Guy Debord: Comments on the Society of the Spectacle

Guy Debord: Panegyric, Verso 1991, ISBN 0-86091-559-X“I have written less than most writers. But I have drunk far more than most drinkers.” “All my life I have seen only troubled times, extreme divisions in society, and immense destruction; I have joined in these troubles.” “My method will be very simple. I will tell of what I have loved; and, in this light, everything else will become evident … ” “Over the years, more than half the people I knew well had sojourned one or several times in the prisons of various countries; many, no doubt, for political reasons, but all the same a greater number for common law offenses or crimes. So I met mainly rebels or the poor.” Guy Debord’s silver-tongue-in-cheek autobiography mixes precision and pastiche in a whirlwind account of philosophy, exploit, and inebriation. From the stark professions of Volume I to the illustrated sequences of Volume 2, Panegyric confronts us with a figure who strategically, demonically tried to wrest life from the disabling modern “spectacle.” “These concise but extremely rich and provocative memoirs are the product of … philosopher whose scathing pen has never been so sharp.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A brief and elegiac memoir of a life lived in its shadows and cracks.” —Artforum “As cryptic and self-effacing a self-portrait as can be found anywhere & Panegyric is almost purely literary, in the sense that one need know or care nothing of the author to be captured by it: Debord is seeking to hijack his era into timelessness.” — London Review of Books Guy Debord was born in 1931 was born in 1931. A founding member of the Letterist International and the Situationist International, he was the editor of their key journals, Potlach and Internationale Situationiste. He committed suicide in 1994. His written and film works include The Society of the Spectacle.

Guy Debord (1931-94) was one of the most important and intriguing intellectual figures of the twentieth century.Filmmaker and poet, urban critic and political theorist, adventurer and activist extraordinaire during Paris' May 1968 uprisings, Debord was simultaneously behind and ahead of his times. Best-known as guru of the avant-garde revolutionary movement the Situationist International (1957-72), and for a classic indictment of post-war capitalist consumerism The Society of the Spectacle (1967), Debord's life and work remains fascinating to this day. Yet the man himself remained elusive and enigmatic throughout his life. Master urban tactician in the 1950s, political muckraker, organizer and theorist during the 1960s, vagabond throughout the 1970s, fleeing to Spain and Italy, he lived as a recluse during the 1980s and early 1990s in an isolated farmhouse in Champot (Auvergne), behind a high stone wall. Guy Debord crosses over that Champot wall, pushes back Debord's shutters and peers through his windows. It crosses his threshold, drinks his wine, and listens to him talk. Andrew Merrifield focuses on the particulars of Debord's life, shedding light on this admirable yet apparently impenetrable figure, a free spirit who was radically at odds with life but at the same time loved many things in it, and thought them worth fighting for. The book reveals the dynamics of the man, his ideas, and his times which have much to say to our own, equally troubled times. The ideas of Guy Debord, who died only 10 years ago, continue to expose the fragility of our democracy and the mismatch between people and political power today; this book shows that the lessons of Debord are as fresh, subversive, and relevant now as they were forty years ago.

Zeit seines Lebens galt Guy Debord als »Geheimagent der Subversion«, als einer, der entweder bewundert oder verabscheut wurde. In den fünfziger Jahren nahm er an den Aktivitäten der Lettristen teil, einer künstlerischen Nachkriegs-avantgarde, die durch spektakuläre Aktionen von sich reden machte. 1957 hatte er entscheidenden Einfluß auf die Gründung der Situationistischen Internationale, an der sich Künstlergruppen wie Cobra und später die Münchner Spur beteiligten. 1967 löste die SI den Skandal von Straßburg aus, der im Mai 68 zum Generalstreik führte. Guy Debord war als Theoretiker der SI und Autor von »Die Gesellschaft des Spektakels« über Nacht zur Berühmtheit geworden, aber er lehnte es ab, »zu einer Autorität« zu werden. Er führte sein Leben im Verborgenen weiter, aber die Gerüchte um seine Person hörten nie auf, vor allem, als sein Freund und Verleger Gerard Lebovici unter bis heute ungeklärten Umständen ermordet wurde. »Die Gesellschaft des Spektakels« und die »Kommentare« sind Debords politisch-philoso-phisches Vermächtnis, sein theoretisches Hauptwerk, in dem er die moderne Verlaufsform der spektakulären Herrschaft aufzeigt, aber auch die Etappen ihrer programmierten Selbstzerstörung.