Guy Debord

"This is the first intellectual biography of Guy Debord, prime mover of the Situationist International (1957-1972) and author of The Society of the Spectacle, the seminal book of the May 1968 uprising in France. Anselm Jappe offers a powerful corrective to the continual attempts to incorporate Debord's theoretical work into French theory. Jappe focuses, to the contrary, on Debord's debt to the Hegelian-Marxist tradition, to Karl Korsch and Georg Lukacs, and more generally to left-Marxist currents of council communism. His close reading of Debord's magnum opus is unique among the great flood of writing on the Situationists in recent decades. This PM reprint edition benefits from a new author's preface and a bibliographical update."-- Provided by publisher There Is A Grain Of Truth In The Simplified Notion That Guy Debord And Raoul Vaneigem Represented Two Poles Of The Situationist International: The 'objective' Debord Versus The 'subjective' Vaneigem; Marxism Versus Anarchism; Icy Cerebrality Versus Sensualism. In Short, The Society Of The Spectacle Versus The Revolution Of Everyday Life - The Two Programmatic Books Of The Situationists, Written Independently, Both Published In 1967 Just Months Before The May 1968 Upheavals In France, Each Serving In Its Own Way To Kindle And Colour That Revolutionary Moment. The Revolution Of Everyday Life Offers A Lyrical And Aphoristic Critique Of The 'society Of The Spectacle' From The Point Of View Of Individual Experience. If Debord's Analysis Armed The Revolutionaries Of May With Theory, Vaneigem's Book Described Their Desperation Directly And Armed Them With 'formulations Capable Of Firing Point-blank On Our Enemies'. Vaneigem First Defines The Alienating Features Of Everyday Life In Consumer Society: Survival Rather Than Life, The Call To Sacrifice, The Cultivation Of False Needs, The Dictatorship Of The Commodity, Subjection To Social Roles, And Above All The Replacement Of God By The Economy. The Second Part Of The Work, 'reversal Of Perspective', Explores The Countervailing Impulses That, In True Dialectical Fashion, Persist Within The Deepest Alienation: Creativity, Spontaneity, Poetry, And The Path From Isolation To Communication And Participation. This Is A Completely Revised Translation Intended To Capture The Period Flavour As Well As The Continuing Pertinence Of Vaneigem's 'classic Of Subversion'. Translator's Acknowledgements -- Author's Preface To The Present Edition -- The Revolution Of Everyday Life -- Introduction -- Part 1. Power's Perspective -- I. The Insignificant Signified -- The Impossibility Of Participation: Power As Sum Of Constraints -- Ii. Humiliation -- Iii. Isolation -- Iv. Suffering -- V. The Decline Of Work -- Vi. Decompression And The Third Force -- The Impossibility Of Communication: Power As Universal Mediation -- Vii. The Age Of Happiness -- Viii. Exchange And Gift -- Ix. Technology And Its Mediated Use -- X. The Reign Of Quantity -- Xi. Mediated Abstraction And Abstracted Mediation -- The Impossibility Of Fulfilment: Power As Sum Of Seductions -- Xii. Sacrifice -- Xiii. Separation -- Xiv. The Organization Of Appearances -- Xv. Roles -- Xvi. The Fascination Of Time -- Survival And Its Pseudo-negation -- Xvii. Survival Sickness -- Xviii. Unbuttressed Refusal -- Part 2. Reversal Of Perspective -- Xix. Reversal Of Perspective -- Xx. Creativity, Spontaneity And Poetry -- Xxi. Masters Without Slaves -- Xxii. The Space-time Of Lived Experience And The Rectification Of The Past -- Xxiii. The Unitary Triad: Fulfilment, Communication, Participation -- Xxiv. The Interworld And The New Innocence -- Xxv. You Won't Fuck With Us Much Longer! -- Postscript (1972): A Toast To Revolutionary Workers -- Appendix 1. Author's Preface To The First French Mass-market Edition (1992) -- Appendix 2. Concerning The Translation -- Index. Raoul Vaneigem ; A New Translation By Donald Nicholson-smith ; With A Preface By The Author. Includes Index. "'A declaration of rights is indispensable in order to halt the ravages of despotism.' So wrote the revolutionary Antoine Barnave in support of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789). Over two centuries after the Great French Revolution, Raoul Vaneigem writes that today, "in a situation comparable to the condition of France on the eve of its Revolution," we cannot limit ourselves to demanding liberties--the so-called bourgeois freedoms--that came into being with free trade, for now the free exchange of capital is the totalitarian form of a system which reduces human beings and the earth itself to merchandise. The time has come to give priority to the real individual rather than to Man in the abstract, the citizen answerable to the State and to the sole dictates of God's successor, the economy. Sometimes playful or poetic, always provocative, Vaneigem reviews the history of bills of rights before offering his own call, with commentary, for fifty-eight rights yet to be won in a world where the "freedoms accorded to Man" are no longer merely "the freedoms accorded by man to the economy"-- Publisher's description This is the first intellectual biography of Guy Debord, prime mover of the Situationist International (1957–1972) and author of The Society of the Spectacle, the seminal book of the May 1968 uprising in France. Anselm Jappe offers a powerful corrective to the continual attempts to incorporate Debord’s theoretical work into “French theory.” Jappe focuses, to the contrary, on Debord’s debt to the Hegelian-Marxist tradition, to Karl Korsch and Georg Lukács, and more generally to left-Marxist currents of council communism. His close reading of Debord’s magnum opus is unique among the great flood of writing on the Situationists in recent decades. This PM reprint edition benefits from a new author’s preface and a bibliographical update. Some 35 years after the May 1968 "events," this short book poses the question of what kind of world we are going to leave to our children. A Letter to My Children and the Children of the World to Come provides a clear-eyed survey of the critical predicament into which the capitalist system has now plunged the world. At the same time, in true dialectical fashion, Vaneigem discerns all the signs of "a new burgeoning of life forces among the younger generations, a new drive to reinstate true human values, to proceed with the clandestine construction of a living society beneath the barbarity of the present and the ruins of the Old World." One of the most important exponents of Situationist ideas, this treatise presents an impassioned critique of modern capitalism and serves as a cornerstone of modern radical thought. Originally published in early 1968, the book both kindled and colored the May 1968 upheavals in France that captured the attention of the world. In the political climate of today, Raoul Vaneigem's important work of radical anticapitalist thought has struck a new chord with the worldwide Occupy Movement. Naming and defining the alienating features of everyday life in consumer society-survival rather than living in f