Guy Debord  

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Guy Ernest Debord (December 28, 1931, in Paris – November 30, 1994, in Champot) was a writer, filmmaker, hypergraphist and founding member of the groups Lettrist International and Situationist International (SI). His book The Society of the Spectacle (1967) was a major catalyst for the uprising of May 1968.


Contents

Life

Guy Debord was born in Paris. His father died early, and he was raised by his grandmother in a series of Mediterranean towns. He was a headstrong youth, and after graduating high school he dropped out of the University of Paris where he had been studying law. He became a revolutionary poet, writer and film-maker founding the Lettrist International schism with Gil J. Wolman. In the 1960s he led the Situationist International group, which influenced the Paris uprising of 1968. His book Society of the Spectacle (1967) was a major catalyst for the uprising. In the 1970s Debord disbanded the Situationist movement, and resumed filmmaking with financial backing from the movie mogul Gerard Lebovici. His two best films date from this period: a film version of Society of the Spectacle (1973) and the autobiographical "In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni" (1981). After the dissolution of the Situationist International, Debord increasingly isolated himself and his writings grew more pessimistic. His lifelong alcoholism began to take a toll on his health. Apparently to end the suffering from a form of polyneuritis brought on by his excessive drinking, he committed suicide, shooting himself in the heart at his cottage in Champot on November 30, 1994.

He was married to Michele Bernstein and Alice Becker-Ho.

Works

Guy Debord's best known works are his theoretical books, Society of the Spectacle and Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. In addition to these he wrote a number of autobiographical books including "Mémoires", "Panégyrique", "Cette Mauvaise Réputation..." and "Considérations sur l'assassinat de Gérard Lebovici". He was also the author of numerous short pieces, sometimes anonymous, for the journals "Potlatch", "Les Lèvres Nues," "Les Chats Sont Verts," and "Internationale Situationniste".

In broad terms, Debord's theories attempted to account for the spiritually debilitating modernisation of both the private and public spheres of everyday life by economic forces during the post-WW2 modernisation of Europe. He rejected as the twin faces of the same problem both capitalism of the West and the statism of the Eastern bloc. Alienation, Debord postulated, could be accounted for by the invasive forces of the 'spectacle' - "a social relation between people that is mediated by images". Debord's analysis developed the notions of "reification" and "fetishism of the commodity" pioneered by Karl Marx and Georg Lukács. This analysis probed the historical, economic and psychological roots of 'the media'. Central to this school of thought was the claim that alienation is more than an emotive description or an aspect of individual psychology: rather, it is a consequence of the mercantile form of social organization which has reached its climax in capitalism.

The Situationist International, a political/artistic movement organized by Debord and his colleagues and represented by a journal of the same name, attempted to create a series of strategies for engaging in class struggle by reclaiming individual autonomy from the spectacle. These strategies, including "dérive" and "détournement", drew on the traditions of Dada and Surrealism.

The SI initially drew membership from the Lettrists – a post-Surrealist group of writers and poets dedicated to the destruction of bourgeois values by reducing the written word to onomatopoeic syllables. However, the SI broke with the formal aims of the Lettrists and, after subsuming much of their membership, were fully established in their own right by 1959. After an intense period of theoretical analysis, publication and the expulsion of most of its few members, the SI dissolved itself in 1972.

Debord's first book, Mémoires, was bound with a sandpaper cover so that it would destroy other books placed next to it.

Debord has been the subject of numerous biographies, works of fiction, artworks and songs, many of which are catalogued in the bibliography by Shigenobu Gonzalves, "Guy Debord ou la Beaute du Negatif".

Films

[Howlings in favor of Sade]

  • Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps, Paris, 1959 (short film, Dansk-Fransk Experimentalfilmskompagni).

[On the passage of some persons through a rather short period of time]

  • Critique de la séparation, Paris, 1961 (short film, Dansk-Fransk Experimentalfilmskompagni).

[Critique of separation]

  • La Société du spectacle, Paris, 1973 (Simar Films)

The Society of the Spectacle

  • Réfutation de tous les jugements, tant élogieux qu’hostiles, qui ont été jusqu’ici portés sur le film « La Société du spectacle », Paris, 1975 (short film, Simar Films).

[Refutation of all judgements whether hostile or in praise which up to now were given on the film 'The Society of the Spectacle']

[We turn in circles in the night and are consumed by fire] This film, which was meant to be Debord's last one, is largely autobiographical but begins with a thorough and pitiless critique of the spectator.

  • Guy Debord, son art, son temps, 1995 (television film, by Guy Debord and Brigitte Cornand, Canal Plus)

[Guy Debord - his art and his time]

Bibliography

Works by Debord

Further reading

See also

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