. 111. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (April 15, 1951) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 86. 112. Ibid., Debord, Letter to Hervé Falcou ( February 27, 1952), 63. 113. Ibid., Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (April 15, 1951), 91. 114. Ibid., Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (December 17, 1950), 75. 115. Ibid., Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (1950), 54. 116. Antoine-Louis de Saint-Just, “Organt” in Œuvres complètes, edition established and presented by Anne Kupiec and Miguel Abensour (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), 121. 117. Saint-Just, “L’Esprit de la revolution et de la constitution de la France” in Œuvres complètes, edition established and presented by Anne Kupiec and Miguel Abensour (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), 363. 118. Ibid., Saint-Just, “Rapport sure les personnes incarcérées,” 667. See also Debord, letter to J. V. Martin (8 May 1963), Correspondance volume 2 (2001), 225. 119. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (April 15, 1951) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 87. 120. Ibid., Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (1950), 118. 121. Ibid., Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (1951), 86. 122. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction” in The Marx-Engels Reader, second edition, edited by Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton, 1978), 65. 123. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (1951) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 86. 124. Isidore Isou, “Principes Poétiques et Musicaux du Mouvement Lettriste,” La Dictature Lettriste (January 1946), 7. https://gallica​.bnf​.fr​/ark:​/12148​/bpt6k32815091. 125. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (March 5, 1950) in Les marquis de Sade (2004), 49. 126. Ibid. 127. André Breton, “Manifesto of Surrealism” in Manifestoes of Surrealism, translated by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), 20. 128. “Soluble Fish” in Breton (1972), 54. 129. Ibid., 91. 130. Many “rootless children” who were considered “vagrants” by the law and would often end up in La Santé prison (24). In his autobiography, Jean-Michel Mension mentions how Debord was fascinated by individuals who were “on the lam from society” (39). “Yes,” wrote Mension, “I think Debord was somewhat ­fascinated by the reformatory or, more precisely, by prison: he thought it was right, it was normal, to go to prison if you led that type of life . . . ” (39, 41). Jean-Michel Mension, The Tribe, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith (San Francisco: City Lights, 2001). 131. Breton, “Political Position of Today’s Art” (1972), 221.

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132. Ibid., my emphasis. 133. Gabriel Ferreira Zacarias, “Lettristes, situationnistes et terrorisme d’avantgarde” in Trans (online edition), 15, 2013, http://trans​.revues​.org​/776. 134. Debord, “Directives” in Œuvres (2006), 654–655. 135. Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, translated and annotated by Ken Knabb (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2014), sec. 191. 136. Debord, “The Situationists and the New Forms of Action in Politics and Art” (1963) in Knabb (2006), 403. 137. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (no date given) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 23. 138. Ibid., Debord, untitled page, 9. 139. Zacarias (2013), para. 1. 140. Ibid. 141. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (1950) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 60. See also the 1950 handwritten sign “Dadaist Guy Debord awaits you at the Porte des Lila Metro station” reproduced in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 28. 142. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou ( June 25, 1951) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 104. 143. Ibid. 144. Isou, “Sommaire” in La Dictature Lettriste (1946), 4. 145. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (June 25, 1951) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 104. 146. In “L’Expression de la Révolution Algérienne et l’Imposteur Kateb Yacine” (“The Expression of the Algerian Revolution and the Imposter Kateb Yacine,” Potlatch 27, November 2, 1956), Debord referred to a “a certain elegance in Char’s poetic language.” See Potlatch (1996), 250. In a letter to André Frankin dated December 28, 1958, Debord refers to Algerian writer Kateb Yacine’s poetry as “manifestly sub-René Char.” See a letter to André Frankin dated December 28, 1958 in Debord, Correspondance volume 1 (1999), 170. English translation, 189. 147. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (1951) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 82. 148. Ibid., Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (June 25, 1951), 104. The term “Propagande” is underlined and the phrase “MANIFESTE POUR UNE ÉTERNITÉ DE LA VIOLENCE” in written in block letters. 149. Ibid., Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (1951), 115-119. 150. “Terrorism Shall Form Secret Societies.” Ibid., 117. 151. Ibid., 115. 152. Ibid. 153. Ibid. 117. 154. Ibid., 118, my emphasis. 155. Mikhail Bakunin, “1842 The Reaction in Germany” in Bakunin on Anarchy: Selected Works by the Activist-Founder of World Anarchism, edited, translated, with an Introduction and commentary by Sam Dolgoff, Preface by Paul Avrich (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), 57. 156. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (June 21, 1951) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 95.

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157. Ibid., letter to Hervé Falcou (June 25, 1951), 104. 158. Ibid. 159. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A. V. Miller with Analysis of the Text and Foreword by J. N. Findley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 359. 160. Debord, screenplay for Howls for Sade in Knabb (2003), 2. 161. Ibid., 11. 162. Ibid. 163. The following is a summary taken from “Prolégomènes à tout cinema future” in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 46. 164. Debord, “Prolégomènes à tout cinema future” (1952) in Œuvres (2006), 46. 165. Debord, screenplay for “Howls for Sade” in Knabb (2003), 2. 166. Debord, “Prolégomènes à tout cinema future” (1952) in Œuvres (2006), 46. 167. The “reality-effect” of cinema is the notion of cinema as a visual “re-presentation” of reality using a range of cinematic devices including editing, camera movement (i.e., tracking, reframing, etc.), and depth of field lenses. 168. Knabb (2003), viii. 169. Debord, “Prolégomènes à tout cinema future” in Œuvres (2006), 46. 170. Zacarias (2013), para. 10. 171. Pierre Aubery, “The Anarchism and Literati of the Symbolist Period,” The French Review, Vol. 42, No. 1 (October 1968), 39. 172. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (1951) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 117. 173. In Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth-Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), Greil Marcus regards the temporary seizure of Notre-Dame Cathedral as “the LI’s founding crime as legend.” Marcus contrast the legend with Ivan Chtcheglov’s exclusion “as the LI’s founding crime as act” (384, my emphases). 174. Serge Berna and Michel Mourre and Serge Berna, “The-Mourre-BernaProclamation,” https://babbleonbabylon​.wordpress​.com​/2008​/04​/10​/remembering​ -the​ -mourre​ -berna​ -proclamation/. The following year, Mourre published Malgré le blaspheme (Despite the Blasphemy, Julliard, 1951), in which he explained how poverty and hunger, and the desire to “engage,” led him on Easter Day 1950, to “The Notre-Dame Affair.” The “Affair” was an act of despair by a disoriented individual, yet one that also made it possible for him to regain his mental balance. 175. Debord, Serge Berna, Jean-Louis Brau, Gil. J Wolman, “Finis les pieds plats” in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 84-85. 176. Jean-Isidore Isou, Maurice LeMaitre, Gabriel Pomerand, “The Lettrists disavow the insulters of Chaplin,” Combat, November 1, 1952, http://www​.notbored​.org​ /lettrist​-disavowal​.html 177. Debord, Berna, Brau, Wolman, “Position de l’International Lettriste” in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 85–86. 178. Ibid., 86. 179. Debord and Gianfranco Sanguinetti, The Real Split in the International: Theses on the Situationist International and its Time, 1972, translated by John McHale (London: Pluto Press, 2003), sec. 49.

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180. Debord, screenplay for “Howls for Sade” in Knabb (2003), 3. 181. Debord, Berna, Brau, Wolman, “Position de l’International Lettriste” in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 86. 182. Ibid.

Chapter 2

Debord and the Letterist International (1952–1957)

In late October 1952, Guy Debord ended a hitherto fruitful working relationship1 with Isidore Isou and his Letterist group by extricating himself out from under Isou’s “dictatorial”2 control and taking with him the Left Letterists3 to form the Letterist International (LI) (1952–1957, henceforth known as the LI). Debord’s time with the LI is another important period in his development as a revolutionary thinker and it is to this phase of his development that we will now focus our attention. The period ends in July 1957 when Debord decides to merge the remaining LI members with the avant-garde art group CoBrA (1948–1951), the International Movement for An Imaginist Bauhaus (1954–1957), and artist Ralph Rumney’s London Psychogeographical Council of London (1957) to constitute the first incarnation of the Situationist International (SI) (1957–1972).4 To be clear, the LI and the subsequent SI are not two distinct entities but rather one original, continuous, and specific revolutionary project that, unlike other avant-garde movements claiming to last several generations (e.g., Surrealism), transformed itself according to the particular needs of history. From his own point of view, the “origins” of Debord’s entire revolutionary project must be understood as beginning in October 1952 and lasting until 1972.5 For our purposes, we will explore a number of important themes that manifested themselves during the period 1952–1957 and investigate how they relate to Debord’s evolving politics of communication. These include new strategic forms of thinking and theorizing regarding détournement and metagraphy, a critical re-assessment of poetry and the creative power of poetic language, a renewed push toward the use of “terror” and anti-aesthetic “terrorism,” and, most importantly, attempts to rediscover the lost radicality of Dada and Surrealism. By critically rethinking the revolutionary potential of these particular art movements, Debord hoped to revive the revolutionary 53

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impulse that had advanced historically through cultural production in a dialectic of moral outrage. The first incarnation of the LI included Debord, artist/filmmaker Gil J Wolman, writer Jean-Louis Brau, and poet Serge Berna. By the time it had published its first official “Manifesto” (Letterist International No. 2, February 1953),6 the LI was already beginning to resemble an extended family of friends, acquaintances, and drinking buddies. The group included Sarah Abouaf, P. J. Berlé, René Leibé, Mohammed Dahou, Linda Fried, Françoise Lejare, Jean-Michel Mension, and Éliane Pápaï. It should be pointed out that Debord’s desire to populate the collective with women, North-African Arabs, and Jews was part of a deliberate affront against French bourgeois sensibilities. “Hanging out with North Africans,” explained one-time LI member Jean-Michel Mension, “was a clear way of being against the bourgeoisie, against the morons, against the French.”7 The overriding tenor of the group’s early critical statements centred on insults, scandals, and deliberate provocations, beginning, as we saw at the end of chapter 1, with its inaugural public attack on Charlie Chaplin. To be clear, the group’s hatred for Chaplin was not centred on his previous work as an actor or director;8 what it objected to mostly was that he was receiving the Légion d’Honneur from the Paris police chief.9 Following publication of the first issue of Potlatch on 22 June 1954, the LI eventually settled into its core membership. Along with Debord, the group included Dahou (founder of the Algerian section of the LI and later the Algerian faction of the SI), Wolman, Henri de Béarn, Potlatch editor-in-chief André-Frank Conord, painter Jacques Fillon, and writer Patrick Straram.10 A week later, and for no particular reason,11 it was announced in a short article entitled “There’s the Door” that the group was already expelling members. These included Serge Berna (“lack of intellectual rigor”), Jean-Michel Mension (“simply decorative”),12 Jean-Louis Brau (“militaristic deviation”), and Ivan Chtcheglov (“mythomania, delirium of interpretation – lack of revolutionary consciousness”).13 It is worth noting that cohesion-through-exclusion was a consistent strategy used both by the LI and later the SI to strengthen its theoretical resolve. It also influenced working relationships with other revolutionary groups in France and beyond. Not only were individuals collectively expelled from the LI on a regular basis, but remaining members were warned by Debord not to contact ex-communicated members; such interactions were considered taboo.14 The period between 1952 and 1957 also includes Debord’s encounter with a struggling writer-poet named Ivan Chtcheglov (alias Gilles Ivain), a tragic figure who indirectly influenced early Situationist strategies, but whose increasingly serious mental health issues would go on to haunt Debord for the rest of his life. Debord had a tendency of taking the best from individuals

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with which he surrounded himself, but he was also quick to break off relationships as soon as those same individual no longer had anything to add to his ever-evolving notion of cultural revolution.15 Along with Hervé Falcou and, to a certain extent, Wolman and Mension, Chtcheglov is one of several early transformative figures who deeply impacted Debord’s intellectual development as a revolutionary thinker. In the words of early SI member Ralph Rumney, “we should not forget Ivan Chtcheglov, [since it was he] who was the real inventor of psychogeography.”16 During the latter half of its existence, the LI published Potlatch (1954– 1957), a free journal that not only provided a public forum through which Debord was not only able to initiate an international version of his politics of communication but also helped to clarify many of the strategic concerns (i.e., psychogeography, dérive, and détournement) that would carry into the first phase of the SI (1957–1962). According to Debord, the overall goal of LI leaflets was to establish connections with likeminded individuals throughout Western Europe and North Africa, as well as influence the development of nascent revolutionary ideas in other countries.17 Throughout his life Debord never deviated from the desire to generate critical theories and revolutionary strategies, and to communicate them to other likeminded groups and individuals. He viewed his role in this international project as a creator/facilitator of theories and concepts designed to advance revolutionary movements elsewhere: It was not his job, however, to speak on their behalf, which is exactly what he faced with student protesters in France in May 1968, and then later on with revolutionaries in Spain and Portugal in the mid-1970s. Debord may have wished to awaken a revolutionary consciousness within each of these disparate groups but he also wished to let them think and speak for themselves. In each case, communicative difficulties remained between the existence of pre-existing revolutionary practices and the diffusion of new ideas that might radically transform these selfsame practices. In order to focus their energies on developing international connections, the LI stopped providing copies of Potlatch to “less well-written”18 French newspapers’ because they did not wish to have their revolutionary ideas watered-down by others and then re-presented in what Debord called “the infantile press.”19 It was not a matter of disdain or some kind of metaphysical-libertarian purity toward an industry that would never appear favorable toward their revolutionary project.20 On the contrary, it was a conscious decision to reach out and communicate only with likeminded individuals. Besides, chasing after advertisers to support a revolutionary bulletin such as theirs would not have served their cause in any significant way; the LI had nothing else to sell except criticism, scandal, and revolt. In the introduction to the second section of Debord’s Works (2006), Vincent Kaufmann describes this crucial period in the following manner.

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The Potlatch period of Letterism is more intellectual than the first, more critical, more organized, and also more political. It massacres the official avant-garde with an often-ferocious humor. . . . It develops, with an already keen sense of the legend to come, themes specific to the Letterist International (mainly psychogeography and détournement), but it also positions itself politically, beyond the extreme left: unfailing anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist, unfailing antiStalinist, etc.21

Before proceeding any further, we should take a moment and explain the effect Potlatch bulletins had on Debord and on other members of the LI. The Potlatch bulletin appeared twenty-seven times, between June 22, 1954 and November 5, 1957. They numbered from 1 to 29, with the bulletin of August 17, 1954 combining Nos. 9, 10, and 11. No. 30 was distributed later on July 15, 1959 (two years after the inception of the SI) as a stand-alone issue. Until the combined issues Nos. 9-10-11, Potlatch published weekly; after that, it was printed and distributed monthly. While only fifty copies of the first issue were printed, Debord estimated that nearly five hundred copies of later issues were printed and distributed to various readers. It is also important to remember that, although he and Wolman began the LI together, Debord viewed himself only as a member of the group and never as its unquestioned leader. To do so would have contradicted his lifelong desire to maintain an anti-bureaucratic, anti-hierarchical organization. As a result, the preparation and publication of Potlatch was “led”22 sequentially by André-Frank Conord (Nos. 1–8), Mohamed Dahou (Nos. 9–18), Gil J Wolman (No. 19), once again by Mohamed Dahou (Nos. 20–22), and, finally, Jacques Fillon (Nos. 23–24). Nos. 25–30 were compiled without a primary editor and published only intermittently. Debord mentioned in a letter to Floriana Lebovici, the widow of French publisher Gérard Lebovici, that Potlatch initially described itself as a “Newsletter of the French group of the Letterist International” (Nos. 1–21) and only later as a “Newsletter of the Letterist International” (Nos. 22–29).23 While the LI was reappraising its initial goal of a sustained cultural critique of postwar avant-garde activities within France, Debord was already orienting the LI’s political writings toward the conscious awakening of a truly international revolutionary spirit. Writing in Potlatch No. 30 (July 15, 1959), Debord understood the critical role the bulletin had played in the historical development of new forms of cultural life: “As an instrument of propaganda in a period of transition between insufficient and failed avant-garde attempts during the post-war period and the organization of the cultural revolution, which is now systematically beginning, Potlatch was undoubtedly in its time the most extreme expression, that is to say, the most advanced in the search for a new culture, and a new life.”24 The strategic intent of Potlatch was to orient the consciousness of likeminded groups and individuals toward a truly

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international revolutionary movement that would combine avant-garde cultural creation with a revolutionary critique of society. As we will see shortly, readers who know Debord only through his association with the SI will no doubt recognize many themes such as dérive, détournement, and psychogeography are presented here in their original formulations. To be clear, of all the various revolutionary approaches initiated by the LI, only détournement remained a consistent strategy used by Debord in his written and film work. Before turning our attention to Debord and the LI, let us revisit some of the main points that we have already raised. The main takeaway in the previous chapter is the identification of unique personal characteristics that foreshadow Debord’s intellectual development as an avant-garde revolutionary thinker. The reason for starting at this early point is to illustrate how his politics of communication develops in tandem with his avant-garde revolutionary thought. While he may have viewed himself and his friend Hervé Falcou as “holy terrors,”25 he applied a similar metaphor to fellow LI members when he described them as “young and beautiful” and who would instead answer “Révolution!”26 when told to suffer. We also mentioned that Debord’s early letters to Falcou contain a mission statement that continued throughout his intellectual life, namely, the desire for a cultural revolution contingent on the liberation of the creative potential of social individuals. Creativity would no longer be harnessed to traditional forms of artistic production but would instead be applied to a radical transformation of everyday life. The destructive, yet creative, power of poetic language would give rise to a “poetry” of everyday life. But Debord was also aware that inferior Surrealist strategies such as automatic writing27 had failed to create a kind of anti-aesthetic outrage that could initiate and maintain a cultural revolution. Writing in October 1954, Debord argued that Surrealists did not appear concerned with economic problems and social revolution.28 They seemed to believe instead that they could escape economic contingencies, even though they still had to live under the same capitalist system and consume the same products as everyone else. Rather than produce irrelevant avant-garde prose poetry, Debord hoped instead that the lost sense of radicalism, first initiated in French Symbolism but then exhausted in Dada and Surrealism, could be re-ignited and placed at the heart of a theoretical stratagem that would revolutionize human existence under bureaucratic capitalism. It was no longer a question of merely relishing the charms of “harmless”29 uproar. It was a matter of the radical transformation of everyday life and the unfolding of a social space in which new ways of thinking, reflecting, and creating can have their being. The poetic power of a social space, its shadowy openings, its inviting passageways, its beautiful-ugly décor, its landscape of faces, the craggy melody of its uneven skyline—everything that escapes the smooth, linear, utilitarian logic

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of economics—could now be explored and defined using the native poetic language of its inhabitants. Debord’s first significant break as a writer and revolutionary thinker began in October 1954 when he and Wolman came into contact with Paul Nougé and Marcel Mariën, two Belgian Surrealists who were already busy publishing the literary periodical Naked Lips (Les Lèvres Nues, 1954–1958/1960). Sensing mutual admiration for one another’s work, Nougé suggested to Debord and Wolman that they collaborate together on the magazine. For Debord and Wolman, Naked Lips seemed to represent the best literary format through which to activate the revolutionary consciousness of Belgian and French artistic communities.30 For them, a text such as “Moscow Poetry” (Moscou la poésie)31 perfectly illustrated the type of avant-garde propaganda that the LI was already outlining in their own theoretical writings. Moreover, this type of revolutionary propaganda stood apart (and yet commented on) the notorious Breton-Rimbaud-Letterist triumvirate that still managed to stir interest in Paris newspapers.32 During its four-year run, Debord would go on to publish a number of key texts in the Belgian periodical, including “Introduction to a critique of urban geography,” in No. 6 (September 1955), a first draft of the shooting script for Howls for Sade in No. 7 (December 1955),33 “Uses of Détournement” in No. 8 (May 1956), and “Theory of the Dérive” in No. 9 (November 1956).34 Allowing Debord, Wolman, Bernstein, and other members a secondary outlet through which to disseminate revolutionary theories regarding détournement, dérive, and psychogeography meant that the LI could now finally begin to reach a new (and potentially sympathetic) Western European audience within the world of the avant-garde, while at the same time continuing to develop revolutionary political strategies aimed at helping colonized nations such as Algeria and Guatemala to overthrow colonial powers. By the late 1950s, the working relationship between the two parties came to a satisfactory end. Debord revealed to Mariën that the LI’s relationship with Naked Lips was at a crossroads. On the one hand, “Uses of Détournement” did not yet display the kind of use value that would have justified an independent publication. But, on the other hand, its length and theoretical rigor were already beginning to overshadow other entries in the same issue.35 According to art historian François Coadou, the initial contact between the LI and the Brussels-based Surrealist group dates back to the end of October and beginning of November 1952.36 Arriving in Brussels to supervise the projection of Isou’s Venom and Eternity at the Ecran du Séminaire des Arts on October 31 (two days after the infamous “Chaplin Affair” at the Hotel Ritz in Paris that launched the LI), Debord, Wolman, and Jean-Louis Brau took the opportunity to visit the Surrealist artist René Magritte. The interaction between the elder artist and the much younger group members was warm

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and cordial. Magritte agreed to forward copies of his art-periodical The Map Following Nature (La Carte D’Après Nature) to them, along with a promise from the group to respond to the following questions: “What meaning do you give to the term poetry?” (Issue No. 5, September 1953) and “Does thought enlighten us and our actions with the same indifference as the sun; or what is our Hope and what is its value?” (Issue No. 6, April 1954). The opportunity to respond critically to these questions gave Debord and the LI the opportunity to reiterate the manner in which the transcendence of poetics37 could be achieved in a consistent, theoretical, and systematic manner. On the meaning of the term “poetry” posed in the first question, the LI submitted the following collective response. Poetry has exhausted its last formal prestige. Beyond aesthetics, it is all in the power of men [sic] over their adventures. Poetry can be read on faces. Therefore, it is urgent to create new faces. Poetry is in the form of cities. Thus, we are going to build new shocking ones. The new beauty will be SITUATIONAL, that is to say, temporary and lived. . . . Poetry for us means no more than the elaboration of entirely new behaviors, and the means to become passionate about those behaviors.38

Compared to the LI’s response to the first question, which posits an anti-aesthetic stance regarding using poetry at the service of revolution, the response to the second question regarding principles of hope suggests a thorough critique of the totality of the modern world. Indifference has made this world, but we cannot live there. . . . Another human condition should be dictated. Economic taboos and their moral corollaries will in any case soon be destroyed by the agreement of all men. The problems to which we are still obliged to attach some importance will be overcome, with the contradictions of today, because the old myths only determine us until the day when we experience more violent ones. A complete civilization will have to be made, where all the forms of activity will tend permanently to the passionate upheaval of life.39

The mutual respect shown between Debord’s associates, Magritte, and Mariën is interpreted by Coadou from two interrelated perspective. Firstly, finding likeminded allies in the Brussels-based Surrealist group likely helped to lessen the sting of cultural isolation felt by the newly formed LI, especially since the existence of Debord’s new group was predicated on a rupture within Isou’s own Letterist group. Secondly, Debord thanked Mariën by distributing copies of Naked Lips in Paris and including a discrete advertisement for the latter’s journal in Potlatch No. 24 (November 24, 1955). Debord knew that the ad would likely not attract new readers because direct appeals would not likely sit well with their mostly hostile audience.40 Only the acknowledgment

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of a free gift—Potlatch was already handed out freely—might have made it possible not to insult them. Nonetheless, by having essays and articles published in Naked Lips, Debord and the LI now at least had a secondary outlet aimed directly at the avant-garde literary world, while at the same time using Potlatch to disseminate revolutionary concerns.41 This remarkable parallel development, with one set of anti-aesthetic activities aimed at the cultural establishment and the other set of activities aimed at fomenting social revolution, continued until the end of the first incarnation of the SI. It was not until 1961 that Debord and the SI finally realized that there could be no cultural revolution without a social revolution. Meanwhile, in France in the mid-1950s, various contemporary arts and literary magazines such as Temps Mêlé (“Mixed-Up Times, 1952-ongoing), Bizarre (1953–1968), and Phantomas (1953–1980) were still busy pedalling stale Surrealist mannerisms that impressed neither Debord nor the LI. In a letter to André Frankin dated September 14, 1955 Debord recounted that in the same decidedly unliterary week the LI received a copy of Phantomas, which it found idiotic, along with the latest issue of Temps Mêlé. Of the latter, Debord thought it was below anything he could have imagined.42 He found it unbelievable that editor André Blavier was still writing such re-hashed Surrealism in the middle of the twentieth century. Rather than re-scandalize Dada and Surrealism as revolutionary avantgarde art movements, Debord and the LI decided instead to focus on creating “a form of thinking that is visibly more mystified than mystifying.”43 From a conceptual point of view, being “mystified” in our thinking is not to be willingly perplexed, baffled or confused, but instead to be suddenly made aware that the connection between thinking and speech should never be made automatically. Instead, to be mystified is to become temporarily aware of a multitude of semantic choices available to the speaker. Which term can I use to best describe this general state of affairs? Conversely, which term can I use to communicate sotto voce to only certain individuals? Debord always felt that language should never be considered as a finite set of preselected option in which no other alternative is available to the speaker/writer. There is nothing wrong with interpreting a speaker’s silence in discourse simply as a moment of reflection. In fact, Debord sought to exploit and articulate the momentary lapse between thinking and speaking as yet another way to overcome reification and the capitalist colonization of our own imagination. Debord’s early interpretation of the relationship between thought, thinking, and language echoes Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological fascination with the coming-into-being of language. In Signs (1960), Merleau-Ponty argues that language truly means only when, instead of rigidly copying the products of thought itself, it allows itself to be undone and remade by a continual exchange between thinking and speaking. We must always try to

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retain a dialectical relationship between thought, especially pure thinking, and the expression of these thoughts in written or spoken language. In the end, speech, or that which truly signifies as discourse, and that which truly frees meaning still trapped in the thing, is, with regard to empirical usage, nothing but what Merleau-Ponty calls the voices of silence:44 “We must uncover the threads of silence that speech is mixed together with.”45 Debord thought that one way to uncover the threads of silence that run through speech (the actual sound of someone thinking?) would be to adopt a purely poetic understanding of language. We must refrain from being seduced by currently popular means of utilitarian communication and already acquired expressions. The latter represents Debord’s view of language, that is, empty words and meaningless phrases that denote objects but are unable to express subjective states of being. While a sense of the “mystified” may radically frustrate adherents of already established language, Debord argues instead that it “can also promote at little expense an atmosphere of uneasiness extremely favorable for the introduction of a few new conceptions of pleasure.”46 To be clear, a “mystified” form of thinking and speaking is not the same thing as what Debord would later call “the imprecision of language.”47 In their early anti-aesthetic strategies, Debord and the LI argued that the best way to derail already established means of communication was through the application of détournement. The French verb détourner typically refers to the act of turning someone aside or putting something out of the way. The LI (and later the Situationists) chose instead to exploit the secondary meanings of detouring, diverting, and perverting. As Vincent Kaufmann writes in the Preface to the second section of Debord’s Works, the period between 1952 and 1957 is characterized by an increasingly theoretical understanding and systematic application of détournement in ways that challenges the fundamental notion of authorship. Debord felt that a text was designed to be read and consumed by its user. However, once discursive materials enter into the literal marketplace of ideas, they should be freely available for others to appropriate as they see fit. As Kaufmann states, this particular view of detournement is an example of what Debord calls “literary communism”48 whose operating mandate is the free appropriation, manipulation, and diversion of already-written materials. The possibility of literary communism49 is a central tenet in Debord’s and Wolman’s 1956 text, “A User’s Guide to Détournement.” Although we will return to this important essay in chapter 3, we will initiate a tentative discussion here because it links the LI together with the first phase of the SI. In their essay, Debord and Wolman agree with Lautréamont that plagiarism is both necessary and progressive. However, they transcend Lautréamont’s original idea by transforming his anti-aesthetic strategy into a critical-dialectical tool. First, as an act of artistic appropriation, détournement transforms an

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author’s statement by negating the original context in which it appears. This can be achieved by cutting out still images or texts from newspapers, books, or magazines. Users can also re-record portions of audio or video from a film or television segment. Second, and this is where détournement transcends mere academic plagiarism by negating the negation (the initial removal of the plagiarized item in the first place), the user critiques the misleading statement by exposing the hidden ideology that allows the author’s statement to be accepted as a truth-claim. A critical analysis of the item abstracts the previous canonized statement from its original setting (e.g., advertising) and places it into an entirely new context (i.e., recontextualized within other plagiarized items). If successful, détournement allows the reader/viewer to critically examine the uncritical hidden relationship that exists between the original truth-claim and the ideological structures that validate such statements. Third and last, Debord and Wolman view Lautréamont’s original notion of deleting a false idea and replacing it with the right one as an act of deleting all ideological forms of false consciousness and replacing the “dead” ideological statement with the native language of social reality. For Debord, détournement exposes the fact that the cultural production of ideas is directly interwoven into the material activities of individuals, or what Marx called “the language of real life.”50 As a critical tool, détournement succeeds in destroying fixed forms51 (i.e., generic conventions and formulas) that tacitly support ideological statements. According to Debord, fixed forms are the scaffolding necessary to meet the needs of a given job—in this case, to lend ideological support to a given truthclaim. In later SI texts, Debord refers to the same ideological fixed forms either as “frames of reference of past communication”52 or as “fixed frames of reference.”53 Debord explained to Marcel Mariën that the LI’s own “fixed forms” (e.g., a reliance on détournement in the creation of public statements) could themselves become formidable critical weapons in their own right, providing readers of Naked Lips can understand how they are being used in a critical manner. Here, the “fixed forms” of détournement refer to the constant manipulation and re-appropriation of a montage of quotes arbitrarily attributed to various authors.54 Two remarkable documents that apply the critical “art” of détournement include Asger Jorn’s Fin de Copenhaugue (End of Copenhagen, May 1957), which features Debord as “technical advisor,”55 and Debord’s own Mémoire (1958).56 Both documents include found imagery and cut-up phrases set against a series of splatter paintings by Jorn. Mémoire in particular is interesting for a number of reasons. First, although it was originally “created” in winter 1957 and published in 1958, it reflects a period in Debord’s life (June 1952–September 1953) when he was leaving Isou’s Letterists to form the Letterist International. Many of the “trigger” phrases, as we might call

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them today, are taken from a variety of sources including Shakespeare, journals of literary or cinematic criticism, detective stories and science fiction, physics manuals, and so on.57 Second, given Debord’s desire to transcend art, the original hardcover dust jacket of Mémoire is made out of heavygrade sandpaper, which means that every time the book is removed from a shelf, it destroys books on either side of it. Third, the last page of the book features a red paint splatter shaped like the Île de la Cité of Paris and a quote originally attributed to Baudelaire: “I wanted to speak the beautiful language of my century.”58 I find Louise Varèse translation of Baudelaire’s original phrase “je voulais parler la belle langue de mon siècle” as “to use the wonderful language of the day”59 rather dismissive because it neglects to address the negative sentiment inherent in the Baudelaire’s specific choice of words. Varèse’s translation implies that “the wonderful language of the day” features a functional linguistic component (or use-value) that facilitates ease of communication between individuals. By comparison, the conditional mood implied in the original phrase (“je voulais parler”) suggests an unfulfilled desire to speak well (“la belle langue de mon siècle”). Perhaps it was Baudelaire’s original notion of an unsatisfied desire to communicate well that caught Debord’s attention and triggered him to appropriate the text in the first place. By isolating the phrase on the last page, Debord is leaving the reader/ viewer with a final thought that the shift from the Letterists to the LI was likely predicated on the continuing search to finally locate and use “la belle langue” of the twentieth century. In order to assess the historical relationship between Dada, Letterism, and the newly established LI, Debord and Wolman decided that trying to reradicalize Dadaism60 was not the best way forward. The historical context that had given birth to Dada had completely changed. The lack of revolutionary politics in postwar France, along with a lack of revolutionary working-class aesthetics, had managed to transform anti-fascist sentiment following the end of World War II into a kind of inchoate confusion. Debord and the SI found a similar situation in the years leading to the General Strike of 1968. Compared to continual protests and demonstrations by German, American, and Japanese students, the potential for revolutionary activity in the 1960s was largely absent in French universities.61 Spiritually and politically, la ­pettite bourgeoisie (previously the political backbone of fascism) still wielded power and influence. Its ideological position was stamped on everything it disseminated into the cultural world—capitalist and socialist-realist literature, pseudoformalist avant-garde, literary criticism (e.g., structuralism), and the pseudoagonies (i.e., hero worship) of past emancipatory movements. In this historical context, we need to keep in mind that Isou’s own goal with the Letterists was to put an end to pervasive forms of politico-economic ideology. From Isou’s perspective, all critical means were necessary: onomatopoeic poetry reduced

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to letters, metagraphic narrative (see below), and a non-narrative cinema without images. Given Isou’s arsenal of critical tools, we can easily see why Debord affiliated himself with Isou and the Letterists without hesitation. One of earliest critical tools in the Letterists’ was metagraphics (“métagraphie”). This peculiar form of collage can best be described as enhanced détournement, in the sense that the artist exploits both the graphical potential of found words and phrases as well as cut-up images. The creation of metagraphics harks back to pictorial collage pieces and cut-up poetry techniques first associated with the 1920s-era Dadaists. Along with détournement, the use of metagraphics pre-dates Debord’s strategy of actively disrupting “the spectacle” by manipulating incongruous, already-existing cultural artifacts into a coherent statement that critiques both the object itself as an expression of “art” and its relationship to the larger social world.62 What made metagraphy a revolutionary tool at that time was the critical provocation that resulted from a unique combination of disparate images and phrases. As Debord and Wolman explain in “A User’s Guide to Détournement,” “It is the most distant détourned element which contributes most sharply to the overall impression, and not the elements that directly determine the nature of this impression.”63 The metagraphic statement is not designed to yield up its critical meaning very easily. It is designed to render the viewer mystified, unsure. The viewer must enter into a “dialogue” with the object from different points of view, firstly, in order to recognize the individual elements that constitute the art object and, secondly, to decipher the multiple meanings that are generated by the provocative interrelationship of its individual elements. More important, by not easily yielding up its critical stance, the viewer has to engage in a critical-dialectical relationship between thinking and speaking. All that mattered for Debord was the revolutionary utility of provocation. Because the end-goal of revolutionary provocation is the eventual seizure of power, Debord quickly realized that successes originally expected from the integration of metagraphy as a critical writing strategy were far from adequate.64 Metagraphics was simply not provocative enough. In “An Odd Exhibition” published in Potlatch No. 7 (August 3, 1954),65 Debord discusses the failure of metagraphic as a potentially provocative strategy by pointing to a recent press review of the LI’s own Metagraphic art exhibition at the Galerie du Double Doute in Paris. In his meta-review, Debord explains that the art critic for the daily newspaper Nice-Matin revealed to his readers that this so-called revolutionary art form is not free in and of itself because it seeks to alter the feelings and gestures of spectators. To the reviewer, the reception of art by a spectator should not provoke active contemplation and intellectual reflection; it should serve only to stimulate aesthetic reflection. In his rebuttal to the mediocre review, Debord responded that, if the LI was being criticized for trying to manipulate viewers, then there should be no real difference

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between metagraphic art and a daily newspaper. Both seek to condition the feelings and gestures of spectators in conscious ways. Because of its limited appeal as political provocation, Debord’s interest in metagraphics soon waned. Metagraphic art was simply not as dangerous66 and provocative as he had originally hoped. After all, the exhibition in Paris was not interrupted by protests or angry demonstrations. There were no hoped-for scandals. Even from a practical point of view, metagraphy was bound to fail. Photographs of metagraphic pieces, for example, became useless as art reproductions because of an overabundance of illegible printed sentences.67 Debord concurred with Ivan Chtcheglov in 1963 that metagraphic writing was not a very effective strategy for Situationists either, even if Debord himself believed that it contained still-unexplored resources for diverse forms of psychoanalytic communication.68 But Debord never specifies how psychoanalysis might factor into a revised form of metagraphic communication. He might have been thinking about his cinematic model of tri-dimensional psychology, that is, the destruction of prose rhetoric by censoring or suppressing words and phrases, the deliberate misalignment of visual elements, or the fragmented use of spoken or written dialogue. Or, he might have viewed metagraphics as a form of thinking that is visibly more mystified or strange, and not unlike the psychological effects that accompany a dérive. Debord realized that the limited revolutionary potential of metagraphics was likely more effective within specific groups where unfiltered communication already existed. For Debord, the value of metagraphics lay in stating in radically new ways what was already known by the creator. As a medium, Debord found that it was little more than a sideways glance to the “knowing” receiver. As part of a larger search for revolutionary forms of communication, metagraphics failed because it had neglected to consider how it might resist the surrounding political-economics forces of commodification, those very same forces which the LI was trying to transcend. Still, Debord ended his letter to Chtcheglov on a hopeful note. While Chtcheglov himself may have viewed the postwar era as increasingly stifling from a cultural point of view, Debord, on the other hand, was seeing signs that living forces were beginning to seek each other out and emerging out of the “lamentable theater of the time.”69 It was those living forces that Debord would continue to explore and exploit to revolutionary effect. Looking back upon this period of his life, Debord felt that the onomatopoeic poetry associated with Isou’s Letterist group marked the first scandalous intervention of a new stream of revolutionary ideas centered exclusively on language and communication. After all, it was at that time a radically new form of revolutionary thinking that took into considerations new forms of communication. Although originally connected with Futurism and Dada, Debord and Wolman no longer had any interest in onomatopoeic poetry

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“except through the absolute systematization which presented it as the only poetry of the moment, thus condemning all other forms to death.”70 The almost complete depreciation of poetry as a creative activity following World War II, which Debord linked to the general decline of aesthetics, was one of the most striking cultural phenomena to occur in the early 1950s.71 Following a new poetics of onomatopoeia that Isou himself had inaugurated, Letterism expanded its theoretical and artistic influence into the literary world of the novel, and the artistic world of painting and cinema. By 1950, however, the Letterists was entertaining so many contradictory ideas that the group split into two factions.72 By 1954, former associates came to regard Letterism as a “positive” form of Dadaism73 set forth by dogmas, rituals, and commandments that had to be accepted simply because they emanated from Isou’s position of authority and not because they could be rationally justified as artistic strategies. As an anti-authoritarian, Debord had no interest in following the dogmatic commands of others, especially individuals such as Isou, who felt no need to justify his own revolutionary tactics. For Debord, the way out of dogmatic commands was simple: “There are no problems—only solutions.”74 Following the inauguration of the Letterist International in 1952, Debord and Wolman disengaged from Isou’s interest in avant-garde poetry and moved instead toward expanding the group’s burgeoning interest in creating unique social and cultural settings which they called “situations.” French poetry, especially onomatopoeic poetry, no longer held any interest to the LI. Nor did it wish to give anyone who was paying attention to the LI the impression that we were trying to defend new forms of French poetry. Instead, the group looked to support any form of political sloganeering that might re-ignite the revolutionary spirit of French workers.75 But the success of this goal required having to look beyond France and French avant-garde culture. With that in mind, Debord wrote to Danish artist Asger Jorn and revealed to him that they shared a mutual interest in the immense powers of radical urban architecture, in particular, the need to exploit these powers toward passionate ends. While he continued to pursue artistic strategies such as détournement, Debord also sought to establish new forms of social life.76 Debord explained to Jorn that the LI was united under the rubric that human existence was generally insignificant and that it was up to them to construct new forms of ludic lifestyles. Collectively, Debord and the LI were arguing that alienation and anomie were indicative of the need to construct a new form of social existence.77 The parallel development of the LI, with one set of anti-aesthetic activities such as détournement aimed at undermining the cultural establishment, and another set of activities aimed at a unitary critique of the modern world, continued until the end of the first incarnation of the SI. It would take until the second incarnation of the

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SI for Debord to realize that there could be no cultural revolution without a social revolution. It should be pointed out that, in their desire to create a poetics of everyday life, Debord the LI temporarily lost sight of the fact that avant-garde poetry existed in opposition to the dominant social and economic forces under which its creators lived.78 French Symbolist poets, for example, were reproached equally for the singularity of their work and for their social existence. During the nineteenth century, the reigning petit-bourgeois ideology refused to integrate Symbolism into its established pantheon, especially when the contributions of French Symbolists became too difficult to discuss using traditional critical or literary theory. Following World War II, power remained in the same bourgeois hands; the difference lay in the fact that bourgeois thought could no longer support an original idea of its own. From their point of view, if an original idea did not come from within its own realm, then it was not worth knowing. Hence, everything it appropriated as a validation of its own existence it had to pull in from the margins of society.79 By comparison, postwar bourgeois intellectuals naturally fought against outside influences with all their might, even if it meant, as Debord pointed out, having to ignore the daily justification of the repression in the Algerian population.80 While they may have temporarily lost sight of the revolutionary power of avantgarde art, Debord and Wolman nevertheless admitted that these very same art forms (e.g., Symbolism, Dada, Surrealism, Letterism, metagraphy) not only undermined and destroyed bourgeois cultural tastes but also the so-called originality of bourgeoisie thought itself.81 In the previous chapter, we discussed how Debord passionately and knowingly rejected the postwar capitalist society of his own time. He knew that revolutionary thought needed to be re-invented; his critique of the modern world also needed to be predicated a critique of late capitalism as a pervasive force in French society. It was still possible to think and act differently, even if that meant having to enter into conflicting relations with one’s own time by systematically defying it. He regarded postwar society as ugly and malignant; in his own words and deeds, he neither perfectly coincided with his own alienating society, nor did he try to adjust himself to its demands. Debord was ready to embark on any kind of artistic and intellectual adventure that might re-ignite the passions of existence presently being crushed by the reifying tendencies of postwar capitalism. In a letter written in the early 1950s to Ivan Chtcheglov, Debord exclaimed to his friend that “THE INDIVIDUAL MUST BE PASSIONATE OR NOT BE AT ALL.”82 At this early point in his intellectual life, Debord not only sought to re-energize the fading notion of a Western European avant-garde tradition for his own postwar generation but he also wished to preserve that tradition without having to compromise his own sense of absolute freedom. In Potlatch No. 4, Debord asked rhetorically:

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“What necessity do you recognize for COLLECTIVE PLAY in modern society?”83 Collective play was necessary to counter the deforming effects resulting from the institutional mediations of schools, churches, professional associations, and so on. Many of Debord’s friends and acquaintances viewed institutional mediation in the same way. In The Tribe, for example, Debord’s drinking buddy Jean-Michel Mension described a similar viewpoint; “I stopped taking an interest in [school], because I thought that I was being not so much formed as deformed by the system.”84 In The Consul, early SI-member Ralph Rumney offered a similar assessment of British society: “Today’s education systems, whether in England, France, or elsewhere, all try to normalize you. It is often very hard to resist, and those who succeed in doing so are rare.”85 As we mentioned above, Debord wished to re-energize the Western European avant-garde tradition for his own postwar generation by creating a new realm of absolute freedom. In a revelatory letter to Gil J Wolman simply dated Thursday night (June) 1953, Debord outlined the role of the avant-garde in the coming revolution.86 Perhaps buoyed by the fact that he had successfully untangled himself from Isou’s Letterists and was able to put together his own coterie of radical artists and cultural theorists, Debord appears to shift from a state of total discouragement regarding the present state of the avant-garde to using that discouragement as a stepping-stone to elicit new forms of radical action that might lead to a renewed sense of revolutionary fervor.87 After all, for Debord, there were no problems, only solutions. It was the desire to rekindle a revolutionary spirit for a new generation that led him to transcend the limitations of Letterism. What made Debord’s intent so remarkable was that he admitted to Wolman—“the theoretician of artistic noncreation”88—that he really didn’t like the arts very much, not even as a source of “aesthetic” sensation. To be clear, we must give Isou some credit in this radical adventure because it was he who introduced Debord to opposing viewpoints to the status quo and it was he who gave him strategic weapons to begin his cultural revolution. What Debord found false, however, was Isou’s antiquated notion of the “artist” as creator of cultural works of artistic value that transcend history. Isou’s peculiar notion of “artistic value” sounded uncomfortably close to the passive act of artistic contemplation. In trying to overcome the limitations of traditional avant-garde art and poetry by revolutionary means, Debord devised what he called the “neopoem,” a style of action-poetry detached from all types of formal, contemplative, or aesthetic value. The neo-poem served a singular purpose: the incitement of scandal and provocation. Unlike the Letterists, who simply scrawled subversive chalk inscriptions in the streets at a time when they had nothing more to say,89 the neo-poem was explicitly designed to destroy the signifying capacity of poetic language by yielding up multiple and

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contradictory meanings. Debord’s anti-aesthetic form of terrorism advanced even further; it also sought to destroy the reified and bureaucratized capacities of language. Anti-aesthetic terrorism became the cultural weapon by which to distinguish Debord’s own Letterist International from the Letterists in general and from Isou in particular.90 Along with the neo-poem and a penchant for violent imagery, we mentioned in the previous chapter that Debord sought to enhance his anti-aesthetic attitude by engaging in direct action.91 In this context, Debord was suggesting different modes of direct action to shift the focus of artistic production away from autonomous art-commodities and toward the creative process itself. As a creative process, direct action would fall under the general category of revolutionary praxis designed to transform the social world. Like the neo-poem, direct action existed beyond all forms of aesthetic judgments or values. After all, it was the “Notre-Dame Affair” of 1950—as a form of direct action—that had led to the original rupture of the Letterist group and from which Isou never truly recovered. Debord stressed that the inception of the LI was not based on Letterism simply being revolutionary; on the contrary, his desire for “scandal” and “provocation” was formed against it.92 By 1952, one side of the Letterist group was struggling to maintain a degree of artistic (i.e., aesthetic) integrity, while the other was adamant on pursuing a path of direct action in the form of scandalous “terror” campaigns. For his part, Isou viewed Letterism not only as an art technique but also as “a revolution in consciousness.”93 Compared to Debord, Isou was simply not interested in revolutionary politics, only in the continuation of a revolutionary aesthetics initiated by Dada and Surrealist artists.94 At a time when discussing revolutionary thought was considered an abomination within bourgeois French society, any serious dialogue regarding postwar revolutionary politics was itself a struggle. In “Educational Games,” published in Potlatch No. 24, Debord astutely compares a discussion between two individuals regarding ideological positions to little more than a boxing match.95 Here is how Debord contrasts the implicit violence of argumentation with the explicit violence of boxing. Two opponents and the referee, whose decision is final, sit at a table, with the referee sitting between the two players. The referee opens the match, and the first adversary chooses some proposal on a subject that seems beneficial (e.g., postwar philosophy, phenomenology, censorship, etc.). The other responds either by boldly denying the proposal they have just heard or by moving on to an affirmation on a related or unexpected subject, or by simply combining the two strategies. The referee ensures that the opponent does not interrupt the other, even if a long-winded speech may cause the clumsy adversary to lose points. The timekeeper announces the end of the round with an appropriate signal which immediately interrupts the discussion. The referee then declares the round

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in favor of one or the other opponents. During short breaks, supporters and trainers can bring the adversaries alcohol, coffee, or even narcotics.96 The argument resumes at the referee’s order. The “Knockout” is announced by the referee when one of the adversaries, disturbed by the implicit violence or the subtlety of the attack, is unable to continue the discussion. If this outcome does not occur, then a winner is designated using points, or according to the number of rounds in which they dominate the discussion. Even arguing in bad faith is allowed. “The Letterists,” explains Debord, “already winners, do not play this game.”97 Why would Debord compare an intellectual debate to a boxing match? First of all, we know that he was fond of describing his own brand of antiaesthetic revolt in violent terms. Secondly, argumentation is already viewed as a form of persuasive, intellectual violence: we advance proposals, we marshal evidence, and we undermine our adversary’s position by attacking their claims, while we defend ours from counterattack.98 But why did Debord use the metaphor of boxing? We can answer this question by pointing out that Debord places the phrase “an ideological discussion considered as a boxing match”99 in quotations, implying that it may have been cited from a secondary source. As a proponent of détournement, we cannot know for sure. While he does not identify the source directly, we may presume that Debord is likely referring to weekly mass-media magazines such as Paris Match. Troubled by social and political instability in the 1950s, Paris Match offered its readers an involved understanding of multiple colonial conflicts, in particular, the Indochinese and Algerian wars that the magazine believed were undermining the stability of the French Empire.100 Such mass market readings were designed to strengthen French nationalist resolve rather than offer readers the opportunity to critically interrogate the basic tenets of colonialism. Most articles praised the commitment of the French army, the courage of its men, and the spirit of sacrifice that animated their belief in nationalism (i.e., the colonial order).101 In his study on the relationship between 1950s depictions of sports figures and the immigrant Other, sports historian Michaël Attali argues that the representation of the “sports champion” in Paris Match is part of a living continuum of strength, pride, and courage from which news writers drew in order to arouse admiration for the French army’s commitment to excellence. According to Attali, drama-as-violence constituted a structuring part of the sports news favored by Paris Match.102 News writers followed suit and blurred the lines between the factual reporting of political events and their metaphoric representation through sports analogies. The representation of the white sports figure “committed to the glory of his country,”103 embodied in boxing, athletics, cycling, and football, became synonymous with strength, determination, stability, excellence, and, ultimately, the glory of nationalism.

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The mythical symbol of the heroic (white) sports figure depicted in Paris Match is presented to an anxious country that needed to convince itself that it could still function under postwar duress and continue to maintain strong family values. As we mentioned above in our brief discussion on the cultural influence of the petit bourgeois, the very same nationalistic bourgeois family values and traditions (e.g., courage, sacrifice) were being constructed and maintained over and against the figure of the postwar immigrant Other.104 As Debord once remarked, the dominant ideas of a time are never anything else but the ideas of the dominant class.105 As Roland Barthes explains in Mythologies (1957), a modern myth tends to express a belief that is generally thought to be true. But, for Debord, what is at stake in the so-called intellectual boxing match is the freedom to speak out against nationalist bourgeois values, especially when those discussions contain political positions that critique the dominant ideology.106 For its part, bourgeois ideology invests the modern myth with its own interests: universalism, a refusal to explain, and an unalterable hierarchy of the world. As well, popular proverbs (e.g., “Actions speak louder than words.”) contribute to a certain degree to an instrumental grasp of the world as object. But, as Barthes points out, popular proverbs are also given meaning by the activity of a dominant ideology that gradually reifies such proverbs into uncritical, empirical observation.107 Debord viewed the uncritical and unquestioned culture of the “spectacle” in much the same way. The spectacle, he would later argue in The Society of the Spectacle (1967), transcends the visual excess produced by mass-media technologies; it is an alienated worldview that has materialized into objective reality.108 Finally, I wish to underscore Debord’s comparison of an intellectual debate to a boxing match because it highlights a number of important issues that pertain to his politics of communication. First of all, Debord never considered an intellectual debate as a contest that ends with winners and losers, or a contest in which one adversary completely dominates the other. Despite his intelligence and sophistication, friends such as Jean-Michel Mension pointed out that Debord never tried to “dominate” others intellectually.109 Second, an authentic, fair, and open intellectual debate should never be predicated on a hierarchical structure that intentionally pits the strong against the weak. By its very nature, freedom of expression is counter-intuitive to a hierarchical structure in which only certain individuals are privileged to speak and others are not. Moreover, in a hierarchical structure, communication is essentially unilateral.110 The LI never presented itself as a hermetic, hierarchical organization that refused to interact with other likeminded groups. On the contrary, Debord spent the next four decades actively seeking likeminded collaborators and exchange ideas in an anti-bureaucratic, anti-hierarchical manner. In early 1957, for instance, Debord suggested to

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Italian artist Piero Simondo that the LI was in an excellent position to clarify non-hierarchical relationships between radical art movements in London and Brussels and to impose a collective111 direction that would be mutually beneficial to everyone involved. Both the LI and the SI were anti-hierarchical in structure. Debord once pointed out the semantic issue surrounding the terms “office” and “centre.”112 An office is a place where a certain type of work is done and whose participants occupy the office space. By comparison, the term “centre” introduces a notion of distinction (“centre”) and hierarchy (“periphery”). Thus, for Debord, the “Unitary Urbanism Research Office” sounded more modest to the uninitiated and created less confusion within the SI. During his time with the LI, Debord thought deeply about the possibility of a cultural revolution contingent on the liberation of the creative potential of social individuals. He sought to revitalize the destruction power of truly avant-garde poetic language, along with a scandalous and provocative use of non-violent direct action to trigger a cultural revolution. However, given that “revolution” was no longer a hot topic in the so-called marketplace of ideas, Debord knew that he needed to create a social space in which such ideas could be discussed frankly and openly. In “All the Water in the Sea Could Not,” published in Potlatch No. 1 (22 June 1954), Debord wrote that the fear of asking real questions, as well as a general complacency toward outdated intellectual fashions, united professional writers such as existentialist Albert Camus. What these individuals lacked was “la Terreur.”113 Debord intentionally capitalizes the word Terreur in order to draw a comparison between the contemporary state of postwar critical thought in France and the Great Terror of 1794 (which accounted for nearly 1,300 of the guillotine’s 2,600 casualties).114 Debord is drawing on a theoretical position with roots in the eighteenth-century French revolutionary writings of Saint-Just. There is, first of all, the desire in Saint-Just’s writings to transcend good and evil in order to deal with each one on its own terms. As Bertrand D’Astorg explains in Introduction to the World of the Terror (1945), Saint-Just ignores the separation between good and evil, just as he ignores how we can voluntarily go from one to the other by choosing between them. No choice can be made between these two terms because they are interrelated to one another. “Good and evil?” D’Astorg asks. “Two cogs equally necessary and one geared within the other so that the immense world-machine can continue its course.”115 It is the great “world-machine,” not individuals themselves, that decides what is good or evil. Debord’s deliberate use of “scandale” and “provocation” were intended to create a new morality based on spontaneity, creativity, and play, a new moral order that would also transcend the reifying tendencies of the bourgeois world-machine.116 As Debord explained in the Preface to the Potlatch texts published by Gallimard,

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The passage of more than thirty years . . . introduces a certain difficulty for the reader of today. It is now difficult for them to conceive in what forms the almost universally accepted banalities presented themselves at that time [the terror invoked by the world-machine?], and consequently to recognize the ideas, then scandalous, which finally ruined them.117

In both “Manifesto” originally published in Letterist International No. 2 (February 1953) and “Additional Act to the Constitution of a Letterist International” published in Letterist International No. 3 (August 1953), Debord argued that human social relationships need be based on an excess of true passions, if not an outright embrace of “la Terreur”118 In “The Practice of Psychogeography”, published in Potlatch No. 2, Debord returned to the French Revolution when he wrote that Saint-Just had a psychogeographical aspect in his politics. In the accompanying footnote to clarify the term “psychogeographical,” he describes “la Terreur” as “defamiliarizing”119 In other words, to be aesthetically “terrorized” is to render the familiar unfamiliar. For our purposes, defamiliarization refers to acute emotional and mental states first described by Debord in his letters to Hervé Falcou. For one thing, to “defamiliarize” someone is to force them to break habitual behavior by placing them into a mental state that is completely different (e.g., décor, climate, habits) from that to which they are used. We also need to consider the term’s secondary meaning, which is to confuse or disorient a person by changing their environment and placing them in a situation that results in strangeness and anxiety. Finally, to be willingly confused and disoriented recalls Arthur Rimbaud’s visionary claim that “the problem [in becoming a visionary] is to attain the unknown by disorganizing all the senses.”120 In the context of a cultural revolution contingent on the liberation of the creative potential of social individuals, the ideas of Saint-Just and Rimbaud are equally valid. To clarify, the particular application of “la Terreur” is understood as a defamiliarization of the habitual, the common, the everyday. “Defamiliarization” not only results in new and unfamiliar modes of thinking and being, which is the primary goal of psychogeography, but also specific emotional and behavioral effects that a geographical environment has on individuals. Debord feels that Saint-Just’s ideas are psychogeographical because they result in unfamiliar modes of thinking, being, and communicating. Finally, in terms of poetry and literature, the mode of being “defamiliarized” is similar to the Russian term ostranenie, a literary technique that depicts familiar things in an unfamiliar manner in order to allow the reader to perceive the world differently. By this point, we should begin to notice a change in how Debord viewed the twin terms of “terrorist” and “terrorism.” When he was younger, the terms

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signified an escalating sense of anti-aesthetic extremism, while the notion of “terrorism” was used only by way of similarity rather than actual practice. “La Terreur,” on the other hand, was designed to conjure up a kind of intentional disorientation and was not unlike the group’s later understanding of psychogeography. From its inception in late 1952, Debord and the LI always maintained two interrelated purposes: the transcendence of aesthetics through cultural revolution and the elimination of all reified forms of behavior through social revolution.121 Artistic production would move away from the creation of commodity-products and toward a more open and inclusive game of ludic activities.122 Incorporating collective forms of non-competitive play and ludic behaviors into a greater notion of free expression123 would counter-balance the absolute moral values associated with capitalist production and bourgeois sensibilities.124 In “The General Line,” published in Potlatch No. 14 (November 30, 1954), the LI made its collective interests absolutely clear. They not only wished to “establish a passionate structure of life,”125 but knew that these “collective constructions”126 would not be possible until after the demise of bourgeois society, its cultural products, and its moral values: “We will contribute to the ruin of this bourgeois society by continuing the criticism and the complete subversion of its idea of pleasures, as well as by bringing useful slogans to the revolutionary action of the masses.”127 Compared to his youthful fascination with “terrorism” and “La Terreur,” a less violent yet equally disorienting focus on “the game” moved Debord and the LI toward a new revolutionary comportment predicated on the demise of bourgeois society.128 While Debord here understands play as a collective activity that pre-dates culture and human society,129 these new social constructions, or situations, transcend traditional ludic activities. These new situations will be temporary, ephemeral, and qualitatively unique. If successful, “beauty will be SITUATIONAL.”130 While he was with the LI, Debord’s hope was that new forms of beauty could be derived from “situations” based on a radical re-evaluation of the ludic aspects found in poetic language.131 Earlier, Debord had written to his friend Hervé Falcou, “poetry, that’s me.”132 Now, in the early 1950s, the hope was that these same ludic aspects, which he viewed as closer in spirit to poiesis, could achieve a degree of practical truth beyond mere utility or duty. Debord held that the Symbolist prose-poetry of Stephane Mallarmé and Rimbaud, and continuing through the global exploits of the Dada poet-boxer Arthur Craven, held the prospect of a passageway toward a more expressive “poetic” life that would transcend aesthetics.133 Debord was always “greatly honored”134 to be compared to Arthur Cravan. After all, Craven was an early model from his youth. He found it reassuring that others could still make the comparison even in his later life. Perhaps Craven embodied a number of profound contradictory elements, most notably, the notion of a poetic, artistic disposition manifested within the ferocious athleticism of a boxer. For

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Debord, at least in the early 1950s, the possibility of an expressively poetic life like Craven’s belonged only in a utopian amusement park.135 Debord’s collective life needed to spring from a more profound and authentic “poetic” sensibility predicated on a “situation” that would lead in substantial ways to a new human condition.136 But it was critical that this new human “situation” be built upon the ruins of bourgeois society. Anything else would simply be another spectacle. If successful, a post-bourgeois world would be a civilization where all forms of human activity are motivated by a passionate upheaval of life. It is in this post-bourgeois world that joys and passions first expressed in the writings of Saint-Just and Charles Fourier could be re-discovered.137 By the mid-1950s, Debord realized that, although the idea of a single cultural revolution in France was still a possibility, multiple political revolutions fostered by anti-colonial sentiment within developing nations such as Guatemala or Algeria were occurring more frequently and required renewed attention. Debord thought that a deeper understanding of political revolutionary activity in developing nations needed to be aligned with a burgeoning Western European revolutionary thought. Given these international developments, the LI advocated for a resumption of the 1936–1939 Spanish civil war.138 In “The Civil War in Morocco,” published in Potlatch No. 8 (August 10, 1954), Debord argued out that the actions of an authentically revolutionary minority could no longer be deferred. It needed to aim toward a more serious insurrection, without at the same time subordinating its own revolutionary goals to a class consciousness led entirely by the Moroccan proletariat. For their part, anything Western revolutionaries could do to foster further discord and chaos would be encouraged. Echoing an earlier rallying cry in favor of political chaos, Debord concluded by stating that “the war of freedom is fought out of disorder.”139 By reframing his advocacy for anti-aesthetic “terror” and “terrorism” (here re-considered as political “disorder”) around burgeoning global revolutionary movements, Debord’s literary attacks against the reification of poetic language were transforming into political attacks against colonialism. In the remainder of this chapter, we will examine how Debord’s decision to reframe his anti-aesthetic notion of “terrorism” around questions of global revolution eventually led him to dissolve the LI in June 1957 and reconstitute it into the more politically motivated SI. The escalating war in Vietnam, for example, a conflict initially viewed as an East-West global power struggle, was already increasing tensions between far-right and far-left political factions within French society. In “The Right to Reply,” published in Potlatch No. 4, editor André-Frank Conord interpreted the tension between these two groups as a sign that the French far-right was preparing for a political showdown.140 Following the surrender of French General Christian Castries in Dien Bien Phu on July 14, 1953, a history-changing event which signaled the end of French

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military involvement and the beginning of an American military presence in Indochina,141 street riots in Paris were already being organized by shock groups likely supported by the police, former Indochinese nationals, and, according to Conord, “the most unintelligent elements of student youth.”142 For the LI, the solution was simple: the only response to violence had to be greater amounts of violence.143 Conord’s advocacy for greater amounts of political violence differs substantially from Debord’s initial intent to restrict anti-aesthetic violence to the overthrow of bourgeois values. This distinction is important to because neither the LI nor the SI were ever designed as militant organizations. Debord and the LI knew that there already existed a combative minority in France with an advanced revolutionary consciousness, namely, the often-unemployed North African workers who were living in Paris and in the surrounding suburbs. The belief was that a genuine propaganda effort to energize the revolutionary “consciousness” of other far-left groups might provide an appropriate response to the growing threat of far-right-wing street violence. For Debord, at least, the political situation had entered its critical phase and that a fascist coup was becoming a very real possible.144 The need to energize these groups was based on the likelihood that the street fighting skills of North African workers were equal to, or better than, most of the trained paramilitary personnel. Regardless of individual differences, Debord and the LI hoped that North Africans living in Paris could all agreed on one point, namely, smashing fascism in all its forms.145 While “directing” the LI toward a sense of revolutionary urgency regarding geo-political matters, Debord was certainly not averse to attacking Isou and his former Letterist colleagues. After he and Wolman announced the formation of a Swiss section of the LI in Potlatch No. 13 (December 22, 1954),146 Debord himself declared two months later that the Swiss Letterists, who actively demonstrated in their own country in the intervening months,147 were simply provocateurs and troublemakers. In an earlier unpublished manifesto dated December 7, 1952 and distributed among the four original members of the LI, Debord had already denounced the use of “senseless” violence as a stupid and counterproductive tactic, especially when trying to reach equitable settlements regarding more serious political conflicts.148 As often as possible, Debord always sought to resolve internal group conflicts through consensus, not violence. But this particular conflict was not political but personal, since it stemmed from a manifesto entitled L’Aubervillier Conference and signed by Debord, Jean-Louis Brau, Serge Berna, and Wolman. The Manifesto is worth considering in detail because it outlines a set of negotiating conditions that not only influenced the actions of the LI but also those of the SI. The Manifesto reads as follows:

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Adoption of the principle of the majority through debate Appropriation of the critique of the arts and certain of its contributions Ban on defending a regressive morality Care in the presentation of personal works on behalf of the LI Ban on collaboration with Isouist activities Ban on publishing commercial works under individual names.149

Throughout its five-year existence, the LI’s attacks on Isou and his Letterist group continued unabated. Debord never forgave his former mentor for his hypocritical and self-serving response following the “Chaplin Affair” in October 1952. Gone was Isou, the radical aesthete, who once proclaimed “To win, Letterism must be PURIFICATION, VENGEANCE, TERROR. Soon, the first fires will ignite the brothels of Paris, to make more room for Letterism. I promise you! MY LIFE must be a great ACTION.”150 In an open letter dated November 3, 1952,151 Jean-Louis Brau instead deplored Isou’s pettiness and cowardly puerility. Brau reminded him that, in the latter’s denunciatory letter published in Combat 1 (November 1952), Isou openly opposed the LI’s actions from the beginning. If this is true, Brau asked publicly, “What then was the meaning of [Isou’s] verbal congratulations, made scarcely an hour after the launching of the tracts?”152 From the LI’s point of view, the “Chaplin Affair” had succeeded in exacerbating a split that already existed within the Letterist group. For Debord and Wolman, the fatal flaw in Letterism, heralded by an unskilled form of violence,153 came to a crisis point in 1952 when the LI distributed offensive leaflets at a press conference held in honor of Charlie Chaplin. Isou and his right-wing Letterists-aesthetes viewed Chaplin as an untouchable icon of freedom and liberty whose work continued to celebrate progressive ideals. The LI’s attack centered on the other hand on Chaplin’s continued relevancy as an icon of progressive politics in the early 1950s (and, indirectly, on Isou’s own relevance). Debord and Wolman noted later that, since the LI’s attack on both individuals, others have since woken up from this illusion.154 Although we saw in the previous chapter that while he may have progressed slowly and carefully in his association with Isou’s Letterist group, Debord was already existentially aware that his own path was yet to be defined. How was he going to distinguish himself from earlier avant-garde artists who had tried and failed to inaugurate a successful cultural revolution? How would he distinguish himself from the Letterists, whose leader seemed to be more concerned with an aesthetic revolution in poetic language than a radical rethinking of Hegelian-Marxist theory? Although he understood that the LI would have to accept a minority position in its unification with other international organizations,155 Debord knew that the working-class could no longer be considered as a point of reference for further mobilization against

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late capitalism. The goal was still the destruction of the very same bourgeois society that had marginalized free thinkers and turned them into functioning alcoholics. The working-class may have been a viable force in revolutionary politics but that potential no longer existed in postwar France. For Debord, the potential for political revolution was more likely be found in colonized nations such as Algeria or Guatemala. In “Make Them Swallow Their Chewing-Gum,” published in Potlatch No. 1 (June 22, 1954), the LI argued that the most effective way to fight against American Imperialism (expressed in the form of the Wrigley’s Company, makers of Wrigley’s Chewing Gum) was for Guatemalan President J. Árbenz Guzman to arm local workers.156A month later in Potlatch No. 4 (July 13, 1954), the LI reprinted a short passage on the working class that originally appeared in Naked Lips No. 1: “Reading the [election results in Guatemala], one could wonder if ‘the people’ are not made up, after all, of millionaires, who would be opposed only by a tiny elite of workers.”157 Following World War II, the proletariat no longer occupied the center of the Marxist universe as it once had.158 In France, the postwar economic boom known as the Thirty Glorious Years (1945–1975) was achieved through a combination of Keynesian government policies (e.g., increased government expenditures and lower taxes to stimulate demand) and Fordist business practices (i.e., the production of low-cost goods using mass production). These two strategies modernized the French economy by making mass consumer goods readily available. As Alastair Hemmens explains, modernization resulted from a mass of value produced by and for society as a whole.159 For those seeking to transcend traditional Marxist thought and applying to it an entirely new set of social, political, and cultural circumstances, there was still the possibility of a cultural revolution that could be realized in and through youth movements that already considered themselves as external to the traditional means of production.160 For his part, Isou had originally sought to integrate the revolutionary potential of avant-garde poetry within the larger purview of a socio-economic revolution. At the time when Debord was still affiliated with Isou in 1951, the Letterists were, comparatively speaking, more politically active and overtly dedicated to Marxist teachings. Together, these two aspects would help to formulate a thorough critique of postwar French capitalist society. In “Youth Uprising, First Manifesto,”161 published in the journal SOS in 1950, Isou argues that the main problem in postwar France is that the political left and right were both making explicit overtures toward youth culture while, at the same time, appearing to leave behind the traditional working-class. The fear was that the working-class was disappearing, especially given that increased automation and modernization would soon lead to factories without workers. Not only was the prospect of employment in the manufacturing

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sector somewhat dire but French youth already regarded themselves as the property of others because the traditional family structure left them without agency, autonomy, or freedom. The standardized educational system (i.e., the baccalauréat) held a tight grip on students. The prospects of a decent (or relevant) post-secondary education were dismal, given the tradition of useless information being delivered by out-of-touch professors in overcrowded lecture halls. Isou thought that, if French youth could become self-conscious of their own enslavement and hierarchical exploitation, then the only solution available to them would be to revolt in the face of their own nonexistence and secure a more substantial form of independence. For a revolution to come into being, though, French youth needed to integrate themselves into increasingly radical activities and to fight for their own future. For Isou, the term “youth” applied to literally any individual, regardless of age, who had not yet coincided with their primary function—to agitate and to struggle to reach the desired center of their own agency.162 In his assessment of the paradoxical connection between economics and youth, Isou devised a dialectical economic relationship between the internality of commodity exchange and the externality of youth culture relative to that exchange. Externality was an economic concept related to Isou’s larger understanding of the Youth Uprising movement. It was the idea that the proletariat no longer occupied a central position in any future Marxist revolution; instead, the new postwar phenomenon known as “youth” would take its place, even if they were not yet directly linked to the traditional means of production. Given this obstacle, any social or economic reform that might favor French youth would have to start from a resolution to reform the lives of millions of agent-less youths who, from a bourgeois point of view, constituted a “disease (or blight).”163 For Isou, at least, the disease of youth was not hygienic but economic. The antidote to “la maladie” was fivefold: reduce the number of years students spend in secondary education, eliminate the baccalaureate programme, reduce taxes to increase wealth, make seed money available to create new businesses, and, lastly, eliminate the nationalization of companies and its accompanying “parasitic” bureaucracy.164 Influenced by Isou’s unique and revolutionary ideas, Debord strongly supported the publication of “Youth Uprising,”165 a journal started in June 1952 by Letterists François Dufrêne and Marc-Gilbert Guillaumin. Debord was keenly aware of the decreasing role of the proletariat in Marxist praxis (and proletariat literature) and the increasing importance of youth culture in postwar France. However, members of the LI found the issues “disgusting”166 because the entire project represented yet another flirtation between Isou’s Letterists and Surrealist leader Breton. For Debord, Isou’s economic revolution could not overcome more serious issues resulting from late capitalism, namely, the inability of Keynesian government policies and Fordist business

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practices to alleviate soul-crushing boredom, the collapse of agency/subjectivity into acts of pure consumption, and a complete lack of play, spontaneity, and creativity in social life. For Debord, Isou’s so-called revolutionary plan truly manifested the dictionary definition of a revolution, that is, a movement in or, as if in a circle back to its original point of departure. Nothing lost, nothing gained. In its place, Debord supported a form of communal opposition “before which our lives are played out—lost—alone.”167 Except for a brief advocacy for the avant-garde work of established “stars” such as Wolman and Isou, Debord was still suffering from a profound discouragement168 regarding what was considered experimental “avant-garde” art in the early 1950s and, inversely, tendencies with his own friends toward “disillusioned mediocrity.”169 Those two currents were enough to prompt him to seriously reformulate reasons to act upon his own revolutionary fervor. But he was not sure which way to move forward.170 Without a proper post-secondary education or work experience, Debord’s economic options were limited. While he did not wish to involve himself in the same type of criminal activities as his friend Jean-Michel Mension,171 he still knew that he wished “to stir the shit.”172 Debord could appreciate the provocative behavior either of SaintJust or Arthur Craven,173 even if he considered his own age as decidedly “sub-Craven.”174 Debord knew that the historical times of Saint-Just, Rimbaud, and Craven were profoundly different from his own era. Until the LI could establish a clearly defined revolutionary lineage,175 it would continue to float in a kind of pseudo-revolutionary vagueness. Still, vagueness was better than applying restrictions that might completely eliminate the revolutionary possibilities of an open-ended, unrealized future. Not surprisingly, as early as 1953, Debord was already thinking that if conditions with the LI became insupportable, then he would be willing to go elsewhere. For the time being, though, the LI was his only possibility for immediate revolutionary activity.176 NOTES 1. Jean-Michel Mension, The Tribe, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2001), 64. According to Mension, Debord may have engaged in Letterist activities, but he was never an actual member of the group. 2. The moniker “Dictature” appears on the front cover of the first issue of the group: La Dictature lettriste, no 1, 1946 (Paris: Réédition Cahiers de l’Externité, 2000). At the bottom of the cover is the phrase “The Only Contemporary AvantGarde Movement.” 3. Guy Debord, “Préface,” Potlatch (1954‒1957) (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 8.

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4. For a comprehensive overview of the amalgamation of these various arts groups firstly with the Letterist International and then the Situationist International, see Mirella Bandini, L’Esthétique, le Politique de Cobra à L’International Situationniste (1948-1957) (Aesthetics and Politics from Cobra to the Situationist International [1948-1957]), translated into French by Claude Galli (Arles: Via Valeriano, 1998). Bandini’s book was originally published in Italy under the title L’estetico E Il Politico: Da Cobra All’internazionale Situazionista 1948–1957 (Rome: Officina Edizioni, October 1977) and received a second reprint by Costa & Nolan in 1999. 5. Debord, letter to Jean-François Martos (September 14, 1985) in Correspondance volume 6 janvier 1979-décembre 1987, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2006), 338. 6. The first “unofficial” LI manifesto followed an “informal” conference held on December 7, 1952 in Aubervilliers (in the north-eastern suburbs of Paris) and attended by Brau, Berna, Debord, and Wolman. The “Manifesto” was immediately torn up, stuffed into a bottle, and then thrown into the St. Denis canal. Brau returned the following day to retrieve the bottle out of the canal. See Debord, Œuvres, edition established and annotated by Jean-Louis Rançon in collaboration with Alice Debord (Paris: Quarto Gallimard, 2006), 88. 7. Mension (2001), 25. 8. See “Position de L’Internationale Lettriste,” a short article written by LI members that was originally rejected by the journal Combat on November 2, 1952 but appeared in the first issue of Internationale Lettriste No. 1 (December 1952). It is reprinted in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 85. 9. Mension (2001), 115. 10. On personal correspondences between Debord and Straram, see Guy Debord Patrick Straham D’une revolution à l’autre: Correspondance Debord-Straham suivi de Cahier pour un paysage à inventer et autre textes, presentation et edition critique par Sylvano Santini (Montreal: Presse de l’Université de Montreal, 2023). 11. “Debord didn’t always give real reasons for expulsions. . . . The motives for expulsions published in Potlatch and Internationale Situationiste bore no relation to the real reasons.” Ralph Rumney, The Counsel, translated by Malcolm Imrie (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2002), 55. For Mension (2001), who barely lasted a year with the LI, “it was more a matter of housecleaning than of exclusion” (95). 12. Mension (2001), 91. For Mension, the Letterist International was more about making a fashion statement than engaging with political causes. At one point, he promoted Debord’s Howls for Sade by writing the title on his white painter pants and then wearing them out on the Paris streets. 13. Debord, “À La Porte,” “Potlatch No. 2” (June 29, 1954) in Potlatch (1996), 21. 14. Mension (2001), 92. 15. Ibid., 46. 16. Rumney (2002), 53. 17. La Rédaction, “Le Choix des Moyens” (“The Choice of Means”) Potlatch No. 16 (January 26, 1955) in Potlatch (1996), 108–109. 18. Ibid., 108.

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19. Debord, letter to Ivan Chtcheglov (Saturday, 30? possibly 1952) in Le Marquis de Sade a des yeux de filles (2004), edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2004), 133. 20. La Rédaction, “Le Choix des Moyens” in Potlatch (1996), 108–109. 21. Vincent Kaufmann in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 77. 22. Debord, letter to Floriana Lebovici (July 7, 1985) in Correspondance volume 6 (2006), 326. 23. Ibid. The headline above No. 30 simply read “Inside Information from the Situationist International.” 24. “Debord, “Le Rôle de Potlatch, Autrefois et Maintenant” (“The Role of Potlatch, Then and Now”) Potlatch No. 30 (July 15, 1959) in Potlatch (1996), 282. 25. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (Monday morning, possibly 1951) in Le Marquis de Sade (2004), 125. Les enfants terribles is also the name of a book by Jean Cocteau published in 1929. In 1950, Cocteau collaborated with director Jean-Pierre Melville to adapt the novel for the screen. 26. L’Internationale Lettriste, “Finis les Pieds Plats” (November 1952) in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 84. 27. Debord and Gil J Wolman, “Pourquoi le Lettrisme?” (“Why Letterism?”) Potlatch No. 22 (September 9, 1955) in Potlatch (1996), 184. On the similarities between automatic writing and the corporate fixation on brainstorming, see also the article “Amere Victoire du surréalisme” in the inaugural issue of Internationale Situationniste, No. 1 (June 1958), 3–4. 28. Debord, “Et ça finit mal” (“And It Ends Badly”) in Œuvres (2006), 165. 29. Debord, letter to the Editor-in-Chief of Combat in Correspondance vol. “0” septembre 1951 – juillet 1957, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2010), 44. 30. Debord, letter to Les Lèvres Nues (30 May 1955) in Correspondance vol. “0” (2010), 66–67. 31. André de Rache, “Moscou la Poésie” in Les Lèvres Nues, No. 3, October 1953, 24–27. The same issue also contains two short essays by Paul Nougé on poetry, “Notes sur la Poésie” (8–11) and “Les Moyens de la Poésie” (11–12) and two others on language, “Le Langage” (12–13) and “De la Chair au Verbe” (21–24). 32. Debord, letter to Marcel Mariën (October 24, 1954) in Correspondance vol. “0” (2010), 45. 33. Ibid., Debord, letter to Marcel Mariën (October 23, 1955), 83. 34. Articles written by other members of the Letterist International and published in Les Lèvres Nues include Michèle Bernstein’s “Refus de discuter” (“Refusal to Discuss”) in No. 7, Jacques Fillon’s “Description raisonné de Paris” (“Reasonable Description of Paris”) also in No. 7, along with Wolman’s “J’écrit propre” (“I Write Properly” in No. 9 and “Publicité, Publicité” (“Advertising, Advertising”) in Nos. 7 and 9. 35. Les Lèvres Nues, No. 8, Mai 1956 (pp. 2–9). See also Debord, letter to Marcel Mariën” (April 11, 1956) in Correspondance vol. “0 “(2010), 104. 36. François Coadou, “Guy Debord et Marcel Mariën” in Lire Debord, edited by Laurence Le Bras and Emmanuel Guy (Paris: Éditions L’Échappée, 2016), 265.

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37. Ibid., 266. 38. L’Internationale Lettriste, “Réponses de l’Internationale lettriste à deux enquêtes du groupe surréaliste belge” (January 1954) in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 119. The LI’s response is also reprinted in Potlatch No. 5 (July 20, 1954), 41–42. 39. L’Internationale Lettriste, “Réponses de l’Internationale lettriste à deux enquêtes du groupe surréaliste belge” (“Responses of the Letterist International to Two Inquiries by the Belgian Surrealist Group”) in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 120. 40. Debord, letter to Marcel Mariën (November 11, 1955) in Correspondance vol. “0” (2010), 85. 41. On Debord’s appreciation for Mariën’s and Paul Nougé’s empathetic tendencies, see also Debord, letter to Marcel Mariën (October 10, 1955) in Correspondance vol. “0” (2010), 80–81. 42. Debord, letter to André Frankin ( September 14, 1955) in Correspondance vol. “0” (2010), 73. 43. Debord and Wolman, “Modeste Préface À La Parution D’Une Dernière Revue Surréaliste” (“Modest Preface to the Publication of a Last Surrealist Revue”), Potlatch No. 26 (7 May 1956) in Potlatch (1996), 241. Debord’s radical new form of thinking was not unlike Simone de Beauvoir’s distinction between ambiguity and absurdity. Like the act of mystification, the existence of absurdity denies the possibility of meaning. A thought that mystifies, on the other hand, is ambiguous because its meaning has not yet been fixed; it must be contested and won. See Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, translated by Bernard Frechtman (New York: Citadel Press, 1976), 129. 44. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs, translated by Richard C. McCleary (Evanston, IL: Northwest University Press, 1964), 44. 45. Ibid. 46. 46. Debord, “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography” in Situationist International Anthology (revised and expanded edition), edited and translated by Ken Knabb (Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2006), 9. 47. Debord, “Cette mauvaise reputation” (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1993), 33. 48. Kaufmann in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 76. 49. Debord and Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement” in Knabb (2006), 18. “Mode D’Emploi de Détournement” originally appeared in Les Lèvres Nues No. 8 (May 1956), 2–9. 50. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, no translator given, edited by S. Ryazanskaya (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998), 42. 51. L’Internationale Lettriste, “Panorama Intelligent de l’Avant-Garde À la Fin de 1955 - Poésie” (“Intelligent Panorama of the Avant-Garde at the End of 1955”), Potlatch No. 25 (November 24, 1955) in Potlatch (1996), 210. 52. Debord, “Perspectives for Conscious Changes in Everyday Life” in Knabb (2006), 96. 53. Debord, “Ideologies, Classes, and the Domination of Nature” in Knabb (2006), 136. 54. Ibid., footnote no. 2. 55. Asger Jorn, “Fin de Copenhague” in Documents Relatifs à la Fondation de L’Internationale Situationniste 1948-1957, edited by Gérard Berreby (Paris: Éditions Allia, 1985), 557–588.

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56. Debord, “Mémoire” in Œuvres (2006), 375–426.While the reproduction in Œuvres is in black and white, an original color version is available for viewing/reading at https://monoskop​.org​/images​/5​/56​/Debord​_Guy​_Jorn​_Asger​_Memoires​_1959​.pdf 57. Debord, “Origines des détournements indiquées, autant que possible, en mars 1986” in Œuvres (2006), 427–444. 58. Charles Baudelaire, “La Solitude” in Le Spleen de Paris (Paris: Éditions de Cluny, 1947), 46. 59. Baudelaire, “Solitude” in Paris Spleen, translated by Louise Varèse (New York: New Directions, 1970), 47. 60. Debord and Wolman, “Pourquoi le Lettrisme?” in Potlatch No. 22 (9 September 1955) in Potlatch (1996), 176. 61. Pascal Dumontier, Les Situationnistes et Mai 69: Théorie et pratique de la revolution (1966-1972) (Paris: Éditions Ivrea, 1995), 80. 62. Ken Knabb, “Introduction” in Debord, Guy Debord Complete Cinematic Works: Scripts, Stills, Documents, translated and edited by Ken Knabb (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2003), viii. 63. Debord and Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement” in Knabb (2006), 16–17. 64. Debord, “Panorama Intelligent de L’Avant-Garde À La Fin de 1955,” Potlatch No. 24 (24 November 1955) in Potlatch (1996), 216. 65. Debord, “Drôle de Vie” (“Funny/Odd Sort of Life”), Potlatch No. 7 (3 August 1954) in Potlatch (1996), 52. 66. Debord, letter to André Frankin (January 9, 1955) in Correspondance volume “0” (2010), 57. 67. Ibid., Debord, letter to Les Lèvres Nues (July 25, 1955), 70. 68. Debord, letter to Ivan Chtcheglov (Cannes, beginning of April 1963) in Correspondance volume 2 septembre 1960 – décembre 1964, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2001), 207. 69. Ibid., 208. 70. Debord and Wolman, “Pourquoi le Lettrisme?” in Potlatch No. 22 (September 9, 1955) in Potlatch (1996), 177. 71. Debord, “Panorama Intelligent de L’Avant-Garde À La Fin de 1955,” Potlatch No. 24 (November 24, 1955) in Potlatch (1996), 209. 72. Debord and Wolman, “Pourquoi le Lettrisme?” in Potlatch No. 22 (September 9, 1955) in Potlatch (1996), 177. 73. L’Internationale Lettriste, “Le Bruit et la Fureur” in Potlatch No. 6 (July 27, 1954) in Potlatch (1996), 43. 74. Debord, letter to Marcel Mariën (November 2, 1955) in Correspondance vol. “0” (2010), 84. The phrase—framed by itself at the bottom of the page—originally appeared in Les Lèvres Nues, No. 4 January 1955 on page 37. 75. L’Internationale Lettriste, “Sortie des Aristes” (“Artists’ Exit”), Potlatch No. 9-10-11 (17 to 31 August 1954) in Potlatch (1996), 63. 76. Debord, letter to Asger Jorn ( November 16, 1954) in Correspondance vol. 0 (2010), 47. 77. L’Internationale Lettriste, “Le Bruit et la Fureur” in Potlatch No. 6 (27 July 1954) in Potlatch (1996), 63.

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78. Debord and Wolman, “Misérable Miracles: méprisable métier” (“Miserable Miracles: Contemptible Profession”), Potlatch No. 26 (May 7, 1956) in Potlatch (1996), 236–237. 79. See Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986). 80. Debord, “Les Débats de ce Temps” (“Debates of this Time”), Potlatch No. 28 (May 22, 1957) in Potlatch (1996), 257. 81. Debord and Wolman, “Misérable Miracles: méprisable métier,” Potlatch No. 26 (May 7, 1956) in Potlatch (1996), 237. 82. Debord, “Letter to Ivan Chtcheglov (Tuesday, no date given) in Le Marquis de Sade (2004), 167. 83. Debord, “Une Enquête de L’Internationale Lettriste” (“A Letterist International Survey”), Potlatch No. 4 (July 13, 1954) in Potlatch (1996), 32. 84. Mension (2001), 5–6. 85. Rumney (2002), 6. 86. Debord, letter to Gil J Wolman (Thursday night [June], 1953) in Correspondance vol. “0” (2010), 27. 87. Ibid. 88. Mension (2001), 80. 89. Debord, “Le Rôle de L’Écriture” (“The Role of Writing”), Potlatch No. 23 (October 13, 1955) in Potlatch (1996), 202. 90. In his assessment of Debord’s life and work, Anselm Jappe (2018) identified a “near-Oedipal hatred” in Debord’s attitude toward André Breton and the Surrealists (56). I would argue that Debord also had a similar hatred toward Isou, even though the latter was only six years older. 91. Direct action is a term traditionally associated with nineteenth-century anarchism; however, in this context, Debord is referring to direct action as non-violent acts designed to thwart cultural agents from propagating messages that favor the economic status quo. Debord’s notion of direct action should not be confused with action directe, a small group of French revolutionaries involved in armed struggles during 1979–1987. See Jean-Christophe Buisson, “Action Directe” in Le Siècle Rebelle Dictionnaire de la Contestation au XX Siècle, edited by d’Emmanuel de Waresquiel, Philippe Gavi and Benoît Laudier (Paris: Larousse, 1999), 19. 92. Debord, “Un Pas en Arrière” (“One Step Back”), Potlatch No. 28 (May 22, 1957) in Potlatch (1996), 263. 93. Andrew Hussey, “The Second Coming of Isidore Isou” in Apollo (online edition), para. 4, https://www​.apollo​-magazine​.com​/isidore​-isou​-lettrism​-paris​ -acquaviva/. 94. According to Mension (2001), Isou was not only convinced of his own genius, but he also took offence when Debord usurped his position as avant-garde leader. Ironically, for Mension, Isou’s resentment “occurred much more on a political basis than an artistic one,” 81. 95. Debord, “Jeux Éducatifs” (“Educational Games”) Potlatch No. 24 (November 24, 1955) in Potlatch (1996), 212. 96. Ibid., 213. 97. Ibid.

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98. Joseph M. Williams and Gregory G. Colomb, The Craft of Argument, 3rd edition (New York: Pearson Longman, 2007), 4. 99. Debord, “Jeux Éducatifs,” Potlatch No. 24 (24 November 1955) in Potlatch (1996), 212. 100. Michaël Attali, “Paris Match et la fabrique sportive de la figure de l’immigré au cours des années 1950: entre naturalisation et assignation” in Migrations Société 2011/5 (Vol. 23/No. 137) September–October 2011, 163. https://www​.cairn​.info​/ revue​-migrations​-societe​-2011​-5​-page​-161​.htm. 101. Ibid. 102. Ibid., 164. 103. Ibid. 104. Ibid., 166. 105. Debord, “La valeur éducatif” in Potlatch No. 18 (March 23, 1955) in Potlatch (1996), 137. 106. Debord, letter to André Frankin (April 21, 1955) in Correspondence vol. “0” (2010), 64. On the introduction of creeping McCarthyism in European customs (“moeurs”), see “Perspectives des Accords de Londres et de Paris” (“Perspectives of the London and Paris Accords”), Potlatch No. 15 (December 22, 1954) in Potlatch (1996), 100. 107. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, translated by Annette Lavers (London: Paladin Books, 1979), 154. 108. Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, translated and annotated by Ken Knabb (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2014), sec. 5. 109. Mension (2001), 44. 110. Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (2014), sec. 24. 111. Debord, letter to Piero Simondo ( February 14, 1957) in Correspondance volume “0” (2010), 161. 112. Debord, letter to Constant (April 30, 1959) in Correspondance volume 1 juin 1957-août 1960, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1999), 226–227. English translation, 246. 113. Debord, “Toute L’Eau de la Mer Ne Pourrait Pas,” Potlatch No. 1 (June 22, 1954) in Potlatch (1996), 13. 114. George Rudé, The French Revolution: Its Causes, Its History, and Its Legacy After 200 Years (New York: Grove Press, 1988), 107. Rudé adds that la Terreure was not a method but rather a manner to signify a particular period of time, namely, September 1793 to July 1794, when the temporary Jacobin government imposed its political will by a variety of means, including military, judicial and economic (196). 115. Bertrand D’Astorg, Introduction au monde de la Terreur (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1945), 20. 116. In his study, D’Astorg suggests that Saint-Just’s desire to transcend the distinction between good and evil anticipates Nietzsche’s ethical position by almost one hundred years. 117. Debord, “Présentation” in Potlatch (1996), 8–9. 118. L’Internationale Lettriste, “Manifeste” and “Acte Additionel à la Constitution d’une Internationale Lettriste” in Œuvres (2006), 95, 101.

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119. Debord, “Exercice de la Psychogéographie,” Potlatch No. 2 (June 29, 1954) in Potlatch (1996), 20. 120. Arthur Rimbaud, “Rimbaud to George Izambard” in Arthur Rimbaud Complete Works, translated by Paul Schmidt (New York: Harper Collins, 2008), 113. 121. L’Internationale Lettriste,“Acte Additionel à la Constitution d’une Internationale Lettriste” in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 102. 122. Debord, “Manifeste pour une construction de situations” (“Manifesto for the Construction of Situations”) in Œuvres (2006), 107. 123. L’Internationale Lettriste, “Touchez pas aux lettristes” (“Hands off the Letterists”) (April 1953) in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 98. 124. Debord, “L’Architecture et le Jeu” (“Architecture and the Game”), Potlatch No. 20 ( May 30, 1955) in Potlatch (1996), 158. 125. Michèle Bernstein, M. Dahou, Véra, Gil J Wolman, “La Ligne Générale” (“The General Line”), Potlatch No. 14 (November 30, 1954) in Potlatch (1996), 86. 126. Ibid., 86–87. 127. Ibid., 87. 128. L’Internationale Lettriste, “Faire-Part” (“Announcement”) (March 10, 1954) in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 123. 129. “Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society.” Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, no translator given (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), 1. 130. Debord, “Fragments de recherche pour un comportement prochain” (“Fragments of searches for an upcoming behavior”) (February 1953) in Œuvres (2006), 95. 131. Huizinga (1980), 158. 132. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (Thursday, June 21, 1951) in Le Marquis de Sade (2004), 96. 133. Debord, “Manifeste pour une construction de situations” in Œuvres (2006), 106–107. 134. Debord, letter to Annie Le Brun (September 26, 1988) in Correspondance, volume 7, janvier 1988 – novembre 1994, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2008), 40. 135. In “Manifeste pour une construction de situations” Debord is here referring to Luna Park, an amusement park near Porte Maillot in Paris, France that opened 1907 (1909?) and closed in 1931 due to worsening global economic conditions. The term “Luna-park” simply denotes an “amusement park.” 136. L’Internationale Lettriste, “Réponses de l’Internationale lettriste à deux enquêtes du groupe surréaliste belge” in Debord, Œuvres (2006), 120. 137. Ibid., 121. 138. “It’s already been fifteen years since Franco has clung to power, sullying that part of our future that we let lost with Spain. . . . We must stop looking at this situation in a sentimental way, no longer let left-wing intellectuals have fun with it. It’s just a matter of strength.” L’Internationale Lettriste, “Il faut recommencer la guerre en espagne” (“We Must Restart the War in Spain”), Internationale Lettriste No. 3 (August 1953) in Debord Œuvres (2006), 100.

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139. Debord, “Pour la Guerre Civile a Maroc” (“For the War in Morocco”), Potlatch No. 8 (August 10, 1954) in Potlatch (1996), 56. 140. La Rédaction, “Le Droit de Réponse” (“The Right to Respond”), Potlatch No. 4 (July 13, 1954) in Potlatch (1996), 34. 141. John G. Steossinger, Why Nations Go to War, third edition (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982, 90. 142. La Rédaction, “Le Droit de Réponse,” Potlatch No. 4 (July 13, 1954) in Debord, Potlatch (1996), 34. 143. Ibid. 144. Debord, letter to André Frankin (October 10, 1955) in Correspondance vol. “0” (2010), 82. 145. Ibid. 146. Debord and Wolman, “Éducation Européene” (“European Education”), Potlatch No. 13 (October 23, 954) in Potlatch (1996), 81. 147. Debord, “L’Hiver en Suisse” (“Winter in Switzerland”), Potlatch No. 15 (December 22, 1954) in Potlatch (1996), 98. 148. Ibid. 149. Mension (2001), 52. 150. Isou,” Pathétique sans ratelier: Correspondance Publique” (“Pathetic without a Rack: Public Correspondence”) in La Dictature lettriste, no 1, Cahier d’un nouveau régime artistique, 1946 (Paris: Réédition Cahiers de l’Externité, 2000, 52. https://gallica​.bnf​.fr​/ark:​/12148​/bpt6k32815091#. 151. Jean-Louis Brau, “Open Letter to Jean-Isodore Isou” in Internationale Lettriste #1, December 1952. http://www​.notbored​.org​/letter​-to​-Isou​.html. 152. Ibid. 153. Debord and Wolman, “Pourquoi le Lettrisme” in Potlatch No. 22 (September 9, 1955) in Debord, Potlatch (1996), 180. 154. Ibid., 181. 155. Debord, “Un pas en Arrière” (“One Step Back”), Potlatch No. 28 (May 22, 1957) in Potlatch (1996), 262. 156. Internationale Lettriste, “Leur Faire Avaler Leur Chewing-Gum,” Potlatch No. 1 (June 22, 1954) in Potlatch (1996), 14. On the role of chewing gum in the American involvement in the Guatemalan economy, Jennifer P. Mathews, Chicle: The Chewing Gum of the Americas, From the Ancient Maya to William Wrigley (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2009). 157. Marcel Mariën, “Valable Partout” (“Valid Everywhere”), Potlatch No. 4 (July 13, 1954) in Potlatch (1996), 33–34. The passage originally appeared under the title “La Propagande Objective” in the Belgian Surrealist publication Les Lèvres Nues No. 1 (April 1954), edited by Mariën, 33. 158. Mension (2001), 84. 159. Alastair Hemmens, The Critique of Work in Modern French Thought from Charles Fourier to Guy Debord (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019), 24–25. 160. Mension (2001), 84.

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161. Isou, Les manifestes du Soulèvement de la Jeunesse (1950-1966), Afterword by Roland Sabatier (Romainville: Éditions Al Dante, 2004). What follows is a summary of Isou’s main arguments regarding youth culture, agency, and rebellion. 162. Ibid., 10. 163. Ibid., 13. On the relationship between youth and disease, see Steven Zdatny’s “The French Hygiene Offensive of the 1950s: A Critical Moment in the History of Manners” in The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 84, No. 4 (December 2012), pp. 897–932. See also Drew Fedorka’s “Le Temps des Copains: Youth and the Making of Modern France,” an unpublished Masters’ Thesis at the University of Central Florida available at https://stars​.library​.ucf​.edu​/cgi​/viewcontent​.cgi​?referer=​&httpsredir​=1​ &article​=1073​&context​=etd. 164. Isou (2004), 14–15. 165. The first seven issues of this Letterist periodical (1952-1954) were published immediately following the break with the Letterists. Nos. 8 and 9 did not appear until November and December 1954, respectively. Following No. 8, the newsletter was retitled Union de la jeunesse and run by an external movement which published only one issue in May 1954. 166. L’Internationale Lettriste, “Vagabondage Spécial” (“Vagrancy Special”), Internationale Lettriste No. 3 August 1953 in Debord Œuvres (2006), 103. 167. “Debord, letter to Gil J Wolman (Thursday night [June], 1953) in Correspondance volume “0” (2010), 29. 168. Ibid., 27. 169. Ibid. 170. Ibid., 28. 171. Mension (2001) makes clear in his memoirs that Wolman, Brau, and Debord were not involved in criminal activities in the same manner he was (i.e., stealing cars); in fact, they were honest without being moralists about it (22). Nor did they panhandle like he did; Debord received a living expense from his parents because he was still registered as a student (38). 172. Mension (2001), 37. 173. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (1950) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 67. 174. Debord, letter to Gil Wolman (Thursday night [June], 1953) in Correspondance volume “0” (2010), 28. 175. Ibid. 176. Ibid., 28–29.

Chapter 3

Debord and the Situationist International (1957–1972)

Chapter 3 covers the period between 1957 and 1972 that coincides with the start and end of the Situationist International (SI). So far, this project has availed itself of personal correspondences written by Guy Debord, along with essays, articles, and manifestos originally published in various journals such as Letterist International (1952–1954), Naked Lips (1954–1958), and Potlatch (1954–1957). With the exception of the groundbreaking essay by Debord and Gil J. Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement” (1956), this chapter will focus on articles originally published in the Internationale Situationniste journal, in particular, texts that explicitly address practical and theoretical concerns regarding the relationship of language in the creation of radical subjectivity, as well as the difficulties in communicating authentically within the reifying tendencies of late capitalism. Debord once explained to Italian former-Situationist Paolo Salvadori that the journal represented the collective expressions of an international group of theoreticians who undertook a radical critique of what modern society had become in all its aspects.1 What made the SI’s radical critique of modern society so different from previous revolutionary movements was its attempt to destroy the capacity of late capitalist society to endlessly absorb self-criticism through a “totalizing self-regulation.”2 The capacity to absorb criticism resulted from the fact that modern capitalist society tends to struggle only against false challenges, that is, only against those that are posed on its own terms (e.g., the perception of Surrealism as producing harmless artistic expressions rather than purely revolutionary acts of rejection and refusal). Because of its capacity to endlessly absorb and self-regulate criticism against itself, so-called capitalist culture endures today because it continually re-frames revolutionary activities as purely cultural expressions rather than explicitly political activism, and to defuse-and-commodify revolt into consumer products. 91

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As it continued to intensify during the 1960s through the forced consumption of gratuitous goods and services, the bureaucratization of the world, and the reification of “native” language into advertising slogans, Debord felt that late capitalism had entered into a final phase of crisis, capitulation, and collapse. If this was true, and this final phase could be decisively exploited to its fullest potential by revolutionary activities designed to undermine both spectacular and real commodities, then the imminent collapse of capitalism would result in the complete abolition of bourgeois class society, a goal Debord and the earlier Letterist International (LI) had already discussed as early as November 1954.3 Following Marx, the abolition of a hierarchical class society would eliminate commodity production and wage labor. By focusing their energies on a comprehensive form of revolutionary praxis, Debord and the SI not only hoped to transcend “art” (i.e., the creation of cultural commodities) but also re-introduce ludic activities back into daily life. By removing commodity production from the realm of authentic artistic activity, Debord would be able to blend revolutionary theory and artistic practice into an experiential activity that could resist ideological fossilization.4 But how would a direct fusion of theory and practice be accomplished and what might it look like? More importantly, how would it impact Debord’s politics of communication? In the early 1960s, Debord and the Situationists were aware that they lacked the necessary means to carry out a sustained critique of certain fields of technocratic knowledge and bureaucratic practice. During the fifth SI Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, August 28–30, 1961, fellow Situationist Raoul Vaneigem stressed that any activity carried out henceforth by the group would have to depend “on its ability to maintain critical rigor, a rigor that will serve as a cohesive force.”5 As early as summer 1961, Debord and the SI were already discussing the spectacular organization of social life as well as devising strategies to smash through the smooth veneer of the capitalist spectacle itself. For Vaneigem, The point is not to elaborate a spectacle of refusal, but to refuse the spectacle. In order for their elaboration to be artistic in the new and authentic sense defined by the SI, the elements of the destruction of the spectacle must precisely cease to be works of art.6

Debord and the early SI members “refused the spectacle” by creating works that qualified on the surface as “artistic statements” and were unknowingly welcomed into the “spectacle” of art culture—not unlike the young woman in Gillo Pontecorvo’s film Battle of Algiers (1961) who knowingly leaves behind a bomb hidden inside her handbag in a crowded resto-bar. Echoing Debord’s earlier view of critical artistic production as a “terrorist” activity, the so-called artistic statement aesthetically “explodes” within that selfsame culture. Given its volatile and corrosive nature, the hope is that the SI’s

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critique cannot be contained or explained away by the “totalizing self-regulation” of late capitalism. Attila Kotányi, another SI member present at the same conference, but later expelled in December 1963, elaborated on Vaneigem’s original point by exploring the potential relationship between critique as a cohesive force and artistic works created by SI members. The issue for Kotányi was the authenticity of so-called artistic statements against what he identified as “the dominant conditions of artistic inauthenticity.”7 What had previously been considered revolutionary art could still be stripped away and sanitized of its critical rigor and safely tucked away on a museum wall. If this is the fate of critical statements produced by revolutionary artists, how, then, can anyone produce literary, filmic, or artistic statements with revolutionary value without being co-opted and commodified? How can public expressions of rejection remain so in a capitalist system that successfully manages to totalize all critical aspects of the existing world into commodities? Kotányi’s own solution echoed Debord’s earlier use of the rhetorical terms “terror” and “terrorism,” especially the use of direct action. The key for both theorists was, firstly, to frustrate cultural agency and, secondly, to propagate messages that continue to destabilize the social and economic status quo. For Kotányi, Our impact lies in the elaboration of certain truths which have an explosive power as soon as people are ready to struggle for them . . . Until we attain [the] purity [of modern explosives], i.e. this necessary degree of clarity, we cannot count on the explosive effects of our approaches to everyday life and to the critique of everyday life.8

In order to contest the monolithic characteristic of the capitalist spectacle of the late 1950s and early 1960s (i.e., science, culture, technocratic knowledge, and bureaucratic practices), Debord and the SI decided to attack pure “models” of technocratic thought with their own social-cultural model of “total communication.”9 This particular communicative model represents the link between Debord’s earlier interest in anti-aesthetic “terrorism” discussed in chapters 1 and 2 and his overall politics of communication. Debord envisioned “total communication” as the realization of a new understanding of culture and everyday social life that was not only linked to a permanent state of revolution, expressed in and through a radical notion of critical art, but also through experimental forms of living modestly (i.e., without the security of a weekly pay cheque or an affiliation with academic institutions).10 Reflecting a few years later on how he and the SI could tactically undermine the symbiotic relationship between ideology, language, and communication, Debord contended that it was necessary to simply act against the end point of an adversary’s communications while keeping one’s own intact.11

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To be clear, the SI’s explicit critique of ideology and the latter’s relationship to language appear only secondarily in essays such as Kotányi’s “Gangland and Philosophy” (1960), Debord’s “Perspectives for Conscious Changes in Everyday Life” (1961), as well as the SI’s “Instructions for an Insurrection” (1961). In these invaluable essays, the relationship between ideology, language, and communication is critically examined within the larger purview of Western Marxist social theory and revolutionary activities within colonized nations. While the aforementioned studies are insightful and instructive in terms of an historical analysis of the relationship between ideology and communication within a revolutionary context, we will concentrate our attention mainly on Debord’s “All the King’s Men” (1963) and how ideas presented in this particular essay are elaborated in other essays by SI members. These include Raoul Vaneigem’s “Basic Banalities (Parts I and 2)” (1962–1963) and Mustapha Khayati’s “Captive Words” (1966). While “All the King’s Men” is a key text in our understanding of the relationship between language and ideology, all four essays deal explicitly with the conviction held by all members of the SI that the problem of language lies at the heart of all struggles either for the abolition or the maintenance of social alienation: language and subjectivity are inseparable from these struggles.12 Before turning our attention to “All the King’s Men,” let us begin our exploration of Debord’s politics of communication by taking a look at an explicitly practical pre-SI essay and use it to create a framework around which to examine in greater detail the critical relationship between language, ideology, and communication. For our purposes, the most important early essay is Debord’s and Wolman’s “A User’s Guide to Détournement,” originally published in May 1956 in the Belgian Surrealist journal Naked Lips No. 8. Before we begin our examination, it is worth noting that, although the authors felt at that time that the text did not have a general use value of its own to justify an independent publication,13 they were nonetheless grateful that publisher Marcel Mariën included it in his journal. More importantly, Debord’s assessment that the “Détournement” essay was not worthy of an independent publication implies that he was likely already thinking of the need for a new publication platform in the form of the Internationale Situationniste journal to broaden the scope of the group’s critical writings. Nonetheless, Mariën’s Surrealist journal still served as a critical platform to facilitate the publication of some of Debord’s most groundbreaking early essays. These include “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography” in issue No. 6 (September 1955) and the revised film script for “Howls for Sade” in issue No. 7 (December 1955). Debord would go on to submit only two more essays to Mariën’s journal, “Theory of the Dérive” and “Two Reports on Dérive,” both published in issue No. 9 (November 1956). For our purposes, we need to keep in mind that dérive and psychogeography fall under the rubric of ludic social behavior

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and, as a result, have only an indirect theoretical relationship to Debord’s politics of communication. Although the essay was written and published a year before the creation of the SI in 1957, “A User’s Guide to Détournement” outlines a critical-practical strategy that Debord would maintain throughout his artistic and intellectual life. The influence of this particular text on early Situationist thinking exemplifies Debord’s own belief that his entire revolutionary project lasted from 1952 to 1972, with the end of the LI and the beginning of the SI simply marking a refinement in his revolutionary understanding of postwar culture in France. As an example of Debord’s revolutionary activities in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the text begins with the pronouncement that art can no longer be defended as an elitist cultural activity because artistic production has been subsumed under general productive forces and is inexorably transformed by secondary productive relations. Secondary productive relations result in a new social practice of life.14 Art is no longer concerned with the personal expression of an individual artist, or even the aesthetic experience of the contemplative viewer, but simply with its exchange value as a commodity. The transformation of artistic production into commodity production signals to Debord and Wolman the possibility that their retaliatory cultural revolution has now entered into a “civil-war phase.”15 The “civil-war” metaphor is particularly appropriate because it portrays an internal war between organized groups living within the same country, in this case, the revolutionary avant-garde artistic tradition on one side and the economic powers that be on the other. For Debord and Wolman, artistic production needs to be pried away from its narrow economic imperatives and to serve to propagandize the articulation of new interpersonal relations in society.16 By applying hitherto extreme and innovative tactics to the rubric of symbolic subversion, artistic production is transformed into revolutionary propaganda, namely, into a disruptive force designed to destroy “ideological formulations of a past society” as well as the “literary and artistic heritage of humanity.”17 Debord and Wolman unashamedly understand their type of artistic production as a form of revolutionary propaganda because they themselves are already engaged in a cultural “civil war” against the state. It is revolutionary because it is a specific type of communicative strategy designed to undermine state and media propaganda messages that advocate a particular type of passive and uncritical consumer lifestyle. Debord and Wolman seek instead to use revolutionary propaganda to transform the totality of mass media (i.e., radio, television, film, and print media) into a weapon against the state and the latter’s own false claim as arbiters of Truth, Justice, and Freedom. According to Baran and David, propaganda “involves the no-holds-barred use of communication to propagate specific beliefs and expectations.”18 This combative view of propaganda

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mirrors Debord’s earlier desire to engage in scandalous and anti-aesthetic “terrorist” activities. Détournement simply represents a new form of antiaesthetic terrorism. Given Baran’s and David’s definition of propaganda, the goal of propagandists “is to change the way people act and to leave them believing that those actions are voluntary, that the newly adopted behaviors— and the opinions underlying them—are their own.”19 From a methodological point of view, the desire to change the way people act (and think) represents Debord’s wish to re-energize the proletariat in France. In a letter addressed to Édouard Taubé (then a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie) and dated October 17, 1964, Debord explained that criticism of all aspects of the social world is contingent on the “self-education” of the proletariat.20 For Debord, the absence of revolutionary alternatives became a characteristic of the proletariat of the late-1950s, due in no small part to the apparent economic successes of the “Thirty Glorious” years. As he pointed out in 1958, “We are excluded from real control over the vast material powers of our time.”21 Propaganda generated by the SI and aimed at the proletariat needed to address this absence by developing a revolutionary consciousness and then organizing it along political lines. The development of class consciousness was contingent on the necessity of revisiting revolutionary organization and making it a “political issue.”22 At the core of the development of class consciousness was the notion of “Truth” as the totality of social, political, cultural, and economic forces and relations of knowledge. Debord and Wolman both knew that to change the way social individuals behave, propagandists would have to change the way people conceive of themselves and their social world. To attain revolutionary class consciousness, a variety of communication techniques would become necessary to guide and transform those beliefs.23 To self-educate the proletariat, artistic production needed to be subsumed within an avant-garde system of revolutionary propaganda that transcends Debord’s earlier notion of “scandal.” Given that Dada, Surrealism, and Brecht’s epic theater of the 1920s had already tried to oppose the bourgeois notion of art as an autonomous entity distinct from social life and capable of being easily bought and sold, Debord and Wolman knew that their revolutionary process had to openly attack capitalist culture itself—and to subsequently push this tactical process “to the point of negating the negation.”24 The end goal is to negate art while at the same time sublating and preserving criticism within it. Implicit in “negating the negation” is the desire to negate previous literary and artistic works by sublating/preserving them and then representing them in critical combinations. “Any combination,” wrote Debord and Wolman, “no matter where they are taken from, can be used to make new combinations.”25 In theory, any item taken from high and low culture, the sacred and the profane, fact and fiction, art and advertising, has the potential

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to transcend its original context. The final step, however, is to sublate and preserve these items in an “artificial” combination that negates truth-claims that are made in the original work (e.g., meritocracy, hero-worship, and selfsacrifice). Taking their cue from modern poetry’s ability to bring together disparate elements to form new literary objects, Debord and Wolman plagiarized visual and written media in ways that not only criticized commodityfetishism but that object’s own problematic relationship to the social world. To be clear, the re-appropriative strategies of détournement are not about following proper citation rules but about subverting so-called “truth-claims” that are hidden within culturally accepted literary, artistic, and commercial works. The final goal of détournement is to expose these so-called “truthclaims” as false expressions about the social world. Détournement is also about undermining a work’s validity-as-truth and replacing it with a new artistic object that recontextualizes truth-claims within a critical setting that exposes the work’s hidden ideological message. Détournement should not be used for humorous effect, since the goal of humor is to provide solace, enlightenment, or an inclusive feeling of mutual suffering. Humor rarely provides a sense of revolutionary praxis through which the negative situation being acknowledged in the joke can be corrected. Instead, the critical purpose of détournement for Debord and Wolman is to establish a “parodic-serious stage when the accumulation of [détourned] elements . . . express our indifference toward a meaningless and forgotten original, and concern[s] itself with rendering a certain sublimity.”26 To be clear, parody is a literary device that mimics the individual style or manner of a primary source in a humorous or satirical way. Parody is typically done so badly, so broadly, and so obviously that it appears to the enlightened viewer as an intentional mockery. Still, we must remember that at the heart of satire and parody is critical commentary. Two things must be kept in mind in trying to achieve what the authors call “a certain sublimity.” First, for the full effect of parody to be meaningful, the viewer must be aware of the context of the primary source material; otherwise, the critical commentary leveled against a certain state of affairs is minimized or lost. Second, the imitative tone of parody does not always have to focus on satire or ridicule. Sometimes, the parodic material functions more like an homage or an imitation, rather than an outright caricature meant to be laughed at or criticized. Given this possibility, it is conceivable that the parodic turn described by Debord and Wolman actually masks “one last great declaration of love for art and poetry,” because they are the only true vehicle left to express “the rich possibilities of human life.”27 In her book A Theory of Parody (1985), Linda Hutcheon argues that we must re-examine twentieth as well as twenty-first century parody in two important ways.28 First, we must reassess the nature of the so-called target. Is it a parody, an allusion, or an homage? For example, modernity is the pinnacle of human development;

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for Marx, on the other hand, it is instead a parody of human development.29 Parody may be as subtle as the imitation of a particular writing or speaking style, or as blatant as physical mimicry or caricature. Second, we must also open up the range of intended responses to include irony, which refers to “the recognition of a reality different from appearance.”30 Here, irony should be considered as the expression of a “reflected consciousness.”31 In verbal irony, for example, the actual intent of the speaker is expressed in words that appear to carry the opposite meaning of the utterance. One of the functions of irony is to give an “oppressed sensibility” a means of protesting against individual alienation.32 Irony is one of the most effective ways to thwart the reification of language. If we can remain aware of the subtle capacities of language to sometimes not say what it means, then we can more easily detect the disconnection between appearance and reality and become more enlightened consumers of parody. If we can reflect on these various elements, then “parody acts as a consciousness-raising device” that limits “dogmatic views of any particular ideological group.”33 It should come as no surprise then that the use of irony tends to increase during periods of uncertainty and turmoil.34 As a critique of commodity-fetishism and consumer culture, the potential for détournement is more commonly found in advertising than in art or poetry since the marketing of goods and services tends to rely more explicitly on the ideological trappings of capitalism to function effectively. Debord and Wolman identify two categories of détourned materials, minor (“mineur”) and deceptive (“abusifs”).35 A minor element of détournement is not important in itself; rather, its détourned value is generated “from the new context in which it has been placed.”36 Minor materials can include cut-up advertising images, single lines or words taken from a published text, generic newspaper photos, and so on. Minor materials are also the building blocks that come together to form a détourned statement. Deceptive détournement, on the other hand, derives its critical prowess from the use of “an intrinsically significant element”37 that is already a critical or provocative statement in its own right. This is why the authors state that deceptive détournement should be considered as a “premonitory-proposition détournement.”38 A premonitory element typically serves as a warning beforehand; for example, in the field of health sciences a premonition is a symptom that something worse may happen in the near future. All efforts must be made to keep the symptomatic condition from exacerbating. In the specific context of symbolic subversion, a premonitory element (the authors mention by name the revolutionary writings of Saint-Just and Soviet filmmaker and theorist Sergei Eisenstein) is by definition already a critical symptom regarding the state of the world. In the end, détournement combines minor materials that provide a visual or written background against which the deceptive, imminent materials are critically compared or contrasted. Thus, a détourned statement must take a critical

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point of view regarding the social world while at the same time maintaining a stance as a critical object in that world.39 In their article, Debord and Wolman present four general laws that détournement must follow. Before looking at each one separately, we should briefly summarize them here. The first universal and essential law states that détournement is predicated on the overall impression of disparate and disconnected materials. The second declares that détourned materials must retain some aspect of their original source. The third law asserts that a détourned statement should not be approached rationally. The fourth maintains that a simple “reversal” may be the most direct but not necessarily the most effective form of détournement. The last three laws are applicable primarily to deceptively détourned materials. Let us look at each one separately and see how they reflect some of the greater concerns found in Debord’s writings and films. The first law implies that it is the most disparate and détourned aspects of a statement “which contributes most sharply to the overall impression.”40 In other words, it is the least appropriate or innocent image, phrase, or individual word that actually initiates a critical reflection that the détourned statement is seeking to initiate. As Henri Lefebvre writes, “Irony asks the question and awaits a reply which it does not know and cannot give, for only the unforeseeable—which motivates irony—holds the answer.”41 We saw in the previous chapter how Debord was interested in creating “a form of thinking that is visibly more mystified than mystifying.”42 With détournement, the incompatible element allows itself to be undone and remade by a continual exchange between thinking and viewing/reading. Why is this détourned element here? What does it mean? How does it fit together? The degree of compatibility/ incompatibility of the various elements that constitute a détourned statement lends itself to a sense of “defamiliarization” that opens up unfamiliar modes of thinking and being. Metaphorically speaking, the way in which a “minor” element works in a détourned statement is not unlike the natural process by which a pearl is created. An incompatible substance enters into the oyster between the mantle and shell and begins to irritate the mantle; the oyster responds to the incompatible material by covering it up with an organic composite material called the nacre (also known as “mother-of-pearl”). The end result is that the incompatible (or “minor”) material is transformed into something beautiful. The second law of détournement states that détourned elements must not be overtly distorted or manipulated because their efficacy is contingent on the unconscious “recollection of the original contexts of the elements.”43 Implicit in the act of recollection is the notion of memory. Debord sought to define what is and what is no longer remembered as avant-garde art (e.g., “naïve” art, or the hollowness of Surrealist art). Yet, everywhere he looks, elements of the past still remain. “We have to fight nostalgia for the past,” he wrote to

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Constant, “under all its forms.”44 Debord and Wolman point out in their essay that the creator’s own conscious memory should not explicitly factor into the choice of minor or deceptive materials. Given that Debord used the techniques of détournement to create an autobiographical book called Mémoires, we need to take a closer look at how exactly memory and recollection operate in the second law of détournement. To begin with, the authors make a distinction between the individual memory of the artist and the collective (or cultural) memory of viewers/readers. For the artist, the role of memory in the creation of art is inescapable; as a result, the likelihood of art as a “pure, absolute expression”45 is difficult. An artist openly embraces their influences, passions, and preoccupations and expresses them as artistic statements. But herein lies the important difference Debord and Wolman understand between the individual memory of the artist and the collective memory of viewers/ readers, and how memory itself—as a particular recollection of an event, person, or thing—can be subordinated to the notion of a “total communication.” While the authors request that artists refrain from relying exclusively on their own subjective memory, they ask that creators combine détourned materials in ways that critically address the disconnection between social existence under late capitalism and social relationships contained therein. Only in the latter sense can “critical” art transcend its traditional artistic sphere and, while retaining the qualities of “art” as the individual expression of one’s creative activities, also exist in a social realm. Writing in 1964, SI members were arguing that the time for traditional art was over. Now was the time to “to realize art,”46 that is, to not only become consciously aware of art but also to make it a substantial part of social existence. To realize art as a social entity is to actively suppress it as an aesthetic entity that is transformed through commodity-fetishism into a frivolous object of consumption. Détournement is not just an anti-aesthetic statement in itself; it is an act of social critique that is at once anti-capitalist, anti-commodity, and anti-spectacular. The total product criticizes both the existing capitalist world of commodity-fetishism and its own relationship as an artistic “commodity” to that social world. If neither of these goals are met, then détourned art is no better than the Surrealist fascination with the so-called “bourgeois” unconscious, or the belief that representations of irrational subjectivity can somehow destroy society’s reliance on logic and reason. The only form of subjectivity worth considering in this context would be an ironic subjectivity that exists as an active, questioning force in modern society. For Debord, the catastrophic existence of so-called capitalist culture “has led to total ideological decomposition.”47 Critical expressions about the state of the social world have been silenced and the absence of traditional capitalist ideology (i.e., individual freedom to make money, sell goods and services, and own a business or private property) has been supplanted by a culture

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of mass media advertising that relentlessly reminds individuals to consume more than they need. As a result, advertising has silenced critical debate by transforming critical judgments “into a mere conditioned reflex.”48 To fight against this “conditioned reflex” is one of the critical aims of détournement. Although we have been discussing individual and collective memory in relation to détournement’s second law, we also need to posit a peculiar form of memory that preoccupied Debord from an early age. For the LI and the early Situationists, the presence of an absence is a very important concept that combines memory and desire with the nonexistence (or the relentless non-presence) of a “Northwest Passage” out of capitalist society. Because of the partial successes of past revolutionary activities during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Debord viewed life after capitalism as a present absence, as a revolutionary desire that had still not yet come to fruition. As Raoul Vaneigem wrote in 1969, “Each time the proletariat takes the risk of changing the world it rediscovers its historical memory.”49 Without proper organization and a coherent theoretical foundation, any action or behavior seeking to realize a “Northwest Passage” beyond capitalism dooms revolutionaries to a kind of nonexistence. As Henri Lefebvre coldly states, “Modernity will be the shadow cast on bourgeois society, by the thwarted possibility of revolution, a parody of revolution.”50 Without meaningful dialogue with other like-minded revolutionary groups, Debord and the Situationists remain a non-presence on the political landscape. As Ivan Chtcheglov recalls in his essay “Formulary for a New Urbanism” (1953), an object that is not consciously noticed at first can, by its subsequent absence, result in an imperceptible or unconscious impression. “As a result of this sighting backward in time,” he writes, “the absence of the object becomes a presence one can feel.”51 In Chtcheglov’s case, memory is triggered not by the object itself but by an awareness of its absence. The missing object is remembered as a lack, an unconscious void that seeks continual fulfillment. In “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography” (1955), Debord originally specified that collective memory should serve only one purpose: “educative value.”52 For example, a statue of a famous war hero should not conjure up feelings of valor, heroism, and nationhood but rather bloodshed and carnage. Extending Debord’s notion of collective memory as educative, Raoul Vaneigem argued later on in “Basic Banalities (Part 2)” (1963) that the collective memory of previous aggressions, presented in a public space in clearly “unaggressive forms” (i.e., statues or monuments), appear today as the latest attempt to transform the violent incoherence of history “into the organization of [spectacular] appearances.53 The innate violence of social and political upheavals is effaced, rendered absent by their transformation into faceless monoliths or monuments. Vaneigem is asking us to remove these falsified, spectacular memories from our individual minds “by harnessing all

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the energy contained in previous antagonisms for a radical struggle soon to come.”54 We must not forget the state’s capacity (and others who speak on its behalf) to completely erase from public memory any references to previous revolutionary activities. To paraphrase Saint-Just once again, “Those who make half a revolution have only dug themselves a grave.”55 The third law of détournement asserts that a détourned statement “is less effective the more it approaches a rational reply.”56 This law emphasizes Debord’s and Wolman’s desire to undermine rationality itself by smashing the oppressive rationality of commodity-fetishism that infects all aspects of late capitalist society. “This is the original flaw in commodity rationality,” writes Debord later, “the sickness of bourgeois reason, a sickness which has been inherited by the bureaucratic class.”57 Although the commodity itself is hierarchical (e.g., certain items are priced out of reach, or not readily available), the spectacle behaves as if these same commodities are universally available to all sectors of the population. In reality, they are not. As a universal entity within capitalist society, the spectacle must appear unaware of the actual hierarchical structure of commodity rationality. Through a willful disavowal by the spectacle, “hierarchical value judgments” exist “in a world of irrational rationalization.”58 Although rationality itself, or the quality of being logical, was a consistent target of both Dada and Surrealist artists, Debord and Wolman argue in their text that aesthetic attacks on rationality originally started much earlier in the prose poetry of Lautréamont. To begin with, Lautréamont sought to experience the material world on its own terms rather than through the lens of late nineteenth-century hierarchical value judgments. “To a noble, simple intellect,” Lautréamont wrote, “nothing is unworthy: the least phenomenon of nature, if it holds mystery, gives the sage inexhaustible food for thought.”59 Even while remaining open to the vagaries of subjective experience, up to and including the infamous “chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella,”60 Lautréamont understood the dangers of using otherwise irrational philosophical concepts to “capture” (read “diminish”) the plenitude of human experience.61 Any type of conceptual tool or rational mechanism that reduces the richness of life must be rejected by the poet. While Debord and Wolman appreciate Lautréamont’s form of “literary anarchy,” they agree with the Symbolist poet that engaging in the juxtaposition of competing thoughts “under the pretext of novelty” is not enough.62 Truth-claims derived from a détourned statement still need to criticize both the existing world and its own relationship to it. In fact, Debord and Wolman state that many of Lautréamont’s “altered maxims”63 do not go far enough; they simply reimagine truth-claims that are inherent in the original statement. To the authors, Lautréamont’s altered maxims resemble expressions of dialectical reasoning. For example, “Nothing true is false; nothing false is true.”64

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For his part, Lautréamont argues that there is a particular form of logic that exists especially for poetry, although it does not operate under the same conditions as philosophy. In fact, this peculiar form of poetic logic places poets above philosophers.65 As Alexis Lykiard points in a footnote to his translation of Lautréamont’s Poésies, “the new poetics, which include ‘correction’ as a principle [i.e., or, from our point of view, a watered-down détournement], will be part of a new order, logical and therefore moral, devoid of Romantic ‘tics,’ bogus individualism, self-pitying postures, etc.”66 The fourth and final law of détournement asserts that a détourned statement “by simple reversal is always the most direct and the least effective.”67 What the authors are addressing here is the manner in which détournement changes the relational “ambience” originally created by objects co-existing within the selfsame “framework.”68 If successful, détournement has “a certain progressive aspect”69 that invites a fresh reconsideration of the so-called logical relationship between objects. At first glance, the fourth law sounds like a dialectical investigation into the implicitly qualitative (i.e., “natural” and “normal’) relationships that originally existed between various objects. To think dialectically is to investigate new and unexpected relationships both between objects and within each object, and to understand relations that typically remain separate. The dialectic allows us to take things apart and examine their inner workings more closely, which is why Debord and Wolman note that a simple relational reversal is a direct, but not the most direct, way to achieve a superior (i.e., critical) significance whose final meaning escapes language. For the authors, the dialectical turn that informs détournement speaks of realities that lack words to name them and words that lack realities which have disappeared.70 When it comes to the fourth law of détournement, what kind of dialectical relationship are we talking about? Are we referring to Plato’s sense of the dialectician, who is able to ascertain the essence of things, and then claim that there is no higher kind of study possible?71 Or are we describing Aristotle’s sense of the dialectic as an interrogative procedure that uses likeness and difference to secure definitions (or “essences”).72 Or even Kant’s warning that, as a form of general logic, the dialectic is nothing more than the logic of illusion.73 While remaining mindful of the history of the dialectic in philosophy, Debord and Wolman are actually referring to Hegel’s dialectic process, since détournement allows self-consciousness to separate aspects in an indivisible whole and to endow each aspect with a kind of independence. The minor or deceptive aspects of détournement are reconfigured into a new coherent entity that critically gestures to the viewer/reader to decipher its social meaning at a higher level. In that sense, Debord and Wolman reflect Ludwig Feuerbach’s notion that “The true dialectic is not a monologue of the solitary thinker with himself [sic]; it is a dialogue between ‘I’ and ‘You.’”74

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If the True is the whole,75 then Debord and Wolman are asking us to keep in mind the quasi-independence of individual détourned statements as well as the relationship they have to the greater social, cultural, or economic realm. As Hegel explains in the Phenomenology of Spirit, the dialectic is a negative movement76 which, first of all, traces out the movement of being-in-itself as it passes over into “figurative representation.”77 Because this representation is something “familiar,”78 genuine knowledge must aim at destroying its recognizable shape.79 The destruction of the familiar object via the negative power of the dialectic is not unlike Debord’s own reliance on the anti-aesthetic “terrorism” that we discussed in the previous chapters. The simple reversal of the object into its “other” is crucial to an understanding of détournement in general and to its fourth law regarding reversal in particular. To be clear, the passage quoted directly above appears in Debord’s personal hand-written notes under the title “Détournable?” (“Divertable?”) and later published in The Library of Guy Debord: Marx and Hegel (2021).80 The citation is particularly important to a theoretical understanding of détournement because Hegel goes further in detailing how the dialectic succeeds in shattering the form of the familiar object. For Hegel, the familiar, because it is so easily recognizable, is uncritically taken for granted and thus not cognitively understood in terms of its unique qualities. Because we tend to accept things that are familiar to us, we render them into “fixed points”81 of reference. As long as these fixed points remain stationary, “the knowing activity goes back and forth between, thus moving only on their surface.”82 It is not until the surface of the familiar form (e.g. the veneer of the spectacle?) is penetrated and shattered into its constituent parts that the object can be properly détourned. A critical analysis of the familiar object disentangles previously canonized statements (e.g., advertising, literature, art) from their original setting and places them into an entirely new context comprised of other plagiarized materials. If successful, détournement allows the reader/viewer to critically analyze the hidden relationships that exist between familiar objects and ideological constructs that validate their existence. Hegel warns us that uncritical analysis only arrives at thoughts which are themselves fixed determinations.83 For Hegel (and Debord), Spirit comes into its own as an intellectual power only by looking at the negative squarely in the face, struggling with it, and tearing the immediate existence of the whole into its individual pieces.84 In their essay, Debord and Wolman argue that one of the immediate effects of détournement is the ability to tap into “intrinsic propaganda powers”85 that already exist in the arts, literature, and advertising. At the very least, the authors view détournement as an improvement over the practice of “automatic writing.” Although Breton viewed the practice as an opportunity to get “our hands on the ‘prime matter’ (in the alchemical sense) of language,”86 Debord found automatic writing “monotonous”87 because it was falsely predicated

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on the “infinite richness of the unconscious [i.e., bourgeois] imagination.”88 At its worst, free association and automatic writing paradoxically bring forth what the bourgeois imagination already views as disgusting yet desirable.89 Détourned language, on the other hand, speaks of realities that lack words to name them and words that lack realities. While the authors express concern over the tendency of social individuals to converse in “newspeak,” détournement allows users to manipulate and reconstitute the language of art, literature, and advertising on their own terms. Because détournement conflicts with social and legal standards (e.g., propriety ownership, and commodification) by manipulating already existing materials, Debord and Wolman argue that “it cannot fail to be a powerful cultural weapon in the service of a real class struggle.”90 As the name implies, détournement diverts cultural statements away from their intended meanings or objectives. Moreover, because détourned statements can be cheaply produced and disseminated through present (and future) media outlets, including cinema,91 they can be utilized in the artistic education of the proletariat. In that sense, the transformation of these cultural materials leads to what Debord and Wolman call “a literary communism.”92 The authors conclude their essay with a discussion on the everyday uses of détournement and the possibility of giving gestures, clothing, and even words new meanings. It is here that we can see where the British punk movement might have misinterpreted the notion of “strong emotional connotations” as a simple desire to shock and outrage.93 “The need for a secret language, for passing words,” they write, “is inseparable from a tendency toward play.”94 Debord’s interest in the secret language of argot and other nonstandard forms of language continued throughout his life. Not surprisingly, though, none of the détourned terms that he used privately with friends appear in Eugène-François Vidocq’s Dictionary of French-Argot (Éditions du Boucher, 2002) , since Debord had a tendency in his personal correspondences to create neologism that were truly part of a secret language that he shared with few others. Some neologisms derived their meaning from actual events. For example, maspériser is an untranslatable French term used to describe the deliberate falsification or unethical editing/rewriting of a text. The term refers to “partisan”95 hack François Maspero, a literary editor and publisher who Debord deemed little more than a card-carrying StalinoCastrist.96 Debord considered any book published by Maspero as intentionally edited, censored, and/or rewritten to reflect the bureaucratic economic theories and policies97 of Stalinism rather than critical/dialectic procedures originally outlined by Marx. Debord’s experience with Maspero stems from issue No. 42 of Partisans (May/June 1968) which dealt with the May 1968 student protests. The journal featured reproductions of essays by members of the SI as well as members

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of the C.M.D.O. (Council for Maintaining the Occupations).98 Reproducing essays by the SI and the C.M.D.O. was not in itself unusual, especially given an increase in revolutionary activities in the late 1960s in the Unite States and across Western Europe. As we have already pointed out, Debord always sought to maintain a balance between the free translation and publication of SI essays around the world, and the need to make sure that their theoretical integrity remained intact. The problem with Partisans No. 42 was the manner in which Maspero distinguished himself from all the other editors by “a deception that smacks of the Stalinist school of falsification of which he is an eminent graduate.”99 According to Debord, in an essay written by the members of the C.M.D.O. entitled “Report on the Occupation of the Sorbonne,” Maspero himself kept only the introduction and conclusion of the original essay, but removed the middle section dealing specifically with student struggles occurring within the Sorbonne itself. In addition, Maspero made no attempt to identify the removal of certain crucial passages in the essay or what those missing passages contained. Debord provided readers with an example of a maspérisation totale: in the essay allegedly “written” by the C.M.D.O. entitled “For the Power of the Workers’ Councils,” Maspero created an original, falsified text by misleadingly re-arranging a portion of the real text and then adding original phrases that gave the essay an entirely different meaning. The new, traitorous version “created” by Maspero implied that members of the C.M.D.O. had made numerous concessions to French prime minister George Pompidou’s government via the C.G.T. (General Conference of Labor, which at the time was considered to be one of the largest unions in France), a leftist labor organization headed by Georges Séguy that was thought by many to have betrayed the spirit of the May 1968 revolution.100 It was only in the early 1990s that Debord decided to stop using maspériser as a descriptor for the crass and “indelicate”101 editing of written texts, especially given that he felt satisfied that he had finally designated Maspero’s name to infamy.102 To be clear, maspériser should never be confused with the four laws of détournement that we have discussed at length. For Debord, either side in this divided society can steal or hijack, depending on the current balance of power; but, of course, the state does it more often and in greater proportions.103 Compared to the etymological root of maspériser, the meanings of other détourned terms are more difficult to ascertain. For example, the term “marsupial,” an epithet originally coined by Ivan Chtcheglov, appeared for the first time in a letter to Mohamed Dahou dated November 18, 1957. Even with an explanatory footnote, the term is intentionally vague; it is a slippery noun that needs further exploration to highlight what Debord might have actually meant by the term. To begin with, the dictionary definition of “marsupial” is any mammal of the Marsupialia order (e.g., kangaroo, opossum) in which the young are born in an immature state and continue

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developing in the marsupium (i.e., an external pouch in which the female carries its baby). However, Patrick Mosconi, series editor of Debord’s correspondences, indicates that “marsupial” actually refers to the notion of “anti-woman” (“l’antifemme”).104 Here is where the term evades traditional understanding and begins to play ironically with multiple meanings. Does the term apply only to a sexist man? Can the term apply equally to men and women? Mosconi adds a short citation (likely written by Chtcheglov) in his footnote which only adds to the irony: “[Marsupial] is ugliness and beauty. It is like everything we love today.”105 Once again, does the term refer to a man or woman who is physically beautiful but morally ugly? Perhaps Debord was echoing Baudelaire’s view that “apart from natural beauty and even artificial beauty, all beings have the stamp of their trade, a characteristic which may, on the physical level, express itself as ugliness, but also as a kind of ­professional beauty.”106 The term “marsupial” reappears in a letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti dated December 13, 1971. Here the neologism refers to a migratory tendency to Florence of so-called “marsupials” from around the world. “These intelligent animals which, in the previous generation, migrated towards Paris,” wrote Debord, “felt with a sure instinct the ecological transformation.”107 Given the frequency with which “marsupials” migrate to Florence, Italy, Debord facetiously argues that this tendency might one day be useful in the study of “marsupiology,” and that the Marsupialfeld could become the center of activity of the international “marsupiologists.’108 Debord similarly describes a young female known to both him and Sanguinetti as externally beautiful but internally ugly.109 Finally, in a letter to Sanguinetti dated June 2, 1972, Debord ends his correspondence with the following assessment: “The charming marsupial from the East came to spend a weekend with us, and we had the pleasure to verify her authenticity.”110 In the end, it would appear that a “marsupial” can be a man or a woman who has a pleasant disposition, as well as displaying a natural sense of beauty, but has a morally or ethically questionable character. Moreover, Debord is quick to distinguish a “marsupial” from a “pro-situ,” the latter being an avid supporter of the SI but having no practical or theoretical understanding of their revolutionary agenda. In our exploration of Debord’s time in the SI, we have identified a number of important points that help to conceptualize his politics of communication and the careful attention he pays to individual words and phrases. To begin with, Debord still believed in the notion of “poetry” but only at the service of a “poetic” life. Given the amount of commodity-fetishism evident in the world of art and literature, there could be no possibility of returning to the kind of ludic Surrealist behavior or earlier poetic writing that might earlier have eluded commodification. Instead, Debord advocated for “the total expression of oneself (masked by the common notion of ‘freedom of

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expression’), which means accomplishing itself in acts and also through means of communication.”111 The task facing Debord was to continue to devise strategies such as metagraphics, and later détournement, that would give full and unrestricted freedom to artistic expression. Détournement was the operative working model reserved for the creation of propaganda. Second, Debord was eager to share SI strategies and theories with other like-minded revolutionaries. Countless letters detail the often-difficult day-to-day operations of Debord and the SI, whose members were spread out across several countries and often spoke different languages. For Debord,112 the SI functioned as an international association of individuals who appeared equal in all aspects of its democratic management as well as its common theoretical and practical activities. Decisions were made by all, with the minority being able to opt out of the group if fundamental questions could not be resolved through discussion and agreement. In theory, however, the “national” criterion was understood in geographical and cultural terms; it was possible (and desirable) for each faction to remain international, in the sense that it would advance revolutionary activities in its respective countries. SI members were also accountable to the whole group; they were collectively bound by the known conduct of its members. Within the framework of general directives adopted by the SI, each international faction would democratically decide under the sole responsibility all of its own indigenous activities and tactics. It would decide in all respects on the editorial direction of its publications, its contacts, and the work it saw fit to undertake. Conversely, all work and theoretical hypotheses undertaken in a personal capacity were limited neither by the group nor by other SI affiliations. In the exceptional case where members might find themselves isolated (i.e., in a country where they alone but acting in the name of the SI), they would determine their activities alone but still remain accountable to the rest of the association. International groups could share their contacts in various languages or activities in countries where no SI group currently existed. Finally, each international group overlooks its own financial planning; still, it also reserves the right to manifest solidarity with other SI groups if needed. However, as Pascal Dumontier points out in his study of the SI following the student riots of May 1968, there was no “equality in communications”113 among international members. Communication breakdowns between international members were exacerbated partly through chronic issues of translation and partly by a poor international postal system. Arguments would often flare up over misunderstandings stemming from one member in one country not responding in due time to a request made by a member in another country. In the year leading up to its dissolution, Dumontier argues that communication breakdown was ultimately predicated on SI members actually viewing themselves as “unequal”114 to one another.

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Along with French, Debord also knew Spanish and Italian well enough to occasionally work as a freelance translator. Many of Debord’s correspondences were concerned with overseeing translations of his own works,115 as well as translations of texts by other revolutionary writers whom he deemed either historically important or contemporaneously relevant. One important reason why his interest in radical social and political thought might be viewed as Eurocentric is because he was unable to read English-language texts. In a letter dated March 1, 1979, Debord casually reminded British-born translator Donald Nicholson-Smith of his “total ignorance of English.”116 The SI always needed to remain vigilant to ensure that its theoretical message was being understood clearly and concisely. At times, clarity and understanding were not always evident. For example, the final section of Correspondance volume “0” entitled “Last Hour Supplement” details a growing sense of frustration in December 1967 between Debord and English-speaking factions of the SI. In correspondences between Debord and the British contingency (e.g., Nicholson-Smith, Christopher Gray, and others), readers can follow the development of serious misunderstandings regarding the translations of many of the SI’s theoretical writings. A second misinterpretation subsequently developed between Debord, Ben Morea, and associates of the American Dada-influenced art group called Black Mask.117 Debord openly rejected the “mystical” reading given to Raoul Vaneigem’s “Basic Banalities” essays by American political-social activist (and Black Mask associate) Abbie Hoffmann. Debord’s stance was clear and unequivocal: “The [S]ituationists have always refused to have anything whatsoever to do with mystics.”118 Critical misunderstandings by the American faction (or individuals once identified as “prospective members”)119 regarding authoritarian activism, theoretical inconsistencies, and a growing sense of mistrust, led to a complete organizational rupture between the SI in France and its New York City contingency. In the end, confusion stemmed from the manner in which each faction (mis) understood revolutionary praxis from its own historical position and what revolutionary action might actually look like. As much as he wished for England, Europe, and the United States to be considered part of a single terrain of action,120 Debord also knew that this outlook was not feasible. In seeking to clarify his theoretical position via numerous correspondences with Englishspeaking SI associates, Debord tried to make clear how such a barely defined “theoretical” divergence between two factions of the same group could lead in two weeks to the complete rupture of practical and theoretical solidarity, as well as the fatal misinterpretation of the need for a clear and consistent theoretical language. Originally published in Internationale Situationniste No. 8 (January 1963), Debord’s “All the King’s Men” is an informative essay that collates various ideas and theories regarding language that also appear in a slightly different

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form in essays written by other SI members. The essay opens with a concise summary of exactly what is at stake in the study of language and communication in the early 1960s: “The problem of language is at the heart of all the struggles between the forces striving to abolish the present alienation and those striving to maintain it.”121 Three interrelated ideas are addressed in the opening statement: first, language and communication under late capitalist rationality are inherently problematic; second, these “problems” are connected in one form or another to the continuation of social alienation; and third, the relationship between those who wish to abolish alienation and those who wish to maintain it is viewed by the former as an ideological struggle between two opposing forces. Let us try to contextualize Debord’s opening statement within the totality of SI theory regarding language and communication. In “Report on the Construction of Situations” (June 1957), Debord argues that the refusal to acknowledge alienation in a Christian-bourgeois moral society has led some individuals, retroactively, to accept the irrational alienation of earlier primitive societies. “But we need to go forward, not backward,” writes Debord. “We need to make the world more rational—the necessary first step in making it more exciting.”122 Here, Debord contrasts rationality with Surrealism’s original initial use of irrationality to destroy bourgeois society’s moral-logical system. Granted, the bourgeoisie may have feigned shock and outrage, but just as quickly it learned how to commodify revolutionary shock and outrage and sell it on the marketplace. The ourgeoisie also reserved the right to call out Surrealism as a radical and dangerous art movement, while at the same time gleefully flooding the art market with more and more Surrealist commodities. “Report on the Construction of Situations” also features one of the e­ arliest conceptions of the modern “spectacle” as it relates not only to alienation proper but also to the notion of “nonintervention.”123 In order to combat the alienation and passivity that keeps the spectacle alive and well, Debord suggests expanding the number of poetic “subjects” in society and then organizing ephemeral games that allow them to vicariously play with poetic “objects.” “Our only concern is real life,” he writes, “we care nothing about the permanence of art or of anything else.”124 By 1961, however, SI members were arguing that legitimate revolutionary thought no longer existed; alternative forms of “social transformation” were simply minor variations of the “existing order.”125 One of the reasons why the desire for revolutionary thought no longer existed is because the “language” of revolution had been easily co-opted by advertising to sell more commodities. As a result, individuals are alienated not only from themselves and from each other but also from the meaning of revolutionary thought. The solution was simple but challenging: “revolution has to be reinvented.”126

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Writing in “Basic Banalities (Part 1),” Vaneigem points out that the notion of a “human condition” is little more a sacrificial image trying desperately to overcome an opposition between the mythic utilitarian sacrifice of a few and the actual sacrifices of the many. For Vaneigem, modern mythic images seek to reduce life to sacrifice and then reward it as such. The so-called mythic unity of these opposites “attains its most tangible and concrete representation in communication, particularly in language.”127 Because language is conceptual and polyvalent, contradictions appear to be resolved and overcome, when in fact they are only resolved conceptually. Rather than drown in the boundless uncertainty and instability of a modern myth that attempts to find meaningful patterns behind the alienating chaos of everyday life, individuals instead long to use “native” language to communicate with a certain degree of “truth.” The free poetic creation of mythic images, or what Nietzsche identifies as “the eternal mythical game of lies,”128 must be tempered, at the very least, by a conditional notion of “truth.” Yet, Vaneigem argued that only the inherent ambiguity and ironic instability of poetic language can expose the act of modern mythmaking by continually deferring and displacing its own final meaning. Myth, as a free poetic creation, is undone by the very act that brings the mythic image into being. Vaneigem already sees this explosive potential in the work of the French Symbolist poet Lautréamont and in the works of Dada poets of the 1920s. For Vaneigem, the always-imminent revolution in poetic language initiated by nineteenth-century Symbolist poets continued to have its being in the truly avant-garde poetic language of today. “When a poem by Mallarmé becomes the sole explanation for an act of revolt,” he writes, “then poetry and revolution will have overcome their ambiguity.”129 In the essay “Instructions for an Insurrection” (August 1961), SI members Attila Kotányi and Raoul Vaneigem suggest different ways in which the absence of authentic revolutionary thought can be “theoretically and practically overcome.”130 One of the most tangible ways to create a new kind of revolutionary organization is to establish a multiplicity of new, hitherto existing human relationships within such organizations.131 The hope is that new types of human relationships will lead to new social formations. In the same way, Debord argued in 1957 in favor of new forms of ludic behavior, Kotányi and Vaneigem advocate for the “creativity and participation” of individuals in a collective project of everyday lived experience. Moreover, in the same way Debord asks us to reimagine a poetry of the future rather than the past, the authors similarly explain that “the revolutionary project”132 must break with past traditions (i.e., ludic behavior demarcated by a specific time and space) in order to provide a comprehensive critique of everyday life. Kotányi and Vaneigem call attention to the terminology used by sociologist Henri Raymond to discuss the present state of social life in postwar France. For

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sociologists, social relationships are viewed quantitatively rather than qualitatively; as a result, traditional (read dominant) social structures remain intact because social research methodologies are more concerned with statistical data than they are with subjective or conditional states of being—the very aspects of human life that the language of manufacturing cannot adequately express. Traditional postwar sociology was unable (or unwilling) to address what kinds of social relationships individuals were experiencing or use qualitative methodologies to deal with ethical issues concerning reasons, opinions, or motivations. Qualitative research methods are more appropriate for understanding issues related to economic status, gender, or the proper identification of marginal or subaltern populations. Without the means to describe social relationships in qualitative, ethical, or subjective terms, social relations escape measurement and thus remain the same. “Even in the most libertarian and antihierarchical revolutionary groups,” write Kotányi and Vaneigem, “communication between people is in no way guaranteed by a shared political program.”133 Herein lies the ideas that will begin to take us back to Debord’s essay, “All the King’s Men.” In “Perspectives for Conscious Changes in Everyday Life” (August 1961), Debord argues that the extreme poverty of conscious organization, and of ­individual’s creativity in daily life, reflects the fundamental need for ­mystification in an otherwise exploitative and alienating society.134 Debord identifies the source of this “extreme poverty” as the inability to correctly identify and define the alienation of individuals within revolutionary politics, as well as the inability to articulate strategies for the liberation of everyday experience.135 For Debord, both of these issues are contingent upon the “problem of language” and point to the need to define alienation qualitatively rather than quantitatively. Debord argues that we are being “polluted”136 by language. Ironically, the overabundance of words and advertising phrases has succeeded only in clouding our minds and stopping us from thinking critically. As Horkheimer and Adorno point out in their essay on the culture industry, “The blind and rapidly spreading repetition of designated words links advertising to the totalitarian slogan.”137 Postwar culture is drowning in cultural information, but individuals have very little actual knowledge of the social world. As Ricardo Paseyro points out in his study on the inverse relationship between the growth of culture and illiteracy, individuals have exchanged the key to tacit knowledge (i.e., collective know-how and experience) in favor of the key to so-called explicit knowledge (i.e., banality, conformity, silencing nuance, and independent thought).138 A loss in tacit knowledge reduces an individual to what is least essential about them. As a result, words neither “play” nor make love the way Surrealists originally thought; instead, Debord argues that “words work—on behalf of the dominant organization of life.” Words have an ambivalent relationship to power; they are used

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and exploited for every type of sense and nonsense that can be assigned to them.139 All forms of thought turn into commodity products, and language itself—the very expression of thought—bears the stamp of that reductive commodification.140 Ideas about the world are falsely raised to a second-order reality, and their metaphysical qualities reinforce conditions of domination that allow the articulation of society upon the many (the dominated) by the few (the dominators).141 Debord adds that “power” exerted upon words is parasitic; regardless of the word itself or its use, political and economic “power” is manifested in and through the “falsified, official sense of words.”142 Debord noticed, for example, that the term artiste is often collapsed into the recognized profession of “painter.” In a letter written on May 7, 1959, to fellow SI member (and painter) Asger Jorn, Debord points out that in France the term “artist-painter” is used only in administrative terms to designate a profession. Or it can be used in a mundane professional manner to simply mean someone who paints pictures of the Notre-Dame Cathedral on tourist postcards.143 For Debord, the French term “peintre” is quite different from the German term Kunstmaler (painter/artist) because the latter at least includes the prefix kunst (art, skill) in its nomination. Under advanced neoliberal capitalism, one’s social identity is often filtered exclusively through one’s job description. Pointing out such reductive and deadening economic tendencies formed part of Debord’s general understanding of the effects of contemporary capitalism upon the language of everyday life. In “All the King’s Men,” Debord quotes Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty, who emphatically states to the young Alice: “The question is which is to be master—that’s all.”144 The so-called “conversation” between Humpty Dumpty and Alice is worth exploring in more detail because it looks backward to Debord’s previous observation that the ruling social order has only a “falsified, official sense of words” as well as forward to his notion of the “insubordination of words.” Along with the Symbolists and Surrealists, Lewis Carroll was an important literary figure to Debord. In personal letters, Debord often quotes from Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark (1876). For his part, Vaneigem considered the Situationists as part of a larger “line of contestation”145 that ran through Sade, Fourier, Lewis Carroll, Lautréamont, Surrealism, and Letterism. In Through the Looking Glass, the narrator points out that Humpty Dumpty is not engaging in an authentic “conversation” with Alice because “he [has] never said anything to her [directly].”146 The conversation is simply a one-way, means-ends monologue between sender, receiver, and message. The fact that Humpty Dumpty is sitting on a narrow wall and looking down at Alice visually represents Debord’s view that top-down relationships established by the authoritarian institutions of neoliberal capitalism are monological and manipulative. When Alice tells Humpty Dumpty her

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name, he finds it “a stupid enough name”147 and asks what her name means. She responds with a question, “Must a name mean something?”148 He replies that all names must mean something. “Of course it must,” responds Humpty Dumpty: “My name means the shape I am . . . With a name like yours, you might be any shape.”149 Humpty Dumpty decides to trick Alice by asking “How old did you say you were?”150 When she responds correctly “Seven years and six months,”151 Humpty Dumpty initiates a Kafkaesque move and declares that she never stated her age until now. Although Alice explains what she thought he meant, Humpty Dumpty aggressively responds “If I’d meant that, I’d have said it.”152 In the context of Debord’s belief that “words work on behalf of the dominant organization of life,” Humpty Dumpty’s response conjures up the possibility of a ruling social order that is little more than a bureaucratic nightmare in which words and meanings only temporarily align with one another or are simply filtered through a utilitarian lens. Language operates on a strictly denotative level and all answers are potentially wrong unless they fit into pre-determined categories. Following a bizarre exchange in which Alice learns about the existence of “un-birthday presents” (“A present given when it isn't your birthday, of course.”).153 Humpty Dumpty rationalizes his statement by arguing that receiving birthday presents only once a year is clearly wrong-headed. “And only one for birthday presents, you know,” he responds. “There's glory for you!”154 When Alice points out that he is using the term “glory” ambiguously, Humpty Dumpty responds scornfully “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”155 Once again, the exchange between the two main characters is less surreal than nightmarish, since the arbitrary use of words with interchangeable meanings is considered by Humpty Dumpty to be acceptable behavior. “The question is,” says Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”156 Humpty Dumpty calmly replies that it is simply an issue of mastery over words. For him, words are sentient beings with fully formed personalities. “They’ve a temper,” he explains, “some of them—particularly verbs, they're the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot of them!”157 In fact, mastery for Humpty Dumpty must be considered in terms of the “impenetrability”158 of words. Of course, the term traditionally means the inability to pierce through or penetrate, rather than the inability to be understood. However, once we are through the looking glass, the “impenetrability” of a given term is no longer a linguistic struggle between the speaker and the enunciation; for Humpty Dumpty, it simply means that “we’ve had enough of that subject,”159 and it is time to move on. In his essay on the contemporary problem of language, Debord mimics Humpty Dumpty’s view of the impenetrability of words when he discusses

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the insubordination of words used by speaking subjects to represent a general revolutionary crisis of modern society.160 Let us unpack this very important idea in a little more detail. According to Debord, the meaning of words resists control by their speaker. Speakers and writers must remain vigilant of this insubordination in order to invent new ways to convey meaning about the world. For example, the term “terrorism” that we discussed in the first two chapters of this project signifies something very different to post–World War II Letterists or Situationists than it does to 1970s-era terrorist groups such as the Red Brigade, the Black September group, or the Red Army Faction (Baader–Meinhof Gang). As a signifier, the term does not change. But its signification certainly does. “Terrorism” in the artistic realm of the 1950s refers to anti-aesthetic behavior; in the political realm of the 1970s, it refers to a decisive shift from cultural propaganda to a protracted and armed civil war against a fascist state. Saussure argued at the beginning of the twentieth century that the nature of a linguistic sign is arbitrary. The link between the concept (signification) and the written/spoken signal is “arbitrary” in the sense that it is freely chosen and agreed-to by a linguistic community.161 However, he goes on to state that the term “arbitrary” does not mean that a given sign can be freely chosen by the speaker. The link between the meaning and an individual term may be arbitrary, but words themselves still remain insubordinate and impenetrable. In fact, the very next sentence in Saussure’s explanation strikes at the heart of the reification of language under late capitalism: “the individual has no power to alter a sign in any respect once it has become established in a linguistic community.”162 As we discussed in the first half of this chapter, détournement presents a particularly effective strategy that alters the meaning of a term once it has been endorsed by a linguistic community. In “Gangland and Philosophy” (June 1960), Attila Kotányi suggests developing a glossary of détourned words that highlight “the systematic falsification of basic information”163 regarding how social space is conditioned by commodity production. Kotányi points out that culture itself is a form of “conditioning” by the economic imperatives of commodity production. Media (film, television, advertising, etc.) speaks a uniform language and disseminates a uniform message of banality, passivity, conformity, consumption, and the futility of critical thought. In “Captive Words: Preface to A Situationist Dictionary” (March 1966), SI member Mustapha Khayati opens his Preface with a restatement of Debord’s essential point that “Popular assumptions [e.g., the agreed-to use of words], due to what they conceal, work for the dominant organization of life.”164 Yet, language should still be subjected to a dialectical turn because it is a living entity within a linguistic community, Khayati explains that while critical thought is expressed in and through traditional language, critical attacks upon the latter succeed in transforming critique into a different

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language. “Every revolutionary theory,” he explains, “has had to invent its own terms, to destroy the dominant sense of other terms and establish new meanings.” What matters most in Khayati’s revolutionary project is the hidden criteria (i.e., the totalitarian imperatives of late capitalism) by which a term is judged according to its use value. While a linguistic community may reserve the right to temporarily stabilize the arbitrary nature of terms and their meaning, the more important question is the degree to which it is aware of the reifying tendencies already at work in that community. According to Debord and the rest of the SI members, the dominant ideology is always seeking to stabilize the allegedly arbitrary relationship between signs and their significations, and it does so by using a (not so) hidden means-ends criteria. Dominant ideology applies the tenets of instrumental rationality to language in order to engender predictable forms of thought or behavior. Herein lies the internal contradiction that lies at the heart of a so-called Situationist Dictionary. While Khayati argues that “language is the house of power,” he also asserts that the inabilities to stabilize language are the same reasons why the SI can posit alternative meanings.165 Let us carefully unpack this statement so we can not only understand Khayati’s premise, but, more importantly, recognize how positing such a statement eventually led to the project’s undoing. First of all, what are the “same reasons” to which Khayati is alluding? Revolutionary groups such as the SI actively sought to destabilize words from their intrinsic meaning and allow them to drift from one semantic field to another. In the theoretical realm of a literary communism, no one “owns” words or their intended meaning. The state, on the other hand, as expressed in and through its various social, political, economic, and cultural institutions, continually seeks to fix the meaning of words to reflect the passive, consumer-centric nature of the late capitalist spectacle. To be clear, revolutionary thinkers reserve the right to express “a subjective truth” about social reality, while the state, conversely, seeks to establish an unchallenged, always-already-there “social truth” maintained through a linguistic network of “permanent falsification.”166 If contestation can take place at the level of meaning, that is, subjectively generated from within the social realm of individuals, then revolutionary groups can contest the reification of capitalist language and undermine the latter’s continued efforts to fix the meaning of words. But contestation between competing groups over the accepted meaning of words is never-ending, which is why trying to publish a document that lists contested words and their meaning is a rather misguided venture. How the Situationist dictionary project ultimately undermines its own purpose is made explicit in the following sentences in Khayati’s essay. “[W]e already know that these same reasons [the continual regeneration of language] also prevent us from proclaiming any definitive certitudes,” he explains. “A definition is always open, never definitive.”167

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In “All the King’s Men,” Debord is much more explicit in identifying these “same reasons.” He states that under the dominating power of late capitalism, “language always designates something other than authentic experience.”168 Capitalist language does not designate the plenitude of a truly authentic life, its impressions, hopes, emotions, desires, and needs. It is an a priori language of mathematical calculations designed to strip away subjectivity and to orient thoughts toward an already-envisioned goal. In this instance, there is practically a short circuit between thinking, thought, and the word. Because capitalist language is not the “native” language of the “marketplace” but rather a monological info-dump of calculated facts, the disconnection between these two forms of language is at once obvious and ripe for exploitation. “It is precisely for this reason that a total contestation is possible,”169 explains Debord. He advocates an authentic and dialogical form of communication that challenges unilateral, hierarchical forms of communication. In the same way subjects need language to assert their subjectivity, continual contestation can destroy late capitalism’s need to assert monological forms of communication. By destroying monolithic forms of communication through contestation, totalitarian capitalism will eventually lose its iron grip on human thought and behavior. Although the Preface was not published until March 1966, Debord was initially very supportive of the idea of creating and publishing a Situationist Dictionary. After all, it would be a valuable source for readers wishing to access further clarifications of concepts and ideas specific to Situationist thinking. Having a dictionary would clarify to readers, for example, what Debord meant by the linear-unified social time of the marketplace and the lived time of individuals that escapes the linearity of historical time. “We must surely define ‘time’ in the dictionary (I can take care of that),” he added, “either in isolation or as the main content of the term ‘history?’”170 A month later, Debord contacted Khayati with suggestions on suitable entries such as “time and/or history, “Situationist,” and “the spectacle” that he could forward to him. “Your project of presenting the dictionary in the magazine looks very good,” he added.171 But upon further reflection, Debord wrote to Khayati to clarify in more detail what he thought the overall style of the dictionary might be. For Debord, at least, the decisive stylistic point seemed to be the necessary use of signal phrases such as “According to the Situationists . . .” “The SI regards . . .” or “The SI sees as . . .”172 This would give the dictionary an objective tone that could present the SI’s central basis as a series of hypotheses open to retesting and further clarification in a dialectical search for truth. But Debord’s own dialectical search for truth was already beginning to notice that the “imperative” tone of Khayati’s entries was coming across as “terribly dogmatic.”173 Given the theoretical objectives of the dictionary as a critical learning tool for interested readers, Debord eventually felt that mere “modesty” might be

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more ambitious than a simple call for victory to unite the SI with the new proletariat.174 Following a review of the terms already written and submitted for the dictionary (e.g., totalitarian, consistency), Debord felt uneasy over the continually evolving definition of the term “situation.’175 Due to the increasingly “political” context in which the term “situation” was being interpreted, perhaps its “artistic-utopian aspect” might be better served as an implicit backdrop rather than an explicit goal.176 We need to keep in mind that as early as 1962 internal tensions regarding the relationship between revolutionary political theory and praxis had essentially forced the artistic contingency out of the SI’s orbit. To speak of purely artistic endeavors after such time would have been misguided at best. For all the reasons listed above, Debord took an increasingly critical stance toward Khayati’s editorial work on the dictionary. By late November 1965, Debord was having second thoughts about its practical use. Debord’s choice of words to Khayati is particularly telling: “As I do not want to flout the ‘editorial democracy’ of the SI, I will stop there, and I leave you to definitively correct—or redo once again—this unfortunate text.”177 In early 1966, Debord wrote to Raoul Vaneigem indicating how work would proceed on the dictionary. The project would be completed by a team of Situationists, but without having to place them under pressure to deal with theoretical difficulties.178 Each member would play to their own strengths and capabilities. Anton Hartstein, then a member of the SI until he was excluded in August 1966, was particularly adept at reading and coherently annotating the works of Lukács and Karl Korsch. Debord insisted to Khayati that other members participate in the dictionary project, even if Vaneigem was already busy working on his own book Revolution of Everyday Life (1967). “We must not absolutely reject their intention to participate in the dictionary,” he wrote to Khayati, “but by showing them, as you propose, that it is difficult.”179 In what follows, Debord finally identified the nagging problem that lay at the heart of such a project, namely, the unresolvable contradiction between “owning” the meaning of words and a belief in literary communism. From this point forward, Debord would revisit the project only intermittently. For Debord, the reason for hesitating to engage fully with the project was simple: “none of us can ultimately claim ‘property’ over a word.”180 To do so would violate the spirit (and the letter) of the law dating back to the hey-days of détournement, namely, the law of “literary communism.” Words, after all, are insubordinate, impenetrable, and time might be better spent clarifying the SI’s theoretical positions in full essays rather than in dictionary entries. What the idea of publishing a Situationist dictionary did manage to accomplish was a renewed justification for the precise use of language and definitions. Debord argued that at a theoretical level the minimum definition of a revolutionary organization would be quite difficult to outline as an

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abstract summary. Instead, Debord wished for SI members to quote, publish, and present to the outside world who they were and what they stood for.181 Including a commentary to a theoretical text would allow for both conceptual concentration in the main text and its justification in more common language. As a methodology, having the two entities sit side by side would allow readers to move more easily from theoretical to practical levels. Let us briefly turn our attention to Debord’s text before completing our commentary on the dictionary project. Debord’s “Definitions” (1967) began by restating that the sole aim of a revolutionary organization is to abolish the existing class system and to preclude new divisions being recreated within society. Restating once again the international aims of Situationist theory, Debord argued that an organization is revolutionary if it consistently pursues the aspirations of Workers’ Councils as demonstrated in proletarian revolutions throughout the twentieth century. Such a non-hierarchical global organization must present “a unitary critique of the world, or it is nothing.”182 Gone were the ludic games of dérive and psychogeography, along with a social critique of art. The revolutionary climate has changed dramatically since the early 1960s, and Debord’s interests were now taken up more and more with political and ideological rather than cultural matters. Debord and the SI were laser-focused on abolishing once and for all the capitalist occupation of everyday life via a radical critique of political economy and the end of the commodity labor force. The only obstacle standing in the way of total democracy was a global recognition by revolutionary members of the coherence and clarity of the SI’s criticism. Given that he was already working on his first book, The Society of the Spectacle (1967), Debord also included in his critical theory the negation of the spectacle which, “from information to mass culture, monopolizes all human communication around a unilateral reception of the images of their alienated activity.”183 The spectacle was especially dangerous to independent, critical thinkers because it sought to unmask all forms of revolutionary ideology184 and then re-present them to passive consumers as historical failures. For Debord, the notion of totality (or what he had earlier called “total communication”) comprised the final word on modern revolutionary organizations. If victorious, revolutionary organization would cease to exist as separate organizations within society and instead become part of a general transformation of social and cultural life. Given Debord’s radical rethinking of presenting a comprehensive theoretical position to other revolutionary thinkers, the dictionary project was briefly mentioned once again in a letter to modern art historian Branko Vucicovic dated December 24, 1966.185 The Dictionary was mentioned as part of an overall attempt by Debord to explain to Vucicovic that the SI was not made up of super-men who engaged in a critical analysis of modern society while

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at the same time standing above and outside it. Debord agreed with Vucicovic that SI members were ruthless in their attacks, but that they were also not artists in the traditional sense of the word. Debord still considered himself a serious revolutionary artist, even though he admitted that he no longer wished to suppress art because the historical conditions in which such a goal might have become possible were long gone. The same mildly dismissive attitude toward the dictionary project also crept into Debord’s letter to Khayati written during the final days of 1967. While alluding to Khayati’s already published Preface to “the very future dictionary,”186 Debord argued instead in favor of explicitly addressing the manner in which conceptual terms such as “alienation”187 are intentionally misinterpreted for political gain. This results in individuals becoming embroiled in a semantic struggle for meaning rather than addressing the social reality of alienation itself. Finally, in a letter to remaining members of the SI written in spring 1970, Debord underlined the SI’s need to reaffirm the group’s specificity and to develop its collective critical-theoretical positions. In the end, under the heading “Modest Proposals,” Debord referred to possible future theoretical works written as a collective and oriented toward direct agitation. In a letter written in 1970 to remaining SI members, Debord decided that collective theoretical work would ultimately replace the “stillborn dictionary,” which Debord found less ambitious but eminently more readable.188 If we return to the essay “All the King’s Men” for a moment, we can see that many of the difficulties regarding the long-term viability of a Situationist dictionary had already been addressed by Debord as early as January 1963. To recall, the main issue in Khayati’s “Preface” centered on undermining the ability of the dominant power to align the connotative meaning of words with economic imperatives. From this perspective, Khayati is clear: “We reject any authority, linguistic or otherwise, only real life allows a meaning and only praxis verifies it.”189 What did Khayati mean when he stated that “only real life” allows a given word its particular meaning? The assertion sounds dogmatic, but Khayati does not provide an explicit revolutionary strategy to bring this into being. To be clear, the answer to the question we have just posed can be found in Debord’s earlier 1963 essay. In it, Debord argues that the “informational” language of capitalism simply names what is always-alreadythere. It is an a priori language stripped of human experience, agency, and desire. It is an a priori language which proceeds from theoretical deduction (i.e., economic imperatives) rather than from phenomenological observation or authentic human experience. It produces nothing new; it merely co-opts what is already there. However, as Debord points out, even under the constant threat of reification and the use of “informational” language that fails to articulate the complexities of human experience, a linguistic community still has the final

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say in deciding the link between the sound (or graphic representation) of an individual word and its meaning. In a worst-case scenario, it is the sheer political will of the dominant order that determines the ultimate meaning of words. But, if that is the case, then “there would be no poetry” and dissent “would be unable to express itself in language.”190 Debord offers a possible way out of this predicament. In a move of determined resistance against the dominant powers, a linguistic community can instead decide to suffuse its own language with revolutionary or poetic substance. The native language of a linguistic community would be imbued with a concentrated and heightened poetic power in which words are carefully chosen not for their utilitarian value but for their sounds, their suggestive power, their overall sense of imagination, their ironic disposition, and ultimately their insubordination to the powers that be. Various slang terms and argot are used by speakers to identify a variety of social, economic, or political concerns that co-exist within a community. Depending on their individual semantic field, each word resonates with multiple meanings and remains intentionally unmoored from all immediate references to the known world. “What is poetry if not the revolutionary moment of language,” asks Debord, “inseparable as such from the revolutionary moments of history and from the history of personal life?”191 Debord argued in his 1963 essay that while the revolutionary moment of language is imminent in all forms of authentic human interactions, “Power’s stranglehold over language is connected to its stranglehold over the totality.”192 Debord later returned to this image in his discussions regarding the concentrated form of the spectacle that favors an ideology focused on a dictatorial personality (i.e., Weber’s charismatic authority), as well as on the diffused forms that force wage-earners to exchange their freedom of political choice for the freedom to choose between different commodities.193 In the spring of 1988, Debord expanded his understanding of the diffused form to include the integrated spectacle, or what he defined as “the Americanization of the world.”194 While the integrated spectacle, according to Debord, was particularly evident in France and Italy, the form itself resulted from a number of different factors including the continued role of Moscow-centric unions in European political and intellectual life, the weakening of democratic traditions, the domination of political power enjoyed by a single party, and the eradication of corresponding revolutionary activities. Debord’s assessment of the integrated spectacle and revolutionary responses struggling against it was borne out by statistics regarding revolutionary acts of intrastate terrorism. Between 1950 and 2004, Scandinavian countries experienced little if any revolutionary activities; on the other hand, there were 583 incidents in Italy involving 32 different groups, 866 incidents in Spain involving 34 different groups, and 3,046 incidents in France involving 48 different terrorist organizations.195 Throughout the 1970s and 1980s,

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the state’s stranglehold over the totality of human life led to a more occulted view of charismatic leadership and its accompanying ideology,196 along with increasingly effective forms of instrumental rationality designed to produce the necessary and “full range of socially produced behaviour and objects.”197 The state’s stranglehold—expressed in and through economic imperatives— had finally permeated all of social reality; the spectacle no longer floated above the globe as an ideological falsity; on the contrary, it utterly permeated all facets of human existence, including behavior, thought, language, and communication. As Debord pointed out in 1963, only a language that has intentionally removed all immediate references to actual human existence can function as “informational.” In such a context, information is presented in-formation; so-called verifiable facts are presented in and through an explicitly formal arrangement of instrumental rationality and then re-presented as an alwaysalready-there factual reality. “News is the poetry of power,” wrote Debord, “the counter-poetry of law and order, the mediated falsification of what exists.”198 The overlapping relationship between news, information, and reality was particularly thorny in the French language. To begin with, the French term “information” signifies both “news” and “general information.” But the French term “actualité” also signifies “news,” “an ensemble of actual events,” as well as “reality.” Thus, there is a critical overlap between news, factual information, and reality. Typically, the more so-called news factors a an item contains, the more prominence it is given in terms of its length and position (e.g., a lead story in a news broadcast, a front-page headline, and so on). But how do we gather similar “factors” from the richness of actuality and assign prominence to some and not to others? By what criteria—other than economic imperatives—do we consider prominence to other aspects of reality? Compared to the “informational” language of news bulletins, poetry, on the other hand, “must be understood as direct communication within reality and as a real alteration of this reality.”199 Once again, Debord is not speaking here of poetry in the traditional sense but rather in having a “poetic” disposition, a “poetic” worldview. To flourish properly, poetry needs the richest possible soil in order to transform life. Compared to the fabrications of “informational” language, the fundamental principle of poetry is antinaturalism; the act of poetry is the “creation” of an artificial universe that is autonomous and superior to the natural world. To have a poetic sensibility is to intentionally exploit the arbitrary relationship between a term and its meaning for personal use. To have a poetic sensibility is to engage in a relentless search for the “mysterious,” the ephemeral, for what lies behind the surface of things. To have a poetic sensibility is to view the objects of the social world in their meaningful rather than useful (commodity) capacities. Poetry, writes Debord, “is liberated language,

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language recovering its richness, language breaking its rigid significations and simultaneously embracing words and music.”200

NOTES 1. Guy Debord, letter to Paolo Salvadori (9 December 1969) in Correspondance volume 4 janvier 1969-décembre 1972, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2004), 188. 2. Ibid. 3. See Michèle Bernstein, M. Dahou, Véra, Gil J Wolman, “La Ligne Générale” (“The General Line”), Potlatch 14 (30 November 1954) in Potlatch (1954‒1957) (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 86–87. 4. Debord, letter to Paolo Salvadori (9 December 1969) in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 189. 5. Situationist International, “The Fifth SI Conference in Götenborg (excerpts)” in Situationist International Anthology, revised and expanded edition, edited, and translated by Ken Knabb (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2006), 114. 6. Ibid., 115. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Situationist International, “Du Rôle de L’I.S.” in Internationale Situationniste No. 7 (April 1962), 18. 10. Debord, letter to Patrick Straram (25 October 1960) in Correspondance volume 2 septembre 1960-décembre 1964, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2001), 32. 11. Debord, letter to Gérard Lebovici (24 May 1976) in Correspondance volume 5 janvier 1973-décembre 1978, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2005), 353. 12. Debord, “All the King’s Men” in Knabb (2006), 149. 13. Debord, letter to Marcel Mariën (11 April 1956) in Correspondance volume “0” septembre 1951-juillet 1957, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2010, 104. 14. Debord and Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement” (1956) in Knabb (2006), 14. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., 14, 15. 18. Stanley J. Baran and Dennis K Davis, Mass Communication Theory: Foundations, ferment, and future, sixth edition (Boston, MA: Wadsworth CENGAGE Learning, 2012), 76. 19. Ibid. 20. Debord, letter to Édouard Taubé (17 October 1964) in Correspondance volume 2 septembre 1960-décembre 1964 (2001), 304. 21. Debord, “Theses on Cultural Revolution” (1958) in Knabb (2006), 54.

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22. Debord, letter to Édouard Taubé (17 October 1964) in Correspondance volume 2 septembre 1960-décembre 1964 (2001), 304. 23. Baran and Davis (2012), 76. 24. Debord and Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement” (1956) in Knabb (2006), 15. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., 15–16. 27. Anselm Jappe, The Writing on the Wall: On the Decomposition of Capitalism and its Critics, translated by Alastair Hemmens (Arlesford, Hants, UK: Zero Books, 2017), 156. 28. Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms (New York and London: Methuen, 1985), 103. 29. Henri Lefebvre, Introduction to Modernity: Twelve Preludes September 1959-May 1961, translated by John Moore (London: Verso, 1995), 32. 30. C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon, A Handbook to Literature, 5th edition (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986), 264. 31. Lefebvre (1995), 3. 32. Ibid., 7. 33. Linda Hutcheon (1985), 103. 34. Lefebvre (1995), 7. 35. Debord and Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement” (1956) in Knabb (2006), 16. The French terms are taken from “Mode D’Emploi du Détournement” in Les Lèvres Nues No. 8 (May 1956), 4. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Ken Knabb in Debord, Guy Debord Complete Cinematic Works: Scripts, Stills, Documents, translated and edited by Ken Knabb (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2003), viii. 40. Debord and Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement” (1956) in Knabb (2006), 16. 41. Lefebvre (1995), 22. 42. Debord and Wolman, “Modeste Préface À La Parution D’Une Dernière Revue Surréaliste” (“Modest Preface to the Publication of a Last Surrealist Revue”), Potlatch No. 26 (7 May 1956) in Potlatch (1996), 241. 43. Debord and Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement” (1956) in Knabb (2006), 17. 44. Debord, letter to Constant (28 February 1959) in Correspondance volume 1 juin 1957-août 1960, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1999), 196. English translation, 216. 45. Debord and Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement” (1956) in Knabb (2006), 17. 46. J. V. Martin, Jan Stribosch, Raoul Vaneigem, René Viénet, “Response to a Questionnaire from the Center for Socio-Experimental Art” (1964) in Knabb (2006), 185.

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47. Debord, “Report on the Construction of Situations” (1957) in Knabb (2006), 32. 48. Ibid. 49. Vaneigem, “Notice to the Civilized concerning Generalized Self-Management” (1969) in Knabb (2006), 363. 50. Lefebvre (1995), 173, my emphasis. 51. Ivan Chtcheglov, “Formulary for a New Urbanism” (1953) in Knabb (2006), 5. 52. Debord, “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography (1955) in Knabb (2006), 11. 53. Vaneigem, “Basic Banalities (Part 2)” in Knabb (2006), 161. 54. Ibid. 55. Saint-Just, “Rapport sure les personnes incarcérées” in Œuvres completes, edition established and presented by Anne Kupiec and Miguel Abensour (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), 667. See also Debord, Kotányi, Vaneigem, “Theses on the Paris Commune” (1962) in Knabb (2006), 401. 56. Debord and Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement” (1956) in Knabb (2006), 17. 57. Debord, “The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy” (1966) in Knabb (2006), 201. 58. Ibid. 59. Lautréamont, “Maldoror” in Maldoror & the Complete Works of the Comte de Lautréamont, edited and translated by Alexis Lykiard (Cambridge: Exact Change, 2011), 135. 60. Ibid, 193. 61. Ibid. 160. 62. Ibid., “Poésies,” 232. 63. Debord and Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement” (1956) in Knabb (2006), 17. 64. Lautréamont, “Poésies” (2011), 250. 65. Ibid., 245. 66. Lykiard in Lautréamont (2011), 317. 67. Debord and Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement” (1956) in Knabb (2006), 17. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid. 70. Jaime Semprun, Dialogues sur L’Achèvement des Temps Modernes (Paris: Éditions de L’Encyclopédie des Nuisances, 1993), 35. 71. Plato, “Republic” in Plato: The Collected Dialogues including the Letters, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns., various translators (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 534b, 534e. 72. Aristotle, “Topica (Topics)” in The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited and with an Introduction by Richard McKeon, various translators (New York: Random House, 15th printing, 1941), 105a20–108b36. 73. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith (London: MacMillan & Co Ltd., 1961), B86.

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74. Ludwig Feuerbach, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future in The Fiery Brook Selected Writings (London: Verso, 2012), 244. 75. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A. V. Miller with Analysis of the Text and Foreword by J. N. Findley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 11. 76. Ibid., 124. 77. Ibid., 18. 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid. 80. Debord, La Librairie de Guy Debord: Marx Hegel, edited by Laurence Le Bras (Paris: Éditions L’Échappé, 2021), 341. 81. Hegel (1977), 18. 82. Ibid. 83. Ibid. 84. Ibid., 19. 85. Debord and Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement” (1956) in Knabb (2006), 17. 86. André Breton, “On Surrealism in its Living Works” (1953) in Manifestoes of Surrealism, translated by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), 299. 87. Debord, “Report on the Construction of Situations” (1957) in Knabb (2006), 28. 88. Ibid. 89. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 191. 90. Debord and Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement” (1956) in Knabb (2006), 18. 91. Although the authors briefly discuss the potential of détourned cinema, Debord would go on write and direct On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time (1959) and Critique of Separation (1961). Following the end of the Situationist International, Debord continued to direct détourned films such as The Society of the Spectacle (1973), Refutation of All the Judgements, Pro or Con, Thus Far Rendered on the Film the Society of the Spectacle (1975), and In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978). 92. Debord and Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement” (1956) in Knabb (2006), 18. 93. On the influence of the Situationist International on British punk rock in general and the Sex Pistols in particular, see my Arts and Politics of the Situationist International 1957-1972: Situating the Situationists (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2021), xvi–xxi. 94. Ibid., 20. 95. Debord, letter to Jean Maitron (24 October 1968) in Correspondance volume 3 janvier 1965-décembre 1968, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2003), 293. 96. Debord, “Une maspérisation” in Internationale Situationniste No. 12 (September 1969), 88.

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97. Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (31 January 1975) in Correspondance volume 5 (2005), 232. 98. On the C.M.D.O., see Pascal Dumontier, Les Situationnistes et Mai 68: Théorie et pratique de la revolution (1966-1972), 135–145. 99. Debord, “Une maspérisation” in Internationale Situationniste No. 12 (September 1969), 88. 100. Ibid. 101. Debord, letter to Michel Bounan (7 September 1992) in Correspondance volume 7 janvier 1988-novembre 1994, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2008), 361. 102. Ibid., letter to Jean-Jacques Pauvert (18 September 1993), 432. 103. Debord, letter to Michel Bounan (7 September 1992) in Correspondance volume 7 (2008), 361. 104. Debord, letter to Mohamed Dahou (18 November 1957) in Correspondance volume 1 (1999), 35. English translation, 57. 105. Ibid. 106. Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life” in Selected Writings on Art and Literature, translated with an Introduction by P. E. Charvet (London: Penguin, 2006), 431. 107. Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (13 December 1971) in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 452. 108. Ibid., 452–453. 109. Ibid., letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (11 April 1972), 537. 110. Ibid., letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (2 June 1972), 562. 111. Debord, letter to Patrick Straram (12 November 1958) in Correspondance volume 1 (1999), 158. English translation, 177. 112. The following is the summary of a letter written by Debord on 21 February 1969 to the Italian section of the SI. See Debord, letter to Italian section of the SI (21 February 1969) in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 32–36. 113. Dumontier (1995), 203. 114. Ibid., 204. 115. In a letter dated 3 July 1978, Guy Debord mentions to Paolo Salvadori that The Society of the Spectacle had already been translated into ten languages. See Debord, letter to Paolo Salvadori (3 July 1978) in Correspondance volume 5 (2005), 470. 116. Debord, letter to Donald Nicholson-Smith (1 March 1979) in Correspondance volume 6 janvier 1979-décembre 1987, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2006), 21. 117. Following the debacle with the Situationist International, the Black Mask group morphed into Up Against the Wall Motherfucker, an anti-Vietnam protest group also known as The Motherfuckers or UAW/MF. 118. Debord, letter to Ben Morea (5 December 1967) in Correspondance volume “0” (2010), 309. In English in the original. 119. Debord, letter to Robert Chasse, Bruce Elwell, Tony Verlaan (14 December 1967) in Correspondance “0” (2010), 313. In English in the original text.

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120. Debord, letter to Robert Chasse (23 December 1967) in Correspondance volume “0” (2010), 339. 121. Debord, “All the King’s Men” (1963) in Knabb (2006), 149. 122. Debord, “Report on the Construction of Situations” (1957) in Knabb (2006), 29. 123. Ibid., 40. 124. Ibid., 41. 125. Attila Kotányi and Raoul Vaneigem, “Instructions for an Insurrection” (1961) in Knabb (2006), 84. 126. Ibid. 127. Vaneigem, “Basic Banalities (Part 1)” (1962) in Knabb (2006), 125. 128. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Notebook 19, Summer 1872-Beginning of 1873” in Writings from the Early Notebooks, edited by Raymond Geuss and Alexander Nehamas, translated by Ladislaus Löb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 156. 129. Vaneigem, “Basic Banalities (Part 1)” (1962) in Knabb (2006), 126. 130. Attila Kotányi and Raoul Vaneigem, “Instructions for an Insurrection” (1961) in Knabb (2006), 84. 131. Ibid. 132. Ibid., 85. 133. Ibid., my emphases. 134. Debord, “Perspectives in Conscious Changes in Everyday Life” (1961) in Knabb (2006), 93. 135. Ibid., 97. 136. Debord, “All the King’s Men” in Knabb (2006), 149. 137. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” in Dialectic of Enlightenment, translated by John Cumming (New York: Continuum, 1989), 165. 138. Ricardo Paseyro, Eloge de l’analphabétisme à l’usage des faux lettrés (Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont, 1989), 167, 198. In this context, tacit knowledge refers to knowledge drawn from experience and difficult to communicate and share, while explicit knowledge can be transmitted and shared, but can also become obsolete very quickly. 139. Debord, “All the King’s Men” in Knabb (2006), 149. 140. Horkheimer and Adorno, “Introduction” (1989), xi–xii. 141. Horkheimer and Adorno, “The Concept of Enlightenment” (1989), 165. See also Paseyro (1989), 26–33. 142. Debord, “All the King’s Men” in Knabb (2006), 149. 143. Debord, letter to Asger Jorn (7 May 1959) in Correspondance, volume 1 (1999), 229. English translation, 249. 144. Debord, “All the King’s Men” in Knabb (2006), 149. 145. Vaneigem, “Basic Banalities (Part Two)” in Knabb (2006), 169. 146. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass (1871) (Bolton, ON: Amazon Publishing, 2020), 92. 147. Ibid. 148. Ibid.

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149. Ibid. 150. Ibid., 93. 151. Ibid. 152. Ibid. 153. Ibid., 94. 154. Ibid., 95. 155. Ibid. 156. Ibid. 157. Ibid. 158. Ibid. 159. Ibid. 160. Debord, “All the King’s Men” in Knabb (2006), 150. 161. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (1913), edited by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, with the collaboration of Albert Riedlinger, translated and annotated by Roy Harris (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1994), 66–67. 162. Ibid., 68. 163. Kotányi, “Gangland and Philosophy” ( 1960) in Knabb (2006), 77. 164. Mustapha Khayati, “Captive Words: Preface to a Situationist Dictionary” in Knabb (2006), 222. 165. Ibid. 166. Ibid. 167. Ibid. 168. Debord, “All the King’s Men” in Knabb (2006), 150, my emphases. 169. Ibid. 170. Debord, letter to Mustapha Khayati (8 October 1965) in Correspondance volume 3 (2003), 69. 171. Ibid., letter to Mustapha Khayati (4 November 1965), 80. 172. Ibid., letter to Mustapha Khayati (13 November 1965), 82. 173. Ibid. 174. Ibid., 83. 175. Ibid., letter to Mustapha Khayati (29 November 1965), 92. 176. Ibid. 177. Ibid., my emphases. 178. Ibid., letter to Raoul Vaneigem (9 January 1966), 118. 179. Ibid., letter to Mustapha Khayati (13 February 1966), 126. 180. Ibid. 181. Ibid., letter to Mustapha Khayati (28 July 1966), 154 The text “Définition minimum des organisations révolutionnaires” appears in Internationale Situationniste #11, October 1967, pp. 54–55. 182. Ibid., 156. 183. Ibid. 184. Ibid. 185. “You will surely read the Dictionary one day, and in general almost everything that we advertise. But I can't guarantee the exact time.” Ibid., letter to Branko Vucicovic (24 December 1966), 184. 186. Ibid., letter to Mustapha Khayati (Thursday, end of 1967), 253.

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187. On Debord’s critical distinctions between social, economic, and philosophical alienation, see “Domenach versus Alienation” in Knabb (2006), 237–239. 188. Debord, letter to all sections of the SI (27 April 1970) in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 230. 189. Mustapha Khayati, “Captive Words: Preface to a Situationist Dictionary” in Knabb (2006), 227. 190. Debord, “All the King’s Men” in Knabb (2006), 150. 191. Ibid. 192. Ibid. 193. Debord, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, translated by Malcolm Imrie (London: Verso Books, 1998), 8. 194. Ibid. 195. Jan Oskar Engene, “Five Decades of Terrorism in Europe: The TWEED Dataset” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 44(1), January 2004, 116. 196. To be clear, the recent global shift toward new forms of right-wing extremism led by populist leaders (Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsonaro, Viktor Orbán, and Recep Erdoğan) has re-energized Debord’s original “concentrated” form of the spectacle. 197. Debord (1998), 9. 198. Debord, “All the King’s Men” in Knabb (2006), 150. 199. Ibid. 200. Ibid.

Chapter 4

Debord’s Post-SI Period (1972–1979)

This chapter presents to Anglophone readers the first of two chapters on a “post-SI” Guy Debord. This is a rarely discussed period in English-language texts when Debord continued to publish critical theory books and oversee various legal (and often prohibit illegal) translations of The Society of the Spectacle and other Situationist texts, produce films with Gérard Lebovici under full artistic control, translate Spanish and Italian revolutionary texts with his wife, Alice Debord (Becker-Ho), as well as continue to open up lines of communications with burgeoning revolutionary groups in Spain, Portugal, and Italy. We mentioned at the beginning of chapter 2 that Debord viewed the twenty-year period between 1952 and 1972 as one continuous revolutionary project that sought to explore the possibilities of new social and cultural forms of life. During its fifteen-year existence, Debord helped to guide the SI away from the ludic theories of dérive and psychogeography—behaviors often fueled by too much alcohol1—and toward a radical critique of social and cultural alienation. The more the SI radicalized its political theories and sought new ways to communicate them to the modern world, the more it moved away from the tenets of dérive and psychogeography. The overall goal was still the complete transformation of everyday life and participation, as much as possible, in its real construction, but a cultural revolution could not be realized without an explicit social revolution. Granted, the SI’s radical critique of urbanism, in part a remainder from Debord’s time with the Letterist International, did retain some of the LI’s original desire to experiment with behavior, forms of decoration, architecture, town planning, and communication capable of provoking compelling new situations. But, by the early 1960s, a new understanding of urbanism eventually made way for renewed economic and social upheavals that would permanently instill new forms of genuine happiness. 131

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Between 1970 and 1972, an era that Debord found to be both successful and productive,2 the SI devised a more politically oriented theory of historical action3 that allowed the group to become more aware of the movement of history as well as its own development in history. Debord continued to affirm the elimination of soul-crushing salaried work; yet, self-management theories in the early 1970s centered on productive processes rather than on building a more equitable social world free of the reifying effects of the spectacle.4 While the first half of the twentieth century had offered a range of revolutionary theories from which to choose (Dadaism, Surrealism, Letterism, and anarchism), nothing seemed to change. In hindsight, Debord began to consider the possibility that it might take less revolutionary work to recover from the ennui of the postwar years. If that was so, then why was the reigning order become sicker and sicker?5 Debord’s task had always been to create a unitary social critique ­regarding the reifying tendencies of late capitalism and to disseminate it to every sector of the globe. In a series of letters written in 1973 to ­translator Jaap ­Kloosterman, Debord expressed that he was not only delighted to hear that the Dutch translation of The Society of the Spectacle was p­ rogressing well,6 especially given that publishing conditions in Holland were much safer than they were in Italy7 (more on that topic later), but that the ­“Calvinist language” of Dutch would have to “evolve” in order to properly accommodate his radical ideas.8 Debord also pointed out to Kloosterman that the particularities of the German secondary sources he cited depended on idiosyncratic French texts that still had a highly referential value to him. Also, on a more practical level, Debord was unable to read Marx or Lukács in the original German.9 In the years following 1972, Debord reassessed his theoretical foundation and decided that the basic thinkers going forward would no longer be Hegel, Marx, and Lautréamont but rather the Athenian historian Thucydides, Machiavelli, and the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz. Although he realigned his theoretical interests to reflect these new concerns, Debord continued reading Hegel’s early theological writings, as well as exploring the philosophical writings of Moses Hess and August von Cieszkowski. Furthering definitions, experimentations, and questions regarding more effective means of communication remained his primary activity. Debord still had to address the fact that one of the serious side effects of social alienation is a lack of communication. The spectacle, for example, communicates unilaterally; the separation of worker and product further eliminates direct personal communication between producers and a proper understanding of the products they actually produce.10 By comparison, the only way to generate active, direct communication between workers was to allow them to develop a revolutionary consciousness on their own so that they may truly say what they

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need to say. To be clear, Debord was not interested in reasoning about fragmentary or uncertain data in which real possibilities are simply not present.11 The concept of a total critique generated in and through the actual conditions of the modern world had always been the centerpiece of SI social theory. But nothing seemed to change. In the Preface to Correspondance volume 6, Alice Debord characterizes the post-SI years as a continual warzone: “Even if the seat of the general staff had moved, the state of war, for [Debord], remained permanent.”12 In the opening paragraph of Panegyric (the first volume published in France in 1989; the second posthumously in 1997), Debord acknowledged that his entire life had been filled with nothing but troubled times, extreme shifts in the structure of French society, and immense destruction.13 The troubled times that informed Debord’s artistic, social, and intellectual worldview were significant: the expansion and contraction of Western European economies following World War II, postwar urban development (i.e., the ubiquity of high modernist architecture), increasingly efficient modes of capitalist production techniques, the continual bureaucratization and nuclearization of the world, global political upheavals, globalization fueled by the encroachment of multinational corporations upon formally colonized nations, and a profound cultural shift from high modernism to postmodernism, all of which can still be felt today. For Debord, modernity itself signified the dawn of social emancipation and an expansion of the field of truth.14 But it also represented a direct reversal in the general progress of repression and falsifications in all fields of knowledge. While he accepted taking part in some of these troubles, or at least helping to accelerate them, Debord knew that an admission of guilt would not be enough to prevent the most obvious of his political actions or critical thoughts from ever being universally approved or understood by others.15 To begin with, Debord never intended to fit neatly into a traditional anarchist or Marxist “pigeon-hole.” As Debord and Gianfranco Sanguinetti wrote in 1972 in The Real Split in the International, “The more famous our theses become, the more shadowy our own presence will be.”16 Not only did Debord choose to operate clandestinely and follow his own rules, but he did so by steadfastly refusing to follow the paths previously laid down by the traditional hierarchy of left-wing politics and leftist intellectuals. In between the publication of the first and second volumes of Panegyric, Debord also published Cette mauvaise réputation (This Bad Reputation) in 1993. The book was an explicit critique mounted by Debord against the French media and their negative treatment of his post-Situationist work between 1988 and 1992. In his book, Debord limited himself to only “the most stunning series of examples”17 of misleading information, intentional disinformation, and false citations regarding his own personal and intellectual life. From his perspective, the entire French media was engaging in maspérisation. In the opening

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paragraph, Debord explained that it was about time to modernize the kind of contemporary criticism that had always managed to contradict itself. On the one hand, Debord no longer endorsed Rimbaud’s denaturalization of the senses and its resulting effect on new forms of language. But, on the other hand, the need for clarity, itself derived from the informational aspect of language, was an equally absurd writing objective. There had to be a middle ground between the excesses of symbolic language and the restraint of informational language, that is, a way to communicate that would be evocative without being vague, and informational without being reductive. According to Debord, journalists continued to relish in the intentional vagueness of language because “almost all of them are unable to write any better.”18 The main issue for Debord was not the media’s campaign of intentional disinformation regarding his written works, but rather the likelihood that language itself had been hijacked by corporations that control mass media.19 For Debord, everyday native language was being replaced by better and more efficient computers that are programmed to express only an economy of desire (i.e., production and consumption).20 As a result, whether selling a commodity or an idea, “The language of seduction, when used to communicate a theory, is the language of sales, i.e., of prostitution.”21 Language is no longer what is common to all; it is manipulated by the owners of mass media to sell commodities. Language is either intentionally vague, but not in an ironic way to create a disturbance or uncertainty, or intentionally designed to create the kinds of desire that can only be satisfied by the commodities. As early as 1971 Debord was becoming increasingly concerned with Orwellian “Newspeak,” or “novlangue.”22 Novlangue was the new language of bureaucratic abbreviations, misinformation, and disinformation. Years later, Debord’s suspicions were confirmed when his friend Nicole Debrie handed him a badly translated copy of George Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language” (1945–1946). In it, Orwell argues that the decline of a language results from direct political and economic forces. As a result, the uglier and more distorted a language becomes, the more foolish our thoughts.23 Debord still believed that the author’s writings had the ability to speak the truth, and Orwell knew how to make us believe it.24 Debord decided that, with autobiographical materials at least, he too would tell the truth “but rarely entirely.”25 This new strategy was not unlike Debord’s earlier interest in the use of deliberate silence as an oblique form of communication. Reveal only what you wish your enemy to know, nothing more. Debord understood that contemporary political terms were often regularly abused and delegated to uncritical jargon or what we refer to today as “talking points.” For Orwell, a term such as “democracy” has no agreed-to meaning, and attempts to identify one are often met with ideological resistance. “Words of this kind,” writes Orwell, “are often used in a consciously dishonest way.

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That is, the person who uses them has his [sic] own private definition but allows his hearer to think he means something different.”26 What Orwell is describing here is disinformation, which, to be clear, is the creation of false information with the intent to mislead. After reading Orwell’s essay, Debord was at once thankful for, yet saddened by, the existence of this timely postwar text. For him, “novlangue” was already being exploited everywhere in what he was seeing and hearing.27 Not only had “novlangue” become a form of commercial language immersed in the functionality of capitalism, but individuals themselves were finding it more and more difficult to use the increasingly reductive language of “spectacular commodification” to identify and express emotional states. In 1990, Debord befriended homeopathic doctor and essayist Michel Bounan and maintained a three-year correspondence with him.28 Along with Bounan’s Le temps du sida (The Time of AIDS, Éditions Allia, 1990), Debord was very interested in his 1993 publication, La vie innommable (The Unnameable Life, Éditions Allia). For Debord, Bounan’s book was a sobering sign of the times: “Excellent title!” he wrote, “since that is what it has become historically (and as product of an exact technique); and also because the word corresponds so perfectly to the common meaning unnameable.”29 To recall, in The Society of the Spectacle, Debord had already described the “spectacular consumption” of past cultures as “the communication of the incommunicable.”30 From the perspective of language and communication, the inability to articulate emotions was yet another sign of the reifying effects of late capitalism on the connotative aspects of everyday language. “I was completely amazed by the discovery of alexithymia,” Debord wrote to Bounan, “which, in terms of the knowledge with which you shed light on it, appears to be the hitherto missing link in the contemporary account of the end of everything.”31 In his book, Bounan discusses the rising phenomenon of alexithymia,32 which is not a mental health disorder per se, but rather an individual’s inability to identify and express emotional states.33 Within such a conceptual framework, emotional states such as frustration or rage cannot be expressed verbally or conceptually; instead, individuals lash out physically at the perceived cause or narcotize the offending emotional state through drugs and alcohol. Individuals who suffer from alexithymia often have great difficulty in maintaining personal relationships and participating in social situations. Debord had already identified a similar difficulty forty years earlier when he stated to his friend Hervé Falcou that they may have had the courage to write to each other, but that it was already so difficult to speak—even to friends.34 In the original letter to Falcou, Debord writes the words “SI DIFFICILE” in block letters. What interested Debord was Bounan’s fear that our own latecapitalist era was itself becoming alexithymic, that is, without conscience, without a language for its suffering, and yet endlessly talkative.35 We drown

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in information, but we have no genuine knowledge about the social world around us. From our contemporary perspective, the incessant, empty chatter that distinguishes surveillance capitalism, with its unsubstantiated truthclaims to objectivity, is characteristic of most social media posts. Not surprisingly, Debord had always held a particularly harsh view of idle or empty chatter: “Here is the universe of words (let’s spit),”36 he once wrote. During his time with the SI, Debord never pretended to hold the secret to organizational problems facing his own era or the next. Even if the SI had misread the General Strike of 1968 as the harbinger of a new revolutionary epoch in France,37 he was still willing to rethink the relationship between theory and praxis, as well as the means of communicating a new revolutionary project. What Debord found most difficult in post-1968 France was the reconciliation of revolutionary practice with the dissemination of certain revolutionary ideas. As Pascal Dumontier points out in his study of the third phase of the SI, Debord finally decided to put an end to the group because its once radical edge was being undermined and diluted by nostalgia for the late 1960s. “The failure of the SI,” explains Dumontier, “was in not being able to truly renew itself in order to avoid its rediscovery and popularization by the society of the spectacle.”38 As we have already mentioned, Debord established a historically e­ volving critique of so-called “modernist” art rooted in the practices of Dada and ­Surrealism. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, Debord temporarily set aside an interest in avant-garde art in order to expand his understanding of late-capitalist cultural production. During this period, Debord engaged in a more comprehensive analysis of the effects of advanced neoliberal capitalism on everyday social life. For Debord, criticism of “spectacular commodities” was already a criticism of art. But for high art to be criticized and surpassed, it first of all needed to be free from the shackles of the marketplace. For centuries, this had been the basis of its legal status in bourgeois democracies. “The question now,” asked Debord, “is whether the cinema is in some way a ‘high’ art. Or does it only belong to industrialists and policemen?”39 Debord was not unaware of the irony that a critical theory book such as The Society of the Spectacle might itself be considered a commodity. Debord knew that no one can transcend the relationship between production and commodification without at the same time destroying market society. The much more serious issue for Debord was for the book itself to become a “truly spectacular commodity.”40 Because of an increase in violent forms of revolutionary activities across Western Europe during the 1970s, Debord decided to maintain a clandestine attitude of “systematic discretion”41 both within and without the SI. Yet, his mail was regularly disrupted without explanation (“In the post, we do not know whether to admire the cynicism or the impotence of their services

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today”).42 The postal service was at best irregular and sporadic. “Dadaism reigns there,”43 he once wrote. Telephone communications were often interrupted, either by chance or malevolence.44 “As a general rule,” he wrote to his one-time associate Gianfranco Sanguinetti, “beware at this time [1972] of any new relationships.”45 Political revolutions in the early part of the twentieth century had designated for Debord not the violent overthrow of a political system by the governed but rather the simple movement of a circle. Everything old was new again. A revolution simply brought participants back to an original point of departure; even worse, the act itself was always-already re-absorbed and commodified by the capitalist apparatus of the spectacle. Debord eventually closed down the SI because both the group and the era itself had lost its revolutionary potential. Situationists such as Raoul Vaneigem had previously argued that all revolutionary acts contesting political power need to include careful analysis and tactical development.46 But the SI’s original concept of social revolution as a ludic festival was beginning to give way to darker and more violent forms of revolutionary terrorism that involved kidnapping, bombings, and a brutal police response. Historically, up to the early 1970s, the SI had constituted the most extremist current of an era which, by all accounts, was itself extreme. Unbeknownst to many revolutionary groups in France at the time, the same “era” also included the spontaneous (and unplanned) upheaval known as the General Strike of May 1968. I use the term “unbeknownst” because one month prior to the General Strike, Debord was already questioning the possible organizational future of the SI. As we also mentioned in chapter 2, the potential for revolutionary activity even as early as 1966 appeared to be largely absent in French universities.47 The SI had originally began by focusing its attention on the “transcendence of art” (1957–1962), then chose to engage in an overt “politics of communication” directed at colonized nations such as Algeria (1962–1968), before finally entering into an explicitly political phase predicated on open resistance and a state of permanent revolution (1968–1972). While the May 1968 Strike may, in hindsight, have been viewed as an unexpected but inexorable experience based on a substantial alliance between the SI, university students, and the French proletariat, Debord saw that the new revolutionary tendencies of present-day society, though still weak and confused, were no longer relegated to the margins of society but were now finally appearing in the streets.48 The 1968 Strike was a brief but cataclysmic bellwether event that began with a series of student protests against neoliberal capitalism, mindless c­onsumerism, American imperialism in Vietnam, and the sanctity of ­traditional social institutions. It ended up crippling the French economy for nearly two months. Debord knew that problems identified during the ­General Strike would influence the direction of post-1968 revolutionary models;

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however, he also understood that they could not be resolved within the immediate context of small radical groups such as the SI. On the contrary, the relationship between autonomous revolutionary organizations had to be worked out against a larger social and cultural background that was itself in constant flux. Even the term “Situationist” now only vaguely designated a certain era of critical thinking where everyone was personally participating on a local level rather than publicly engaged on a global level.49 Members were expected to contribute to the articulation of a coherent theoretical position rather than engage in public demonstrations and protests. Not doing so would lead to expulsion from the group. Debord was not about to give up hope for the future because, from his perspective, an open-ended future was significantly better than a pre-ordained, always-already-there, future. As he explained in a letter to Sanguinetti, “all you have to do is radicalize your criticism even more and then wait for the next generation capable of understanding it to come along.”50 In terms of future developments, Debord thought that Italy of the 1970s was becoming “a good revolutionary school; classes lasted longer there than [in France], and the teaching had some chance of being complete.”51 Two principles resulted from trying to positively envision a post-1968 revolutionary world in Italy. The first was Debord’s lifelong desire to dialogue with other autonomous radical groups, especially those now currently beginning to form in Italy. What was required to move beyond the third and final phase of the SI (1968–1972) was less a continuation of theoretical elaborations than the desire to communicate and disseminate explicitly revolutionary content across the rest of Western Europe.52 In the months leading up to May 1968, SI journals, along with individual works of Debord and Raoul Vaneigem, were easily available in bookstores in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Mustapha Khayati’s pamphlet “On the Poverty of Student Life” was widely distributed to various French universities. Establishing and maintaining open communications was a persistent characteristic of Debord’s official correspondences between 1949 and 1994, especially personal letters addressed to compatible individuals living in France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, and the United States. Some of the most consequential individuals who engaged with Debord during this twenty-year post-SI period included Giorgio Agamben, Anselm Jappe, Ricardo Paseyro, Paolo Salvadori, Gianfranco Sanguinetti, and Jaime Semprún, along with Sadean scholars Annie Le Brun and Jean-Jaques Pauvert. Along with a desire to communicate with autonomous revolutionary groups, the second principle regarding the possibility of a post-1968 revolutionary world was a prohibition against the resumption of antiquated revolutionary models, in particular, the unreflective search for purely informal connections between older, historically situated revolutionary models and newer ones requiring a completely different style of organization. It was from

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this second sobering assessment that Debord chose to completely rethink his revolutionary position following 1972 and to leave behind what he called “the SI mythology.”53 The SI’s reign was over, and Debord felt that the group had fulfilled its limited historical aims. In their modest and lucid assessment of the group, The Real Split in the International (1972),54 Debord and Sanguinetti included both an historical analysis of the current revolutionary period and a critical self-analysis of SI actions (including recent purges). Debord felt that the SI had been the only group in France that had noticed the worsening conditions of social life.55 Yet, there were now in his estimation a lot more “unofficial” Situationists who remained in close contact with him (and who possessed officially translated copies of The Real Split and The Society of the Spectacle in either Italian, German, Dutch, Spanish, or English) and were ready to act in a revolutionary capacity. They explicitly understood that radical critique was predicated on a simple refusal.56 Debord felt that publication of The Real Split would end up not only providing an a posteriori summary of previous writings but, more importantly, an understanding of a specific historical moment that would be dispatched to the world in the form of a final communiqué.57 But in order to counter worsening political and economic conditions, Debord still needed to demystify the economic structure of society. He would accomplish this through an all-encompassing critique of alienation, totalitarian control over social behavior, and the pervasiveness of spectacular consumption (i.e., cars, TVs, and new forms of telecommunications). A preliminary awareness of social and economic changes had always been for Debord the first negative step— a refusal—upon which to construct a successful cultural revolution. But armed with an awareness of the certainty of historical change, revolutionary acts now had to learn to move in tandem with the changing social, political, and economic realities of the day. Returning to revolutionary activities in the 1970s would have to include an illusion-free recognition that the defeat of revolutionary projects in the first third of the twentieth century, and its official replacement by pseudo-revolutionaries writing under pseudonyms58 had merely succeeded in preserving the old order.59 But how could the old order be demystified and undermined? If previous revolutions have failed to re-invent the world, then what would become of the revolutionary spirit in the early 1970s and beyond? What would become of the “terrorism of the truth,”60 Debord’s revolutionary manifesto adopted and echoed later on by Sanguinetti, in the new world of “spectacular”61 terrorism? Because of escalating threats in the early 1970s from both right- and leftwing political terrorists in France (e.g., the extreme right-wing OAS and the Charles Martel Group, the extreme left-wing anarcho-Maoists), the former West Germany (e.g., the left-wing Red Army Faction aka Baader-Meinhof Group), and especially Italy (e.g., the left-wing Red Brigade), Debord had

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to spend the next decade carefully considering critical differences between contemporary political terrorism and so-called “traditional” left-wing revolutionary methodology aimed at overthrowing bourgeois ideology. Writing to Sanguinetti on April 21, 1978, Debord agreed that the Italian Red Brigade had progressed in terms of public awareness but not in terms of methodology. Gone was the notion of revolution as a ludic festival. “They know how to kill effectively,” he wrote, “but their methods still suffer from the same illogical hesitations and contradictions.”62 As sincere as the radical left’s intentions were in stepping out from under the shadow of Stalinist bureaucratic ideology, Debord felt that the former should have never operated in such a deadly manner, especially the kidnapping on 16 March 16 1978 of Italian statement Aldo Moro and his subsequent murder on 9 May. The SI had never advocated overt militancy or terrorist activities. Following the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, it was now up to the limited intelligence of the Italian media to figure out if the Red Brigade had a discernible thesis to present to the general public and what it might be. In hindsight, the Red Brigade had argued that, following half-hearted attempts by the police to locate and arrest the kidnappers, the only politically responsible action would have been to release Moro unharmed. But Moro’s kidnapping, sham trial, and murder were actually part of a greater logic in the transition from armed propaganda to real civil war.63 In fact, the Red Brigade identified this logic as both “consistent” and “mature.”64 But, for Debord, indiscriminate bombings and kidnappings not only harmed innocent civilians but also deflected attention away from whatever ideological propaganda the group may have been trying to disseminate. From the group’s point of view, Moro’s kidnapping was not just a guerilla action, but a piece of “news” aimed at “the destruction of this normal [bourgeois] order.”65 Because the message was already contained in the deed itself, no amount of misinformation, censoring, or “spin-doctoring” by media experts could alter the historical fact that Aldo Moro had been kidnapped and killed. The guerillas now controlled the narrative, and they were not going to let the Italian media define who they were. The spectacle could finally be turned on its head. Military actions such as kidnappings and imprisonment were not only designed to “disorient” the state but, more importantly, to maintain “political advantages”66 regarding the unfolding of historical events. The Red Brigade believed that maintaining political advantages in this manner would heighten “mass political consciousness” and strengthen its “combative spirit.”67 For his part, Debord viewed the political messaging by the Red Brigade very differently. For one thing, he was finding it very difficult to understand the behavior of the Red Brigade in light of traditional questions once posed by Thucydides regarding logic, intentionality, and historical evidence. In The History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides warned against the state’s

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deceptive influence in public matters: “wherever they have power they may use violence, and wherever they can escape detection they may overreach someone; and if, perchance, they can steal a march on anyone, that they may brazen it.”68 For Debord, the subsequent question was this: How can one engage in a rigorous critical analysis of history based on objective, documented evidence when so-called objective facts are not what they seem? While the spectacle of terrorist activities may have initially appeared to serve the leftist cause, there was no way of knowing with certainty whose cause was ultimately being promoted. Were Italian factory workers, with their absenteeism, their wildcat strikes, their refusal to work, and their contempt for the law, no longer the wellspring of revolutionary activities? Or was the state’s deadly response to alleged terrorist activities another way to contain the revolutionary tendencies of the working class? Could the mere objective threat of left-wing violence simply serve as justification for further retaliation by the police? As he pointed out in the Preface to the fourth Italian edition of The Society of the Spectacle translated by Paolo Salvadori, Debord argued that the SI had done the most out of all contemporary radical groups to bring revolutionary protest back into French modern society. He also contended that the SI could lay claim to the successful dissemination of theoretical social criticism and its skillful application in practical agitation.69 But in trying to carry out an objective critical analysis of postwar Italian history over against what Michel Foucault once called “the calculation of the truth,”70 Debord had to consider the real possibility that the state might be willfully engaging in terrorist activities of its own in order to justify governance and to maintain economic control over its citizens. With Thucydides as a reference point, Debord also had to consider whether the state had infiltrated individual terrorist groups and was using them as a means to an end, namely, to eliminate enemies of the state. “We have been able to see the state lie develop in itself and for itself,” wrote Debord in his Preface, “having so completely forgotten its conflicting link with truth and verisimilitude, that it can forget itself and replace itself from hour to hour.”71 For Debord, the critical issue regarding authentic communication versus intentional disinformation stemmed from the desire of the working class to distinguish itself from an oppressive Stalinist bureaucracy within labor unions and to do so without having to rely on what he called the “illogical and blind terrorism”72 of the Red Brigade. The very notion of Stalinist “reforms” was a spectacular illusion; the only way for the revolutionary proletariat to humanize “bureaucratic socialism” was to destroy it.73 “Stalinists in the Italian majority do not wish to restore order,” he once explained to Sanguinetti, from the point of view of the revolution, and also from the point of view of late capitalism, their continued participation in no way changes the nature of class

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society because there are other sectors of capitalism whose interests are completely opposed to social change.74

Debord had every reason to doubt the so-called objective facts of the Moro case. The bombing at the Piazza Fontana that killed seventeen and wounded eighty-eight in Milano on December 12, 1969, was not the responsibility of left-wing anarchists, as originally claimed by the police, but of the far-right, neo-fascist paramilitary terrorist group Ordine Nuovo (“New Order”).75 Once Debord realized that the state was tacitly approving of right-wing extremist violence, everything changed. No political action could now be accepted at face value or be understood in a traditional means-end relationship. “Political Italy has entered into this apparent madness,”76 he wrote to Sanguinetti. The objective view of 1970s Italian politics as a deadly struggle between “the left-wing intellectual establishment and its conformist mentality”77 had not changed significantly. The most serious difficulty facing a proper understanding of the era was not the veracity of “factual” events but the actual identity of actors and their hidden intentions. Without factual evidence, producing and disseminating revolutionary theory becomes fraught with unnecessary difficulties. In the “Translator’s Introduction” to the 2014 English translation of Gianfranco Sanguinetti’s On Terrorism and the State (1979) Bill Brown argues, unfortunately without “factual” evidence, that “[Aldo] Moro was in fact abducted and killed by Italy’s intelligence agencies”78 because, as a proPalestinian, progressive thinker who sought to include the Italian Communist Party in what he called the “Historic Compromise,” Moro had become a political liability in an on-going fight to maintain the economic status quo with its working class.79 In opposition to the violent terrorist activities of the Red Brigade, Debord sought instead to explore the possibility of new social and cultural forms of life and to change people’s minds regarding social life under late capitalism. Debord’s communicative strategies never involved explicit threats of violence against the bourgeois state, only against its capitalist ideology. His form of terrorism was anti-aesthetic rather than armed rebellion. Debord even admitted in the 1979 Preface to the Italian edition of The Society of the Spectacle that whoever attentively reads his book will clearly see that it offers neither assurance of revolutionary victory nor the promise to bring everyone perfect happiness.80 But an imminent danger was already fomenting in Italy between what the political fiction of the “spectacle” was reporting to the general public as factual and what the political reality in the street actually entailed. Debord’s fear was that, as the spectacle continued to import into Italy the imagined threat of terrorism (which was not yet there), the manipulation of images of an “imaginary” civil war between the left and the state would lay the groundwork for a real civil war.81 Debord viewed increased activities on

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the part of protesters and police alike as a kind of “trial balloon” to divide the “respectable Stalinists”82 and the remaining leftists. From Debord’s viewpoint, terrorist activities in Italy appeared to have no recognizable theoretical grounding from which to articulate a clearly defined end goal that could be achieved through violent means. From the perspective of a global proletarian movement, Italy was a political contradiction still immersed in the old world through a continued reliance on Christianity and bourgeois liberalism, a small degree of economic modernization relative to its cultural backwardness, and a powerful bureaucracy still linked to the totalitarianism of the Stalinist East. “Old world” powers were trying to diminish the social contradictions of everyday life by drawing student protesters into the empty spectacle of protest.83 The dominant class became the weakest link in a chain of established powers as the working class became more politically conscious (partly through translations of older SI texts) and manifested itself more forcefully. Therein lay the real threat to the state-sponsored spectacle of normality and order. Debord believed that it was the Italian working class— and not the Red Brigade—that needed to shatter once and for all the “sacred union”84 that existed on a national level between the dominant bourgeois classes and bureaucratic totalitarianism. By the late 1970s, Debord viewed as “naïve”85 the ability of Italian leftwing terrorists to engage in fully theoretical discussions regarding their problematic use of revolutionary violence. In fact, throughout the 1970s, Debord developed an increasingly ambivalent attitude toward violent revolutionary activities in Italy. But, as always, he still held out hope. For him, the revolutionary activities of the working class were distinctly different (and more productive) than the terrorist activities of the Red Brigade. On the one hand, in the period following the General Strike of May 1968 and the tense relationship that ensued between the state and its French citizens, Debord imagined that new revolutionary possibilities were already presenting themselves in Italy. Granted, Italy had its own unique problems, especially the uneven relationship between young anarchists, the still-powerful Stalinist-oriented Communist Party, and various Maoist groups. “It is the most dangerous country in the Western world,” he wrote to Sanguinetti in 1972, “more than the Chicago of the 1930s, and probably more than Moscow today, where opponents are treated by psychiatry rather than dynamite.”86 On the other hand, while the General Strike of 1968 had briefly shown the possibility of a “Northwest Passage”87 toward a real and open-ended future, Debord thought that Italy best expressed the revolutionary realities of contemporary Europe. Based on regular communications with former Italian members of the SI and the availability of major SI texts, Debord came to the conclusion that Italian workers had already reached a critical degree of revolutionary consciousness that had only been reached in France after the end of May 1968.88

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But, as Europe became, in Debord’s words, more and more “Italian” in the negative sense described above, the model of political life it was exporting was one of disorder without remedy. “The remedies will come,”89 he promised. However, Debord still viewed the Italian political situation as dangerously unstable because of totalitarian Stalinists, radical leftists, and student bureaucrats. Italian SI members who stayed in touch with Debord had to exercise caution at every turn between 1968 and 1970. “If soon the movement goes further than in May [1968],” he explained to Salvadori, “many people will be armed; and it will become even more dangerous, of course, to be attacked by Stalinists or others, occasionally denouncing you as fascists or provocateurs.”90 As we will shortly see, it was, comparatively speaking, SI-inspired revolutionary activities in both Spain and Portugal that were at once less deadly, more culturally astute, and, ultimately, more successful in improving the everyday lives of their citizens. However, before we turn our attention to revolutionary activities in Spain and Portugal, let us try to better understand how political events in Italy in the late 1960s and early 1970s radically changed Debord’s politics of communication and his reticence to enter into further revolutionary activities in the 1980s and 1990s. One way to understand Debord’s increasing ambivalent toward the idea of Italy as a model for the revolutionary future of Europe is to trace out his working relationship with various Italian publishers such as De Denato and Silva, as well as personal relationships with the second incarnation of the Italian SI section (1968–1970), namely, translators Paolo Salvadori and Gianfranco Sanguinetti, as well as Claudio Pavan. Salvadori, Sanguinetti, and Pavan visited French associates of the SI in January 1968 and made a strong impression. Although the Italians would go on to publish several editions of their own Internationale Situazionista journal starting July 1969, their main function in early 1968 was to oversee new translations of SI texts, including Raoul Vaneigem’s Revolution of Everyday Life.91 Sanguinetti in particular worked with Debord to achieve a certain degree of theoretical rigor regarding organizational principles that were acceptable to a councilist organization. However, Debord was already beginning to notice theoretical differences with adjunct member Mario Perniola likely stemming from a misunderstanding regarding the reconciliation of organizational principles acceptable to a councilist organization.92 Perniola had originally proposed a federation of independent groups that would not have to answer to the dictates of a central group of theoreticians. However, the peculiar notion of relative autonomy described by Perniola seemed antithetical to the SI’s original nature;93 it would have reduced it to being simply one group among many. The twin matters of autonomy and accountability plagued not only communications with the short-lived Italian faction but related issues of translation and applying revolutionary theory to historically unique contexts would also go

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on to plague the American contingent. In both cases, Debord admitted in a letter to Jonathan Horelick and Tony Verlaan dated October 28, 1970, that the ultimate inadequacy of the SI was the mediocre effort being put in the majority of its members. “And in this sense,” Debord concluded, “we must admit that the SI was not as democratic as it once thought it was.”94 If members had truly applied themselves to democratic principles, they might have themselves been in a position to effect positive change. By comparison, some Italian newspapers were already portraying the Milanese section of the SI not only as “extremist” but likely affiliated with “leftist anarchists, perhaps terrorists.”95 Two main issues regarding Italian revolutionary activity in the 1970s still needed to be addressed. The first centered on the ability of a spontaneous workers’ movement to overcome police provocation and repression, as well as seeing beyond reformist concessions included in a recently ratified collective agreement in 1969 with the state. The second issue dealt explicitly with a unique set of Italian economic and political conditions that the Situationists were encountering for the first time. These included the repressive tendencies of a Catholic fascist morality, the Stalinist totalitarian bureaucracy that still influenced Italian political life, and the marginalization of “youth” culture within Italian society.96 While the early SI displayed only a passing interest in religion, viewing it primarily as easily displaced by “the real construction of life,”97 it definitely had extensive knowledge and experience with French totalitarian bureaucracy and a substantial understanding of the marginalization of youth culture going back to Debord’s days with Isidore Isou and the Letterists. Even after the breakup of the Italian section of the SI in 1970 and the end of the SI in 1972, the affiliation alleged by the Italian media between former SI members and terrorist organizations was proving increasingly dangerous and problematic. Gone were the days of youthful bravado and thoughts of anti-aesthetic “terrorisme” first scribbled down in the early 1950s by Debord in his letters to Hervé Falcou and Ivan Chtcheglov. As late as November 1979, Debord noticed that the Red Brigade was behaving as if the SI was still active; although both he and Sanguinetti had publicly denounced the group, Italian media continued to discuss both entities as if they were theoretically related.98 Agreement between Debord and Sanguinetti regarding terrorist activities in Italy was not always mutual, however. In summer 1978, for example, Debord wrote to Salvadori expressing his concern that Sanguinetti was buying into the government’s thesis that the secret police did not even exist. Such a dismissive attitude was placing all Italian “revolutionaries”— viewed by the state as potential terrorists—in danger. Debord felt at that time that Sanguinetti was viewing the Leninist terrorists as demi-gods.99 Debord wished for Sanguinetti to speak more openly about the Aldo Moro affair

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while Moro was still alive, but he was unsuccessful. For his part, Sanguinetti considered the possibility of intervening in the affair; however, going “underground” “would have been a serious error at that time.”100 Debord grew so concerned that he wrote directly to him to ask who was applying direct (or indirect) pressure on him and causing him to think in this manner.101 Debord warned both Salvadori and Sanguinetti that, while the spectacle was clearly being contested by the working class on a global scale, “there is almost everywhere an extraordinary progress of the lie of power, which goes further than Goebbels, because the socio-material conditions for the reception of lies have evolved since 1930.”102 Engaging in revolutionary activities or disseminating revolutionary theory anywhere in Western Europe in the mid-1970s was extremely dangerous, if not deadly. In West Germany, Ulrike Meinhof was found hanging in her cell in the Stammheim Prison in Stuttgart on May 9, 1976; Andreas Baader then allegedly committed suicide on October 18, 1977, thus effectively ending the Baader-Meinhof gang. Questions still linger today whether either individual committed suicide or were murdered in prison by the state. Although convinced that the Stalinist secret police in Italy only engaged in “pseudo-terrorism” as accomplices, Debord knew that the murder of Aldo Moro represented the “culminating point of an offensive” by Stalinists to re-establish bureaucratic power by any means necessary.103 In his book On Terrorism and the State (April 1979), Sanguinetti claimed that it would have been easier to trace out a relationship between the “police-like ideology”104 of Italian prosecutors and the Red Brigade than it would be to establish a relationship between the ideology of the Red Brigade and Situationist theory. “The SI never had an ideology,” explained Sanguinetti, “because it fought against all of them (including the ideology of armed struggle).”105 Two years prior, Debord had noticed that the revolutionary fragrance of May 1968 was still in the air in Italy and was being made worse on the left by the general disorder and anguish caused by Stalinist tendencies. As Debord wrote in 1967, “The totalitarian ideological pronouncement [of Stalinism] obliterates reality as well as purpose; nothing exists but what it says exists.”106 For the Italian working class, however, the SI still continued to remain “relevant” because SI texts such as the third Italian edition of The Society of the Spectacle were still being disseminated through extremist political currents.107 Even though the SI remained a significant force in Italian revolutionary thinking, we need to point out that the exchange between the two countries regarding revolutionary action was not reciprocal. Critical theory books such as Sanguinetti’s The Real Report on the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy (1975), although talked about in France more than any other book, either sold poorly or were explicitly sabotaged by television and radio broadcasters.108

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Looming on the cultural horizon in fall 1968 was a “defective”109 and “lamentable”110 Italian version of The Society of the Spectacle published by De Denato. The De Denato translation was so bad that it earned the publisher the disparaging epithet “Dedonatized.”111 The critical fallout in Italy was so “substantial”112 that Debord dispatched a letter to Sanguinetti begging him to create a new Italian version. Because poor translations of SI texts such as “Basic Banalities” had already been published by De Denato, along with Mustapha Khayati’s 1966 essay On the Poverty of Student Life by Feltrinelli, Debord asked the Italian SI section to undertake a revision of all translations and then edit an Introduction for a reprint of the Situationist International Anthology scheduled for publication by Silva.113 Debord was ready to foment another great scandal to celebrate the release of the Italian Anthology, even if it meant the possibility of prosecution and seizure by the police.114 A week later Debord wrote directly to De Denato to state the group’s position: not only did the publisher not have the right to reserve exclusive copyright in Italy of Debord’s work (and other SI texts), since it had neither been requested nor granted,115 but texts published by the SI had always been presented as copyright-free. “But the fact that we allow the texts published by the SI to be freely reproduced,” explained Debord, “above all does not mean that a dog merchant can hope to compromise us, by publishing a caricature of our writings.”116 De Donato’s publishing house finally went bankrupt in the spring of 1971. At the same time, a “scrupulous translation” by Salvadori of the Situationist International Anthology was finally delivered to Silva and slated for a fall 1971 release.117 The plan was to have the Anthology published in two volumes and “officially” endorsed by the SI. However, as much as Debord preferred the Silva edition to literally anything else published by De Denato, he could not endorse the Anthology for the following reasons. First of all, “anthologies” are typically compiled and edited by individuals not directly associated with the authors in question. Second, and more importantly, Debord could not, with a clear conscience, reprint ancient texts written by Raoul Vaneigem, someone whom Debord now considered as a “pro-situ.”118 Debord did, however, agree to augment the Anthology with texts from Situationist International No. 12 (September 1969), including Debord’s “The Beginning of an Era” and “Reform and Counter-Reform in the Bureaucratic Bloc.”119 In early January 1970, the social and intellectual climate in Italy had reached a point where both the Italian section of the SI and the workers’ revolutionary movement faced imminent collapse. The situation worsened when theoretical and practical disagreements within the Italian section began to affect relationships between both sections. From Debord’s Paris perspective, there seemed to be a complete lack of theoretical and practical understanding of the problem of loyalty within the Italian section as well as an inability to

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prioritize basic issues.120 “This way of separating, of atomizing the elements of a problem,” explained Debord, “if it is not simply bad faith, is a complete rejection of dialectical thought.”121 To atomize a problem was counter-intuitive to the SI’s tendency to study a problem in relation to the totality of society. The SI still had to communicate to the world the theoretical knowledge it had already accrued and disseminated through books, essays, and films. “We will still have to astonish this world,”122 he concluded. It was also a matter of driving away readers who did not interest them (i.e., “pro-situs”) and refusing any contact with them.123 Isolation was better than a failed association with a misguided revolutionary group. In Milan, Salvadori agreed with Debord that the SI needed to balance the communication of the already elaborated theory with a new orientation toward further agitation. Although the revolutionary theory that had earlier informed SI essays and articles needed to be “reconstructed” (read recontextualized) by readers, there was no harm in adapting a “new simplicity of language” to further unify and synthesize it on a more scientific level.124 In “Provisional Theses for the Discussion of New Theoretico-Practical Orientations of the SI” (May 1970), Salvadori outlined how both issues could be resolved and result in the “definitive awakening of consciousness.”125 For Salvadori, the SI now needs to concentrate more on the dissemination of theory than on its elaboration (though the latter must also be continued). I want to call attention to the fact that in order to accomplish this, theory must first of all be put in a condition in which it can be effectively disseminated. The first step of theory’s advance toward practice takes place within theory itself. The dissemination of theory is thus inseparable from its development.126

Debord spent the remainder of the 1970s trying to recapture and harness the revolutionary passions that had initially inspired students and workers to initiate the General Strike of May 1968. Until 1972, Debord knew that the SI’s new French “editorial committee” exhibited both quantitative and qualitative deficiencies that had to be overcome in order for the Situationist project to continue unabated.127 Methodological issues were also seriously getting in the way of editing and publishing Internationale Situationniste No. 13, a new project that Debord had initially brought to Sanguinetti’s attention on July 7, 1970.128 The brief history of this ill-fated project is indicative of the general sense of fatigue facing the SI in the early months of a brand-new decade. At first, Debord attributed the slow progress of issue No. 13 to practical questions regarding working methods as well as theoretical issues regarding the orientation of on-going debates.129 Completing the next issue was proving to be “overwhelming”130 to the inexperienced French editorial staff. As Debord understood the task at hand, “putting revolutionary theory into practice is not

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at all messianically dependent on the victory of the revolution, it is demanded in the whole process of revolutionary activity.”131 The critical question regarding issue No. 13 was not the ability to prepare a first draft of the new issue but rather how to conceive and communicate the essence of revolutionary practice at a qualitative level. It was through a critical-dialectical notion of action that revolutionary dialecticians sought to identify the decisive elements of a complex problem before deciding how to interact, modify, or negate these elements. Moreover, it was only through authentic dialogue and communications with other revolutionaries that dialecticians could break down a problem and identify its constituent elements. “It is the territory of the qualitative,” explained Debord in a letter to SI members, “where we know each other—and where we must learn to know— individuals, their actions, their meaning, their life.”132 “It was not a matter of simply having the Situationist tone (today more or less accessible to various pro-situs), but to think and choose qualitatively what constitutes an issue,” explained Debord. “All the mysteries that push Situationist theory toward the mystical chatter of the pro-situs find their rational solution in the understanding of the practice of the formulating Situationist theses.”133 Following Raoul Vaneigem’s dismissal on November 14, 1970, the inability to move beyond a first draft of issue No. 13 became symptomatic of a much larger problem facing Debord, namely, the refusal by remaining SI members to take responsibility for their (in)actions and to honestly address the alleged communicative inequalities that were appearing within the group.134 As a result, Debord eventually had to put to rest issue No. 13 and mentioned it only a few more times over the next year and a half, stressing to members that no one was required or obliged to publish the issue in question. As he explained to the remaining SI members in January 1971, “the only condition sine qua non of our common conclusion is that it fundamentally satisfies each one of us, and without containing anything troubling or false.”135 In late summer of the same year, Debord wrote to René Riesel regarding the possibility of publishing a short leaflet rather than a full-length issue. Unfortunately, no decision could be made regarding the future of the SI until internal tensions within the French and Italian sections could be resolved.136 These were the same tensions that Debord had to continue dealing with following the demise of the SI in 1972. Making matters worse was the fact that Debord was trying to bring Sanguinetti to France and amalgamate him into the French section after French authorities had already deported him back to Italy.137 Sanguinetti had to formally apply to the government to settle in France and had to admit to authorities that he had never been accused of political offenses or activism—only that he was open to certain Situationist ideas. Given their positions relative to the state, Sanguinetti’s political future in Italy and Debord’s own

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revolutionary future in France were in doubt. Debord still wished for ideas to become dangerous again,138 especially given the current political climate in both countries. “I think we will also have to wait for the release of IS No. 13, to measure at this time how we treat the musketeers who remain in the capital of the revolutions.”139 Rather than re-establish the SI in the early 1970s as the intellectual and theoretical center of revolutionary activities in Western Europe, persistent attempts to complete and publish issue No. 13 remained a source of continual in-fighting and accusations between Debord and the remaining members. The first five issues of the Internationale Situationniste had been written and compiled as a truly collective effort, while issues 6 to 9 were written and compiled by Debord, Vaneigem, and Attila Khotányi. Issues 10 and 12 were brought to a successful conclusion single-handedly by Debord and Mustapha Khayati, with help from Vaneigem, René Riesel, Christian Sébatiani, and René Viénet. All twelve issues were clearly labeled as a “journal of the French section of the SI” and contained the following invitation: “All texts published in Internationale Situationniste can be freely reproduced, translated, or adapted even without indication of origin.” But the overall lack of enthusiasm members felt toward completing the new project, let alone addressing the current problems facing what Debord identified as “a new era,”140 was indicative of the overall reluctance to engage in a critical dialogue that might have helped to overcome the creeping paralysis and indifference remaining SI members felt toward developing new forms of theoretical-practical action. Throughout the 1970s, a struggle was also ensuing over who would have the final say on the historical importance of the SI’s revolutionary legacy. In a pamphlet entitled Pour l’intelligence de quelques aspects du moment (Of the Intelligence of Some Aspects of the Moment, January 1972), Daniel Denevert had originally planned to create yet another Situationist dictionary, a project Debord already felt would be both difficult to write and to read.141 The critical issue for historians looking at revolutionary life after May 1968 stemmed from what Debord called an implicit “regret for the golden age”142 of revolution, an era that he felt still needed to be criticized, especially in light of the currently deteriorating conditions of social life in Western Europe. Compared to previous eras characterized by historical limits, the absence of any substantial cultural activity in the postwar years meant that Situationists (and other revolutionary groups), comparatively speaking, did not have anything to lose. Any kind of revolutionary movement toward a better life still counted as an improvement. Unlike Denevert, Debord continued to believe that there were still essential revolutionary ideas waiting to be (re)discovered. Even after the end of the SI, Debord still went on to discover the works of Clausewitz, the Polish philosopher August Cieszkowski, who, in his opinion, provided the definitive link between Hegelian and Marxist thought, along

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with the Italian political theorist Bruno Rizzi. All of the various ideas and theories developed by these thinkers still needed to be communicated to other groups and critically assessed. For Debord, the SI had devised two or three essential ideas of its own that were favorably received, but the group was persistently suffering from a lack of resources to successfully bring them to fruition. Debord also rejected Denevert’s conclusion that the SI had somehow subjected itself to spectacular procedures that were now being positively realized. The following citation is taken from Denevert’s own text. The SI itself has partly contributed to subjecting itself to spectacular procedures. This is expressed in particular by the pre-eminence of what was positively realized and of a certain margin of theoretical certainty acquired on the objectively experimental part of the activity of the Situationists. It is this comfortable positive installation that characterizes the role in situ; and in fact, the more the objective place of the SI in present history became effective (and it will be the same for all future revolutionary organizations), the more its heritage became perilous for each of its members to assume.143

Debord disagreed with Denevert’s conclusion because the latter’s assessment was based on quantitative methods associated with positivism rather than qualitative methods associated with the lived experience of phenomenology. If there is a grain of truth in Denevert’s conclusion, then it is only that truth-by-definition is itself a positivist statement. “The argument is abstract,” wrote Debord, “not historical.”144 Debord’s revolutionary work cannot be measured quantitatively because his activities are driven by the power of the negative—by the energy of thought itself. Moreover, if there is still a grain of truth in Denevert’s statement, then it is that Debord is guilty only of positively stating the negative in theory and in action. If that is so, then SI historians will have to pay attention not to what failed (i.e., “a regret for the golden age”) but rather to what the SI succeeded in changing. In a letter to Denevert sent a month later, Debord argued that if we measure, on the one hand, the weight of new ideas brought by the SI to the present day as well as the old radical ideas it revisited, and, on the other hand, the potential celebrity aspect that characterizes the entire process, we find that the latter is minimal but nonetheless evident.145 By fall 1972, Debord was openly resisting the notion of having Denevert or anyone else capriciously attempt to describe his own “sense of revolution,”146 especially by pro-situ individuals who were passing themselves off as experts. “Pro-situ critics,”147 as Debord describes them, were more willing to discuss matters in the abstract rather than in terms of actual work. “They lock themselves into this trap of pretentious and delayed passivity,” explained Debord, “at the same time they publish quite informative documents for people who are interested in such details but incapable of discovering them

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on their own.”148 Even trusted friends often found themselves guilty of trying to communicate Debord’s own understanding of revolution action. Debord chastized Jamie Semprún, for instance, for incorrectly making “a chain of wild assumptions”149 regarding (1) his ability to influence publishing activities at Champ Libres, (2) his obligation to publish revolutionary tracts on behalf of Champ Libres, (3) his personal hatred toward him, and (4) his ability to prevent publishers from disseminating another’s author’s work. Debord implored to Semprún that he was not his enemy. “I have many enemies, but I have never been accused of censoring them,”150 he explained. It did not matter to Debord one way or the other if another theorist’s ideas aligned perfectly with his own. In fact, he agreed in principle with the revolutionary intentions of the Spanish proletariat described by Semprún in his book.151 But publishing decisions made at Champ Libre were not his concern (or decision); he had neither the taste nor the time nor the means of becoming a publisher.152 Compared to the dangerous and chaotic political events occurring in Italy during the 1970s that we have circuitously examined thus far, revolutionary activities in Spain and Portugal unfolded very differently from Italy and from each other. For one thing, both countries had always fallen within the purview of areas of potential (or actual) revolutionary activities. Let us turn our attention firstly to Spain. Whether the advent of major strikes or a reassessment of anarchist positions in Spain, Debord and the Situationists felt that 1966 represented the end of the traditional “revolutionary image” supported by the International Communist movement and the end of “ideologies of the old world.”153 Yet, while the international revolution was in the air, nowhere were there real revolutions that were successfully overthrowing oppressive conditions. There appeared to be a separation between revolutionary praxis and the material reality of late capitalism that it needed to overcome (i.e., a decrease in the land-owning bourgeoisie and an increase in the industrial bourgeoisie associated with international capital). “Our language,” wrote the SI collective, “which will perhaps seem fantastic, is the very language of real life.”154 If properly understood and acted upon, the SI’s revolutionary language will undermine once and for all “the lying language of power.” For Debord, future revolutionaries will succeed only if they engage in the task of “understanding themselves.”155 The need for revolutionaries to understand themselves was one of the main reasons why Debord was so concerned with making sure that SI texts, along with his own Society of the Spectacle, were properly translated into Spanish and disseminated to the proletariat. “They must totally reinvent their own language and defend themselves against all forms of co-option prepared for them.”156 In Spain, the choice for revolutionaries was either to align with Christian, monarchist, and Stalinist tendencies and move toward the next Spanish form of modern capitalism or to continue the anarchist struggle

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originally begun in 1936 but crushed three years later by Franco’s fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War. As Debord often pointed out, the movement of history, as well as movement in history, are very different from one country to another. Historical reality is the reason why the desire to initiate an international revolutionary movement had to be tempered with the reality that any and all national revolutionary movements need to be fully aware of their own historical forces. Following the May 1968 student riots in France, other countries such as Mexico, Czechoslovakia, and Spain began to detect “the directives of French revolutionaries.”157 But this is not to say that the revolutionary tendencies of French students were blindly and uncritically exported to other countries. If anything, the May 1968 student riots were, at the very least, a template for others to study. Franco’s decision to re-impose martial law restricting freedom of expression and assembly in Spain in early 1969 was a direct response to the political threat posed by students and members of the working class. If Spanish revolutionaries could truly “understand themselves” as autonomous entities and respond accordingly to martial law as well as to the material reality of late capitalism, then they might possess the ability to critically comprehend “the profound tendencies of modern society in its production of culture and its regimentation of everyday life.”158 What we need to keep in mind when discussing communications between Debord and international revolutionary groups is that at no point did he ever wish to become “a controlling power in society”159 or a revolutionary entity seeking to relinquish the rights of individuals to self-discipline and self-control. Inherent in the notions of “understanding oneself” and “inventing one’s own language” were the twin goals of autonomy and independent thinking. To be autonomous and independent is to have the ability to assess for oneself how to resist the cultural co-option of commodity-spectacle in whatever form it may take. Radical thought “must assert” its own right to exist without being “co-opted” and distorted by the social order that ultimately possesses the monopoly of appearances.160 In the same way, Debord earlier created an Italian section of the SI to widen its international scope and influence, Debord established an SI Spanish section in fall 1970,161 especially in light of revolutionary actions that were becoming “quite intense, and therefore perilous.”162 Debord sought to forward to his new Spanish contacts press clippings, SI essays, and articles (e.g., Khayati’s “On the Poverty of Student Life”), along with a copy of the first issue of Internazionalista Situazionista. Consequently, what appeared to link together France, Spain, and Italy was the continued presence of Stalinist forces seeking to assert greater control of left-wing activities through violence.163 Although France and Spain differed in terms of political structures and ideologies, both became modern industrialized countries at a time when political power was distinctly separate from social democratic

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management.164 By early 1975, however, the Spanish Stalinists were unable to curb the growing pressure of revolutionary mass movements; in turn, workers placed the development of economic liberalism in Spain in a difficult situation. The revolutionary movement had never explicitly addressed its own underdeveloped cultural and educational institutions as it slowly shifted from hierarchical bureaucracy and authoritarianism to liberal democracy.165 While Franco may have ushered Spain into modern international capitalism, he did so at the cost of martial law (i.e., forced labor, concentrations camps, and the state-sponsored torture and executions of political enemies) and tight control over social and cultural institutions. Not surprisingly, Debord even noticed that translated texts reached five or ten times fewer people in France than in Italy, while in information-starved countries such as Spain the numbers are even more disproportionate.166 While Spain still had to contend with Franco’s dictatorship (1939–1975) and its conservative social and political institutions, the Portuguese population, on the other hand, had to cope with Salazar’s autocratic dictatorship (1932–1968) and his secret police. During the 1970s, the path from authoritarianism to liberal democracy looked very different in each country for one important cultural reason: pedagogy. In their 2013 study on how macro-historical change helps to shape cultural tastes, social historians Robert M. Fishman and Omar Lazardo argue that, while the revolution in Portugal abolished hierarchies in a number of social institutions and initiated a bold program of pedagogical and cultural transformation, Spain’s collective transition sought only to reform political institutions.167 By reforming social and cultural institutions, rather than just political ones, pedagogical practices in Portugal encouraged young people to adopt an officially recognized “anti-hierarchical orientation”168 toward aesthetics and culture. Analogous practices in Spain, on the other hand, curtailed the desire for reform writ large by encouraging instead a “hierarchical, largely canonical attitude”169 toward culture and cultural products. As we will see, enthusiasm in Portugal for cultural education and instruction, along with an officially sanctioned and supported antihierarchical attitude in young people, created extremely favorable conditions for an SI-styled revolution to take place. To be clear, as early as 1964 Debord and the SI did not think highly of the possibility of a Portuguese social revolution. For the SI, a Portuguese “situationist” simply referred to a supporter of the existing political regime, namely, a supporter of Salazar’s authoritarian dictatorship.170 However, by spring 1971, Debord had to turn his attention to Portugal for personal reasons: his friends were now in jail awaiting trial and the Portuguese editor of his book was no longer in a position to publish it.171 In early May, Debord found out that several of the Portuguese friends narrowly escaped going to jail, but were now in exile.172 Although he was pleased that his friends had avoided

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lengthy jail terms, Debord was also deeply worried about the political future of Portugal itself.173 On a personal level, the adage “no news is good news” was one way for Debord to cope with the fact that his friend was now safely (and quietly) in exile. But the feeling among the Portuguese population, the armed forces, and politicians was that any attempt to modernize and liberalize Salazar’s authoritarian social and political systems, and to relinquish political and economic control over colonized countries in Africa, along with his decades-long disastrous economic policies, could only be accomplished by revolution. The revolutionary praxis mapped out by Debord, and in the Internationale Situationniste journals, was now being put to use by Portuguese revolutionaries as they thought their way through their own “Northwest Passage.” Portugal was already facing economic pressure from protracted colonial wars (1961–1974) in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique; at home, the government was facing increasing pressure by its own population to radically reform political structures and introduce basic democratic principles. The catalyst in the trajectory toward the eventual “Revolution of Carnations” (1974–1975) was not revolutionary praxis per se but rather the publication in 1973 of General António de Spínola’s book, Portugal and the Future. In it, Spínola criticizes the continuation of the Portuguese colonial war, along with the resulting embargoes maintained by the international community. In its place, he offered a comprehensive program for Portugal’s economic and political recovery (i.e., the dismantling of Salazar’s old regime and reforming electoral law for free elections through universal suffrage to a Constituent Assembly).174 However, following the events of April 24, 1974, the struggle between opposing groups over differing visions of Portugal’s immediate future led to the radicalization of the population and the likelihood that no single group would be able to impose its vision upon the other.175 There were four main tendencies vying for control over the future of Portugal: “the bunker,” or Salazar’s old guard still clinging to power; Spínola’s followers trying to reform military and political structures but managing to lose control over both institutions; political rivalries stemming from military reforms; and, finally, the Communist Party’s own strategy for the future and dedicated individuals willing to consider a dialectical approach to social change.176 Whoever emerged as the winner in the struggle for Portugal’s future would then have to align itself with international economic and political interests. The momentum toward the country’s successful path to full democratic freedoms began on April 25, 1974, when a group of officers belonging to the Armed Forces Movement (Movimento das Forças Armadas—MFA) overthrew Marcelo Caetano’s ineffectual political regime and installed Spínola as the head of the new government. The coup was effectively bloodless;

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Caetano’s political cronies were either arrested and imprisoned or exiled to Brazil. In his assessment of the events of April 1974 that triggered the “Revolution of Carnations,” Robert Fishman points out that international scholarship “lacks a shared explanation of exactly how the Portuguese revolution helped to make possible the global upsurge of political freedoms which had seemed unlikely prior to that date.”177 According the Fishman, the impact of the Revolution upon other countries could be traced back “to its multiple meanings and its multifaceted character.”178 Granted, Portugal’s complete transformation involved for Fishman much more than a fundamental political change from an authoritarian dictatorship to a democracy; historically, it was unusual, “with much greater consequences for society, the economy and culture than more common pathways to democracy, focused more exclusively on the transformation of political rule itself.”179 In fact, Fishman argues that the April 1974 “Revolution of Carnations” should be celebrated for its “distinctiveness”180 because, unlike previous revolutions, it offered a unique pathway to democracy. Fishman is explicit in viewing the April 1974 revolution as social and cultural. I suggest that within Portugal itself the most persistent significance of the country’s quite distinctive pathway to democracy is to be found, in various ways, in the cultural legacies of social revolution and their ongoing impact on socio-political life; that is, the basic understandings of democracy and forms of conduct by social and political actors are strongly conditioned by the country’s pathway to democracy.181

In May 1974, Debord viewed the Portuguese situation as decisively openended, partly due to the “objective misery of Portuguese [economic] power”182 and partly due to the army not responding negatively to a political condition that they themselves had created. Capitalism in Portugal relied on bureaucracy, but it still needed the autonomous consent of trade unions to upgrade its economy to the international standards of other democratic countries. Portugal wished to join other liberal-democratic countries such as Italy and France, even though they were also experiencing revolutionary protests in factories and in the streets. But, thought Debord, can a state truly be “democratic” if it is still under the influence of Stalinist bureaucratic forces? The short answer was “yes”—if armed partisans were being helped and protected by local army factions. Could autonomous councils made up of workers and soldiers bypass parliamentary elections? If that was so, then, for Debord, “Portugal is experiencing a ‘Liberation,’ not a revolution.”183 If Portugal can effectively deal with the aforementioned political and economic issues, and avoid what had not worked elsewhere, then it might finally experience the

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opportunity to transcend the state and its legal-bureaucratic apparatus. For Debord, The main objective of Portuguese revolutionaries must therefore be to make the current situation a true revolution of our time. They must, by denouncing the world “revolutionary spectacle” of the post-term birth of a bourgeois democracy, lay out the minimum program of such a revolution.184

The question for Debord was now twofold: How will the current situation evolve, and what can his friends do?185 Letters sent from Portugal during the month of May were already going missing,186 which made gathering reliable information from friends even more difficult. After forwarding a new address to friends in Lisbon, Debord began to receive regular bulletins filled with what he considered to be “good news.”187 While the burgeoning social revolution in Portugal had not yet reached the culminating point of the May 1968 General Strike, Debord believed that it was already exhibiting many similar features that could take it even further, providing the “StalinoSpínolist repression”188 did not succeed in destroying the entire movement and crushing the revolutionary proletariat. The hope was that the theoretical groundwork originally laid down by Debord and the Situationists could push demonstrators even further. “In Portugal,” he wrote to his friend Jacques Le Glou, “the [Portuguese] edition of The Society of the Spectacle, which had sold poorly for two years, sold out in a few days in May.”189 Spínola’s decision to abolish censorship was another positive step toward a more open society, but, according to Debord, the truth of the matter was that the population was still “living without knowing and without wanting to say so.”190 The General Strike was still little more than the “minimum truth”191 of Portugal, as long as Stalinist bureaucrats and the bourgeoisie did not actively work against the revolution on moral grounds and transform it into some kind of victory for left-wing government parties. Revolutionary success was possible only if leftists concentrated on political differences with the ruling party rather than engaging directly with economic and social struggles. For Debord, the message was clear: Let the proletariat decide for themselves; social classes must self-organize for themselves and decide what they want. This was the same message Debord and the SI had for the French proletariat during the General Strike of May 1968. “If the autonomous struggle of the workers does not go further soon,” he wrote to Eduardo Rothe, “there will undoubtedly be limited repression against extremists.”192 Writing as the revolution was unfolding in real time, Debord felt that it could not continue in its present state for either the revolutionaries or for the conservative Spínola, who was acting as the temporary president of the Republic. The answer was for the Portuguese proletariat to become better-armed and more openly dangerous, with the very real possibility of

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a civil war erupting between the working class and Spínola’s conservative government (supported by a Stalinist bureaucracy).193 Debord’s response to increase the level of violence should not come as a surprise. Writing in “The Right to Respond” back in the mid-1950s, Debord was already preparing to meet violence with more violence.194 For him, violence was the “negative at work” and should always be applied whenever the opportunity arises. But, as Anselm Jappe points out in his biography on Debord, “The precise attitude to the negative adopted by Debord, by the Letterists and Situationists, is not easy to pin down.”195 In fact, Debord’s response to the Portuguese revolution provides a useful example that illustrates both his anti-aesthetic sense of terrorism as well as his revolutionary praxis. We mentioned just above that he instructed his friends and colleagues to meet violence with more violence. For Debord, the only way to speak to a fascist is with your fists. While the revolution continued, Debord also passed on specific instructions to his Portuguese comrades: contact documentary filmmakers and film these important historical events, just like French filmmakers had done so in Paris in May 1968. “It would be very valuable for a future cinematic exposition of this moment,” he added.196 Collecting raw documentary footage of the revolution would ensure that state media would not be able to present an “alternative” version of the same event. As well, documenting the revolution for themselves and presenting it sub rosa to other revolutionaries would mean not only bypassing regular channels owned and operated by others but also the opportunity to smash the veneer of spectacular consumption. In fact, during the summer of 1975, Debord would go on to watch and assess footage of the Portuguese revolution.197 He viewed such events as an opportunity to create “a completely new language in cinema.”198 Although he would not be able to explore this new cinematic language until the following year in Refutation of all the Judgments, Pro and Con, Thus Far Rendered on the Film “The Society of the Spectacle,” a short film produced in October 1975 by Gérard Lebovici, he still believed that cinema possessed an effective way to communicate criticism and controversy. As a medium capable of altering and restructuring both sound and image through editing, cinema had the capacity to transcend the traditional “for” or “against” positions often taken by critics. To be clear, Spínola finally resigned on September 30, 1974, over the government’s (and the army’s) radicalizing move to the left, as well as its granting independence to former Portuguese colonies.199 In early 1975, Debord could already see how the Stalinist leadership in Portugal, which had settled in very quickly and began developing its real strength, still feared holding democratic elections or diversifying trade unions. This reluctance was now being threatened by leftist demonstrators who were backed by the MFA movement. Debord was especially concerned with this situation because he had not yet heard back from his Portuguese friends in three months.200 Still,

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he remained optimistic and hopeful. Because of the radicalization of the MFA movement and its continued support of workers, Debord hoped that the Portuguese proletariat would figure out for themselves how the save the revolution. Debord knew that the proletariat were self-managing their affairs and in constant communication with each other. “And they say,” he wrote to his friend Alfonso Montiero, “the revolution is not the storm, it is a majestic and fertile river.”201 One month later, Debord was proven right. The radicalization of MFA members began to worry Stalinist and conservative elements in Portuguese society. On 11 March, the remaining conservative military tried to shut it down but failed. The MFA’s victory increased their influence in the provisional government and immediately set about nationalizing the banking industry. Because banks owned most of the larger industry and national newspapers, the left-leaning state now essentially controlled a substantial portion of the economy and the media.202 In the days before the 11 March defeat of conservative elements within the military, Debord still feared that Portugal was currently experiencing a genuine proletarian revolution but that it would almost certainly be beaten.203 It seemed as if the unique qualities that characterized the proletarian revolution in Portugal were moving it into uncharted waters. Historically, it was like no other revolution that had come before it. Given the resurgence of Stalinist bureaucratic forces from within and international political pressures from without, the revolution could have moved in any direction. “Whatever happens now,” wrote Debord, “it’s going to be important to publish as much of the truth as possible.”204 Because the revolution was moving into new and unknown territory, and the subsequent struggles between the workers/MFA and Stalinist/politically conservative elements were historically unprecedented, Debord feared that no one would recognize the climax of the final offensive. At what point do personal losses begin to outweigh the political gains? At what point does the revolution begin to move backward unless peace can be achieved? For Debord, “there is no possible peace between the order of the world and the proletarian movement of Portugal.”205 Debord admitted to his friend Alfonso Monteiro that he had never visited Portugal even as a tourist; any international travel he may have enjoyed was always predicated on how he could help a given revolutionary movement.206 He regretted not being invited by Monteiro to visit Portugal in fall 1974 when they might have had the opportunity during the winter months to discuss and analyze in more detail revolutionary perspectives. Still, despite having no direct contact with the Portuguese proletariat, Debord believed that the stillvibrant revolution had reached a point where even advanced groups of limited means likely could not add anything new or important. Although events were unfolding at an international level and impacting other countries in Western Europe, the revolution itself was almost completely unknown outside

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Portugal (even among extremist circles).207 Debord offered to publish a book as soon as possible that would outline the main issues regarding the aims of the revolution. Media in other Western European countries were simply not interested in covering events in Portugal. Typically, the aims of a revolution are only discussed after the fact. Debord was more concerned with discussing events during revolutionary activities in much the same way they had done so during the General Strike of 1968. Debord strongly encouraged his friend Jaime Semprún to write and publish La Guerra Social en Portugal (The Social War in Portugal) in May 1975, which was an account of the still-developing revolution based solely on Portuguese newspaper articles and on eye-witness evidence from a mutual friend. Debord found the book “magnifique”208 and argued that its greatest value was in getting written, published, and read before the final defeat of the revolution.209 Despite this positive fact, Debord was still worried that the struggle for political power in Portugal was simply moving in circles and that the “strategy of tension” that was being applied on all sides was turning into “tragicomic indecision.”210 Despite the on-going power struggles between Salazar’s remaining supporters, Stalinist and left-wing bureaucrats, and workers themselves, Semprún’s book could not have appeared in a timelier fashion; the French mass media was now finally beginning to pay attention to revolutionary events in Portugal. The book was being promoted in French bookstores and had the potential to reach a wide audience. But it was still not enough for Debord: “We must break the silence of the press,” he wrote to his friend Jaime, “and quickly.”211 Given the volatility of political events in Italy occurring at exactly the same time, Debord felt that the broader post-Situationist theoretical current in Portugal had achieved a greater degree of success. “Although you consider this current to be quite strong in Italy,” he wrote to Sanguinetti, “it is known worldwide that it is, above all for the moment, in Portugal, and that it is fighting capitalism with the greatest success, along with Stalinism and its captains, reformism, and what remains of fascism.”212 However, getting individuals in France to read and think about revolutionary theory, let alone avant-garde revolutionary theory, was once again becoming increasingly difficult. Debord and the SI had become better known in the years following the General Strike; the problem was that awareness had not yet translated into knowledge and understanding. Debord was already noticing a “quasiboycott” of Semprún’s book by the French media. The “cretinism” and “singular provincialism” of Italian journalists did not help either.213 According to Debord, the only SI period that the media found significant was 1957–1960, and they still managed to misunderstand it. The so-called highlight of that era was a failed retrospective of “industrial paintings” by Pinot Gallizio that disturbed ultra-leftists who were trying to present themselves as heirs of the

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SI. “In any case,” explained Debord in his letter to Semprún, “what these [Italian journalists] have done well is to state that the SI has not existed since 1972.”214 Debord felt that Semprún’s book on Portugal still had time to “find its audience through infiltration.”215 Given revolutionary events in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, publishing books on the current political situation in Western Europe was still better than asking a publisher to flood the market with reprints of earlier SI texts. Even a second reprint of Semprún’s book with a new explanatory Preface might generate renewed interest in the book.216 As we have seen, Debord remained vitally active during the 1970s as a writer and confidante to other like-minded individuals regarding revolutionary events in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. In March 1978, Debord completed his final film In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (“We Turn in the Night and Are Consumed by Fire”). Given the fact that Debord was still actively seeking to destroy “capitalist” culture, the military imagery used by Debord was intentional: a military theater of operations is an area in which tactical military events occur and a hostile theater views land, sea, or airspace as potentially useful in military operations. As a kind of military theater of operation, the realms of art and language became for Debord the new battlegrounds in an attempt to accelerate the breakdown of modern culture. Because he viewed the spectacle as constraining, Debord’s early passion for destruction included the annihilation of the very means of communication that he would use to disseminate his own revolutionary message. His greatest passion was to escape any conditions imposed upon him by others.217 “We were not made to have the esteem of the world,” he wrote to author Jean-Jacques Pauvert, “but at a pinch admiration, which mainly creates enemies.”218 Regarding the pre-eminence of poetry and its own enemies, Debord viewed new material forces originating from the language of advertising as controlling public space in an ever-more dangerous shift of operations.219 Debord knew that the battle to save “native” language would be difficult because all strategic calculations regarding communication had to be enacted on behalf of advanced industrial society. In the voice-over to his last film, Debord alluded to this unique dilemma when he quoted military theorist Carl von Clausewitz: in war neither side is ever certain about the situation of the other. One must become accustomed to acting in accordance with general probabilities; it is an illusion to wait for a time when one will be completely aware of everything.220

Debord continued to maintain private correspondences with international friends regarding revolutionary activities because he simply did not trust the media to report such events with integrity or honesty. In fact, Debord was always more interested in periods before the revolution, in times when

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revolutionary passions and potentialities were at their highest and had not yet collided with reality. As Voice 1 states in Howls for Sade, “Love is valid only in a prerevolutionary time.”221 For almost a year, Debord had to contend with intermittent news blackouts by major film production companies like Pathé, which, according to Debord, had witnessed political events as early as May 1974 but had chosen not to return to Portugal.222 “Your letter magnificently describes the very atmosphere of a revolutionary crisis,” he wrote to his friend Alfonso Monteiro, “which the newspapers here hide as much as possible, but that it is nevertheless possible to read between the lines.”223 Debord was especially pleased that the Portuguese epithet “Situationist” had undergone a complete reversal of meaning in such a short time, namely, from uncritical supporters of Salazar’s authoritarian dictatorship to revolutionary social theorists openly critical of Stalinist tendencies trying to defend those selfsame values. Debord was also delighted to hear that Portuguese revolutionaries were applying détournement tactics and devoting popular songs “to the most recent struggles.”224 The songs, explained Debord, need to be violent and passionate, but not too much; otherwise, the clarity of the critique might be overwhelmed by the violent imagery of the song lyrics. The issue for Debord was to highlight the inherently violent and destructive passion of critique without, at the same time, having the message sound either explanatory or pedagogical. As he explained to his friend Jacques Le Glou, “You want to instruct listeners on all the reasons for a revolutionary radicalism that already expresses itself very well on its own in the songs (since their texts will also be printed verbatim).”225 Using détournement allowed the Portuguese revolutionaries to break through the façade of their own political spectacle. To do so was vitally important for Debord because, from his point of view, “it has always been men of power and experts who hold authority over opinion.”226 We will return to Debord’s post-SI use of détournement in chapter 5. In fall 1975, Debord began to notice “ambiguities” and “contradictions” surrounding the question of whether his involvement would ever be welcomed by Portuguese revolutionaries.227 Although he had no direct involvement and was not a co-creator in revolutionary activities, Debord still took the time to congratulate them on publishing in summer 1974 an early analysis of events from the perspective of the revolutionaries themselves. Buoyed by this success, they were now ready to speak again of further publications and possibly a film. From Debord’s perspective, the underlying factor behind their actions was the fact that they were continually re-establishing a correlation between the dialectical development of the revolution and their own existence as a group, something the SI were unable to do until the spring of 1968. Debord had nothing but praise and sympathy for their own independent revolutionary activities. “It is as if you thought,” he explained to Monteiro,

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“that you needed to teach me of its existence and importance, and as if this fact constituted an argument in your favor!”228 After several decades offering advice regarding the co-ordination of revolutionary activities designed to undo the value system inherent in bourgeois ideology across Western Europe, Debord reminded Monteiro that his Portuguese revolutionaries should not fear international influence and that he himself had no intention of playing a leading role in consciousness-raising or practical organization. A successful avant-garde revolution does not need a so-called “rock star” to validate its existence. “I would obviously be quite willing to support the movement itself,” he explained, “not as you say by my ‘experience’—everyone in Portugal must have more experience of the situation than me currently—but with my few talents that you can use.”229 Because he was truly an outsider in Portugal and did not even know the language or culture, Debord intentionally chose not to intervene in the inner workings of Portuguese politics. More important to Debord was the possibility that the Portuguese proletariat were also feeling increasingly ambivalent toward Monteiro and his comrades. Debord argued that if the proletariat all had the same revolutionary awareness of their situation and an ability to imagine a variety of subsequent practical actions, then why would they need him in the first place—or, for that matter, Monteiro?230 From his perspective, Debord felt that Monteiro had not been directly involved or responsible for the great achievements of the Portuguese proletariat, however slowly they may have occurred. The Portuguese revolution was following the path of traditional proletarian revolutions and that was already enough to praise its successes. Debord went further in his critique of Monteiro’s role in the revolution by adding that originality and creativity were initially not characteristics of the proletariat. “What was original,” explained Debord, “and completely new in the world was the extreme and burlesque weakness of the counter-revolution in Portugal [e.g., the Salazarist generals to the Stalinists and leftists].”231 Debord felt that the overall slowness of the revolution was due instead to the objective quality of the era, namely, the breakdown of all ideological forms of recovery232 from revolutionary activities and the resulting societal confusion that limits the possibility of foreign states to intervene in domestic affairs. Debord felt that what had initially started the revolution was a struggle between two different movements, on the one hand, a rejection of the rapidly forming bureaucracy of parties and trade unions, and, on the other, the army whose base was already radicalized and unstable. In hindsight, Debord’s assessment turned out to be correct. The revolutionary process may have been reasonable, but it did not mean that the right group had won. There was no demi-god objectively guiding the reasonable movement of history, only individuals who believed in self-management, autonomy, and authentic communication. “Every idea,” Debord explained to Monteiro, “every argument,

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every perspective developed in this permanent discussion is counted there and will count in subsequent encounters.”233 From Debord’s perspective, the Portuguese revolution had unfolded in the same way as previous proletarian revolutions but with a few significant differences. First, the revolution was moving dialectically from one success to another. Each significant gain was assessed by the proletariat on its own merit, critically evaluated in relation to the original trajectory envisioned in April 1974 and then integrated into a newer and more comprehensive understanding of the best way forward at that historical moment. As revolutionary dialecticians, the Portuguese proletariat understood that knowledge for its own sake was little more than non-dialectical thought. Without a critical awareness and understanding of revolutionary theory and praxis previously disseminated by the SI, the sheer movement of history would soon overtake its cause. “What will make workers into dialecticians is merely the revolution that this time they are going to have to conduct themselves,” wrote Debord and Sanguinetti in 1972.234 Second, Portuguese proletarians sought to selfmanage their own affairs and reserve the right to critically decide on which tasks to complete and which autonomous course of action to follow. In Jaime Semprún’s view, “[The Portuguese proletariat] recognized their enemies’ right to exist only to be able to exist themselves, and in the formal renunciation of their class autonomy, they refuted it daily in the practice.”235 Debord stated that it was never a matter of SI revolutionary praxis per se, but rather the possibility of an autonomous, self-managed proletariat: “The SI not only saw modern proletarian subversion coming; it came along with it.”236 But it does not mean that it was also looking to lead the subversion; Debord and the SI only meant to show the way forward and to posit the theoretical means to achieve its goals. Debord’s two-decades-long enterprise was predicated on critically contesting the dominant ideology and on communicating to others a historically new avant-garde revolutionary program that would explicitly address postwar political concerns. As we have already mentioned, Debord was looking neither to become a revolutionary guru nor to act in the capacity of a revolutionary leader for others. Unless a group of individuals is asked by the proletariat to help to lead them forward, the best course of action is to simply get out of the way. Association with a given revolutionary organization does not guarantee the necessary gifts of intellect, temperament, and courage. “Whatever may become of us individually,” wrote the SI collective, “the new revolutionary movement will not be formed without considering what we have sought together, which could be summed up as the passage from the old theory of limited permanent revolution to a theory of generalized permanent revolution.”237 Throughout the 1970s, Debord carefully considered his influence upon revolutionary activities in Portugal (for the better) and Italy (for the worse), and, in both instances,

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likely confirmed that the task of leading a revolution to its inexorable conclusion should always rest in the hands of those actually fighting for a better life. Any thought of so-called leadership should always be conducted from the sideline or behind the scenes. Debord’s decision to maintain a hands-off relationship with revolutionary workers may have been influenced by military theorist Carl von Clausewitz. “If the mind is to emerge unscathed from this relentless struggle with the unforeseen,” wrote Clausewitz, “two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.”238 NOTES 1. “Don’t forget, we were drunk, and distances are greater when you are drunk: you don’t walk in a straight line.” Jean-Michel Mension, The Tribe, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2001), 105. 2. Guy Debord, letter to Eduardo Rothe (February 21, 1974) in Correspondance volume 5 janvier 1973-décembre 1978, series edited by Patrick Monsconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2005), 126. 3. Ibid., 127. 4. Debord, letter to Yves Le Manach (December 23, 1972) in Correspondance volume 4 janvier 1969-décembre 1972, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Libraire Arthème Fayard, 2004), 617. 5. Ibid. 6. Debord, letter to Jaap Kloosterman (31 January 1973) in Correspondance volume 5 (2005), 27. 7. Debord, letter to Jaap Kloosterman (23 March 1972) in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 522. 8. Debord, letter to Jaap Kloosterman (18 June 1973) in Correspondance volume 5 (2005), 60. 9. Ibid., letter to Jaap Kloosterman (27 August 1973), 79. 10. Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, translated and annotated by Ken Knabb (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2014), secs. 24, 26. 11. Debord, letter to Juvénal Quillet (18 November 1972) in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 604. 12. Alice Becker-Ho (Debord), “Présentation” in Correspondance volume 6 janvier 1979-décembre 1987, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2006), 7. 13. Debord, Panegyric, translated by James Brook and John McCale (London: Verso Books, 2009), 3. 14. Debord, letter to Jean-Jacques Pauvert (8 February 1993) in Correspondance volume 7 janvier 1988 – novembre 1994, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2008), 393. 15. Ibid.

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16. Debord and Gianfranco Sanguinetti, The Real Split in the International: Theses on the Situationist International and its Time, 1972, translated by John McHale (London: Pluto Press, 2003), 71. 17. Debord, Cette mauvaise reputation (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), 12. 18. Ibid., 33. 19. Ibid., 54. 20. Ibid., 92. 21. Ibid., 22. 22. Debord, letter to Paolo Salvadori in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 359. 23. George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language” (1945, revised 1946) in All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays, compiled by George Packer, Introduction by Keith Gessen (Boston: Mariner Books, 2009), 270. 24. Debord, letter to Morgan Sportès (16 January 1989) in Correspondance volume 7 (2008), 68. 25. Debord, letter to Morgan Sportès (August 23, 1989), 104. 26. Orwell (2009), 276–277. 27. Debord, letter to Nicole Debrie in Correspondance volume 7 (2008), 49. 28. Debord, Correspondance volume 7 (2008). Debord’s correspondence with Bounan began 13 December 1990 and ended May 15, 1993. 29. Ibid., letter to Michel Bounan (21 December 1992), 381. 30. Debord (2014), sec. 192. 31. Ibid., letter to Michel Bounan (21 April 1993), 407. 32. The term alexithymia was originally coined in the early 1970s by the American psychiatrist John Case Nemiah and the Greek-born clinician Peter Emanuel Sifneos. In their study of subjects with common and persistent psychosomatic problems, they noticed that, compared to individuals with recognizable mental disorders, many of those within their sample group also “found it extremely difficult to describe their subjective feelings, apart from having an impoverished fantasy, as well as a utilitarian cognitive style focusing on the outside.” The term used to describe this type of emotional silence was derived by combining the roots of several Greek words and simply means a lack of words for emotional states. See Francisco López-Muñoz and Francisco Pérez-Fernández, “A History of the Alexithymia Concept and Its Explanatory Models: An Epistemological Perspective” Frontiers in Psychiatry, Vol. 10, 31 January 2020, 3. 33. See also Erkki Kronholm, Timo Partonen, Jouko K. Salminen, Aino K. Mattila and Matti Joukamaa, “Alexithymia, Depression and Sleep Disturbance Symptoms” Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Vol. 77(1), 2008, 63–65. See also Lauren A. Demers and Nancy S. Koven, “The Relation of Alexithymic Traits to Affective Theory of Mind” The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 128(1), Spring 2015, 31–42. 34. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (15 April 1951) in Le marquis de Sade a des yeux de fille, edited by Patrick Mosconi (Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2004), 90. 35. Michel Bounan, La vie innommable (Paris: Éditions Allia, 1993), 100. 36. Debord, letter to Hervé Falcou (April 1950) in Le marquis de Sade (2004), 86. 37. Pascal Dumontier, Les Situationnistes et Mai 69: Théorie et pratique de la revolution (1966-1972) (Paris: Éditions Ivrea, 1995), 168.

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38. Ibid., 221. 39. Debord, letter to Gérard Lebovici (13 November 1973) in Correspondance volume 5 (2005), 101. 40. Debord, letter to Ole Klitgård (11 February 1972) in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 495. 41. Guy Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (7 February 1972) in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 492. 42. Debord, letter to Jacques Le Glou (10 June 1974) in Correspondance volume 5 (2005), 163. 43. Ibid., letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (3 January 1973), 14. 44. Ibid., letter to Afonso Monteiro (8 May 1974), 153. 45. Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (7 April 1972) Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 534. 46. Raoul Vaneigem, “Basic Banalities (Part 1)” in Knabb (2006), 122. 47. Dumontier (1995), 80. 48. Debord, letter to the SI (24 April 1968) in Correspondence, volume 3 janvier 1965-décembre 1968, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2003), 279. 49. Ibid. 50. Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (2 May 1974) in Correspondance volume 5 (2005), 148. 51. Debord, letter to Paolo Salvadori (9 December 1969) in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 188. 52. Debord, letter to the SI (24 April 1968) in Correspondence volume 3 (2003), 279. 53. Debord, letter to Juvénal Quillet (8 January 1972) in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 478. 54. The title of Debord’s and Sanguinettis book is a détournement of a French pamphlet entitled Les Pretendues Scissions dans l'Internationale (Fictitious Splits in the International) written by Marx and Engels and published in Geneva in 1872. 55. Debord and Sanguinetti (2003), 28. 56. Dumontier (1995), 264. 57. Debord, letter to Juvénal Quillet (8 January 1972) in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 477. 58. Responding to an attack published in Le Monde (22 July 1988), Debord stated that he never resorted to publishing under a pseudonym. He may have written anonymously, or collectively as a member of the SI, but never under a pseudonym. See Debord, letter to Jean-François Martos (27 July 19880 in Correspondance, volume 7, (2008), 33. 59. Debord, “Address to Revolutionaries of Algeria and of All Countries” (1966) in Knabb (2006), 190. 60. Gianfranco Sanguinetti, On Terrorism and the State, translated by Bill Brown (Brooklyn, NY: Colossal Books, 2014), 3. 61. Bill Brown, “Translator’s Introduction” in Sanguinetti (2014), x.

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62. Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (21 April 1978) in Correspondance volume 5 (2005), 455–456. 63. Saverio Plana, “Achtung Banditi” in 1978: A New Stage in the Class War: Selected Documents on the Spring Campaign of the Red Brigades, translated and edited by Joshua Depaolis (Montreal: Kerslebedeb, 2019), 218. 64. Ibid., 217, 218. 65. Ibid., “Anonymous, Red Brigade #6” (March 1979) in A New Stage in the Class War (2019), 173. 66. Ibid., 174–175. 67. Ibid., 175. 68. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Books I and II, translated by Charles Foster Smith (Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press, 1956), 69. 69. Debord, “Préface à la quartrième edition italienne de La Société du Spectacle” (January 1979) in Œuvres, edition established and annotated by Jean-Louis Rançon in collaboration with Alice Debord (Paris: Quarto Gallimard, 2006), 1463. 70. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punishment: The Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 38. 71. Debord, “Préface” in Œuvres (2006), 1466. 72. Ibid., 1468. 73. Situationist International, “Reform and Counter-Reform in the Bureaucratic Bloc” (September 1969) in Knabb (2006), 334–335. 74. Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (21 April 1978) in Correspondance volume 5 (2005), 457. 75. Jamie Mackay, “50 years since the Piazza Fontana bombing and Italy is still facing-up to its ‘years of lead’” (2 January 2020), https://www​.opendemocracy​.net​/ en​/can​-europe​-make​-it​/50​-years​-since​-the​-piazza​-fontana​-bombing​-and​-italy​-is​-still​ -facing​-up​-to​-its​-years​-of​-lead/. 76. Ibid., 458. 77. Richard Drake, “Why the Moro Trials Have Not Settled the Moro Murder Case: A Problem in Political and Intellectual History” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 73(2), June 2001, 371. 78. Brown in Sanguinetti (2014), i. 79. On the lingering questions that remain surrounding the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Modo, see Richard Drake, “Why the Moro Trials Have Not Settled the Moro Murder Case: A Problem in Political and Intellectual History” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 73(2), June 2001, 359–378. 80. Debord, “Préface” in Œuvres (2006), 1472. 81. Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (2 June 1972) in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 560. 82. Ibid., letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (6 December 1969), 177. 83. Miguel Amorós, A Brief History of the Italian Section of the Situationist International” in Internazionale situazionista, los textos completos de la sección italiana de la Internacional situacionista (1969-1972), translated by Diego Luis Sanromán (Longrono: Pepitas de calabaza, 2010), 7. 84. Debord, letter to Paolo Salvadori (24 November 1969) in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 159.

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85. Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (21 April 1978) in Correspondance volume 5 (2005), 457. 86. Ibid., letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (20 March 1972) in Correspondance volume 4, 520. 87. As late as 1979, Debord was still arguing that the transcendence of art represented the true “Northwest Passage” of the geography of real life. See “Préface” in Œuvres (2006), 1465. 88. Ibid., letter to Paolo Salvadori (24 November 1969), 161. 89. Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (11 June 1974) in Correspondence volume 5 (2005), 166. 90. Debord, letter to Paolo Salvadori (24 November 1969), 162. 91. Debord, letter to the Italian section of the SI (7 May 1969) in Correspondence volume 4 (2004), 70. 92. Ibid., letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (21 February 1969), 29. 93. Amorós (2010), 12. 94. Debord, letter to Jonathan Horelick and Tony Varleen (28 October 1970) in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 297. 95. Ibid., Debord, letter to J. V. Martin (23 December 1969), 195. 96. While Debord dismissed Isou’s argument, the marginalization of youth culture in France was a key notion in the latter’s pamphlet “Manifestoes of Youth Uprising” (1950–1966). See chapter 2. 97. Situationist International, “Preliminary Problems in Constructing a Situation” (1958) in Knabb (2006), 50 98. Debord, letter to Gérard Lebovici (28 November 1979) in Correspondance volume 6 (2006), 40. 99. Debord, letter to Paolo Salvadori (3 July 1978) in Correspondance volume 5 (2005), 471. 100. Sanguinetti, “Letter from Sanguinetti to Khayati Concerning Debord” (10 December 2010) in Sanguinetti (2014), 101. 101. Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (29 August 1978) in Correspondance volume 5 (2005), 473. The complicated relationship that developed between Debord and Sanguinetti during the late 1970s and 1980s can only be understood by reading Debord’s numerous letters to Sanguinetti and then comparing them with Sanguinetti’s own recollection in a detailed letter he later wrote to Khayati. In a letter dated 11 June 1980, Debord mentioned to Gérard Lebovici that Sanguinetti had not cited him in the French translation of Del terrorismo e dello stato (Terrorism and the State, 1980), even though he is mentioned on three different occasions. “It is true that the author does not quote me,” he wrote to Lebovici, “but who ever quotes me?” (Correspondance volume 6 [2006], 59). For his part, Sanguinetti was offended by the fact that Debord had not mentioned him in the new Preface to fourth Italian edition of The Society of the Spectacle regarding evidence of collusion between the Italian government and members of the Red Brigade in the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro. For Sanguinetti, “it was him who should have cited and supported me—knowing [as he did] that I was fighting behind enemy lines, in extreme conditions—because, when he wrote his Preface (January 1979), he had already read the

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manuscript of On Terrorism (October 1978), which had been written well before his text” (109). 102. Ibid., letter to Paolo Salvadori (18 September 1978), 474. 103. Ibid., 475. 104. Sanguinetti, “Preface to the French Edition of On Terrorism and the State” (January 1980) (2014), 25. 105. Ibid., 24. 106. Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, translated and annotated by Ken Knabb (Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2014), sec. 105. 107. Debord, letter to Gérard Lebovici (4 May 1977) in Correspondance volume 5 (2005), 420. 108. Ibid., letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (2 August 1977), 430. 109. Ibid., letter to the Italian section of the SI (17 March 1969), 46. 110. Ibid., letter to the Italian section of the SI (10 April 1969), 55. 111. Debord, letter to Paolo Salvadori (12 November 1978) in Correspondance volume 5 (2005), 485. 112. Ibid., letter to the Italian section of the SI (27 May 1969) in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 78–79. 113. Ibid., letter to Casa Editrice Silva and the Italian section of the SI (20 May 1969), 74. 114. Ibid., letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (3 August 1969), 107. 115. Ibid., letter to Guy Buchet (22 June 1969), 92. 116. Ibid, letter to the editor De Denato (4 June 1969), 88. 117. Ibid., letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (7 April 1971), 362. 118. Ibid., 363. 119. Ibid., letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (13 October 1969), 125. 120. Ibid., letter to the Italian section of the SI (11 February 1970), 213. 121. Ibid., 216. 122. Ibid., 225. 123. Debord, letter to all sections of the SI (27 April 1970) in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 228. 124. Paolo Salvadori, “Discussion of New Theoretico-Practical Orientations in the SI (excerpts)” (1970) in Knabb (2006), 465. 125. Ibid., 464. 126. Ibid. 127. Ibid., letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (10 July 1970), 245. 128. Ibid., letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (7 July 1970), 242. 129. Ibid., 250. 130. Ibid., letter to all sections of the SI (27 July 1970), 261. 131. Ibid. 132. Ibid., 258. 133. Ibid. 134. Ibid., letter to Christian Sébastiani (24 November 1970), 307. 135. Ibid., letter to all Situationists (28 January 1971), 342. 136. Ibid., letter to René Riesel (1 August 1971), 392.

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137. In a letter to Sanguinetti dated March 23, 1971, Debord described how since December 1969 the political situation had evolved to the point where the government was keen to conflate fascist violence with certain “irresponsible” leftist extremists. The defence of democracy via right-wing extremist violence not only supported the government’s position, but threats of left-wing violence would allow the Stalinist PCI (Communist Party of Italy) to control its workers. The police in France and Italy took the opportunity to indiscriminately follow, harass, and arrest prominent members from both groups. Sanguinetti was informed by an anonymous telephone call that all his papers had been photocopied during a search of his room at the Hotel de la Paix, rue Blainville, in the 5th arrondissement of Paris (353–354). 138. Ibid., letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (15 August 1971), 394. 139. Ibid. 140. Ibid., letter to all members of the SI (27 July 1970), 270. 141. Debord, letter to Daniel Denevert (26 February 1972) in Correspondance volume “0” (2010), 273. 142. Ibid. 143. Daniel Denevert, “Pour l’intelligence de quelques aspects du moment (extrait),” http://www​.bopsecrets​.org​/French​/aspects​.htm. 144. Debord, letter to Daniel Denevert (26 February 1972) in Correspondance volume “0” (2010), 274. 145. Debord, letter to Daniel Denevert (24 March 1972) in Correspondance volume 4, 526. 146. Ibid., letter to Gérard Guégan (copied to Daniel Denevert) (17 November 1972), 603. See also Debord’s letter to Gérard Guégan (29 November 1972), 609–610. 147. Debord, letter to Eduardo Rothe (21 February 1974) in Correspondance volume 5 (2005), 125. 148. Ibid. 149. Ibid., letter to Jaime Semprún (26 December 1976), 387. 150. Ibid., 388. 151. La guerre sociale au Portugal (The Social War in Portugal, Paris: Ivrea, 1975). On a detailed analysis of the relationship between Jaime Semprún and Guy Debord this book, see Max Vincent, “Du temps que les situationnistes avaient raison” (“When the Situationists were right”), L'herbe entre les pavés (The Grass Between the Cobblestones) (February 2007), http://lherbentrelespaves​.fr​/index​.php​?post​/2013​ /04​/10​/Du​-temps​-que​-les​-situationnistes​-avaient​-raison. 152. Debord, letter to Jaime Semprún (26 December 1976) in Correspondance volume 5, 392. 153. Situationist International, “Address to Revolutionaries of Algeria and of all Countries” (March 1966) in Knabb (2006), 189. 154. Ibid., 191. 155. Ibid., 193. 156. Ibid., my emphases. 157. Debord, “The Beginning of an Era” (1969) in Knabb (2006), 323.

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158. Situationist International, “Contribution to a Councilist Program in Spain” (March 1966) in Knabb (2006), 217. 159. Situationist International, “The Ideology of Dialogue” (1966) in Knabb (2006), 232. 160. Ibid. 161. Ibid., letter to Xabier Urdanibia (14 September 1970) in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 287. 162. Ibid., letter to Connie (4 December 1969), 175. 163. “And in Spain the police shoot at the workers (which is still rarer than in Venezuela!), ibid., Debord, letter to J. V. Martin (23 July 1970), 254. 164. Ibid., letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (6 December 1969), 178. 165. Robert M. Fishman and Omar Lizardo, “How Macro-Historical Change Shapes Cultural Taste: Legacies of Democratization in Spain and Portugal” American Sociological Review, Vol. 78(2), April 2013, 216. 166. Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (15 January 1976) in Correspondance volume 5 (2005), 333. 167. Fishman and Lizardo (April 2013), 213–239. 168. Ibid., 213. 169. Ibid. 170. Situationist International, “Questionnaire” (1964) in Knabb (2006), 178. 171. Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (13 April 1971) in Correspondance volume 4 (2004), 364–365). Debord reminded Sanguinetti of this troubling situation in another letter written on 16 April. 172. Ibid., Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (3 May 1971), 368. 173. Ibid., Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (1 December 1971), 449. 174. Jonathan Story, “Portugal's Revolution of Carnations: Patterns of Change and Continuity” International Affairs, Vol. 52(3), July 1976, 421. 175. Ibid., 419. 176. Ibid., 420. 177. Robert Fishman, “What 25 April Was and Why It Mattered” Portuguese Studies, Vol. 34(1), Portugal, Forty-Four Years after the Revolution (2018), 20. 178. Ibid., 21. 179. Ibid. 180. Ibid., 22. 181. Ibid., 24. 182. Debord, letter to Alfonso Monteiro (8 May 1974) in Correspondance volume 5, 153. 183. Ibid., 155. 184. Ibid., 156. 185. Ibid., Debord, letter to Eduardo Rothe (8 May 1974), 158. 186. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jacques Le Glou (10 June 1974), 163. 187. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jacques Le Glou (25 June 1974), 171. 188. Ibid. 189. Ibid., 172. 190. Ibid., letter to Eduardo Rothe (26 June 1974), 174.

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191. Ibid. 192. Ibid., 176. 193. Ibid., 177. 194. See La Rédaction, “Le Droit de Réponse” (“The Right to Respond”), Potlatch No. 4 (13 July 1954) in Potlatch (Paris: Gallimard, 1996). 195. Anselm Jappe, Guy Debord. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, Foreword by T. J. Clark (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2018), 128. 196. Ibid., 177. 197. Ibid., Debord, letter to Simar Films (24 June 1975), 277. 198. Ibid., Debord, letter to Gérard Lebovici (18 July 1974), 184. 199. Story (1976), 422. 200. Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (31 January 1975) in Correspondance, volume 5 (2005), 234. 201. Ibid., Debord, letter to Alfonso Monteiro (24 February 1975), 243. 202. Diego Palacios Cerezales, “Civil Resistance and Democracy in the Portuguese Revolution” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 52(3), July 2017, 695. 203. Debord, letter to Alfonso Monteiro (early March 1975) in Correspondance volume 5 (2005), 248. 204. Ibid., 250. 205. Ibid., 251. 206. Ibid., Debord, letter to Alfonso Monteiro (10 April 1975), 260. 207. Ibid. Debord echoed virtually the same sentiment in an early letter to Monterio simply dated March 1975. 208. Debord, letter to Gérard Lebovici (29 May 1975) in Correspondance volume 5 (2005), 272. See also Debord’s letter to Jaime Semprún (31 May 1975), where he congratulates the author directly. 209. Ibid., letter to Jaime Semprún (31 May 1975), 273. 210. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jaime Semprún (24 June 1975), 279. 211. Ibid., 280. Unfortunately, none of the six different English-language essays that I used in my research on events surrounding the Portuguese revolution mention Jaime Semprún or his 1975 book. 212. Ibid., Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (20 May 1975), 269. 213. Debord, letter to Anne Krief and Jaime Semprún (10 June 1975) in Correspondance volume “0” (2010), 280. 214. Ibid. 215. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jaime Semprún (3 July 1975), 282. 216. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jaime Semprún (17 July 1975), 286. 217. Sylvano Santini in Debord and Patrick Straram. D’une revolution à l’autre: Correspondance Debord-Straram suivi de Cahier pour un paysage à inventer et autres textes, edited by Sylvano Santini (Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2023), 63. 218. Debord, letter to Jean-Jacques Pauvert (14 November 1991) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 312. 219. Ibid., Debord, letter to Annie Le Brun (26 September 1988) (2008), 40–41.

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220. Debord, In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni in Guy Debord: Complete Cinematic Works: Scripts, Stills, Documents, translated and edited by Ken Knabb (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2003), 180. The same citation also appears in La Librairie de Guy Debord: Stratégie, edited by Laurence Le Bras (Paris: L’Éditions L’Échappée, 2018), 80. 221. “Howls for Sade” in Knabb (2003), 1. 222. Debord, letter to Gérard Lebovici (9 August 1975) in Correspondance volume 5 (2005), 289. 223. Ibid., Debord, letter to Alfonso Monteiro (12 June 1974), 168. 224. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jacques Le Glou (14 July 1974), 179. 225. Ibid. 226. Ibid., Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (26 October 1975), 301. 227. Ibid., letter to Alfonso Monteiro and his friends (15 November 1975), 308. 228. Ibid. 229. Ibid., 308–309. 230. Ibid., 310. 231. Ibid. 232. Ibid., 311. 233. Ibid. 234. Debord and Sanguinetti (2003), 26–27. 235. Jaime Semprún, La guerre social au Portugal (no place of publication listed: Satanic Mills, March 2021), 12. https://archive​.org​/details​/semprun​-gsportugal. 236. Ibid., 8. 237. Situationist International, “Instructions for an Insurrection” (1961) in Knabb (2006), 86, with a slight modification to the translation and my emphasis. 238. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, abridged with an Introduction and Notes by Breatice Heuser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 47, italics in the original.

Chapter 5

Debord’s Final Years/Final Thoughts (1979–1994)

The last twelve months leading up to 1980 were relatively quiet for Guy Debord, beginning and ending with serious concerns regarding the continuation of dangerous terrorist activities in Italy. For one thing, he still believed that it was “a very good thing” to publish a French translation of Gianfranco Sanguinetti’s book Terrorism and the State (originally published in Italy in April 1979), especially given that it was “exactly right on the central issue it dealt with, and full of very valid arguments.” However, Debord also found it deficient in theoretical content.1 His main argument against the book was that Sanguinetti had “pretentiously”2 reduced the numerous complexities of all terrorist activities to a simple schematic relationship that neglected the strategic historical context of previous armed struggles in Italy. By summer 1981, following a series of derogatory verbal attacks between the two men, Debord was warning mutual friends and acquaintances that Sanguinetti was little more than a “pro-situ” thinker whose behavior was bringing undue police attention upon the latter and his own revolutionary activities in Italy. The political climate in Italy and France had clearly changed for the worst: to advocate in the late 1970s for the joyous destruction of the capitalist state via anti-aesthetic (or actual) terrorism now had serious legal consequences. Debord also feared that the same dangerous, unstable, and self-serving relationship between Italian political institutions and so-called “terrorist” groups could soon be replicated in France. Still, despite its lack of theoretical rigor, Debord felt nonetheless that Sanguinetti’s book contained a fair assessment of the Red Brigade’s activities in Italy in the 1970s.3 The more serious issue in the early 1980s was the epithet “terrorist.” The term meant different things to different organizations in different countries. In France in 1981, for example, every form of political upheaval aimed at extinguishing “the cadaver of democracy,”4 and subsequently provoke a military 175

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response was viewed by the Socialist Presidency of François Mitterrand as supporting a “terrorist” cause. Beyond the potential response by Mitterrand’s government, Debord was also concerned that Claude Cheysson, the French minister of Foreign Relations, had publicly described terrorist activities as “comprehensible” which, in the sometimes-ironic language of diplomacy, meant a kind of tacit approval or understanding. At that time, Cheysson had publicly announced that “All political activists are entitled to asylum here.”5 Mitterrand’s government was now giving refuge to Basque nationalists, the Italian Red Brigades, the Irish Republican Army, and various Arab radical groups.6 While the notion of granting asylum to political activists may have appeared welcoming on the surface, Debord thought it was a bad idea because he did not want to see the same types of self-serving covert relationships that he and Sanguinetti had identified in Italian politics in the 1970s to begin in earnest in France. There was nothing to stop the French government from viewing certain “activists” as favorable to their own political cause. Because of the potential for covert relationships to develop in France between rightor left-wing terrorist organizations and various government entities, Debord once again felt the need to clarify the true nature of the Situationist International’s theoretical writings and to defer any misunderstanding regarding its intent. Now more than ever, Debord’s role as an avant-garde revolutionary thinker required clarity, concision, and correctness. The SI were neither ­apologists for terrorism or militancy, nor political activists on behalf of ­foreign powers, nor advocates for the assassination of political figures.7 Regardless of the political circumstances of the early 1980s, all Debord ever desired was to tell the truth regarding his intended goals and to have that truth correctly understood. Hiding the truth from global revolutionary movements would constitute a greater disservice to them than it would to the police or the media.8 He knew that he could still annoy the most contemporary authorities, not only with an historical-dialectical notion of “the truth” but also with the manner in which he could tell it.9 A thread of negative energy still appears to run through Debord’s intellectual output that is manifested, firstly, in the desire to destroy and transcend the production of art, and, secondly, in the wish to destroy the means of communication already owned by capitalist interests. To destroy both entities cripples the communicative potential of the spectacle. To achieve this goal, Debord had to devise new channels of communication that would allow users to distinguish truth from fiction or what T. J. Clark calls “representational regimes” (i.e., art, film, and television).10 In comparison, the latest modern scientific techniques at the time seemed to be more concerned with producing misinformation and perfecting greater and greater amounts of repression through unitary, hierarchical channels of communication.11 In challenging so-called scientific and technological “progress,” Debord found that the original version of

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truth-as-critique was viewed in the postwar years as reactionary,12 that is, as nothing less than a deliberate attempt to sabotage human development. In its need to capitalize on this view , the media had managed to occult important differences between social “progress” and technological advancements. “For well over thirty years,” wrote Debord to his friend Jean-François Martos, I have very sincerely opposed the most impassive contempt to all kinds of outrageous willful misunderstandings about what I have written that is true about anything (and that is a lot), from hundreds of waste pickers, media, politicians, artists, police, academics, historians, false revolutionaries, and renegades from our own camp.13

For Debord, at least, there was still one place left where truth, criticism, and irony could still flourish unhindered: “It has always been known that poets are the only good critics.”14 Debord ended 1979 still worried about police actions against Gianfranco Sanguinetti, as well as the latter’s Italian friends and associates. He was also concerned with an unsubstantiated rumor still circulating in Italy that the SI was alive and well and intimately associated with the Red Brigade.15 Nonetheless, Debord began the year by publishing a new preface for the fourth Italian edition of The Society of the Spectacle, written in part, as he pointed out to French editor Gérard Lebovici “to displease everyone.”16 Debord knew that the intellectual environment had changed considerably since its original publication in France in 1967. Despite having already written and published numerous articles, essays, and monographs, as well as a highly popular book translated into several languages, along with a small group of influential and financially successful films (e.g., Œuvres cinématographiques completes, 1952–1978 had just been published in November 1978), Debord still faced open hostility and intentional neglect by the French and Italian press. He had chosen years ago not to speak to the media, choosing instead to let his written and cinematographic works speak for themselves.17 Yet, chronic problems continued to plague Debord; what had changed, however, was that he now had to concern himself with misinformation as well as intentional “disinformation.”18 As he explained in 1991 to author Annie Le Brun, “I think not only to political tyranny or to the offenses lavished by media reasoning, but to concrete life itself, that the entire industry falsifies the whole environment.”19 The Italians in particular were ready to consider Debord as little more than an irrelevant historical figure associated with May 1968, especially since new causes (e.g., feminism, French “leftist” terrorism and Italian “fascist” terrorism,20 the environment, and the nuclearization of the world) were already appearing on the horizon.21 Being actively ignored and denigrated by the Italian media only seem to galvanize Debord’s intent to critically challenge the status quo. Into a contradictory social situation that sought to reconcile tacit political

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affiliations with known terrorist groups and a repressive “Holy Alliance” established between bourgeois and bureaucratic-totalitarian class powers,22 the appropriately “cynical”23 content of the Preface to the fourth Italian edition was “coldly Machiavellian”24 in tone, rife with military imagery (“Afterwards, it is by starting to lead the war of freedom with anger that all proletarians can become strategists”),25 and characterized by détourned phrases from Clausewitz, Saint-Just, and Marx. For Debord, the most striking statement in the Preface was a critical misappropriation of Machiavelli’s observation regarding the ruination of the state (“rovinamento dello Stato”):26 “If one wishes to read this book, they will see that I have neither slept nor wasted the fifteen years that I spent in meditating of the ruination of the State.”27 Following the publication of The Society of the Spectacle in 1967, Debord believed that human life, understood at that time as an “immense accumulation of spectacles,”28 was now reaching the stage of a global “integrated spectacle.”29 Particularly disturbing was the postmodern notion of “telematics.” At the time of writing, telematics was a term referring to the use of online computer networks as an independent artistic medium, or as a kind of artistic cyberspace designed to break down barriers between artist and spectator. In his book Telematic Embrace, art theorist Roy Ascott views telematics positively as an associative form of digital communication that provides for a field of “psychic interplay that can be generative of multiple meanings.”30 Was telematics a new means of communication that could finally bypass previously available means of communication that are controlled by others? For his part, Debord instead saw in telematics something more sinister, namely, “the last ideology of an ‘absolutely computerized’ society,” an ideology that was quickly becoming the official doctrine in France.31 “We have seen playing to the absolute,” he wrote in the Preface, “to the point of a ‘telematic’ madness, the technical and police control of men [sic] and natural forces, a control of which errors grow just as fast as means.”32 Debord’s assertion has since been proven correct. Every single individual who engages with social media platforms or even accesses the internet leaves behind a digital footprint that is still visible to internet service providers. Since the internet is itself commodification par excellence, there is no such thing as internet “privacy” or an “incognito” setting. Every click, every view, is transformed into a commodity identifier. But why would Debord have such a negative notion of “telematics” at this particular time? Historically, the internet did not become available to the general public until April 1993.33 For Debord, “télématique,” a French term coined by Simon Nora and Alain Minc in their 1978 book The Computerization of Society, referred to a “growing interconnection between computers and telecommunications”34 that was transforming society in unprecedented and alarming ways. Granted, French society was fascinated with Minitel,

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the new nationwide videotex online service accessible through telephone lines, and one of the most successful precursors to the World Wide Web. But French society was also experiencing an intensive period of self-analysis “in which the traditional centralization of administrative power was increasingly under question.”35 Critical theorists like Debord were aware that French bureaucratic and political institutions were already rigid and unyielding; the fear from Debord’s perspective was that the increasing computerization of society by a telecommunication system like Minitel might be rejected as a new form of technology designed to accelerate the desire for emancipation and equality.36 The alternative was yet another centralized form of surveillance and bureaucratic control, and it was this form of telecommunication that Debord feared the most. Regardless of how a centralized administrative power might respond to the potential (mis)use of a telecommunication system like Minitel, Nora and Minc acknowledged the anxiety that this new system was creating. They categorized the concern as either pessimistic or optimistic. Pessimists viewed computerization (i.e., robotics) as a victory over repetitive tasks and the elimination of menial jobs. But, given that a 2017 McKinsey Global Institute study has projected that there could be 375 million jobs lost to automation by 2030,37 a similar concern in the late 1970s was certainly not unfounded. Moreover, the world was now divided into users and the used. For Nora and Minc, “Society would become opaque, to itself and to its individual members, but at the same time dangerously transparent, to the detriment of freedom, to those possessed of the demiurgic technology and their masters.”38 Optimists, on the other hand, believed that computerization equaled autonomous access to critical information; critical information amounts to cultural activities, and cultural activities lead to a renewed sense of liberation and democratic principles. For Nora and Minc, Anything that increases access to information facilitates dialogue on a more flexible and personal level, encourages increased participation and more individual responsibilities, and strengthens the ability of the weak and the “little man” to resist the encroachments of the Leviathan, the economic and social powers-that-be.39

While Debord may have wished to support an optimistic view of telematics, especially the potential relationship between information, cultural activities, and democratic principles, he knew, from a more realistic point of view, that society would likely become a digital surveillance state preferring to gather personal information on its citizen-users rather than allow, as Roy Ascott hoped, a realm of psychic interplay that would generate multiple meanings.

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Debord knew first-hand the exquisite joy of surveillance: his mail was regularly intercepted by the police and his telephone tapped. Not surprisingly, he feared new repressive Stalinist measures originally brought about in Spain by what he ironically called the “modernization of the electronic police.”40 In France and Italy, Debord frequently found himself to be the object of surveillance, a situation that also affected his professional and personal relationships. Friends knew how much he hated using the telephone, preferring instead to communicate in person or write letters.41 Debord had been watched by the state for many years because of his steadfast refusal to explain himself to French media on their terms; as a result, his conspicuous silence instead created a sense of pure mystery and danger surrounding his anonymity.42 We may recall that from an early age Debord used silence as an effective form of anti-aesthetic terrorism. In response, mass media relied on pundits and commentators to fill in the intellectual vacuum left by Debord’s absence and to interpret his covert behavior and anonymity as a form of terrorism in and of itself.43 After all, the media spectacle needed to feed its viewers something resembling information and the state still reserved the right to lawfully act under what Debord viewed as a new media neologism, the “rule of law” (“État de droit”).44 In this context, the rule of law exposes the apparent uselessness of reminding citizens that the state, after all, is a civilized entity that would not, without due cause, infringe upon the rights and freedoms of its members. For Debord, on the other hand, the “rule of law” reminded him of the state’s pursuit of specific goals that were not unlike those of a military operation. Debord did not think highly of the manner in which the media circus in Western Europe openly traded in misinformation and disinformation, especially when truthful information was effectively silenced. “They are pure ignoramuses who throw out misinformation to the masses,”45 he wrote to Jaime Semprun. Given the increasingly unstable political situations in both Italy and France, Debord was ready to go underground and cut all ties with Italian associates.46 His increasing paranoia was not unfounded. The “politics” in his politics of communication was becoming contentious, dangerous, and met with violence. On March 5, 1984, Debord’s producer and publisher Gérard Lebovici was assassinated by a still-unknown assailant for unexplained reasons. Was his death indirectly caused by Debord’s increasing radicalization following the May 1968 student demonstrations? Was it because of Lebovici’s friendship and financial support of Debord? Or was it because his publishing house Champs Libre had not only reprinted Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle in 1971 but also other radical thinkers such as Jaime Semprun and early critical thinkers such as Marx, Bakunin, Orwell, and Karl Korsch. The spectacular police-surveillance state—freedom from terrorist attacks in exchange for complete transparency and lack of privacy—was continuing to

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develop independently of other social and political institutions and following its own political agenda. The situation in France was no better than it had been in Italy in the 1970s. As Debord saw it, “The idiots have simply lost the pedals to the spectacle, which is the only mistake that is currently costing leaders dearly.”47 Ironically, Nora and Minc had argued in their 1979 book, rather idealistically, that it would be the development of society itself that would dictate how technological changes affected the future of late capitalist society. Hence, the challenge for social and political institutions lay “in the difficulty of building the system of connections that will allow information and social organization to progress together.”48 From Debord’s point of view, it was the disconnection between the dissemination of information and the controlled development of social organization that would render society into a transparent surveillance state. Once he was able to temporarily set aside political events in Italy, Debord began the 1980s working on a translation of Jorge Manrique’s book of poems Coplas a la meurte de su padre (Couplets on the Death of his Father, 1492) from Castilian Spanish into French.49 The translation was completed and published by Champ Libre in April 1980. In his biography on Debord, Anselm Jappe refers to the poem as representing a uniquely interesting time and place in which his subject found himself. The opening stanza reminds readers to wake up and realize how easily life passes by. Youth, beauty, love, passion—nothing lasts forever: “Our lives are the rivers that flow into the sea.”50 This line is especially poignant, given that, following his cremation in SaintÉtienne in November 1994, Alice Debord and several close friends traveled back to Paris and spread his ashes in the Seine River.51 As Debord entered his fifties, he appeared to think more seriously about the pettiness of individuals “who passively [submit] to the spectacle”52 and are ignorant of the inexorable flow of time. Moreover, given the radicalization in the 1980s of critical issues such as feminism, the environment, and, especially, the nuclearization of the world, Debord also had to contend with the realization that he was no longer the singular spokesperson of a generation. As he aged, Debord likely became increasingly concerned with what he had already accomplished and how much there was still left to do: “Do not make the fearful battle that you expect so bitter, because another longer life of such glorious fame you leave here.”53 As Jappe points out, although Debord may have had to re-assess his relationship to avant-garde revolutionary activities, he nevertheless remained “a highly vigilant witness to his time.”54 Manrique’s poem contains an interesting linguistic aspect that is worth considering in detail. Debord was particularly sensitive to linguistic differences between Castilian Spanish and French. For example, he noted the difference in Spanish between “ser” (“being in itself”) and “estar” (“being in the making”) and found that the latter expressed a particularly “Situationist”

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concept of becoming.55 Compared to ser “being in itself,” the notion of estar “being in the making” reflects Debord’s insistence on revolutionary praxis as a purposeful human activity informed by a theoretical framework. Debord always viewed praxis as a self-creative activity through which individuals change and create their own historical, human world and, in so doing, change themselves in the process. “Being in the making” implies a human activity that aims at a precise goal or at least a realizable conclusion. Given our discussion in chapter 2, we could regard psychogeography and dérive as activities-in-the-making that express a primordial desire to dynamically become other than that which is expected by the spectacle. Situationist strategies such as those described above, along with détournement, metagraphics, and the disfigurement of “unitary” language through irony, contradiction, incongruity, and absurdity, all represent a behavioral or expressive drive toward grasping an authentic form of life that rejects banality, boredom, and uniformity. Whether translating Castilian poetry or a Spanish anarchist treatise such as Protestation devant les libertaires du présent et du futur sur les capitulations de 1937 (Protest Before Present and Future Libertarians Over the 1937 Capitulations, Champs Libre, 1979), Debord was always mindful of subtle connotative differences between Spanish and French terms. It was especially important to Debord and his wife Alice (Becker-Ho) to properly translate the anonymously written Protest text as accurately as possible. After all, for Debord, “This appeal from an unknown anarchist militiaman belonging to the famous ‘Iron Column’ [from the 1936 Spanish Civil War] seems to be, to date, the most truthful and beautiful writing that the proletarian revolution has left us.”56 Moreover, the anonymous author, writing under the provocative epithet of “L’Incontrolado” (“the Uncontrollable”), seemed to speak directly to Debord’s own political concerns in the 1980s. “L’Incontrolado” not only denounces the counter-revolutionary actions of the Spanish Stalinists, who had overtaken the disarmed republican bourgeoisie, but also concessions made by the leaders of the National Confederation of Workers, both of which led to the failure of the Proletarian Revolution in Spain. The political situation described by “L’Incontrolado” in 1936 did not seem very different from those in contemporary Italy and Portugal. As Debord explained to Gérard Lebovici, the Spanish term “paisano” has a range of meanings including citizen, compatriot, civilian, or peasant. In the text, Debord contrasts “paisano,” a term that he felt more strongly represented the Spanish revolutionary, with “campesino” (e.g., farmer or peasant) and noted that the anonymous author used the latter term in an inconsistent manner. What needed clarification in the mid-1980s was the likelihood that “the weakness of the subjective side of revolutionary activity” was now largely gone but the existence of a “revolutionary party” continued unnoticed in Spain, “especially,” explained Debord, “in this hyper-spectacular time.”57

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Distinguishing between these two terms was another opportunity for Debord to not only use “native” language but, more importantly, to indicate that revolutionary consciousness developed naturally and organically with the campesino. Without putting words into the author’s mouth, Debord promised Lebovici that, while his translation might be “less unfaithful,”58 at least it would be less riddled with false meanings and misinterpretation. We mentioned in the previous chapter that the 1974–1975 Portuguese “Revolution of Carnations” was unique because it offered a social and cultural pathway toward democracy. In the early 1980s, Debord suggested to Spanish associates that they should engage in similar revolutionary activities since a cultural revolution would not be possible without also engaging in social revolution. Since the General Strike of May 1968, the SI had repeatedly stressed that there could be no cultural revolution without a social revolution. Debord had argued that the term “revolutionary” had long been co-opted by advertising and used to sell commodities designed to deflect attention away from the profound alienation felt by individuals living in late capitalist society. As a result, “revolution [had] to be reinvented”59 in order to better reflect a unitary critique of the modern world. Individual participation must be centered around the notion of a “collective project”60 that jointly critiques the poverty and boredom of social life. “The different moments of situationist activity up till now can only be understood in the perspective of a reappearance of revolution,” wrote SI members back in 1961, “a revolution that will be social as well as cultural and whose field of action will right from the start have to be broader than during any of its previous endeavors.”61 New types of revolutionary organizations needed new forms of human relationships that would, ultimately, lead to new forms of social organizations. Along with new types of social organization and new forms of human relationships, Debord also stressed that none of these revolutionary changes would come into being without new forms of dialogical, horizontal communications between autonomous groups and individuals. In early 1981 Debord contacted Gérard Lebovici and suggested that, in addition to reprinting the 1936 book by L’Incontrolado as well as Appels de la prison de Ségovia (Appeals from the Segovia Prison, Éditions Champs Libre, 1980), they should also collect and release détourned Spanish folk songs meant to draw attention to the prisoners of Segovia.62 The plan was to record between April and May, and then aim for a June release on vinyl. For the sake of convenience and portability, the project would also be released on cassette tape. While Debord considered the song lyrics dubious, he still felt that the consciousness-raising effect was certain to succeed.63 Debord also knew that time was of the essence since the critical impact resulting from détourned Spanish folk music was contingent on the rapid and indisputable evolution of the political situation in Spain.64 What was most striking to him

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in this endeavor was the disjunction between using Spanish folk music as a revolutionary vehicle to rouse the masses and the increasingly dangerous fate of political prisoners currently being held at a medieval prison in Segovia, Spain. From a moral and ethical perspective, Debord thought that the tactic was “disrespectful” and a “detestable artistic exploitation.”65 Releasing the music (possibly) in June would amount to a “dismal joke”66 that he was not willing to play on the Spanish prisoners. A couple of months later, Debord rethought the tenets of détournement for this project and decided that it would be more effective if the songs focused exclusively on the Segovia prisoners rather than on a generalized sense of revolutionary struggles dating back to the mid-1970s.67 Doing so would strategically concentrate critical forces upon a single target—the political prisoners being held in Segovia prison—rather than a cultural revolution writ large. Focusing on a single critical and contemporary issue would also avoid the awkwardness of quoting unrelated protest songs from previous decades. Debord was referring to protest songs that appeared on Pour en finir avec le travail: Chansons du proletariat révolutionnaire (To Finish with Work: Songs of the Revolutionary Proletariat), an anthology of old French revolutionary songs and détourned pop tunes compiled by his friend Jacques Le Glou and released by Éditions musicales du Grand Soir in September 1974. Debord was very familiar with the record. Of the nine songs collected on the disc, two of them, La Java68 des Bons-Enfants (“The Friendly Children’s Party”) and Le Chant des jours de mai (“The Song of the Days of May”), originally credited to an anonymous member of the group Friends of Durruti (active in May 1937 in Barcelona), ​​were actually détourned songs that featured new lyrics by Debord.69 As provocative as the compilation may have been in 1974, the lyrics referred to past revolutionary events (e.g., an anarchist bombing by Émile Henry at the end of the nineteenth century, the 1937 Spanish Civil War, and the student demonstrations of May 1968). None of them focused on the immediate historical struggles facing the Spanish people. Debord knew that the lyrics needed to directly communicate the historical importance of the struggles to listeners. Given the instability and inherent danger of the Spanish revolution, Debord saw the immediate limitations of détournement in the following manner. I don’t have the same feeling as you about the effectiveness of diverted songs. I find yours an often too “militant” radicalism, compared to the best old models, which are often stronger by being more discreet. I want to believe that you took good care of the harmony with the music, but I see that you have, on occasion, neglected rhyme, which was a law of the genre. I certainly do not defend the principle of literary property. As Brecht said, “everything belongs to whoever improves it.”70

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More importantly, Debord did not wish to maspériser the Spanish revolution and falsify its values and objectives, either deliberately or casually, through the unethical editing or rewriting of its own revolutionary texts. Nor did he wish to dredge up historical protest songs such as La Cárcel de Segovia (“The Prison of Segovia”) because, according to Debord, it had already been détourned twice, first in reference to a mining disaster and second in reference to police repression against strikers.71 The issue here for Debord was a simple one: At what point does détournement eventually silence the original revolutionary message? Debord felt that rewriting the lyrics to a popular song in order to communicate a revolutionary message to the masses could be justified from a social and cultural standpoint. But, more importantly, it also needed to authentically represent indigenous values and objectives in its truly “native” language. After all, authentic, autonomous thoughts need to be re-presented in a “native” language that indelibly integrates thoughts with words without distortion or misrepresentation. Whether a campesino or a member of the proletariat, each must be allowed to say what they want and to choose the manner in which to say it. Otherwise, the revolutionary message loses its objective historical value, and the political situation deteriorates further. “I find it annoying, shocking, even insolent,” he wrote to Jaime Semprun, “that these songs about Segovia were written by foreigners, when it naturally had to be done in the country by people speaking the beautiful Castilian language.”72 Closer to home, Debord was facing a different and more dangerous form of maspérisation. Following the inconceivable manner in which Lebovici’s (still-unsolved) murder on March 5, 1984, was being treated by the French media, Debord decided early the following year to prohibit the exhibition of his films in France. For Debord, taking his films out of circulation was a fitting tribute to someone whose murder was still being met with silence and indignation by the French media and complacency by the law. Debord’s immediate reaction was to take legal action against newspapers that were printing slanderous, derogatory, or plainly false statements regarding Lebovici’s character and his professional endeavors.73 Given the serious nature of events, Debord feared that the French media were conducting its own public maspérisation against him and Lebovici. For years the French press had operated under the assumption that, if statements regarding the veracity of Debord’s actions or words could not be accurately confirmed, then it would simply print hearsay and conjecture. In hindsight, we could argue that, in situations such as these, Debord’s intentional silence may actually have worked against him. What made matters worse was that even an official public statement by Debord in the form of a carefully written essay was still no guarantee that the “infantile [French] press”74 would not go ahead and misconstrue and/ or misrepresent its truth claims. As we saw in chapter 2, Debord gave up

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forwarding published articles to French media as early as 1955. If anyone ever took the time to learn something about Debord and his avant-garde revolutionary theories, it was almost always a posteriori.75 “I don’t know at what point this smear campaign is simply an aggravating circumstance,” he wrote to French criminal lawyer Thierry Lévy, “or, on the contrary, a mitigating circumstance for each newspaper to implicate me.”76 Even after Lebovici’s murder, Debord still steadfastly refused to interact with the French press or other media outlets. He knew that in the same way revolutionary strategies outlined by the SI had been cheapened and vulgarized by the spectacle machinery following 1968, the same thing would happen to any type of public discussion regarding Lebovici’s murder. The consensus of the press at that time was that Lebovici was moving in dangerous circles and might have even deserved his fate. Even public debate surrounding an unfounded accusation of murder against Debord himself should have warranted more than a mere polite “rebuttal.” In fact, Debord viewed “the malevolent arbitrariness of contemporary newspapers,” especially when it came to him, to be “greater than that of judicial institutions.”77 To be convicted of a crime in the court of law was less of an insult than in a court of public opinion, especially by a French public who was at once passive and incapable of critical thought. Debord followed the withdrawal of his films from circulation in 1985 with the publication of Considerations on the Assassination of Gérard Lebovici (published by Éditions Gérard Lebovici [formerly Éditions Champ Libre] and reprinted by Éditions Gallimard in 1993). Once again, Debord wisely chose not to forward “review” copies of his new book to the media, a decision fuelled primarily by his continued “contempt for the French press as a whole.”78 The world had never been so contemptible and dismissive; yet, it had never been less criticized. In Debord’s estimation, the spectacle had managed to crush all sense of critical distance from daily events79 by transforming them into superficial incidents to be vicariously experienced. World “events” had become thicker, more congealed, “hypertrophic,”80 and made worse not only by a proliferation of so-called social media “news feeds” but also by the viewer’s endless scrolling from one catastrophe to the next. Given the tone evinced in his personal letters, Debord appeared depressed and demoralized by Lebovici’s still-unsolved murder. But this tragedy was likely also increasing his fear and paranoia. The “abnormal” nature of the “Lebovici Case” was now settling into a “new normal” of senseless violence81 and apathy. Debord’s original notion of revolution-as-festival was no longer tenable in a militarized police state with broad and sweeping powers. Regarding the so-called modernization of society and its false sense of harmony between social “progress” and technological “advancement,” Debord saw only despair and frustration: “A society without pleasures can only

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crumble into dust.”82 Pleasure had been inexorably transformed into passive consumption. Speaking as an ironic utilitarian, he found it remarkable that a society that suppresses pleasure ought to be able to suppress pain.83 In fact, Debord’s overall contempt for Paris and its former pleasures was beginning to overwhelm him. Despite increased surveillance by the state regarding political matters and the false equivalency between progress and advancement, Debord’s life was still a river flowing into the sea. Gone were the days spent drinking with friends (Ivan Chtcheglov, Patrick Straram, and Jean-Michel Mension) at Chez Moineau in the Latin Quarter and discussing the creative passion for destruction. But, because of a strict adherence to revolutionary ideas, Debord decided at a very young that it would be better to change friends rather than ideas.84 Once an associate had outlived their usefulness, Debord would cut off all communications with them. His passion for professional and personal relationships was politicized from a very young age. In an introductory essay to a collection of letters between Debord and Straram written in the early 1960s, Sylvano Santini argues that Debord’s desire for destruction is “a passion which tears, which denies, which separates rather than unites.”85 For Debord, Paris was like a “destroyed city”86 because it had finally lost its central historical role in the creation of French culture. From his perspective, there was no longer a Christian nor a Muslim society, not even a socialist or a scientific culture. There was only the generalized homogeneity of late “capitalist” spectacle masquerading as a culture. “There is no more truth and evidence to look at for a single moment,” wrote Debord, “than the spectacular-global (American) degradation of any culture.”87 He decided that revolutionaries who chose to remain in Paris were likely suffering from a sickening excess of Parisianisme, the lingering memories of a certain subversive milieu in the 1970s that were now “left like mussels on a polluted rock.”88 Debord and his wife Alice finally left Paris in disgust in 1979, settled in Arles, and never looked back. “[Paris] has, in truth, disappeared,” he wrote to friend Reine, “and that it is therefore by sheer illusion that many people believe that they still resided there.”89 Debord was not in good mental spirits either, resulting partly from paranoid feelings stemming from Lebovici’s murder and partly from still-minor health issues likely related to alcoholism. Professional relationships were also beginning to sour over theoretical differences, misplaced manuscripts, and a general misunderstanding regarding the historical reality of social and political changes that had occurred since 1968. These relationships included Jaap Kloosterman (“Another one who is more capable of blaming everyone in the world than to show that he admires something”),90 Jaime Semprun (“I would have had no objection in principle to acting with him, under certain concrete conditions, for a cause which can be common to us”),91 and Dutch author and historian Arthur Lehning (“a dishonest bureaucratic temperament with a taste

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for hostile maneuvers”).92 Moreover, in the post-68 academic world of social critic-as-rock star, Debord’s own post-SI work was designed to undermine the “absolutely new thinker whose unbearable brilliance should be relegated to the utopians of the previous century.”93 The post-1968 revolutionary world of Western Europe was now littered with revisionist “pro-situationists” who were determined to peddle a new kind of “Marxo-Situationist”94 orthodoxy called “Situationism” that had never existed before. Debord and the SI never intended to leave behind a doctrine, a canon, a closed system, or even a body of principles and practices that could be uncritically applied to future revolutionary activities. The task of revolutionary artists and intellectuals was not to slavishly follow SI orthodoxy (or any doctrine, for that matter) but instead “to find out what the international avant-garde is doing, to take part in the critical development of its program, and to call for its support.”95 As Deleuze and Gauttari asked a decade later: What is the best way to follow the great thinkers? Is it to repeat what they said, or to do what they did, and create new concepts for problems that necessarily change over time?96 The very notion of Situationism was meaningless and completely antithetical to Debord’s original understanding that SI theory should always remain fluid and able to respond to specific historical conditions.97 As Debord stated earlier in 1957, “the situationist attitude consists in going with the flow of time.”98 Moreover, the fact that the LI needed to morph into the SI was for Debord “proof of the newness of the domain [they we were now] entering.”99 In 1960, Debord reiterated a similar message when he stated that he was a “situationist” only to the degree that he was once a member of a diverse group of individuals who operated under the moniker of the SI.100 Yet, in the earlier 1957 article mentioned above, Debord anticipates the likelihood that the surest symptom of “idealistic delirium” would be the stagnation of these same individuals, supporting each other or quarreling for years, arguing over the same arbitrary values, all because they are the only ones to recognize them as “the rules of a poor game.”101 At the dawn of the 1980s, the proletarian revolutionary movement, which still sought to abolish the state and its class divisions, had tried unsuccessfully to disguise itself as a labor movement. The problem was that labor movements in France and Italy were still Stalinist in their rigid orthodoxy and bureaucracy. From Debord’s perspective, their socalled enemies were actually their allies: bankers, informants, diplomats, and politicians still loyal to the state.102 Now, nearly three decades later, Debord was shocked that he was still having to explain a nonsensical term like “Situationism,” a misguided notion that had plagued the group from its inception. Situationist practice was never about creating an -ism, a distinctive behavior, or a closed system that typically follows a rigid political ideology. In a letter to Dutch translator Jaap

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Kloosterman, Debord explained that he had been a Situationist only from 1957 to 1972, or when the SI actually existed.103 But the struggle was far from over, and the “dark times” he was noticing were not about to end any time soon.104 “I have never known anything ‘peaceful,’” he wrote, “neither before the SI, nor during, nor since.”105 The 1980s avant-garde revolutionary milieu in Western Europe was not fairing much better. Both the notion of the “avantgarde” and “revolution” were undergoing reassessment and reconfiguration. The two ideas had become disconnected from one another; the avant-garde retreated back into the arts community to continue experimenting and innovating, while revolution activities were becoming increasingly pre-occupied with fighting against a global economic and political shift to the right. From Debord’s perspective, the revolutionary climate of the 1980s was not a dwelling of unwavering strength and revolutionary determination but rather a place of neurosis, ignorance, and incapacity.106 Even with renewed calls for international solidarity across Western Europe, there is still the dangerous tendency of drifting into “a certain optimistic vagueness,”107 due either to mistrust or to a lack of authentic communication between interested parties. By the late 1980s, Debord became less involved in political turmoil in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, by shifting his attention to the future of his own publications. Following the murder of Gérard Lebovici, the primary concern at that time was the increasing disillusionment he was experiencing regarding the future of his publishing relationship with Champs Libre.108 Lebovici not only understood Debord’s critical stance regarding Western Europe in the 1980s, but he was ready to support him in any way he could. However, in what follows, the issue at hand was not so much Debord’s adherence to his politics of communication as it was to the reality of publishing critical theory in France in the 1980s. Lebovici’s widow, Floriana, decided to continue operating the publishing house during the second half of the 1980s. She not only changed its name to Éditions Gérard Lebovici in honor of her late husband but also opened a successful bookshop in Paris under his name. However, when she died of cancer in February 1990, the bookshop closed shortly after, and the remaining stock was transferred to Éditions Ivrea. Although Debord thanked publishing entrepreneur Gérard Voitey for everything he did “to delay the inevitable outcome”109 of the publishing house, he still lamented the fact that Voitey had not tried hard enough to save it from liquidation in April 1991. Debord understood that the history of the company had been, in his own words, “difficult” but that “the story of Champs Libre was now completed.”110 A few days later, speaking through their literary lawyer Yves Cournot, Debord and Alice Becker-Ho requested that the publishers destroy all expired or unsold copies of their books and to recycle the paper.111 Future publishing projects were a different matter altogether. On February 19, 1991, Debord sent a formal letter to the remaining editors at Éditions

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Gérard Lebovici and officially forbade them to publish Volume 2 of Panégyrique.112 Lebovici’s widow had already published Volume 1 in 1989. Once again, Debord has to keep track of pirated translations of his work in Italian and English. Italian publishers, for example, were behaving as if Debord had already passed away and thus no longer publishing.113 Because his works had already been illegally translated in Italy for nearly twenty years, they were considered to be in the public domain. In England, on the other hand, Donald Nicholson-Smith contacted Debord to let him know that Sanford Kwinter, cofounder of Zone Books, was claiming a prior agreement with Éditions Gérard Lebovici regarding translation rights and was planning to hire NicholsonSmith to translate La Société du spectacle.114 Never willing to uncritically accept the veracity of an alleged prior agreement, Debord instead “smelled a deception”115 and thus did not respond either to Nicholson-Smith or to Zone Books. Instead, he contacted Gérard Voitey and stressed the urgency of intervening in the Zone case. According to Debord, Lebovici’s associates had never agreed to hand over English translation rights to Zone, even if the latter was ready to ignore their refusal and begin publishing Debord’s work.116 From Zone’s perspective, a lack of response by Debord or his editor (again, a conspicuous silence) was viewed as a tacit acceptance. They too had interpreted unauthorized translations as a sign that his work was already in the public domain.117 “After their ‘official’ announcement in this M.I.T. catalog,” Debord wrote to Voitey, “we must thoroughly attack and make them pay dearly for their impudence.”118 While Debord was engaged in a legal battle with Zone (and later Verso) over illegally securing English translation rights to La Société du spectacle, new books focusing on Debord and the SI were being written and published by art historians, philosophers, film theorists, and social historians who had no direct affiliation with the group. Compared to an historical account such as sinologist René Vienet’s Enragés et situationnistes dans le movement des occupation (Enragé and Situationists in the Occupation Movement, Gallimard 1968), an ex-SI member who Debord eventually viewed as an untrustworthy and contemptible Stalinist “clown,”119 these new texts were not concerned with settling accounts or furthering internal squabbles. Instead, they were providing to interested readers an objective appraisal of the interdisciplinary nature of the SI’s theoretical, artistic, and practical activities over the last three decades. These new books seem to validate Debord’s earlier claim to Gianfranco Sanguinetti that “all you have to do is radicalize your criticism even more and then wait for the next generation capable of understanding it to come along.”120 To be clear, these young writers and theorists were not the radical social revolutionaries that Debord had been waiting for. Instead, they served a greater purpose as messengers on behalf of Debord as a unique and singular postwar critical and revolutionary thinker who established neither

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a specific school of thought nor affiliations with other contemporary thinkers. Like Debord himself, they understood that he occupied a singular place in society and his own time, and free from personal polemics.121 As Debord once wrote, “I have lived everywhere, except with the intellectuals of these times.”122 For their part, these writers sought to unpack and explain what Ken Knabb described in the Preface to his Situationist International Anthology as the alleged difficulties in the SI’s language.123 As Knabb explains, “Situationist language is difficult only to the extent that our situation is.”124 For Debord, linguistic difficulties were part of an overall strategy to terrorize and defamiliarize. As he explained in the essay “Considerations on the Assassination of Lebovici,” Each period has its own vocabulary to exorcise the phantoms that disturb it. At the time when the situationists were active, they were rarely treated as terrorists, even we have popularized the idiotic concept of “intellectual terrorist” . . . If the Situationist International existed today, it would inevitably be called a terrorist group.125

While Debord himself was never fond of revisiting the past, preferring instead to create new passions to respond to unique historical moments, film theorists, philosophers, and social historians were not only taking the time to contextualize Debord’s works within broader social, cultural, and artistic trends within the twentieth century, but also fortunate enough to maintain correspondences with him during the few remaining years of his life. Of course, not all writers chose to maintain a personal correspondence with him. I am thinking, for example, of Pascal Dumontier’s 1990 study of the role of the Situationists in the General Strike of 1968, as well as Anselm Jappe’s 1993 biography of Debord. Debord was not only impressed by Jappe’s work but, more importantly, appreciative of his level of understanding. To be understood, without having to simplify his language, concepts, or theories was something that troubled Debord throughout his intellectual life. Now, as many of the original fears and concerns raised in his writings were coming to fruition (e.g., the integrated spectacle), Debord’s ironic and sometimes combative language was coming into sharper focus. Through friends and colleagues, Debord remained cognizant of ongoing works and publications regarding the SI. For example, Debord was alerted to the fact that Italian historian and art critic Mirella Bandini had not only recently published a collection of essays in Italian entitled Pinot Gallizio e il Laboratorio Sperimentale di Alba (Pinot Gallizio and the Experimental Laboratory of Alba, 1975), an Italian artist who was also a founding member of the SI, but also a book on the artistic origins of the SI to be titled L'estetico, il politico. Da Cobra all'Internazionale situazionista 1948-1957 (Aesthetics, Politics: From Cobra to the Situationist International, 1948–1957).126 Bandini understood

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Debord’s need to express a destructive urge through art. As she concludes in her Postface, The category of the Debordian spectacle, as this great thinker defined it, is today a veritable compass for anyone who ventures into the universe of an art that seems to have given up being the repository of the active knowledge of society or a moment of critical reflection. An art crushed by Marxian merchandise. Gallizio's industrial painting did not wish to denounce something else with a more refined complexity, for Debord's theory of desires: it is certainly a neo-romantic cultural strategy—but, in truth, what is more romantic than Marx’s thought?— where invention dominates. The project of desires is always new in reaction to the contemptible condition imposed on man by the capitalist system, whose tactics lead on the contrary to creating artificial needs, and imposing a travesty of reality on masses dispossessed of their primary needs and, therefore, unable to experience genuine desires.127

In spring 1987, Debord responded favorably to a “kind letter”128 written by American film theorist and professional Thomas Y. Levin. In response, Debord was truthful yet defiant in describing his relation to the French film industry: “You know that I have always been very badly seen, and rightly so, by the whole film industry,” he explained to Levin. “But I have always been able to maintain before it the most contemptuous independence.”129 In spring 1989, Debord renewed his correspondence with Levin, whose theoretical work displayed both “rigor and intelligence,”130 and agreed to meet him. In subsequent letters exchanged between the two men, Debord’s assessment of his own cinematic works was at once honest and uncompromising. He was aware that his communicative style was intentionally challenging and provocative. He also knew that his films had been badly received by audiences because even the possibility of experimenting with cinematic form was not easily accepted at the time.131 What made Debord provocative was his dangerous “anti-spectacular” and “unworldly” (“peu mondain”) behavior. While the term “anti-spectacular” clearly refers to Debord’s explicit attempts to disrupt the inherent passivity associated with the uncritical act of viewing, the term “unworldly” is worth exploring in more detail. To be “worldly” is to be sophisticated and versed in the ways of the world; to be “unworldly,” on the other hand, is to be unconcerned with material values or pursuits. At its worst, it implies naïveté and unsophistication. Ironically, Debord instead held a refined and critical understanding of the ways of the world, in particular, how a systematic network of forces manipulates various public discourses in order to validate only certain forms of knowledge. Debord was not just unconcerned with material values or pursuits associated with the theoretical foundation of commodity capitalism, but he actively rejected them at every turn.

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In the biographical study mentioned above,132 Anselm Jappe discusses Debord’s peculiar combination of austere formalism and revolutionary thinking, a mixture perhaps last seen in the personality of the radical French Enlightenment thinker Baron d’Holbach (1723–1789). “Debord’s aristocratic spirit and predilection for the seventeenth century,” writes Jappe, “coexist in paradoxical harmony with the agenda of the proletarian revolution, approbation for certain types of youthful banditry, and the cartloads of insults tipped on his opponents.”133 Jappe also mentions the “fascination” contemporary individuals have had for Debord’s sometimes confrontational “style”134 in terms of his day-to-day life, as well as his challenging literary and cinematic works. From a postmodern perspective, Debord’s individual style and his “unworldly” attitude hint at the twin notions of “worlding” and “unworlding” that refer to the making and unmaking of our understanding of the world. While the term “worlding” refers to a “normative force of the world”135 that, in certain cases, contributes to the creation of a literary or cinematic universe, “unworlding,” on the other hand, implies the explicit dismantling and questioning of how the social world is held together and given the appearance of a logical unity. As a mode of communication, Debord’s cinematic universe not only dismantles our understanding of the known world, but it does so by using a critical-dialectical procedure. The latter combines irony, parody, contradiction, and incongruity. Despite an explicit refusal to yield either to aesthetic pleasure or to an ordinary understanding of the social world, Debord’s cinematic style instead obeys three objectives that he himself set out from the beginning: (1) a high level of originality, (2) a critical understanding of contemporary society, and (3) a revolutionary form and content.136 Regarding his cinematic style, Debord also made sure to remind Levin to consultant “A User’s Guide to Détournement” (1956) to clarify the notion of “stolen” films:137 It is thus necessary to envisage a parodic-serious stage where the accumulation of détourned elements, far from aiming to arouse indignation or laughter by alluding to some original work, express our indifference toward a meaningless and forgotten original, and concerns itself with rendering a certain sublimity.138

Now in his late fifties, Debord’s positive engagement with various art historians, film theorists, philosophers, and social historians, each one seeking to establish an objective account of his work, was tinged with a peculiar kind of nostalgia that bordered on wistfulness.139 Over time, Debord became more explicit in his nostalgia for the early-1950s. In his memoirs, for example, former Letterist International member Jean-Michel Mension commented on Debord’s singular view of nostalgia.

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In the end Guy was a sad person: he had a rather pessimistic vision of the future, even though that never prevented him from fighting. I don't know whether you could say he had a double personality, but I'm not at all sure that he really believed in the possibility of turning the world upside down; he believed absolutely in the necessity of trying to do so, on that he was categorical, but he was quite a pessimist.140

We have mentioned several times that Debord was never fond of dwelling on the past and pining over what could have been. Yet, in the late 1980s, Debord was being asked by sympathetic theorists, biographers, and historians to reflect upon what he, the LI, and the SI had accomplished over the last thirty years. About to turn sixty years of age, Debord likely began unconsciously reflecting upon his own life as a revolutionary thinker. In a letter to Thomas Levin, for example, Debord mentioned an elegiac memorial he had written in September 1972 for Asger Jorn, in which he wrote What is painted and what is carved, the stairs never equal between the unevenness of the ground, the trees, the added elements, a cistern, vines, the most diverse kinds of debris always welcome, all thrown there in perfect disorder, make up one of the most complicated landscapes that can be traversed in a fraction of a hectare and, ultimately, one of the best unified.141

Debord’s comment to Levin regarding the re-reading of ancient texts is revelatory: “These memories are old; and emerging from just as long ago are earlier preoccupations and concerns . You’ve forced me to work a lot on the past!”142 While coincidently continuing to work on his own biography Panegyric, Debord took the time to answer numerous questions posed by Levin regarding the SI’s past, including the ephemeral “Hamburg Theses” (September 1961), “undoubtedly the most mysterious of all the documents emanating from the SI.”143 To be clear, the Hamburg Theses are mentioned only in passing in Internationale Situationniste No. 7 (April 1962) and No. 9 (August 1964), which makes awareness of their existence a remarkable feat of detective work. The “Theses” refer to an intentionally secret theory and strategy session that took place in the fall of 1961 at a random series of bars in Hamburg and dealt with the then-immediate future of the SI. Intentionally or not, nothing was ever written down, either regarding the content of the discussion or its conclusions. Debord remembered that the group collectively agreed that the easiest summary of these otherwise rich and complex conclusions could be reduced to a single sentence: “The SI must now realize philosophy.”144 The problem was that no one even bothered to write down that sentence, either for posterity or for immediate reference. In hindsight, the “Hamburg Theses” represented the end of the first “artistic” phase of the SI and the beginning of its second “communicative and

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political” phase that laid out the theoretical foundation for the eventual student riots of 1968. As well, the decision to commit the “Theses” to memory anticipated the SI’s reluctance in the mid-1960s to move beyond passing around handwritten notes to be read, memorized, and then destroyed. Debord sounded genuinely surprised that Levin had dug so deeply into the minutiae of SI history to begin making important historical connections between theory and practice. “This note was written especially for Thomas Y. Levin,” Debord wrote in November 1989 at the end of the redacted version of the Theses, “who has so tirelessly traveled the world to find traces of art erased from the Situationist International, and also from its various other historical packages.”145 Two months prior, Debord had already notified Levin of the latter’s diligence and hard work: “I’ll make a note to you on [The Hamburg Theses],” he hinted. “It will be a scoop.”146 Compared to Greil Marcus, whose book Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (Harvard University Press, 1989) attempted (but failed in Debord’s estimation)147 to establish a viable connection between the Situationists and examples of cultural subversion such as Dada and the Sex Pistols, Debord was hoping that Thomas Levin would become “the definitive [cinematographic] authority on what concerns the whole of the Situationist adventure.”148 Compared to Levin’s diligence, Debord felt that Marcus had only capitalized on early SI strategies such as dérive, détournement, and psychogeography rather than examining the totality of its theoretical and practical works. The resulting mess was for Debord “an overdose of confusionism” stemming from the adoption of an honestly “European” approach but without Marcus ever actually setting foot in Europe.149 Debord ultimately contacted Marcus while the latter was working on a second edition of the book. In his letter, Debord explained to Marcus that he understood the concept of a “personal” history of the twentieth century and broadly sympathized with his desire to uncover “long hidden” areas of revolutionary avant-garde art that Debord had already known so well.150 At the very least, Marcus’s original manuscript contained numerous factual errors that needed to be amended in the second edition of the book. To correct these deficiencies, Debord promised Marcus that he would send him “a document about this time”151 to help him better represent the SI’s second phase in more detail and clarity. In the end, Levin, Marcus, and French scholars such as Pascal Dumontier were, collectively, beginning to construct a comprehensive literary canon on the SI’s theoretical and practical activities. Given “the troubled period which is beginning again in the world,”152 Debord likely thought that it was up to him to step in and make sure that documentation regarding SI “history” was, once and for all, factual, objective, and accurate. Still, even after corresponding with Marcus and addressing some of the deficiencies evident in his original 1989 text, Debord still felt that the author’s “American interpretation”

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was, ultimately, “restrictive.”153 “In fact,” Debord later wrote to Japanese translator Makoto Kinoshita, [the restrictive American interpretation] unbalances the unity of the Situationists’ revolutionary point of view in social criticism and culture and actually benefits the latter. Even in culture this interpretation is still far too backward since it favors modern art forms which have only recently become known and well received in the United States.154

By comparison, in the fall of 1989 Debord read “quickly and with pleasure”155 another historical study of the SI, this one written by l’Université de Nanterres sociologist Pascal Dumontier and originally published in 1990 by Éditions Gérard Lebovici. In Debord’s opinion, Dumontier’s “important”156 book was the truest to date and a formidable response to the current status of historical explanations regarding the SI’s actions during the General Strike of 1968. In a letter to Dumontier,157 Debord appreciated the deeper significance of the epigraph that the author cited from The Real Split in the International to open the second part of his book: The occupations movement was the rough sketch of a “situationist” revolution, but it was no more than a rough sketch both as practice of revolution and as Situationist consciousness of history. It was at that moment internationally that a generation began to be situationist.158

What Debord meant by the crisis of the current status of historical explanations was a misunderstanding of the movement of history. Dumontier explicitly (and correctly, according to Debord) addressed the existence of this historical movement in his analysis of social and political events leading up to—and beyond—May 1968. For Debord, the General Strike represented the first serious historical blow against the globalist tendencies of Stalinism which were now historically threatening Moscow and Peking.159 Unlike American analyses of SI history as a past event, Dumontier’s social and cultural account is closer to a Hegelian view of historicism, in that the author examines the SI in relation to particular laws and values that were specific to that postwar period. While an historical account implies that events no longer exist and are no longer relevant to the present day, an historicist account, on the other hand, not only seeks to identify particular laws and values associated with a given historical period but also examines whether those laws and values continue to exist today in different forms. Given the difficulties Dumontier was experiencing in late 1990 trying to get his book published during the final days of Éditions Gérard Lebovici, Debord himself was beginning to wonder if “odious attempts” by the new temporary editors

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to halt its publication were actually a personal attack directed against him or against “the spirit of 1968.”160 The belief that a revolutionary spirit continued post-1968 is evident in so many letters that Debord wrote to friends and associates regarding social and political struggles in Spain, Italy, Portugal, and also, following the period between 1980 and 1982, in Poland. While he may have wished in 1967 for “ideas to become dangerous again”161 and to communicate them using “Heraclitean”162 terseness, Debord felt that the surrounding academic and intellectual world of the early 1990s was instead returning to uncritical thinking (empirical observation without reflection) that was not only dangerous but also highly effective in unquestioningly maintaining the spectacle.163 A certain way of thinking (“façon de penser”)164 critically and/or poetically about the world was no longer valued or possible. Critical theory for Debord had lost its principles of hope, its utopian impulse, to present the world not as it is but as it could be. “The history of past events is obviously linked to the knowledge, experiences, and discoveries of the present,” Debord wrote to Dumontier. “There is also a continual dialectic from one to the other of these terms, which often favors their reconsideration and enrichment.”165 What mattered for Debord (and, indirectly, for Dumontier) in the social-historical analysis of a particular historical moment was not only knowledge of individuals involved in that moment but, more importantly, what they thought, what they said, and what they did with what they knew.166 While writing Panegyric, Debord began to think more seriously about the relationship between thought and language, in its classical, modern, or slang (“argotique”) forms,167 as well as how these forms contain multiple meanings. In the case of a precise translation, for example, the information contained in a written or spoken statement is also contingent on the way it is expressed. The translator must not only consider the semantic meaning of words but also the form in which the sentence is written. A discourse may be genuinely ironic or facetious; the vocabulary may also allude affectively in an ironic or inappropriate manner to academic, legal, or military jargon. If a statement has two possible meanings, then the reader/listener must be ready to recognize and maintain both of them at the same time. A statement must be understood as entirely truthful in both senses.168 Taken as a discursive activity, this means that the totality of all possible meanings is its only truth.169 For Debord, whether reading written accounts of historical events or publishing a book, the definitive meaning of a text must be both allusive and elusive. The text must be full of allusions to a possible state of affairs, yet always slightly difficult to grasp. Panegyric represented an explicit attempt by Debord to write a so-called biography whose final meaning “remains in suspension.”170 The question of the relationship between language and meaning must be dealt with strategically: (1) by leaving open a potential for all possible

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meanings that are implied by a given statement, (2) by its deliberate choice of words (including jargon or slang), and (3) by its context. The text must be read dialectically, keeping in mind “this continual shift in meaning”171 (“glissement continuel du sens”) between words, phrases, and paragraphs. In Panegyric, Debord sought to exploit a view originally proposed by Russian linguist V. N. Vološinov that “the forms of signs are conditioned above all by the social organization of the participants involved and also by the immediate conditions of their interaction.”172 Without specifically referring to Vološinov’s merging of linguistics and Marxism, Debord was pointing to the belief that language is the medium of ideology and cannot be separated from ideology. “Without signs,” writes Vološinov, “there is no ideology.”173 Moreover, as a socially constructed sign system, language allows consciousness to arise in the first place and manifest itself as a material reality. “Every ideological sign is not only a reflection, a shadow, of reality,” writes Vološinov, “but is also itself a segment of that very reality.” In Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, Vološinov explains that each sign has its own orientation toward reality. Within the domain of signs—i.e., within the ideological sphere—profound differences exist: it is, after all, the domain of the artistic image, the religious symbol, the scientific formula, and the judicial ruling, etc. Each field of ideological creativity has its own kind of orientation toward reality, and each refracts reality in its own way. Each field commands its own special function within the unity of social life. But it is their semiotic character that places all ideological phenomena under the same general definition.174

In the early 1990s, Debord and Alice Becker-Ho continued their independent reassessment of the pragmatic dimension of language by exploring the social and cultural impact of argot, an idiomatic language that is specific to a professional or social environment. Argot can be the language of professionals (e.g., technical terms, acronyms) that separates those in the know from those who are not, and hence reinforces a technical world based on a division of labor.175 But, in an entirely different social context, argot refers to the language of “the dangerous classes.”176 This second notion is the one that concerns us most. In a biography on his friendship with Debord in the early 1950s, Jean-Michel Mension recalls how the existence of reformatories in France “made a social issue of the ‘crime’ of being young.”177 Debord and his friends decided at an early age that, if they were going to be treated by the system as criminals just for being young and unemployed, then they would speak and act accordingly, and occasionally indulge in petty crimes (e.g., theft or public drunkenness): “We were never anything but petty thieves,” adds Mension, “we never committed many crimes.”178 What is paramount here is not that members of the LI engaged in petty crimes, but that they viewed themselves

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as maintaining via language a similar relationship to society as the Parisian criminal underground. What is critical to our understanding of Debord’s politics of communication is the manner in which he viewed the use of argot as emblematic of a different “dangerous class,” in this case, a group of politically minded individuals engaged in a unitary critique of the modern world, yet who wished to coexist autonomously within that same social world. To be clear, argot refers to a “community of beggars using a secret language to communicate with one another.”179 Debord long considered secrecy as a necessary component in communications between revolutionaries, especially given the increased police surveillance he had already experienced regarding telephone calls and the interception of personal correspondences. Debord saw in Becker-Ho’s investigation “something completely true”180 and necessary in the social and historical use of argot. Given its function as a secret language indigenously constructed by its users, the use of argot exemplified Debord’s interest in the way “native” language explicitly subverted “spectacular” communication through multiplicity, irony, ambiguity, and an intentional veneer of impenetrability. In The Essence of Jargon (originally published by Gallimard in 1994), Becker-Ho argues that argot is a secretive and deliberately manipulated language. Argot is designed to communicate only with those individuals who are capable of deciphering its cryptic content. For our purposes, we must remember that “argot chooses its words according to a scale that reflects its vision of the world.”181 If Merleau-Ponty is correct to state that language itself is the basis of social reality, then it should be possible to use language to construct a unique social reality that exists apart of the integrated spectacle. If we pursue the notion of argot as a practical and discursive entity a little further, we can also see that it also reflects Debord’s utopian desire to use language to bring-into-being new forms of social life and new relationships within it. As he wrote in The Society of the Spectacle, argot is “a praxis that unifies direct activity with its own appropriate language.”182 Although we will return in our conclusion to Becker-Ho’s book, it is clear that the ideas discussed in The Essence of Jargon provide us with key concepts that clarify Debord’s politics of communication and their practical, avant-garde application in the disruption of the integrated spectacle. Argot in general, and slang in particular, offers unique ways of thinking about the role of language in positing a vision of social reality and of social living.183 “I believe Alice has really blazed a new and important path,” Debord wrote to Paolo Salvadori, “to the point where all of us meet the problems of dangerous classes and secret languages: you measure how topical it is!”184 A few days later, Debord made a similar statement to Jean-François Martos: “I believe Alice started with a masterstroke, clearing a direct path to the very center where the question of dangerous classes and that of secret languages

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are linked.”185 A couple of years later, Debord referred once again to BeckerHo’s book when he wrote to Michel Bounan, “Alice brilliantly continues her research on jargon. Me too, but it’s less pleasant; it’s on the dissolution of the world.”186 Debord understood that in unhappy times such as his own, it was undoubtedly preferable to be as close as possible to that which threatened him most. It was also about not giving up or giving in. As he wrote to his friend Annie Le Brun, “It’s about being able to be and to be respected,”187 But it is also about being understood. Because slang is a language of “conflict,”188 it must be used strategically. It is in the notion of language-as-praxis that argot most resembles another type of linguistic détournement: as Alice Becker-Ho explains, “the essence of jargon is deceit laid bare and then turned on its head.”189 In the last few years before he ended his life, Debord appeared resigned to the passive and uncritical state of the “spectacular” world and to a limited potential for the future of revolutionary thought. As far as he was concerned, the more SI texts could be disseminated around the world, the better chance there would be to lay the groundwork for future revolutionary activities. But, to begin with, he still needed to extricate himself from “enemy hands,”190 as he described his withering relationship with the transitional editorial staff at Éditions Gérard Lebovici. With the help of author Jean-Jacques Pauvert,191 Debord was soon able to secure a publishing deal with Gallimard.192 He also legally prohibited his previous publisher from releasing the second volume of Panegyric.193 In addition, Debord was very pleased with Giorgio Agamben’s Italian translation of La société du spectacle, as well as Makoto Kinoshita’s Japanese translation of many crucial SI texts. In December 1993, Debord contacted Anselm Jappe to thank him for his new and “interesting” book.194 “I appreciate your level of thought, your information, and the sympathetic understanding which you show toward me,” he wrote to Jappe. “You stand out extraordinarily from all the other texts dealing with the subject.”195 Debord sent Jappe a copy of his latest book Panégyrique, along with a recent reissue of Mémoires, to help him clarify a few points that the latter had dealt with in his book. In March 1994, Debord wrote to Algerian-born writer Morgan Sportès to thank him for his insightful essay “Guy, d’abord” (“Guy, First of All”) in Les Lettres Françaises (October 1992).196 “I believe that no one today is better qualified than you to show, in a few words, that which may be characterized as my style.”197 In his final book Cette mauvaise réputation, a malevolent testimonial to the so-called French disinformation media experts, Debord singled out Sportès as a bona-fide writer rather than a hack journalist.198 In the aforementioned letter to Sportès, Debord also described Jappe as a “very cultured German” whose study dedicated to him was quite “thought-provoking.”199 “I think this Jappe was a little too consistently complimentary,” he

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wrote to Sportès, “and yet he gives me the impression of being the observer who up to now has understood me best.”200 In a later letter to Makoto Kinoshita, Debord reiterated Jappe’s study as arguably the best-informed book written by a German openly arguing from a Hegelian-Marxist point of view.201 In April 1994, Debord once again reminded Jappe of how much he appreciated the well-informed aspects of his book and the excellent level of his theoretical thinking. “Your objectivity makes a pleasant contrast,” he admitted to Jappe, “after all the extravagant misunderstandings calculated first by contemporaries. I even find that you were perhaps a little too lenient with me.”202 Despite the positive outlook Debord may have expressed privately regarding new publications on the SI, something was not right with the world. To be understood was one thing, to be uncritically accepted was another. First of all, despite terrorist activities in Italy, and civil unrest in Spain and Portugal, censorship directed against revolutionary thought in both France and the rest of Western Europe ironically appeared to soften during the post-SI years. Compared to the politically charged 1960s, Debord’s name could now circulate freely “in the most official circles.”203 The resulting situation was rather dubious. “I don’t believe that man is progressing, at least now” he wrote to author Ricardo Paseyro. “I think he’s freed himself from various things, but surely not the most dreadful.”204 Debord had taken his films out of circulation following Gérard Lebovici’s murder, and his books were still difficult to obtain in France. Yet, for Debord, the fact remained that media discussion of his work was proof that censorship no longer existed in its previous form. Had he and his revolutionary ideas finally been co-opted and vulgarized by the spectacle? Into this contentious realm of so-called intellectual freedom, Debord authorized Éditions Larousse to reproduce articles that they had already cited from the Internationale Situationniste journals in preparation for Le siècle rebelle: Dictionnaire de la Contestation au XX Siècle (The Rebellious Century: Dictionary of Contestation in the XX Century, Larousse, 1999),205 a scholarly assessment of individual and collective revolts that had occurred during the twentieth century. In a final conciliatory gesture to the growing media interest in his life and work, but tempered to reveal to the public no more than necessary, Debord placed his implicit trust in Brigitte Cornand, a young Parisian filmmaker who would go on to create a television documentary film for Canal Plus, Guy Debord, son art et son temps (Guy Debord, His Art and Times, 1994). I use the term “implicit trust” because Debord felt reasonably confident with the fact that Canal Plus had the means and the budget to mount an evening-long retrospective of his life and work. He also felt comfortable working with Cornand and Canal Plus because of their association with Paul Destribats, a French collector of the twentieth-century avant-garde art, books, and manuscripts. Debord had confidence in Destribats’s knowledge and taste regarding

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art and literature.206 Once Debord finally overcame his initial hesitation and agreed to the retrospective, Cornand showed him how to navigate through the bureaucratic-commercial labyrinth that constituted Canal Plus and the world of film rights and royalties.207 In return, he agreed to the production and exhibition of Cornand’s one-hour documentary on the premium television channel. To be clear, Debord’s involvement in the project was comprehensive. For example, he expressed in very specific terms how he wished his work to be publicly received or interpreted. I will indicate to you—or sometimes will provide to you directly—all the elements, visual and auditory, which will be exactly necessary to fulfill this intention. I will guarantee the relevance of these elements, and the authenticity of their use to effectively deal with the subject: a precious thing since we know how polluted it has been by so many legends. You will be solely responsible for the adequate means of this realization; without any intervention, restriction, or comment from anyone else. I don’t want to hear, nor want you to hear from yourself, any kind of remark, even laudatory one (“même élogieuse”). It would be unthinkable that I implicitly recognize whoever it may be, nor the slightest quality to judge anything of my work or my conduct.208

Although Debord agreed under certain conditions to the production and exhibition of a documentary on his art and times, memories of previous negative experiences with French media were never far from his mind. Issues of trust had never been fully resolved to his satisfaction. Debord expressed to JeanJacques Pauvert concern that the subject matter “must already add a few uncertainties and perplexities among our partners, because I do not believe that there can be discretion in such circles.”209 Debord remembered a similar overture made the year before by Canal Plus to mount a similar television event, but that their program scheduling was no longer compatible with the subject matter. Although the channel later reconsidered their decision, Debord made it clear to Cornand that it was he who had the final say in all future decisions regarding the likelihood of such a program.210 Eventually, Debord overcame his justified fear and began working more closely with Cornand in picking font sizes and styles for the main title, the length of intertitles,211 incidental music, and various photos or film clips from his own films. In the end, Cornand’s documentary film ended up being a very close collaboration between her and Debord, with the latter helping to orchestrate the overall style and content of the production. He was especially concerned with the “Acknowledgment” and “Special Thanks” sections at the end of the film because he wished to group together names according to “artistic value.” Debord welcomed the fact that composer and accordionist Lino Léonardi had agreed to contribute original music for the soundtrack. Debord not only found Léornardi’s music à propos to the subject matter, but he also found

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the sound of the accordion as a musical bridge to a distant past. “This music seems to me to be in perfect harmony with [15th century French poet and criminal François] Villon and the very spirit of its time; as also of ours,” he explained to Léonardi. “The accordion always brings us back to the moving presence of hoodlums of Paris, among whom I flatter myself that I could be ranked.”212 After hearing Léonardi’s completed soundtrack, Debord found it to be “magnifique” and “exactly what [he] wished.”213 Yet, a month before taking his own life, an act Byung-Chul Han has called the most radical rejection possible of capitalist production” because “it challenges the system of production,”214 Debord wrote to Ricardo Paseyro and included in his letter a lengthy passage from William Byron’s 1988 biography on Miguel de Cervantes. In it, he pointed out how the sixteenth-century Spanish poet Alonso Alvarez de Soria, a Spanish version of François Villon in Debord’s estimation, suffered from a neurocognitive disorder (“maladie de la corde”)215 similar to Parkinson’s Disease. Debord too was now suffering from a similar neurocognitive disorder resulting in a form of polyneuritis that was affecting his nervous system. He was also suffering from severe depression brought on by the realization that, no matter how radical a project may be at the outset, all agents of revolutionary thought will eventually be co-opted by the “spectacular” machinery and commodified for future consumption. Given that we know Debord took his own life only three weeks after writing his letter to Paseyro, the poem he cites by Alvarez de Soria could have been written by Debord himself. They give me three hours to live, those who want to escort me to death, and as the road is long, they insist on leaving early… Ah, how short the time left! Who owes so much can never pay but a little!216

NOTES 1. Guy Debord, letter to Jaap Kloosterman (23 February 1981) in Correspondance, volume 6: janvier 1979–décembre 1987, edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2006), 86. 2. Ibid. Debord mentions the letter he sent to Kloosterman to Luc Mercier in a letter dated March 4, 198l. 3. Ibid. Debord, letter to Mikis Anastassiadis (25 June 1981), 152–153. 4. Ibid., Debord, letter to Miguel Amoros (13 August 1981), 169. 5. Uli Schmetzer, “France Runs Out of Patience” (21 September 1986) in Chicago Tribune (online edition), para. 11. https://www​.chicagotribune​.com​/news​/ct​ -xpm​-1986​-09​-21​-8603100536​-story​.html.

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6. Ibid. 7. Debord, letter to Thierry Lévy (12 June 1984) in Correspondance, volume 6 (2006), 271. 8. Debord, letter to Paolo Salvadori (29 January 1990) in Correspondance, volume 7 janvier 1988–novembre 1994, edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2008), 167. 9. Ibid., Debord, letter to Annie Le Brun (4 October 1989), 111. 10. T. J. Clark in Anselm Jappe, Guy Debord, translated by Donald NicholsonSmith, Foreword by T. J. Clark (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2018), xv. 11. Ibid., Debord, letter to Paolo Salvadori (29 January 1990), 169. 12. On the notion of criticism as anti-progressive and reactionary, see Gunther Anders, L’Obsolescence de l’homme: Sur l’âme à l’époque de la deuxième revolution industrielle (The Obsolescence of Man: On the Soul during the Era of the Second Industrial Revolution, originally published in 1956), (Paris: Éditions Ivrea, 2002), 18–19. 13. Debord, letter to Jean-François Martos (24 February 1990) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 182–183. 14. Ibid., Debord, letter to Annie Le Brun (4 October 1989) 15. Ibid., Debord, letter to Paolo Salvadori (30 November 1979), 44. 16. Ibid., Debord, letter to Gérard Lebovici (7 February 1979), 15. 17. Debord, letter to Anita Blanc (29 September 1989) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 110. 18. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jean-François Martos (24 February 1990), 179, 181. 19. Ibid., Debord, letter to Annie Le Brun (23 April 1991), 280. 20. Debord, letter to Mikis Anastassiadis (5 August 1980) in Correspondance, volume 6 (2006), 65. 21. Ibid., Debord, letter to Gérard Lebovici (29 March 1980), 51. 22. Debord, “Préface à la quatrième edition italienne de La Société du Spectacle” in Œuvres, edition established and annotated by Jean-Louis Rançon in collaboration with Alice Debord (Paris: Quarto Gallimard, 2006), 1471. 23. Ibid., Debord, letter to Giorgio Agamben (16 February 1990), 172. 24. Ibid., Debord, letter to Paolo Salvadori (7 February 1979), 16. 25. Debord, “Préface” in Œuvres (2006), 1464. 26. Debord, letter to Paolo Salvadori (7 February 1979) in Correspondance, volume 6 (2006), 16. 27. Debord in Œuvres (2006), 1465. 28. Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, translated and annotated by Ken Knabb (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2014), 2 29. Debord, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, translated by Malcolm Imrie (London: Verso Books, 1998), 8. 30. Roy Ascott, “Towards a Field Theory for Postmodern Art” (1980) in Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness, edited with an essay by Edward A. Shanken (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2003), 178. 31. Debord, letter to Paolo Salvadori (7 February 1979) in Correspondance, volume 6 (2006), 19.

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32. Debord in Œuvres (2006), 1466. 33. David Grossman, “On This Day 25 Years Ago, the Web Became Public Domain,” Popular Mechanic online version, April 30, 2018. https://www​.popularmechanics​.com​/culture​/web​/a20104417​/www​-public​-domain/ 34. Daniel Bell in Simon Nora and Alain Minc, The Computerization of Society: A Report to the President of France, Introduction by Daniel Bell, translation by MIT (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1980), vii. 35. Ibid., xiv. 36. Nora and Minc (1980), 2. 37. Darin L., “Rise of Robots - Jobs Lost to Automation Statistics in 2023” in Leftronics, March 07, 2023. https://leftronic​.com​/blog​/jobs​-lost​-to​-automation​-statistics/#:~​:text​=A​%202017​%20McKinsey​%20Global​%20Institute​,robots​%20in​%20the​ %20coming​%20years. 38. Ibid., 10. 39. Ibid. 40. Debord, letter to Miguel Amoros (13 August 19810 in Correspondance, volume 6 (2006), 168. See also Debord’s letter to Jean-François Martos (19 December 1986), 450. 41. Ibid., Debord, letter to Floriana Lebovici (2 October 1985), 353. 42. Ibid., Debord, letter to Christian Sébastiani and Jaime Semprun (9 May 1984), 268. 43. Ibid. 44. Debord, letter to Malcolm Imrie (28 June 1990) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 207. 45. Debord, letter to Jaime Semprun (4 May 1986) in Correspondance, volume 6 (2006), 421. 46. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jaime Semprun (28 March 1986), 395. 47. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jaime Semprun (30 September 1985), 352. 48. Nora and Minc (1980), 11. 49. Debord, letter to Gérard Lebovici (12 November 1979) in Correspondance, volume 6 (2006), 36. 50. Jorge Manrique, Stanza III, Coplas a la muerte de su padre. https://www​ .cervantesvirtual​.com​/obra​-visor​/obra​-completa-​-0​/html​/ff6c9480​-82b1​-11df​-acc7​ -002185ce6064​_5​.html 51. Andy Merrifield, Guy Debord (London: Reaktion Books, 2005), 134. 52. Jappe (2018), 116. 53. Manrique, Stanza XXX. https://www​.cervantesvirtual​.com​/obra​-visor​/obra​ -completa-​-0​/html​/ff6c9480​-82b1​-11df​-acc7​-002185ce6064​_5​.html 54. Jappe (2018), 117. 55. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jean-Paul Iommi-Amunategui (9 March 1986), 386. 56. Debord, “Note de couverture rédigée” in Protestation devant les libertaires du présent et du futur sur les capitulations de 1937 (Paris: Champ Libre, 1979), abridged online version, https://inventin.lautre.net/livres/Incontrole-Protestationdevant-les-libertaires.pdf.

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57. Debord, letter to Jaime Semprun (5 March 1985) in Correspondance, volume 6 (2006), 309. 58. Ibid., Debord, letter to Gérard Lebovici (9 November 1980), 69. See also Debord’s letter to Lebovici (15 September 1980), 67. 59. Situationist International, “Instructions for an Insurrection” (1961) in Knabb (2006), 84. 60. Ibid., 85. 61. Ibid., 86. 62. Debord, letter to Gérard Lebovici (18 January 1981) in Correspondance, volume 6 (2006), 77. 63. Ibid., Debord, letter to Gérard Lebovici (11 March 1981), 97. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid., Debord, letter to Miguel Amoros (4 June 1981), 133. 68. “Faire la java” (“Have a coffee”) refers to the act of getting together socially to have a pleasant conversation. https://www.linternaute.fr/dictionnaire/fr/definition/ faire-la-java/ 69. Patrick Mosconi, timetable for 1974 in Correspondance, volume 5 janvier 1973 – décembre 1978, series edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2005), 117. Debord briefly mentions the record title in a letter to Jacques Le Glou (10 September 1974), 203. 70. Debord, letter to Miguel Amoros (4 June 1981) in Correspondance, volume 6 (2006), 133. 71. Ibid., 134–135. 72. Ibid., 135. 73. Ibid., Debord, letter to Thierry Lévy (23 March 1984), 256. 74. Debord, letter to Ivan Chtcheglov (Saturday, 30? possibly 1952) in Le Marquis de Sade a des yeux de filles (2004), edited by Patrick Mosconi (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2004), 133. 75. Ibid., Debord, letter to Gérard Lebovici (18 January 1981), 78. 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid., Debord, letter to Thierry Lévy (30 March 1984), 259. 78. Ibid., Debord, letter to Thierry Lévy (18 March 1985), 311. 79. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jaime Semprun (13 February 1986), 382. 80. Debord, letter to Jean-François Martos (26 December 1990) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 237. 81. Ibid., Debord, letter to Floriana Lebovici (5 March 1986) in Correspondance, volume 6 (2006), 385. In the same letter, Debord also mentions Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister who was assassinated on February 28, 1986. What was particularly painful for Debord was the fact that Palme was an anti-globalist, as well as an anticolonialist, who favored indigenous liberation movements and financial support for developing nations in the Third World. 82. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jaime Semprun (5 March 1985), 310. 83. Debord, letter to Michel Bounan (23 March 1991) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 269.

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84. Debord and Gil J Wolman, “Pourquoi le Lettrisme?” in Potlatch No. 22 (9 September 1955), Potlatch (1954-1957) (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 185. 85. Sylvano Santini, “À toi de jouer: Échange et mésentente entre Guy Debord et Patrick Straham” (“It's Up to You: Exchange and Disagreement between Guy Debord and Patrick Straham”) in Debord, Guy and Patrick Straram. D’une revolution à l’autre: Correspondance Debord-Straram suivi de Cahier pour un paysage à inventer et autres textes, edited by Sylvano Santini (Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2023), 64. 86. Debord, notes for Mezioud (December 1985) in Correspondance, volume 6 (2006), 364. 87. Ibid. 88. Ibid., Debord, letter Jaap Kloosterman (2 July 1981), 153. 89. Ibid., Debord, letter to Reine (21 January 1981), 79. 90. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jean-François Martos (21 October 1982), 224. 91. Ibid., Debord, letter to Michel Prigent (22 May 1981), 120. 92. Ibid. Debord, letter to Jaap Kloosterman (23 February 1981), 84. 93. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jaap Kloosterman (12 May 1981), 114. 94. Ibid. 95. Debord, “Report on the Construction of Situations” (1957) in Knabb (2006), 43. 96. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy? translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 28. 97. “There is not such thing as situationism, or a situationist work of art, or a spectacular situationist. Once and for all.” Situationist International, “The Fifth SI Conference in Götenborg (excerpts)” (1962) in Knabb (2006), 115. 98. Debord, “Report on the Construction of Situations” (1957) in Knabb (2006), 43.42. 99. Ibid. 100. Debord, “À propos de quelques erreurs d’interprétation” (“Regarding a Few Errors of Interpretation”) (June 1960) in Internationale Situationniste No. 4 (2021), 33. 101. Ibid. 102. Debord, letter to Jaap Kloosterman (26 March 1982) in Correspondance, volume 6 (2006), 211. 103. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jaap Kloosterman (12 May 1981), 114. 104. Debord, letter to Nicole Debrie (26 December 1988) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 56–57. Although Debord was discussing the French novelist LouisFerdinand Céline, his comment to Debrie that “a really very dark time, which, by the way, is getting even worse before our eyes” is more likely a reference to contemporary French society. 105. Debord, letter to Jaap Kloosterman (12 May 1981) in Correspondance, volume 6 (2006), 114. 106. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jaime Semprun (28 March 1986), 393. 107. Ibid., Debord, letter to Miguel Amoros (13 August 1981), 170. 108. At the same time, Debord was also working for Lebovici as an editor.

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109. Debord, letter to Gérard Voitey (19 January 1991) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 245. 110. Ibid. 111. Ibid., Debord, letter to Yves Cournot (9 April 1991), 274. 112. Ibid., Debord, letter to Éditions Gérard Lebovici (19 February 1991), 261. 113. Ibid., Debord, letter to Gérard Voitey (25 August 1990), 213. 114. Ibid., Debord, letter to Anita Blanc (9 January 1990), 161. 115. Ibid. See also Debord, letter to Anita Blanc (12 January 1990), 162–163. In the second letter, Debord warns Anita Blanc, a former employee at Éditions Champs Libre and Gérard Lebovici, that her publishing house is likely dealing with “imposters,” which might explain the “insolent” behavior of the Zone editors. 116. Ibid., Debord, letter to Malcolm Imrie (13 April 1990), 197. 117. Ibid., Debord, letter to Malcolm Imrie (8 September 1990), 215. See also Debord, letter to Paolo Salvadori (12 September 1990), 217. 118. Ibid., Debord, letter to Gérard Voitey (13 April 1990), 197. 119. Debord, letter to Gérard Lebovici (29 November 1978) in Correspondance, volume 5 (2005), 488. 120. Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (2 May 1974) in Correspondance, volume 5 (2005), 148. 121. Debord, “Considérations sur l’Assassinat de Lebovici” in Œuvres (2006), 1539. 122. Ibid., 1570. 123. Ken Knabb, Preface to Situationist International Anthology (2006), x. 124. Ibid. 125. Ibid., 1543. 126. Debord, letter to Gianfranco Sanguinetti (10 October 1975) in Correspondance, volume 5 (2005), 298. Debord learned of Bandini’s SI study when she contacted him to ask for Sanguinetti’s address. Since her book on the SI was published in Italy in 1977, Bandini also was published in 2008 Il mito situazionista della città (The Situationist Myth of the City). In 2003, she also wrote Pour une histoire du lettrisme (For a History of Letterism). 127. Mirella Bandini, L’Esthétique, Le Politique: De Cobra à l’Internationale Situationniste (1948-1957) (Sulliver Via Valeriano: Paris, 1998), 346–347. 128. Debord, letter to Thomas Levin (29 May 1987) in Correspondance, volume 6 (2006), 473. 129. Ibid. 130. Debord, letter to Anita Blanc (28 June 1989) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 95. 131. Ibid., Debord, letter to Thomas Levin (24 April 1989), 82. 132. Jappe’s book was originally published in Italy in 1992 and then in France in 1993. 133. Jappe (2018), 111. 134. Ibid. 135. Pheng Cheah, “World against Globe: Toward a Normative Conception of World Literature” New Literary History, Vol. 45(3), summer 2014, 322.

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136. Debord, letter to Thomas Levin (24 April 1989) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 82. 137. Ibid., Debord, letter to Thomas Levin (31 May 1989), 89. 138. Debord and Gil J Wolman, “A User's Guide to Détournement” (1956) in Knabb (2006), 15–16. 139. Reading Correspondance volume 7 and knowing essentially “how it ends,” I was reminded of a similar experience reading Luis Buñuel’s 1982 autobiography Mon dernier soupir (My Last Breath) in late July 1983. The last chapter was entitled “Le chant du cygne” (“Swansong”), in which Buñuel rails against nuclear destruction, overpopulation, science, technology, and the media. Yet, due to his advanced age and increasing serious health issues, Buñuel was also taking the time “to say goodbye to everything—to the mountains, the streams, the trees, even the frogs.” His only fear was dying while there was still so much going on. I finished reading Buñuel’s book in late July 1983—he died a few days later on 29 July in Mexico City. See Luis Buñuel, My Last Breath, translated by Abigail Israel (London: Fontana Books, 1985), 255. 140. Jean-Michel Mension, The Tribe translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2001), 126. 141. Debord, “De l’architecture sauvage” in Debord (2006), 1194. 142. Debord, letter to Thomas Levin (5 June 1989) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 91. 143. Debord, “Les Thèses de Hambourg en semptembre 1961” in Debord (2006), 585. 144. Ibid. 145. Ibid., 586. 146. Debord, letter to Thomas Levin (1 September 1989) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 106. The “Hamburg Theses” are reproduced in a letter to Thomas Levin (November 1989), 139–142. Debord uses the English term ”scoop” in the original French. 147. Ibid., Debord, letter to Gilles Cahoreau (6 April 1989), 79, note 7. 148. Ibid., Debord, letter to Thomas Levin (23 October 1989), 117. 149. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jean-François Martos (12 July 1989), 99. To be clear, Marcus’s “European” sensibility resulted partly from a personal reaction to a global shift toward the political right and partly to the realization that American culture did not possess the same kind of subversive tendencies that constituted the history of European avant-garde art and politics. 150. Ibid., Debord, letter to Greil Marcus (2 September 1989), 107. 151. Ibid. Neither Debord nor series editor Patrick Mosconi identifies the particular text in question. However, a brief comparison between “Works Cited” in the 1st edition of Lipstick Traces and “Works Cited and Sighted” in the 2nd edition features a number of new entries including “The Situationists and the New Action Forms in Politics and Art” (Denmark: Galerie EXI, 1963), Panégyrique I (Paris: Éditions Lebovici, 1989) and II (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), Correspondance, vols. 1–7 (Paris: Fayard, 1999–2008), Le marquis de Sade a des yeux de fille (Paris: Fayard, 2004), and Œuvres (Paris: Gallimard, 2006).

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152. Debord, letter to Anita Blanc (20 November 1989) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 137. 153. Ibid., Debord, letter to Makoto Kinoshita (13 July 1994), 457. 154. Ibid. 155. Ibid., Debord, letter to Anita Blanc (23 October 1989), 116. 156. Ibid. 157. Ibid., Debord, letter Pascal Dumontier (24 October 1989), 118. 158. Debord and Gianfranco Sanguinetti, The Real Split in the International: Theses on the Situationist International and its Time, 1972, translated by John McHale (London: Pluto Press, 2003), 11. 159. Debord, letter to Pascal Dumontier (31 May 1990) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 201. 160. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jean-François Martos (26 December 1990), 236. 161. Situationist International, “Our Goals and Methods in the Strasbourg Scandal” (1967) in Knabb (2006), 272. 162. Debord, letter to Giorgio Agamben (6 August 1990) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 212. 163. Ibid., Debord, letter to Michel Bounan (1 July 1991), 290. 164. Ibid., Debord, letter to Annie Le Brun (9 October 1992), 370. 165. Ibid., Debord, letter Pascal Dumontier (24 October 1989), 118. 166. Ibid. 167. Ibid., Debord, letter to Anita Blanc (6 November 1989), 130. 168. Ibid., 129. 169. Ibid. 170. Ibid., 130. 171. Ibid. 172. V. N. Vološinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, translated by Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 21, italics in the original. 173. Ibid., 9. 174. Ibid., 10–11, italics in the original. 175. Alice Becker-Ho, The Essence of Jargon, translated by John McHale, Introduction by Roger Farr (Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 2015), 65. 176. Debord, letter to Macolm Imrie (28 June 1990) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 205. 177. Mension (2001), 37. 178. Ibid., 74. 179. Becker-Ho (2015), 64, my emphasis. 180. Debord, letter to Jean-Jacques Pauvert (5 January 1992) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 328. 181. Ibid., 65. 182. Debord (2014), sec. 187. 183. Becker-Ho (2015), 50. 184. Ibid., Debord, letter to Paolo Salvadori (19 December 1990) (2008), 227. 185. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jean-François Martos (26 December 1990), 233.

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186. Debord, letter to Michel Bounan (29 January 1992) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 332. 187. Debord, letter to Annie Le Brun and Radovan Ivsic (14 March 1993) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 332 188. Becker-Ho (2015), 74. 189. Ibid., 76. 190. Debord, letter to Annie Le Brun (11 May 1991) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 285. 191. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jean-Jacques Pauvert (5 January 1992), 327–330. 192. Ibid., Debord, letter to Antoine Gallimard (15 May 1992), 342. 193. Ibid., Debord, letter to Éditions Gérard Lebovici (19 February 1991), 261. 194. Ibid., Debord, letter to Anselm Jappe (3 December 1993), 441. 195. Ibid. 196. Ibid., Debord, letter to Morgan Sportès (24 March 1994), 450. 197. Ibid. 198. Debord, Cette mauvaise reputation (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), 87–88. 199. Debord, letter to Morgan Sportès (24 March 1994) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 450. 200. Ibid. 201. Ibid., Debord, letter to Makoto Kinoshita (5 April 1994), 453. 202. Ibid., Debord, letter to Anselm Jappe (21 April 1994), 454–455. 203. Ibid., Debord, letter to Ricardo Paseyro (12 March 1993), 397. 204. Ibid. 205. The Dictionnaire contains a separate entry on Guy Debord (pp. 169–170) and a general one on the SI (pp. 300–302). 206. Ibid., Debord, letter to Brigitte Cornand (8 October 1992), 369. 207. Ibid., Debord, letter to Brigitte Cornand (9 July 1992), 352. 208. Ibid, Debord, letter to Brigitte Cornand (27 March 1993), 404. 209. Ibid., Debord, letter to Jean-Jacques Pauvert (23 April 1993), 411. 210. Ibid., Debord, letter to Brigitte Cornand (7 October 1993), 434. 211. Debord requested to Cornand that the following intertitle, occurring roughly ten minutes into the film, should unroll extremely slowly: “I will write my thoughts on purpose in order and without confusion. If they are right, the first coming will be the consequence of the others. This is the real order.” See Debord, letter to Brigitte Cornand (27 October 1994) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 466, note 3. 212. Ibid., Debord, letter to Lino Léonardi (6 October 1994), 464. 213. Ibid., Debord, letter to Lino Léonardi (8 November 1994), 468. 214. Byung-Chul Han, The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present, translated by Daniel Steuer (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020), 53. 215. Debord, letter to Ricardo Paseyro (2 November 1994) in Correspondance, volume 7 (2008), 467. 216. Ibid.

Conclusions

In order to conclude our study of Guy Debord’s politics of communication, we need to address five specific areas of interest that work together to create a comprehensive understanding of how language and communication function critically to undermine the integrated spectacle. Briefly, these five areas are (1) language and the social construction of individuals in a late-capitalist society, (2) Debord’s original avant-garde program, (3) his ideology of horizontalism, (4) his concept of a “literary communism,” and, finally, (5) his desire to unmoor the meaning of words. Together, these five areas will help us to formulate a better and more conceptual understanding of how Debord views language as linked to new forms of social life.1 Creating new forms of social life was the paradigmatic goal of Debord’s revolutionary program. The first issue we will examine is the role of language in the social reality of individuals in late-capitalist society. Given the difficulties in maintaining dialogical forms of communication using a monological version of capitalist language (“the language of manufacturing”), we may conclude that Debord was primarily concerned with conveying in and through “native” language the negative, destructive energy of critical-dialectical thought. Critical language not only needs to be self-generated by its users (rather than “borrowed” from advertising or pop culture), but it also needs to be confrontational in order to expose the insurmountable contradictions within capitalist society. “In the language of contradiction,” writes Debord, “the critique of culture is a unified critique, in that it dominates the whole of culture—its knowledge as well as its poetry—and in that it no longer separates itself from a critique of the social totality.”2 In The Society of the Spectacle, Debord asserts that “critical theory must communicate itself in its own language—the language of contradiction, which must be dialectical in both form and content.”3 The self-generated 213

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language of critical theory must aesthetically “terrorize” conventional ways of thinking, speaking, and being (esp., habitual behavior). Its target is a spectacular economy that is directly linked to the fabrication of false habits that manipulate individuals into repressing their own desires.4 “The spectacular consumption that preserves past culture in congealed form, including co-opted rehashes of its negative manifestations,” explains Debord, “gives overt expression in its cultural sector to what implicitly is in its totality: the communication of the incommunicable.”5 Individuals reserve the right to communicate thoughts, hopes, and desires that are otherwise counterintuitive to the smooth functioning of the capitalist “culture” machine. At the heart of Debord’s view of critical language is the notion that radicalized individuals need to learn how to correctly identify and express their own authentic desires rather than those generated in and through the spectacular-commodity matrix of an unlivable world. For Hegel, the determination of the negative is activity, creation, and power; it is the bringing forth of an Other.6 For our purposes, the bringing forth of “an Other” not only includes the oppositional activities of radical subjectivity but also the subsequent coming-into-being through language of alternative forms of thinking and sociability. For Debord, an autonomous, radical subject must consciously communicate in the “native” language of real life, or the popular language of reality. Henri Lefebvre argues that if we privilege language, then we privilege consciousness; we fetishize the latter into a thing and give it an independent existence.7 Through the power of the negative, Debord maintains that the radical speaking subject can struggle to realize an ideal. Through the use of a deliberately ironic language, Debord and the Situationists explored the reality of an ephemeral, “lived utopia” that exists beyond the alienating structures of the modern spectacle. Irony works in a positive and constructive manner (i.e., the creation of a Utopian otherness), as well as in a negative and destructive manner, especially against the “one-sidedly serious”8 face of the spectacle. According to Lefebvre, irony as a method is a truer way of thinking and speaking about the social world than modernism’s manic desire for a perpetual present-ness. Like Debord, Lefebvre views irony as “the opening out of the field of possibilities in the modern world, of their multiplicity, of the necessity of opting and the risk every option involves.”9 Through irony, we can grasp the “aleatory in modernism.”10 From Ivan Chtcheglov’s original request to build a small situation without a future,11 Debord followed suit and created for himself “a small situation” by intentionally communicating with others in a language rife with irony, parody, contradiction, and incongruity. As Debord wrote in December 1959, “The constructor of situations, to use a word from Marx, ‘by acting through his [sic] movements on the external nature and by transforming it

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.  .  . transforms at the same time his own nature.’”12 The use of irony was for Debord a personal act of defiance; it was the language of a “universal agitator.”13 This is how we should regard Debord’s ironic use of language. It is explicitly designed to undermine the monological, unidirectional communication channels of the spectacle. Debord grasps the aleatory in modernity by using the “spectacle’s own language”14 against itself (e.g., media images, and already-existing fragments of poetry or prose). Turning “spectacular” language against itself exposes the disconnection between the fetishism of the always-present commodity creation (“Buy now!”) and the falsification of lived experience. The response expected by the spectacle from its passive consumers is suddenly rendered problematic and laughable. Radicalizing one’s consciousness through language is the first step in struggling with the negative in a comprehensive manner and in creating a situation that lies beyond the reach of the spectacle. The second area of interest is the role of language in Debord’s original avant-garde revolutionary program, and whether this program remained the foundation of his critical diagnosis of the society of spectacular commodity. Exactly how did language and communication fit into his project? Is communication contingent upon spoken or written language, or are individuals freely able to communicate through nonverbal means? Before answering these questions, let us first define our terms. In cultural production, the avant-garde refers to those artists, writers, composers, and so on, whose techniques or ideas are decidedly experimental in relation to those that are generally accepted at a given time. To be “revolutionary” is to advocate for revolutionary activities, or to engage in radically new or different behaviors. But, as Peter Bürger points out, not only is art as a social institution immune to “avant-gardiste” attacks but, like revolutionary activity, the avant-garde is itself historical.15 “The neo-avant-garde institutionalizes the avant-garde as art,” explains Bürger, “and thus negates genuinely avant-garde intentions.”16 To be clear, Debord likely first associated “avant-garde” art with progress, exploration, and innovation, but, as he became increasingly politicized and radicalized, he came to understand it in its original formulation, namely, as a military metaphor associated with the front ranks who enter into battle and pave the way for the rest to follow. Debord never gave up viewing his interactions with institutions as a similar (and permanent) state of war. In early correspondences with his friend Hervé Falcou, Debord pointed out the historical failure of avant-garde art and poetry to maintain a permanent state of revolutionary rage, and how this rage must be reconstituted into a new theoretical stratagem designed to revolutionize everyday life. For Debord, the revolutionary transformation of everyday life is contingent on a “poetic” revaluation of social existence (i.e., dérive and psychogeography). This “revolutionary” transformation gives rise to a “poetry” of everyday life. Art and

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life merge into a revolutionary practice that privileges innovative behaviors, thoughts, and desires. The functional characteristics of avant-garde poetry (i.e., radical syntax, defamiliarization, words with multiple meanings, a figurative or made-up language, and descriptive imagery) are all realized in and through the very materiality of human existence (i.e., in “native” language, dress, behavior). However, to dérive as a way of life may be hazardous to one’s mental health. As Ivan Chtcheglov explained in August 1964, The dérive is indeed a technique, and almost a therapy. But just as analysis without anything else is almost always counter-productive, so a continual dérive is a danger insofar as the individual advances too far, without protection, is threatened with bursting apart, dissolution, dissociation, or disintegration.17

To counteract consistency and predictability expected by social institutions, Debord actively sought to live a more “fluid” and instinctual life. He intentionally behaved like an “ever-shifting poem” that does not yield its meaning very easily and is always open to multiple interpretations. Inspired by the transformative qualities of avant-garde poetry, Debord sought to pursue these selfsame qualities in daily life. Debord always maintained a mercurial presence by refusing to play by the rules of the spectacle. It is in the context of an avant-garde revolutionary agenda that we should also view the twin notions of anti-aesthetic “terror” and “terrorism.” Given how the meaning of these terms has historically changed over time, we need to remember that they were rhetorically associated in the early 1950s with the Western European avantgarde tradition by way of similarity rather than actual practice. Thinking beyond Mikhail Bakunin’s notion that the passion for destruction is a creative passion, Debord felt that the end of poetic language would not only herald a new phase of artistic creation (e.g., the terroristic “neo-poem”) but also an entirely new purpose for language: scandal and provocation. Debord never lost sight of the scandalous capacities of language. “A common language can no longer take the form of the unilateral conclusions that characterized the art of historical societies,” he writes in The Society of the Spectacle, “—belated portrayals of someone else’s dialogueless life which accepted this lack as inevitable—but must now be found in a praxis that unifies direct activity with its own appropriate language.”18 This type of revolutionary praxis engages spectator and creator alike in a substantial dialogue regarding the meaning generated by this new “appropriated” language. New types of avant-garde practices, including metagraphy and détournement, a critical re-assessment of the creative power of poetic language, and, finally, anti-aesthetic “terrorism,” were all efforts to rediscover the lost radicality of Dada and Surrealism. The “insurrectional style” of détournement, for example, was created to undermine “previous critical conclusions that have been petrified into respectable truths and thus transformed into lies.”19

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Détournement was the “flexible language of anti-ideology.”20 By critically revisiting the revolutionary potential of these art movements, Debord hoped to rediscover a transformative impulse that had previously advanced through twentieth-century cultural production in a dialectic of moral outrage. For Debord, the rediscovery of a revolutionary potential in avant-garde poetry needed to merge with his avant-garde revolutionary program. It was now a matter of “poetry” without poems. In this particular context, the poetic function of language no longer serves poetry or literature but instead brings something into being that had not existed before. This was always Debord’s primary goal in using language ironically. Speaking subjects use words and phrases that escape fixed meanings in order to “play” inside an unpredictable space that is created between thought, expression, and understanding. While different classes may use the same language, a critical awareness of its ideological dimension indicates to users that signs can quickly become “an arena of the class struggle.”21 The third area of interest concerns whether Debord’s communication model fares well as a paradigm for twenty-first-century digital communication. We briefly mentioned in the introduction that Debord’s notion of “horizontal” communications is alive and well on social media platforms. However, there is an unresolvable contradiction between the desire for participatory (horizontal) communication on these platforms and new forms of spectacular domination that threaten their alleged autonomy and independence. Are these new forms of digital communication enhancing or corrupting sociability? Before discussing twenty-first-century digital communication in more detail, let us revisit Debord’s model of horizontal communication. Throughout his life, Debord insisted that sociability be predicated not on hierarchical, monological communication models favored by bureaucratic institutions but on horizontal, dialogical relationships between autonomous social groups. Debord’s wish to radicalize sociability was grounded on a notion of social individuals using “native” language to communicate with one another. Here, meaning is not ready-made by the spectacle but contingent upon speaking subjects and the context in which they communicate. Speaking subjects are no longer passive recipients of one another’s thoughts and expressions; they are protagonists in their own lives, historical beings with agency and intentionality. Debord’s notion of horizontal communication involves, on the one hand, autonomous speaking subjects who actively reject the relentless uniformity of authorial discourse and, on the other, the need for horizontal formations between social groups. By creating a “horizontal space” in which to communicate with one another, individuals are grounded in a continually changing sense of individual and collective subjectivity. In her writings on revolutionary activity in twenty-first-century Argentina, Marina A. Sitrin presents a similar notion of autonomous “power” relations that exist within

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horizontal assemblies. Like Debord, her concept of politics is contingent on language and authentic social relationships between individuals. The key to understanding Sitrin’s horizontal communication is to imagine social individuals sharing the same social space in real time and engaging in an authentic dialogue that addresses common revolutionary goals. More recently, Sebastian Sevignani has examined the ideology of the twenty-first-century public sphere of digital communication. Sevignani argues that the rise of digital media platforms is predicated on the desire for an economic-horizontal, rather than an ideological-vertical, model. In theory, social media reflects an ideology of horizontalism, in which users seek to communicate with one another on the same level plane. But, in reality, the so-called “public sphere” of twenty-first-century digital communication is not horizontal at all but increasingly multitiered and hegemonic. The ideology of corporate power pervades digital communication and is evinced both by its control of the flow of information and, under the guise of “freedom of speech,” the consciously economic choice to allow misinformation and disinformation to flow freely across all types of platforms. In the end, while the ideology of autonomous horizontalism has the psychological value of bringing users together under a common desire to communicate along horizontal lines, Sevignani argues that the ideology of hegemonic verticalism (i.e., a multitiered communication system) can still be challenged not only by forming a political movement that unifies economic, political intellectual, and moral aims, but also by positing “all the questions around which the struggle rages not on a corporate but on a ‘universal’ plane, and thus creating the hegemony of a fundamental social group over a series of subordinate groups.”22 For his part, Debord did not think that the ideology of technocracy would ever allow for such a political movement in the modern (digital) world. Writing in July 1962, he was already noticing that the accelerated growth of classical capitalism and modern bureaucracy was, together, throwing the social world off-balance. In the early 1960s, Debord envisioned an unholy alliance forming between capitalism, bureaucracy, and digital technology which would result in a totalitarian form of cybernetics.23 Debord’s response to this coalition of economic forces is shockingly accurate—especially given the fact that he was writing in 1962—because it describes not the success of horizontalism in the digital domain but its complete failure in our present age of algorithmic echo chambers and “clickbait.” [The social organization of modern life is] a totalitarian and hyper-hierarchical cybernetization, which is naturally very different from the current dreams of cyberneticians or the old experiences of fascist dictatorship, but which would find some features of them, mixed with those which appear everywhere in the democratic society of abundance: perfected control over all aspects of people’s

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lives, who are now reduced to maximum passivity in automated production as in consumption and entirely oriented according to the mechanisms of the spectacle, and by the owners of these mechanisms.24

The fourth area of interest pertains to a concept that Debord and Gil J. Wolman originally called “literary communism.” What we wish to consider here is how this concept relates to Debord’s avant-garde revolutionary project and how its importance changed as Debord moved closer to the anarchic realm of self-management? To be clear, Debord and Wolman discuss “literary communism” only within the context of the avant-garde strategy known as détournement. The concept refers to the likelihood that all forms of discursive entities belong to the world and should be appropriated without penalty. “The literary and artistic heritage of humanity should be used for partisan propaganda purposes,” they write in A User’s Guide to Détournement (1956).25 If a poem or work of art expresses the hopes and fears of an entire generation, then the latter should be allowed to reconfigure its message and align it with new partisan concerns. Besides, this heritage is easily available as a means of developing proletarian artistic education. Once an image or statement enters into the “marketplace of ideas,” it should not only be ripe for critical scrutiny, but it should also be freely available for others to use, mangle, or manipulate for propaganda purposes. “Détournement not only leads to the discovery of new aspects of talent,” explain Debord and Wolman, “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.”26 In fact, Debord’s cinematic style can be traced back to a similar form of re-appropriation and re-contextualization. His literary output is also structured along similar lines, with many passages détourned from a great variety of secondary sources. As we mentioned in the preface, Debord appeared less concerned with creating original artistic statements than he was in critically re-contextualizing ready-made objects in ways that would bring forth an abject rejection of the contemporary social world. His films engage critically with whatever words or images he wishes to express in new and interesting ways. In this sense, Debord is a bricoleur who can recontextualize ready-made objects in order to bring to fruition what has not yet been seen or heard before. We mentioned above that, while Debord continued to engage in détournement throughout his professional life, he never explicitly returned to the idea of “literary communism” in later years. Debord initially rejected (Stalinist) communist orthodoxy early in his intellectual life and gravitated instead toward an anarchic realm of self-management. However, he ended up rejecting both political entities because communism and anarchism in France continued to be organized along a hierarchal, bureaucratic structure.

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[W]e hold the SI’s views to be incompatible in the long term with the existence and claims of “other revolutionary political movements,” for the simple reason, moreover, that if the wretched anarchist bureaucracy does go trailing after these unspecified “other political movements” nowadays, the quality of “revolutionary” movement is not something we for our part recognised in them.27

To be clear, though, Debord did retain from Marx an idea of communism that is worth considering in more detail. In The German Ideology, Marx contends that communism transforms existing economic conditions into conditions of unity. “The reality which communism creates is precisely the true basis for rendering it impossible that anything should exist independently of individuals,” explains Marx.28 Debord concurs with Marx when he writes that “authentic” communism “abolishes everything that exists independently of individuals.”29 Communism is also the positive expression of annulled private property, or what Marx calls “universal private property.”30 Given that “communism” is a unifying principle and the annulment of private property, I wish to argue that Debord’s early notion of a “literary communism” eventually found a home in Alice Becker-Ho’s concept of jargon, in particular, the manner in which jargon is one of the unifying principles of the dangerous classes (its very “mindset”).31 Moreover, members of the (politically) dangerous classes believe that language is not owned by the powers that be. Language is malleable (i.e., creating words with semantically different meanings that respond to different context and circumstances) and capable of being privately shared between knowing individuals. For Debord and Becker-Ho, language does not exist independently of its users; on the contrary, it creates “conditions of unity” that secretly identify the dangerous classes as being distinct from each other and from other social formations. To use jargon is to actively manipulate “native” language in order to represent and defend one’s own values and one’s own conception of the world.32 Moreover, like détournement, “the essence of jargon is deceit laid bare then turned on its head.”33 Slang and jargon enter into cultural parlance through deception, never yielding up to the general public its etymological history or its current meaning. The fifth and final area of interest regarding Debord’s politics of communication concerns the unmooring of the meaning of words, in particular, how destabilizing their meaning undermines the singular expressions of the dominant ideology. In chapter 3, we briefly discussed how the SI sought to let words drift from one semantic field to another. In the 1960s, the language of spectacular domination was serious and unambiguous. The spectacle expected passive, monological, and uncritical responses from its consumer citizens. It did not care if poetry could speak the truth; it merely wished to let individual words speak its truth. The singular unity of the spectacle was

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substantiated by the singular unity of consumer consciousness. As Mikhail Bakhtin explains in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, A monological perception of consciousness holds sway in other spheres of ideological creativity as well. All that has the power to mean, all that has value, is everywhere concentrated around one centre—the carrier. All ideological creative acts are conceived and perceived as possible expressions of a single consciousness, a single spirit.34

For Debord the problem of language in the 1960s lay at the heart of all struggles either for the abolition or the maintenance of social alienation: language and subjectivity were inseparable from these struggles. How could individuals living under surveillance capitalism speak with competence as individuals; in other words, how might they balance the general use of language with their own ability to use it in specifically creative ways? How can an individual express an original idea without at the same time avoiding the trap of reified language? In the twenty-first-century, however, everyday language is subject either to parodic ambiguity or to political contestation. In 2023, political terms such as “liberty” or “freedom” are viewed very differently by the left and the right. The terms may exist, but their meanings greatly depend upon their political context. Moreover, the so-called precision of spectacular language has given way in the twenty-first-century to tautology, alexithymia, vagueness, and intentional disinformation. Individuals often use vague language in cases where they are not sure about something, to expedite an uncomfortable conversation, or to speak to others in a manner that appears friendly. Individuals no longer speak in specific terms unless they are looking for confrontation. As a result, political discourse has been reduced to uncritical “talking points.” Whereas previously Debord regarded the ability to untether language from meaning as a critique of the dominant ideology, today the explicit denigration of language has itself become part of the dominant ideology. Clarity and concision in language are considered elitist. How do we reconcile the alleged precision of public discourse under the integrated spectacle with Debord’s own observations that bureaucrats and journalists themselves speak in intentionally vague terms? In 1929, V. N. Vološinov argued that the realm of ideology coincides with the realm of signs.35 “Everything ideological possesses semiotic value.”36 Each realm of ideological creativity (e.g., speech, poetry, or critical thought) “has its own kind of orientation toward reality and each reflects reality in its own way.”37 Speaking subjects who communicate critically are mindful of the orientation individual words have toward social reality, which is exactly what Debord sought to express in his politics of communication. Détournement

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was for him the remedy against the capitalist imperative toward monological thinking and speaking. Détournement was the flexible, slippery, and intuitive language of anti-ideology.38 It disrupted the stability of meaning in the world by questioning the very creation of meaning and to whose ends it served. As Tom McDonough suggests, To carry class conflict into the realm of language, to insist upon the central place that realm occupied in the collective construction of the world to be made, to announce the arrival of a “literary communism”—these were the inseparable aims of Situationist détournement.39

Debord’s power of negative seeks to destroy what Günther Anders calls “the collective monologue”40 of conformist (read capitalist) society. For Anders, a conformist society is a society that speaks incessantly to itself without ever saying anything substantial. Michel Bounan similarly argues that the late-capitalist era has itself become alexithymic, that is, without conscience, without a language for its suffering, and yet endlessly talkative. Perhaps this is why individuals are speaking more and more in vague and imprecise terms. By speaking vaguely and incessantly with each other, Anders argues that we end up erasing differences that might still exist between us.41 We erase unique differences in order to fit more perfectly into society and, inadvertently, to achieve a greater degree of conformity. As a result, we live as collaborators in our own demise.42 For Debord, the complicated relationship between communication and politics writ large is emblematic of the complicated relationship that speaking subjects experience with one another while living within the spectacle of late-capitalist society. For Debord, the communicative is political. Rather than speak in vague and imprecise terms, we must stand apart from the collective and vague monologues of conformist society. By design, critical language should be experienced as a difficult voice that stands outside the chorus. Critical language is meant to be dissonant, craggy, and confrontational. NOTES 1. Roger Farr in Alice Becker-Ho, The Essence of Jargon, translated by John McHale, Introduction by Roger Farr (Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 2015), 28. 2. Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, translated and annotated by Ken Knabb (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2014), sec. 211. 3. Ibid., sec. 204. 4. Raoul Vaneigem, “The Bad Days Will End” (1962) in Situationist International Anthology (revised and expanded edition), edited and translated by Ken Knabb (Bureau of Public Secrets: Berkeley, 2006), 113.

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5. Debord (2014), sec. 192. 6. G. W. F. Hegel, The Science of Logic, translated by A. V. Miller, Foreword by J. N. Findley (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, Inc, 1993), 85. 7. Henri Lefebvre, Introduction to Modernity Twelve Preludes September 1959May 1961, translated by John Moore (London: Verso, 1995), 5. 8. M. M. Bakhtin, Speech Genres & Other Late Essays, translated by Vern McGee, edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1986), 134. 9. Ibid., 3. 10. Ibid. 11. Debord, “Rédaction de Nuit” (“Night Writing”), Potlatch No. 20 (30 May 1955) in Potlatch (1954-1957) (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 155. 12. Internationale Situationniste, “Le Sens de Déperissement de l”Art” (“The Meaning of the Withering of Art”) in Internationale Situationniste No. 3 (1959), 7. 13. Lefebvre (1995), 8. 14. Debord (2014), sec. 11. 15. Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, translated by Michael Shaw, Foreword by Jochen Schulte-Sasse (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 57. 16. Ibid., 58. 17. Ivan Chtcheglov, “Letters de Loin” (“Letters from Afar”) in Internationale Situationniste No. 9 (1964), 38. 18. Debord (2014), sec. 187. 19. Ibid., sec. 206. 20. Ibid., sec. 208. 21. V. N. Vološinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, translated by Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 23. 22. Sebastian Sevignani, Digital Transformations and the Ideological Formation of the Public Sphere: Hegemonic, Populist, or Popular Communication? Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 39(4), 2022, 95–96. 23. Debord, “La Région Parisienne à la Fin du Siècle” (“Paris at the End of the Century”) in Œuvres (2006), 602. 24. Ibid. 25. Debord and Gil J. Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement” (1956) in Knabb (2014), 15. 26. Ibid. 27. Debord and Gianfranco Sanguinetti, The Real Split in the International: Theses on the Situationist International and its Time, 1972, translated by John McHale (London: Pluto Press, 2003), 106–107. 28. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, no translator given, edited by S. Ryazanskaya (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998), 90. 29. Debord (2014), sec. 163. 30. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, translated by Martin Milligan (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1988), 100.

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31. Becker-Ho (2015), 74. 32. Ibid., 60. 33. Ibid., 76. 34. Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, edited and translated by Caryl Emerson, Introduction by Wayne C. Booth (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 81–82, my emphases. 35. Vološinov (1973), 10. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. Debord (2014), sec. 208. 39. Tom McDonough, The Beautiful Language of My Century: Reinventing the Language of Contestation in Postwar France, 1945-1968 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 49. 40. Günther Anders, L”Obsolescence de L”Homme: Sur la destruction de la vie à l”époque de la troisième revolution industrielle, Tome II (Paris: Éditions Fario, 2011), 153. 41. Ibid., 154. 42. Ibid., 162–163.

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Index

The Index has been organized in the following manner. When necessary, individual words are listed in their original language, along with an English translation in brackets. Unless articles or texts have already been translated into English, all titles are listed alphabetically in their original languages, followed by an English translation. Finally, with the exception of Guy Debord, all other essay and book titles appear after the authors’ names. “Acte Additionel à la Constitution d’une Internationale Lettriste” (“Additional Act to the Constitution of a Letterist International”), 86n118, 87n181 Action Directe (revolutionary group), 85n91 “Address to Revolutionaries of Algeria and of All Countries,” 11, 167n59, 171n153 Adorno, Theodor, 112, 128n137, 140, 141 aesthetics, 26, 37, 59, 63, 66, 69, 74, 154 Agamben, Giorgio, xvi, 13, 138, 204n23, 210n162; Language and Death: The Place of Negativity, 46–47n66; What is an Apparatus? and Other Essays, 17n55 agency, x–xi, xii, xiv–xv, 2, 24, 79–80, 89n161, 93, 120, 217 Alexithymia, 135, 166n32, 221 Algeria, 58, 75, 78, 137 Alice (from Humpty Dumpty), 113–14

alienation, as anomie, parental, social, x, 1, 12, 27, 30, 66, 94, 98, 110, 112, 120, 130n187, 131–32, 139, 183, 221 “All the King’s Men,” 11, 11n44, 11n49, 17n51, 94, 109, 112, 113, 117, 120, 123n12, 128n121, 128n136, 128n139, 128n142, 128n144, 129n160, 129n168, 130n190, 130n198 Amorós, Miguel, 168n83, 169n93, 203n4, 205n40, 206n67, 206n70, 207n107 anarchy, 40; literary, 102 Anastassiadis, Mikis, 203n3, 204n20 Anders, Günther, 222; L’Obsolescence de l’homme: Sur l’âme à l’époque de la deuxième revolution industrielle, Tome II (The Obsolescence of Man: On the Soul at the Time of the Second Industrial Revolution, Volume II), 204n12, 224n40 anti-aesthetics, 69, 70 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 33; “Toujours” (“Always”), 25, 45n39

233

234

Index

Appels de la prison de Ségovia (Appeals from the Segovia Prison), 183–85 Aragon, Louis, 33; “Introduction à 1930,” 47n80 architecture, 66, 131; high modernist, 133 Arendt, Hannah, xii; The Human Condition, xviin11 Argot (slang), 105, 121, 198–99 Aristotle, 103; “Topica” (“Topics”), 125n72 art, ix, xv, 22, 28, 35, 68, 69, 95, 104, 105, 107, 109–10, 136, 161, 176, 195–96, 202, 207, 209n149, 215, 219; as critical, 63, 67, 80, 96–100, 104–5, 119, 217; transcendence of, xiii, xviin10, 21, 36, 43, 63–65, 92– 93, 120, 137, 169n87, 176, 192 Ascott, Roy, 178, 179; “Towards a Field Theory for Postmodern Art,” 204n30 Attali, Michaël, 70; “Paris Match et la fabrique sportive de la figure de l’immigré au cours des années 1950: entrenaturalisation et assignation” (“Paris Match and the Creation of the Immigrant as Sports Figure During the 1950s”), 86n100 Aubery, Pierre, 40; “The Anarchism and Literati of the Symbolist Period,” 51n171 Autarky (self-management), 3, 16n34 authority, x, 1–2, 5, 27, 120; Weber’s charismatic, 121 automatic writing, 57, 82n27, 104–5 automation, xiii, 78, 179 avant-garde, ix, xiii, xviin10, 10, 25, 32, 35–42, 53, 56, 58, 63, 67–68, 77, 80, 85n94, 95, 96, 98, 136, 209n149, 215–16; as poetry, xi, 9, 19, 21–22, 26, 28, 30, 32–34, 36, 57, 60, 72, 78, 111, 216; as revolutionary, 9, 22, 57, 60, 66–67, 160, 163–64, 176, 181, 186, 188–89, 195, 199, 213, 215–17, 219

Baader, Andreas (Baader-Meinhof Gang), 115, 139, 146 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 7–8, 221; Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, 7, 15n28, 16n33; Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 221, 224n34; The Speech Genres & Other Essays, 223n8 Bakunin, Mikhail, 38, 180, 216; Bakunin on Anarchy: Selected Works by the Activist-Founder of World Anarchism, 50n155 Bandini, Mirella, 191–92, 208n126, 208n127; L’estetico, il politico. Da Cobra all’Internazionale situazionista 1948–1957 (Aesthetics, Politics: From Cobra to the Situationist International, 1948–1957), 81n4, 191; Pinot Gallizio e il Laboratorio Sperimentale di Alba (Pinot Gallizio and the Experimental Laboratory of Alba), 81n4 Baran, Stanley J. and Dennis K. Davis, 95–96; Mass Communication Theory: Foundations, Ferment, and Future, 123n18, 124n23 Barthes, Roland, 71; Mythologies, 86n107 Baudelaire, Charles, 23, 33, 45n23, 63, 84n58, 107; “The Painter of Modern Life,” 127n106 Becker-Ho (Debord), Alice, 1, 3, 15n10, 131, 133, 165n12, 181–82, 189, 198– 200, 220; The Essence of Jargon, 14n3, 199, 210n175, 222n1 “The Beginning of an Era,” 147, 171n157 Benveniste, Émile, 6; Problèmes de linguistique Générale 1, (Problems of General Linguistics, I), 15n25 Berardi, Franco “Bifo,” 13; The Third Unconscious, 17n58, 43n7 Berna, Serge, 41–42, 54, 76, 51nn174– 175, 177, 52n181, 81n6 Bernstein, Michelle, 58, 87n125, 123n3 Berreby, Gérard, Documents Relatifs à la Fondation de L’Internationale

Index

Situationniste 1948–1957 (Related Documents to the Foundation of the Situationist International, 1948– 1957), 15n11, 83n55 Bildung (culture), 22–23 Black Mask, 109, 127n117 Blanc, Anita, 204n17, 208nn114–115, 130, 210n152, 210n155, 210n167 Bounan, Michel, xvi, 127n101, 127n103, 135, 166nn28–29, 166n31, 200, 206n83, 210n163, 211n186, 222; La Vie innommable (The Unnameable Life), 135, 166n35; Le Temps du sida, (The Time of AIDS), 135 Bourgeois, Christian, 110, 152, 187 Boxing, 69–71 Brau, Jean-Louis, 42, 51n175, 51n177, 52n181, 54, 58, 76–77, 81n6, 88n151, 89n171 Breton, André, 33, 35, 58, 79, 85, 104; “Manifesto of Surrealism,” 35, 49n127; “On Surrealism in its Living Works,” 126n86; “Political Position of Today’s Art,” 49n131; “Soluble Fish,” 35, 49n128 Buchet, Guy, xviiin27, 170n115 bureaucracy, bureaucratisation, 92, 133; Stalinist ideology of, 140–41, 145, 156–60, 180, 188, 219 Caetano, Marcelo, 155–56 Canal Plus, 201–2 Cannes Film Festival, 30–32, 48n97 capitalism, 27, 98, 120, 135, 152, 154, 156, 160, 192, 218; bureaucratic, 10, 57; late, ix–x, xii, xiv–xvi, 5, 11, 22, 24, 30, 67, 78–79, 91–93, 100–101, 115–17, 132, 135, 141–42, 152–53; neo-liberal, 6, 113, 136–37; spectacular, xi, 7; surveillance, xvi, 9, 136, 221; totalitarian, 117 Carroll, Lewis, 113; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty, 128n146; The Hunting of the Snark, 113

235

Céline, Louis-Ferdinand, 13, 207n104 Cette mauvaise reputation (This Bad Reputation), 12, 32, 83n47, 133, 166n17, 200, 211n198 Champs Libres, 180, 182, 183, 189, 208n115 “The Chaplin Affair,” 32, 42–43, 58, 77 Chaplin, Charlie, 32, 42, 51n176, 54, 77; Limelight, 32, 42 Char, René, 37, 50n146 Chazal, Robert, 32, 48n106 childhood, Debord’s, 26–27 Chtcheglov, Ivan (alias Gilles Ivain), 11, 16n48, 25, 54–55, 65, 67, 82n19, 84n68, 85n82, 106–7, 145, 187, 206n74, 216, 223n17; “Formulary for a New Urbanism,” 101, 125n51 cinema, reality-effect of, 40–41, 51n167 Coadou, François, xiii, 58, 59; Lettres à Marcel Mariën, xviiin15, 82n36 CoBrA, 3, 53, 191 Cocteau, Jean, 31, 82n25 collage, xvi, 64 colonialism, 70, 75 Combat, 42, 51n176, 77, 81n8 Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, 16n32, 24, 45n31, 130n193, 204n29 commodification, x, xii, 23, 28, 65, 105, 107, 113, 135–36, 178 commodity-fetishism, x, 97–98, 100, 102, 107 communication, authentic, xi, 3–4, 9, 11, 20, 22, 113, 117, 120–21, 141, 149, 163, 182, 185, 189, 218; media, 5, 95, 101, 134, 140, 177, 180, 215; political, x, 2, 5–7; total, 93, 100, 107, 119 conditioning, cultural, 39, 115 Conord, André-Frank, 54, 56, 75–76 “Conscious Changes in Everyday Life,” 11, 43n6, 83n52, 94, 112, 128n134 Considerations on the Assassination of Gérard Lebovici, 186, 191, 208n121

236

Index

Constant (Nieuwenhuys), 86n112, 100, 124n44 Cornand, Brigitte, 201–2, 211nn206–8, 211nn210–11; Guy Debord, son art et son temps (Guy Debord: His Art and Times), 201 Cournot, Yves, 189, 208n111 Craven, Arthur, 74, 80 creativity, xiv, 7, 21, 24, 35, 57, 72, 80, 111, 112, 163, 198, 221 critique, ix, xii, xvi, xviin10, 1–2, 5, 56–59, 66–67, 71, 77–78, 91–94, 98, 100, 111, 115, 119, 131–33, 136, 139, 162–63, 176, 183, 199, 213 Croisette, La, 31, 48n97 culture, capitalist, 4, 22, 24, 41, 91, 96, 100, 136, 161, 214 D’Astorg, Bertrand, 72, 86n116; Introduction au monde de la Terreur, (Introduction to the World of Terror), 72 Dada, ix, xviin10, 36–39, 53, 57, 60, 63, 65, 67, 69, 74, 96, 102, 109, 111, 136, 195, 216 Dahou, Mohammed, 54, 56, 87n125, 106, 123n3, 127n104 “Débats de Ce Temps, Les” (“Debates of The Time”), 85n80 De Beauvoir, Simone, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 83n43 Debrie, Nicole, 13, 17n56, 134, 166n27, 207n104 “The Decline and Fall of the SpectacleCommodity Economy,” 125n57 decomposition, ideological, 23, 100 De Denato, 144, 147, 170n116 “Définition minimum des organisations révolutionnaires” (“Minimum Definition of Revolutionary Organizations”), 129n181 denaturalization of the senses, 34, 173 Denevert, Daniel, 150–51, 171n141, 171nn144–46; De l’intelligence de quelques aspects du moment (Of the

Intelligence of Some Aspects of the Moment), 150, 171n143 Dérive (“purposeful drifting”), xv, xviiin30, 11, 55, 57–58, 65, 94, 119, 131, 182, 195, 215–16 De Saint-Just, Louis Antoine, 2, 33, 72–73, 75, 80, 86n116, 98, 102, 178; “De lanature” (“On Nature”), 14n4; “L’Esprit de la revolution et de la constitution de la France” (“The Spirit of the Revolution and the Constitution of France”), 33, 49n117; “Organt,” 33, 49n116; “Rapport sur les personnes incarcérées” (“Report on Incarcerated Persons”), 49n118, 125n55 De Saussure, Ferdinand, 115; Course in General Linguistics, 129n161 desire, xi, xiii, xvi, 1, 3, 20, 22, 24, 26, 32, 35, 41, 51n174, 54–57, 63, 67–69, 72, 86n116, 96, 101–2, 110, 120, 131, 134, 138, 141, 153–54, 176, 179, 182, 187, 195, 199, 213–14, 217–18 De Soria, Alonso Álvarez, 203 De Spínola, General António, 155, 157– 58; Portugal e o Futuro (Portugal and the Future), 155 Détournement (“detouring, hijacking”), xv–xvi, 40, 53, 55–58, 61–62, 64, 66, 70, 96–106, 108, 115, 118, 162, 167n54, 182, 184–85, 195, 200, 216–17, 219–22; minor and deceptive, 98 dialectical, 22, 30, 61, 102–3, 115, 117, 148, 155, 162; critical-, x, xvi, xviin9, 61, 64, 79, 149, 193, 213; historical-, 176 dialogical, 6, 117, 183, 213, 217 dialogue, 2, 6, 9, 20, 39, 41, 64–65, 69, 101, 103, 138, 149–50, 216–17; authentic, 3, 218; fake, 3–4 direct action, 37–38, 40, 42–43, 69, 72, 85n91, 93, 120 “Directives,” 50n134 disinformation, 9, 133–35, 141, 177, 180, 200, 218, 221 “Domenach versus Alienation,” 130n187

Index

Drake, Richard, “Why the Moro Trials Have Not Settled the Moro Murder Case: A Problem in Political and Intellectual History,” 168n77, 168n79 “Drôle de Vie” (“Funny/Odd Sort of Life”), 84n65 Dubreuilh, Simone, 32, 48n105 Dumontier, Pascal, 108, 136, 195–97, 210n157, 210n159, 210n165; Les Situationnistes et Mai 68: Théorie et pratique de la revolution (1966–1972) (The Situationists and May 68: Revolutionary Theory and Practice (1966–1972)), xviin1, 84n61, 127n98, 127n113, 166n37, 167n47, 167n56 “Éducation Européene” (“European Education”), 88n146 “Enquête de L’Internationale Lettriste, Une” (“A Letterist International Survey”), 85n83 ever-shifting order, 28 ever-shifting poem, 28–29, 216 “Exercice de la Psychogéographie” (“The Practice of Psychogeography”), 73, 87n119 Falcou, Hervé, 10–11, 19, 21–22, 25, 27–30, 32–34, 37–38, 42, 43n1, 44n9, 44n12, 44nn15–18, 45n35, 45n38, 45nn40–41, 45n46, 46n47, 46n65, 47n71, 47n77, 47n79, 47n83, 48n85, 48nn87–89, 48n96, 49nn111–15, 49n119–21, 49n123, 49n125, 50n137, 50nn141–42, 50n145, 50nn147–49, 50n156, 51n157, 51n172, 55, 57, 73–74, 82n25, 87n132, 89n173, 135, 145, 166n34, 166n36, 215 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 103; “Principles of the Philosophy of the Future,” 126n74 Fifth SI Conference, xixn35, 92, 123n5, 207n97 Fillon, Jacques, 30–31, 54, 56; “Description raisonné de Paris” (“Reasonable Description of Paris”), 82n34

237

“Finis le cinema français” (“Down with French Cinema”), 48n103 “Finis les pieds plats” (“Down with Flat Feet”), 82n26, 51n175 Fishman, Robert M., 156; “What 25 April Was and Why It Mattered,” 172n177 Fishman, Robert M. and Omar Lizardo, 154; “How Macro-Historical Change Shapes Cultural Taste: Legacies of Democratization in Spain and Portugal,” 172n165, 172n167 Fishman, Sarah, 27; “Crisis and Change in the Juvenile Justice System, 1934– 1945,” 47n69 fordist, xviin22, 78, 79 Formes fixes (fixed forms), 62 Foucault, Michel, 141; Discipline and Punishment: The Birth of the Prison, 168n70 Fourier, Charles, 75, 113 “Fragments de recherche pour un comportement prochain” (“Fragments of Searches for an Upcoming Behavior”), 87n130 France, postwar economic growth, xiii–xiv, 20, 30, 78 Franco, Francisco, 38, 87n138, 154 Frankin, André, 15n22, 50n146, 60, 83n42, 84n66, 86n106, 88n144 Gallizio, Pinot, 46n61, 60, 191 Glorious Thirty (Years), xiii, 78, 96 Graffiti, 31, 34, 38 Greenberg, Clement, 23; “The Historical Culture of ‘The Avant-Garde and Kitsch,’” 45n27 Guatemala, 58, 75, 78 Guégan, Gérard, 171n146 Guillaumin, Marc-Gilbert (alias Marc, O), 30, 48n94, 79 Han, Byung-Chul, xviii, 203; The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present, PsychoPolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power, 211n214

238

Index

Hegel, G. W. F., 3, 22, 28, 36, 39, 104, 132, 214; Phenomenology of Spirit, xviin4, 51n159, 126n75, 126nn81– 84; Science of Logic, 47n78, 223n6 Hegelian-Marxism, ix, 77, 201 Hemmens, Alastair, x, xiv, 78; The Critique of Work in Modern French Thought from Charles Fourier to Guy Debord, 88n159; Situationist International: A Critical Handbook The, xviin6; xviiin28 hierarchical, vs. unilateral, 6–8, 19, 21, 56, 71–72, 79, 92, 102, 117, 119, 154, 176, 217–18 history, movement in, 13, 132, 153; “L’Hiver en Suisse” (“Winter in Switzerland”), 88n147; movement of, 10, 13, 121, 132, 153, 163–64, 196 horizontalism, xii, 8, 213, 218 Horkheimer, Max, 112; “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” 128n137, 128nn140–41 Howls for Sade, 21, 27–28, 30, 39–40, 43, 47n67, 47n72, 47n75, 51n160, 51n165, 52n180, 58, 81n12, 94, 162, 174n221 Huizinga, Johan, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, 87n129, 87n131 Hutcheon, Linda, 97; Irony’s Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony, 16n43; A Theory of Parody, 124n28, 124n33 Ideas, as becoming dangerous, 9, 150, 197 “Ideologies, Classes, and the Domination of Nature,” 83n53 Ideology, bourgeois, 67, 140, 163; capitalist, xv, 100, 142; dominant, 5, 9, 71, 116, 164, 220–21; politicoeconomic, 63; revolutionary “The Ideology of Dialogue,” 15n12, 15n16, 15n19, 172n159 the incommunicable, 6, 135, 214 industry, culture, 112, 128n137

Information (news, information), 122, 133, 179, 218 In girum imusnocte et consumimur igni (We Turn in the Night and Are Consumed by Fire), 126n91, 161, 174n220 “Instructions for an Insurrection,” 11, 94, 111, 128n125, 128n130, 206n59 instrumental rationality, 9, 12, 116, 122 interdisciplinary, xiii–xiv, xvi, 13, 190 International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, 3, 53 “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography,” 58, 83n46, 94, 101, 125n52 ION, 32, 39 irony, xi, 16n43, 98–99, 107, 136, 177, 182, 193, 199, 214–15 Isou, Isidore, 10–11, 30–31, 33–34, 37–40, 42–43, 51n176, 53, 64, 66, 68–69, 76–80, 85n90, 85n94, 145; Dictature Lettriste, Le (The Letterist Dictator), 16n46, 34, 37, 50n144, 80n2; Introduction à unenouvelle poésie et à unenouvelle musique (Introduction to a New Poetry and to a New Music), 37, 49n124; Manifestes du Soulèvement de la Jeunesse (1950–1966) (Manifestoes of Youth Uprising, 1950–1966), 89n161, 89n164; “Pathétique sans ratelier: Correspondance Publique” (“Pathetic without a Rack: Public Correspondence”), 88n150; “Principes Poétiques et Musicaux du Mouvement Lettriste” (“Poetic and Musical Principles of the Letterist Movement”), 49n124; Soulevement de Jeunesse (Youth Uprising), 78; Traité de Bave et d’Éternité (Venom and Eternity), 21, 29, 39, 58 Italy, xvi, 23, 45n31, 107, 121, 131, 138–39, 142–47, 149, 152–54, 156, 160–61, 164, 168n75, 171n137, 175,

Index

177, 180–82, 188–90, 197, 201, 208n126, 208n132 Jappe, Anselm, xiii, xviiin19, 85n90, 138, 158, 181, 193, 200–201; Guy Debord, 173n195, 204n10, 205n52, 205n54, 208n133, 211n194, 211n202; The Writing on the Wall: On the Decomposition of Capitalism and its Critics, 124n27 “Jeux Éducatifs” (“Educational Games”), 85n95, 86n99 Jorn, Asger, 46n62, 47n76, 66, 84n76, 113, 128n143, 194; “Fin de Copenhaugue” (“End of Copenhagen”), 62, 83n55, 84n56 Kaufmann, Vincent, 1–2, 5, 10, 19–20, 25–28, 43n3, 45n43, 46n48, 55, 61, 82n21, 83n48; Guy Debord: Revolution in the Service of Poetry, 14n1, 14n5, 16n45, 43n4, 46n57, 47n70, 47n73 Keynesian, xviiin22, 78–79 Khayati, Mustapha, 46n60, 40n63, 115– 18, 120, 129n164, 129n170, 129n171, 129n172, 129n175, 129n179, 129n181, 129n186, 130n189, 150, 169n100, 169n101; “Captive Words: Preface to A Situationist Dictionary,” 11, 94, 115, 129n164, 130n189; “On the Poverty of Student Life,” 138, 147, 153 Kinoshita, Makoto, 196, 201, 210n153, 211n201 Kitsch (mass culture), 23, 45n27 Kloosterman, Jaap, 132, 165nn6–9, 187, 189, 203nn1–2, 207n88, 207nn92– 93, 207nn102–3, 207n105 Knabb, Ken, xvi, 40, 191, 208n123; Guy Debord Complete Cinematic Works, xixn33, 47n67, 51n168, 84n62, 124n39 Korsch, Karl, 118, 180 Kotányi’s, Atilla, 93, 111–12, 115, 125n55, 128n125, 128n130; “Gangland and Philosophy,” 115,

239

129n163; “Programme élémentaire du bureau d’urbanisme unitaire,” (“Elementary Program of the Bureau of Unitary Urbanism”), 15n21 language, as a priori, 117, 120; as bureaucratized, 69; as Calvinist, 132; as Castilian, 181–82, 185; of critical theory, 213–14; of everyday life, x–xii, 113, 134–35, 221; as informational, 120, 122, 134; as instrumental, 9, 12, 71, 116, 122; as intentionally vague, 134, 221; as native, 1, 5–10, 22, 58, 62, 92, 111, 117, 121, 134, 161, 183, 185, 199, 213–14, 216–17, 220; as poetic, ix, 9–11, 22, 29, 31, 34–35, 38, 43, 50n146, 53, 57–58, 61, 68, 72, 74–75, 77, 103, 107, 111, 121–22, 215–17; as reified, xvi, 1, 69, 221; as revolutionary, xi, xiv, 5, 9–10, 12, 16n43, 22, 33–34, 57, 65, 121, 152, 185, 215–16; as secret, 105, 194, 199; and thinking, 22, 60–61, 64–65, 73, 99, 117, 153, 197, 199, 214, 222 “À La Porte” (“There’s The Door”), 54, 81n13 Lautréamont, Comte de, xixn31, 3, 32, 61, 102–3, 111, 113, 132; Maldoror, 125n59; Poésies I and II, xv, 125n64 “La valeur éducatif” (“Educational Value”), 86n105 Lebovici, Floriana, 56, 82n22, 189, 205n41, 206n81 Lebovici, Gérard, 12, 56, 123n11, 131, 158, 167n39, 169n98, 169n101, 170n107, 173n198, 173n208, 174n222, 177, 180, 182–83, 185–86, 189–90, 204n16, 204n21, 205n49, 206n58, 206nn62–63, 206n75, 207n108, 208n119 Le Brun, Annie, xvi, 87n134, 138, 173n219, 177, 200, 204n9, 204n14, 204n19, 210n164, 211n187, 211n190

240

Index

Lefebvre, Henri, ix, 99, 101, 124n29, 124n31, 124n34, 124n41, 125n50, 214, 223n7, 223n13 Légion d’Honneur (Legion of Honor), 42, 54 Le Glou, Jacques, 157, 162, 167n42, 172nn186–87, 174n224, 184, 206n69 Le Marquis de Sade a des yeux de fille de beaux yeux pour faire sauter les ponts (The Marquis de Sade Has Girls’ Eyes Beautiful Eyes for Blowing Up Bridges), 21, 32, 37, 43n1, 44n9, 44n12, 44n15, 45n35, 45n38, 45n40, 45n46, 46n65, 47n71, 47n77, 47n79, 47n83, 48n85, 48n87, 48n96, 49n111, 49n119, 49n123, 49n125, 50n137, 50nn141–42, 50n145, 50n147, 50n156, 51n172, 82n19, 82n25, 85n82, 87n132, 89n173, 166n34, 166n36, 206n74, 209n151 Léonardi, Lino, 202–3, 211nn212–13 Letterism, 32, 37–38, 56, 63, 66–69, 77, 82n27, 113, 132 Letterist International, 3, 26, 53–58, 62, 66, 69, 81n4, 81n12, 82n34, 89n165, 91–92, 136; “Acte Additionel à la Constitution d’une Internationale Lettriste” (“Additional Act to the Constitution of a Letterist International”), 86n118, 87n121; “Faire-Part” (“Announcement”), 87n128; “Il faut recommencer la guerre en espagne” (“We Must Restart the War in Spain”), 87n138; “La Ligne Générale” (“The General Line”), 74, 87n125, 123n3; Le Bruit et la Fureur” (“The Sound and the Fury”), 84n73, 84n77; “Le Choix des Moyens” (“Choice of Means”), 81n17, 82n20; “Le Droit de Réponse” (“The Right to Respond”), 88n140, 88n142, 88n158, 173n194; “Leur Faire Avaler Leur Chewing-Gum” (“Make Them Swallow Their Chewing-Gum”), 78, 88n156; “Manifeste” (“Letterist

International Manifesto”), 86n118; “Panorama Intelligent de l’AvantGarde À la Fin de 1955 - Poésie” (“Intelligent Panorama of the AvantGarde at the End of 1955 – Poetry”), 83n51, 84n64, 84n71; “Position de l’International Lettriste” (“Position of the Letterist International”), 42, 51n177, 52n181, 81n8; “Proposals for Rationally Improving the City of Paris,” 46n49, 46n52; “Réponses de l’Internationale lettriste à deux enquêtes du groupe surréaliste belge” (“Response to Two Inquiries by the Letterist International to the Belgian Surrealist Group”), 83nn38–39, 87n136; “Sortie des Aristes” (“Artists’ Exit”), 84n75; “Touchez pas aux lettristes” (“Hands off the Letterists”), 87n123; “Vagabondage Spécial” (“Special Vagrancy”), 89n166 Letterists, 11, 31–32, 34–35, 37–38, 40, 42–43, 44n11, 53, 62–64, 66, 68–70, 76–79, 87n123, 89n165, 115, 145, 158; “Finis le cinéma français” (“Down with French Cinema”), 48n103 Levin, Thomas, 44n11, 192–95, 208n128, 208n131, 209nn136–37, 209n142, 209n146, 209n148 Lévy, Thierry, 15n17, 186, 204n7, 206n73, 206nn77–78 Librairie de Guy Debord: Marx Hegel, La (Library of Guy Debord: Marx, Hegel), xviiin19, 126n80 Librairie de Guy Debord: Stratégie, La (Library of Guy Debord: Strategy), xviiin19, 14n7, 174n220 L’Incontrolado (The Uncontrollable), 182 literary communism, 61, 105, 116, 118, 213, 219–20, 222 literature, xiii, 10, 19, 22–24, 33–34, 40, 63, 73, 79, 104–5, 107, 202, 217 Ludic, activities, 74, 92, 137, 140; behavior, 95, 107, 111; games, 119; lifestyle, 66; theories, 131 Lukács, György, xiii, xviiin19, 118, 132

Index

Machiavelli, Niccolo, 2–3, 14n7, 132; The Prince, 2 Magritte, René, 58–59; Carte D’Aprèsnature, La (The Map of Nature), 59 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 74, 111 “Manifeste pour une construction de situations” (“Manifesto for the Construction of Situations”), 87n122, 87n135 Manrique, Jorge, Coplas a la meurte de su padre (Verses to the Death of his Father), 205n50, 205n53 Marcus, Greil, 51n173, 195, 209n150; Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century, 51n173, 195 Mariën, Marcel, xiii, xviiin15, 58–59, 62, 82nn32–33, 83nn40–41, 84n74, 94, 123n13; Lèvresnues, Les (Naked Lips), 58–60, 62, 78, 82n35, 91, 94; “Valable Partout” (“Valid Everywhere”), 88n157 marsupial, 106–7 Martin, J. V., 49n118, 124n46, 169n95, 172n163 Martos, Jean-François, xvi, xviin8, 81n5, 167n58, 177, 199, 204n13, 204n18, 205n40, 206n80, 207n90, 209n149, 210n160, 210n185 Marx, Karl, xi, xiii, xviin7, xviin9, xviiinn18–20, 1, 3, 14n2, 24, 34, 45n34, 49n122, 62, 83n50, 92, 98, 105, 132, 167n54, 178, 180, 214, 220, 223n28, 223n30; German Ideology, 14n2, 24, 45n34, 83n50, 220, 223n28; Les Pretendues Scissions dans l’Internationale (Fictitious Splits in the International), 167n54 Marxism, xviin9, xviiin19, 198 “Maspérisation,” 106, 126n96, 127n99, 133, 185; Maspériser, 105–6, 185 Maspero, François, 105–6 mass culture, 23–24, 119; media, 70–71, 95, 101, 134, 160, 180

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May 1968 General Strike, 1, 12, 63, 136– 37, 143, 148, 157, 160, 183, 191, 196 Mazower, Mark, 27; Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century, 47n68 McDonald, Dwight, 24; “A Theory of Mass Culture,” 45n26, 45n30, 45n33 McDonough, Tom, 222; The Beautiful Language of My Century: Reinventing the Language of Contestation in Postwar France, 1945–1968, 224n39 Meinhof, Ulrike, 115, 139, 146 Mémoire (Memory), 62, 84n56, 100 Mension, Jean-Michel, 14, 49n130, 54, 55, 68, 71, 80; The Tribe, 17n59, 45n45, 80n1, 81n7, 81n9, 81n11, 81n12, 81n14, 85n84, 85n88, 85n94, 86n109, 88n149, 88n158, 88n160, 89nn171–72, 165n1, 187, 193, 198, 209n140, 210n177 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 60–61, 199; Signs, 83n44 Métagraphie (Metagraphics), 53, 64– 65, 67, 216 Minitel, 178–79 “Misérable Miracles: méprisable métier” (“Miserable Miracles: Despicable Profession”), 85n78, 85n81 modernity, 97, 101, 133, 215 modernization, xiii, 78, 143, 180, 186 “Modeste Préface À La Parution D’Une Dernière Revue Surréaliste” (“Modest Preface to the Publication of a Last Surrealist Revue”), 83n43, 124n42 monological, 6, 9, 113, 117, 213, 215, 217, 220–22 morality, 41, 72, 77; as fascist, 145 Moro, Aldo, 140, 142, 145–46, 168n77, 168n79, 169 Mosconi, Patrick, 107, 206n69, 209n151 “Moscou la Poésie” (“Moscow Poetry”), 41, 58 Morea, Ben, 109, 127n118 Mourre, Michel, 41; Malgré le blaspheme (Despite the Blasphemy), 51n174 myth, 71, 111; mythology, 139

242

Index

Nancy, Jean-Luc, 12; The Truth of Democracy, 17n52 the negative, 104, 139, 151, 158, 176, 213–15, 222; negation, 5, 36, 62, 96, 119 neologism, 105, 107, 180 Néo-poème (“neo-poem”), 34, 38–39, 68–69, 216 “Ne Travaillez Jamais” (“Never Work”), 34, 38 Nicholson-Smith, Donald, 109, 127n116, 190 Nietzsche, Friedrich, xii, 26, 111; Between Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, xviiin14; Human, all too Human, 44n14; “Notebook, 19, Summer 1872-Beginning of 1873,” 128n128; Untimely Meditations, 46n54; The Will to Power, xviiin13 Nietzschean, xvi, 22 Nora, Simon and Alain Minc, 178–79, 181; The Computerization of Society, 205n36, 205n48 “The Northwest Passage,” 2, 101, 143, 155, 169 “Notice pour la Fédération français des ciné-clubs: Éclarissements sur le film Hurlement en faveur de Sade” (“Notice to the French Federation of Ciné-Clubs: Enlightenment on the film Howls for Sade”), 47n74 “Notre-Dame Affair,” 41–42, 51nn173– 174, 69 Nougé, Paul, 58, 82n31 Novlangue (Newspeak), 134–35 “Nuit du Cinema, La” (“The Night of Cinema”), 48n92 “Origines des détournements indiquées, autant que possible, en Mars 1986” (“Origins of Indicated Détournement, As Much as Possible, in March 1986”), 84n57

Orwell, George, 134–35, 180; “Politics and the English Language,” 166n23, 166n26 “Our Goals and Methods in the Strasbourg Scandal,” 16n41, 210n161 Paisano (revolutionary peasant), vs. campesino (peasant), 182 Panegyric, 12, 133, 165n13, 194, 197– 98, 200 “Panorama Intelligent de L’AvantGarde À La Fin de 1955” (“Intelligent Panorama of the AvantGarde at the End of 1955”), 83n51, 84n64, 84n71 Paris Match, 70–71, 86nn100–104 Parisian criminal underground, 199; life, 23 Parisianisme, la maladie (The Parisian sickness), 187 parody, 97–98, 101, 193, 214 Partisans, 105–6 “Un Pas en Arrière” (“One Step Back”), 43n5, 85n92, 88n155 Paseyro, Ricardo, 112, 138, 201, 203, 211n203, 211n215; Eloge de l’analphabétisme à l’usage des faux letters (In Praise of Illiteracy in the Use of False Literati), 128n138, 128n141 Pauvert, Jean-Jacques, xvi, 127n102, 138, 161, 165n14, 173n218, 200, 202, 210n180, 211n191, 211n209 Perniola, Mario, 14n6, 144 “Perspectives des Accords de Londres et de Paris” (“Perspectives of London and Paris Accords”), 86n106 “Perspectives for Conscious Changes in Everyday Life,” 11, 83n52, 94, 112, 128n134 Petit bourgeois, 67, 71; Petite bourgeoisie, la (petty bourgeoisie), 63 philosophy, to be realized, 34, 194

Index

Picasso, Pablo, 32, 48n109, 49n110 plagiarism, xvi, 61–62 play, 10, 26, 68, 72, 74, 80, 87n129, 105, 107, 110, 112, 217 poetic attitude, disposition, sensibility, or way of life, xiii, 9–10, 19, 22, 30–31, 35, 38, 57, 74–75, 107, 110, 122, 215–17 poetry, xiii, 26, 50n146, 53, 59, 66, 73, 82n31, 97–98, 107, 111, 121–22, 161, 213, 215, 217, 220–21; avantgarde, xi, 9, 19, 21–22, 26, 28, 32–38, 57, 64, 66–68, 78, 215–17; Castilian, 182; French Symbolist, ix, 30, 32, 40, 74, 102–3, 111; onomatopoeic, 63–66; without poems, 10, 217 Poiesis, 10, 74 Portugal, 55, 131, 144, 152, 154–64, 171n151, 172n165, 172n174, 172n177, 174n235, 182, 189, 197, 201 “Position de L’International Lettriste” (“Position of the International Letterist”), 42, 51n177, 52n181, 81n8 postmodern, 178, 193; postmodernism, xiv, 133; postmodernist, 24 Potlatch, 12, 31, 54–56, 59–60, 64, 67, 69, 72–76, 78, 91 “Pour la Guerre Civile au Maroc” (“Toward a Civil War in Morocco”), 88n139 “Pourquoi le Lettrisme?” (“Why Letterism?”), 82n27, 84n60, 84n70, 84n72, 88n153, 207n84 Praxis, revolutionary, ix, xiv, 1, 4, 9, 25, 41, 69, 79, 92, 97, 109, 118, 120, 136, 152, 155, 158, 164, 182, 199–200, 216 “Préface à la quartrième edition italienne de La Société du Spectacle” (“Preface to the Fourth Italian Edition of The Society of the Spectacle”), 142, 168n69, 169n101, 177, 204n22

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Prigent, Michel, 17n54, 207n91 production, artistic, ix, xv–xvi, 26, 36, 43, 57, 69, 74, 95–96, 176; cinematic, 40; commodity, xiii, 78– 79, 92, 115; cultural, xiii, 7, 23–24, 39, 54, 62, 136, 153, 215, 217 “Prolégomènes à tout cinema future” (“Prolegomena to All Future Cinema”), 47n72, 51nn163–64, 166, 169 proletariat, xiv, 34, 75, 78–79, 96, 101, 105, 118, 141, 157; French, 137, 157; lumpen, 33; Portuguese, 157, 159, 163–64; Spanish, 152, 185 propaganda, 5, 23, 37, 39, 41, 56, 58, 76, 95–96, 104, 108, 115, 140, 219 “À propos de quelques erreurs d’interprétation” (“Regarding a Few Errors of Interpretation”), 207n100 Pro-situ, 107, 147, 151, 175 “Protestation devant les libertaires du présent et du futur sur les capitulations de 1937” (“Protest Before Present and Future Libertarians Over the 1937 Capitulations”), 182, 205n56 pseudocommunication, 9 psychogeography, xv, xviiin30, 11, 31, 55–58, 73–74, 94, 119, 131, 182, 195, 215 qualitative research, 103, 112; vs. quantitative, 148–49, 151 Quillet, Juvénal, 165n11, 167n53, 167n57 radicalism, 38, 162, 184; as lost radicality, 36, 53, 57 The Real Split in the International, 133, 139, 196 Red Army Faction (Baader–Meinhof Gang), 115, 139 Red Brigade, 115, 139–43, 145–46, 169n101, 175–77 “Reform and Counter-Reform in the Bureaucratic Bloc,” 147, 168n73

244

Index

refusal, xii, 91–92, 139, 141, 180, 193; rejection, xiii, xv, 91, 93, 148, 163, 203, 219 Réfutations de Tous les Judgements Tant Élogieux Qu ‘Hostiles, Qui Ont Été Jusqu’Ici Portés Sure le Film ‘La Société du Spectacle’ (Refutation of all the Judgments, Pro and Con, Thus Far Rendered on the Film ‘The Society of the Spectacle’), 126n91, 158 “Région Parisienne à la Fin du Siècle, La” (“Paris at the End of the Century”), 223n23 “Report on the Construction of Situations,” xviiin29, 44n8, 45n29, 110, 125n47, 126n87, 128n122, 207n95, 207n98 Revolution, of Carnations, 155–56, 172n174, 183; cultural, 19–21, 32, 35–36, 43, 55–57, 60, 67–68, 72–75, 77–78, 95, 131, 139, 156, 183–84; French, 73, 184; political, ix, xiii, 16n34, 58, 75–76, 78, 137; Portuguese, 154–59, 162–64, 173n202, 173n211; social, 57, 60, 67, 74, 131, 137, 154, 156–57, 190; world, xiii, 22, 41, 69, 157 Riesel, René, 170n136, 149–50 Rimbaud, Arthur, 33, 40, 58, 73–74, 80; “Rimbaud to George Izambard,” 87n120 “Rôle de l’écriture, Du” (“Role of Writing, The”), 31, 48n98, 85n89 Rothe, Eduardo, 157, 165n2, 171n147, 172n185, 173n190 Rumney, Ralph, 55, 68; The Consul, 81n11, 81n16, 85n85 Sade, Marquis de, 33, 113 Salazar, Antonio, 154–55, 160, 162 Salvadori, Paolo, xvi, 91, 123n1, 123n4, 127n115, 138, 141, 144–48, 166n22, 167n51, 168n84, 169n88, 169n90, 169n99, 170n102, 170n111, 199, 204n8, 204n11, 204n15,

204n24, 204n26, 204n31, 208n117, 210n184; “Provisional Theses for the Discussion ofnew Theoretico-Practical Orientations of the SI,” 170n124 Sanguinetti, Gianfranco, xvin8, 15n24, 17n53, 46n59, 51n179, 107, 127n97, 127n107, 127n109, 127n110, 133, 137–47, 149, 160, 164, 167n41, 167n43, 167n45, 167n50, 167n55, 168n62, 168n74, 168nn81–82, 169nn85–86, 169n89, 169n92, 170n108, 170n114, 170n117, 170n119, 170n127–28, 171nn137–38, 172n164, 172n166, 172nn171–73, 173n200, 173n212, 174n226, 174n234, 175–77, 190, 208n120, 208n126, 210n158, 223n27; “Letter from Sanguinetti to Khayati Concerning Debord,” 169nn100–101; The Real Report on the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy, On Terrorism and the State, 146, 167nn60–61, 167n78, 170n104 scandal, 31, 37–38, 41, 43, 55, 68–69, 96, 147, 216 Sébatiani, Christian, 150, 152, 170n134, 205n42 Segovia, 183–85 self-management (autarky), 3, 132, 163, 219 Semprun, Jaime, xvi, 16n43, 138, 152, 160–61, 171n149, 171n152, 173n208, 173nn209–11, 173n213, 173nn215–16, 180, 185, 187, 205n42, 205n45, 205n47, 206n57, 206n79, 206n82, 207n106; Dialogues sur L’Achèvement des Temps Modernes (Dialogues on the Completion of Modern Times), 125n70; Encyclopédie desnuisances Discours Préliminaire, xviiinn24–25; La Guerra Social en Portugal (The Social War in Portugal, The), 171n151, 174n235 The Sex Pistols, 126n93, 195 silence, 26–28, 37–40, 60–61, 134, 166n32, 180, 185, 190

Index

Simondo, Piero, 46n58, 72, 86n111 situationism, 188, 207n97 A Situationist Dictionary, 115–20, 129n164, 129n185, 130n189, 150 Socialisme ou Barbarie, xvi, 96 society, capitalist, x, xiii, xvi–xvii, 1, 4, 67, 78, 91, 101–2, 181, 183, 213, 222 The Society of the Spectacle, xiv, 6, 12, 71, 119, 131–32, 135–36, 139, 141–42, 146–47, 152, 157–58, 169, 177–78, 180, 199, 213, 216 sociology, ix, xviii, 112 Soulèvement de la Jeunesse (Youth Uprising), 78–79, 89n161, 169n96 Spain, 55, 87n138, 121, 131, 144, 152– 54, 161, 172n163, 180, 182–83, 189, 197, 201 spectacle, integrated, 13, 24, 45n31, 121, 178, 191, 199, 213, 221 spectacular commodities, 3, 92, 135–36, 214–15; consumption, 6, 135, 139, 158 Sportès, Morgan, xviin5, 166nn24–25, 211nn196–99; “Guy, d’abord” (“First of all, Guy”), 200 Stalinists, 56, 106, 153, 188, 219; French, 143, 190; Italian, 140–41, 143–44, 171n137; Portuguese, 156–60, 162–63; Spanish, 152, 154, 180, 182 Stallybrass, Peter and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, 85n79, 126n89 Stockholm Appeal, 29, 47 Straram, Patrick, 44n19, 54, 81n10, 123n10, 127n111, 173n217, 187, 207n85 Stravinsky, Igor, The Rite of Spring, 31, 41 structuralism, x, xiv–xv, 3, 63 students, French, 79, 137, 148, 153; international, xvi, 63 subjectivity, x, 12, 30, 80, 94, 117, 217, 221; historical, 2; ironic, 100; radical, x, xii–xiii, xiv, 29, 91, 214

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subjects, speaking, x–xi, xiv, 1, 5–6, 8–10, 115, 214, 217, 221–22 subversion, 164, 195; symbolic, 95, 98 surrealism, ix, xi, 25, 27, 36–37, 53, 57, 60, 67, 91, 96, 110, 113, 132, 136, 216 Taubé, Édouard, 96, 123n20, 124n22 télématique (telematics), 178–79 Terreur, La, 72–74 terror, 12, 36, 39–40, 42, 53, 69, 75, 77, 93, 216 terrorism, 121, 137, 139–41, 175–77; anti-aesthetic, 35–36, 38, 40, 53, 68–69, 73–75, 93, 96, 104, 115, 142, 158, 180, 216 terrorists, 139, 145, 191; Italian leftwing, 143 “Theory of the Dérive,” 58, 94 “Thèses de Hambourg en Septembre 1961; Les” (“Hamburg Theses of September 1961”), 194–95, 209n143, 209n146 “Theses on Cultural Revolution,” 16n40, 123n21 Thucydides, 3, 132, 141; The History of the Peloponnesian War, 140–41, 168n68 totality, 6, 59, 95–96, 119, 121–22, 148, 197, 213–14 “Toute L’Eau de la Merne Pourrait Pas” (“All the Water in the Sea Could Not”), 72, 86n113 translation, xiv, xvi, 33, 63, 106, 108–9, 131–32, 142–44, 147, 169n101, 175, 181, 183, 190, 197, 200 tri-dimensional psychology, 39, 65 truth, 14, 30, 95–96, 133–34, 151, 157, 159, 165, 187, 197; as calculation, 141; as a claim, 5, 62, 97, 102, 136, 185; as conditional, 2, 111, 116–17; as critique, xvi, 176; as Machiavellian, 4; as practical, 74; as spectacular, 220; terrorism of, 139

246

Index

Uroskie, Andrew V., 31; “Beyond the Black Box: The Lettrist Cinema of Disjunction,” 48n101 “A User’s Guide to Détournement,” xix, 46n50, 58, 61, 64, 83n49, 84n63, 91, 94–95, 123n14, 124n24, 124n35, 124n40, 124n43, 124n45, 125n56, 125n63, 125n67, 126n85, 126n90, 126n92, 126n193, 209n138, 219, 223n25 utility, 14, 24, 64, 74 Vaneigem, Raoul, 47n82, 92, 101, 111–13, 124n46, 125n55, 128n125, 128n130, 129n178, 137–38, 147, 150; “Bad Days Will End”, 222n4; “Basic Banalities (Parts I and 2)”, 101, 111, 125n53, 128n129, 145, 167n46; “Notice to the Civilized concerning Generalized SelfManagement”, 125n49; “Programme élémentaire du bureau d’urbanisme unitaire” (“Elementary Program from the Bureau of Unitary Urbanism”), 15n21; Revolution of Everyday Life, 118; “Theses on the Paris Commune,” 125n55 Villon, François, 203 violence, 27, 35, 38, 50n148, 69–70, 76, 101, 141–43, 153, 158, 171n137, 180; anti-aesthetic, 16, 35, 76–77; senseless, 76

Voitey, Gérard, 189–90, 208n109, 208n113, 208n118 Vološinov, V.N., 7–8, 198, 221; Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, xviiin26, 7, 15n29, 198, 210n172, 223n21, 224n35 Von Cieszkowski, August, 132, 150 Von Clausewitz, Carl, 3, 132, 150, 161, 165, 178; “On War,” 174n238 Vucicovic, Branko, 119–20, 129n185 war, 23, 161, 215; Algerian, 1, 70; civil, 95, 140, 142; Portuguese colonial, 155, 160; Spanish Civil, 75, 153, 182, 184; Vietnamese, 70, 75, 78; World War II, xiii, 10, 13, 19, 24, 27, 35–36, 63, 66–67, 115, 133 Wolman, Gil J., 26, 39, 42, 44n11, 54–56, 58, 61–68, 76–77, 80, 81n6, 89n171, 91, 95–100, 102–5, 219; and nuclear cinema, 39; “J’écrit propre” (“I Write Properly”), 82n34; L’Anticoncept, 21 Workers’ Councils, 106, 119 worlding, 193; and unworlding, 193 Zacarias, Gabriel Ferreira, 35–36, 38, 40–41; “Lettristes, situationnistes et terrorisme d’avant-garde” (“Letterists, Situationists and Avantgarde Terrorism”), 35, 50n133, 50n139, 51n170 Zone Books, 190, 208n115

About the Author

Edward John Matthews teaches philosophy, writing, critical thinking, and communications in the School for Language and Liberal Studies at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario, Canada. He has also taught on a part-time basis at the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at Western University, which is also in London, Ontario. This is the author’s second book on Guy Debord and the Situationist International.

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