Date: Mon, 3 Apr 1995 18:17:39 +1000 (EST) From: Steve Wright <sj-AT-deakin.edu.au> Subject: Re: Guy DeBord suicide Take two... Sorry about the mangled layout, Bill, but I'm having to do some pretty weird cutting and pasting since my direct email program went haywire. If you think it's interesting, maybe you could post it back to the marxism list. All the best, Steve Wright OBITUARY: GUY DEBORD FREEDOM INTERNATIONAL SECTION 84B, WHITECHAPEL HIGH ST. LONDON E1 THE AUTHOR OF SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE HAS KILLED HIMSELF Last Curtain Call for Guy Debord We don't know how he died and still less why. We only know that Guy Debord, around evening time on Wednesday 30th November, took his life; the life that in the last few years he himself - perhaps the last of the Situationists still partly faithful to his own image of the resolute enemy of the society of the spectacle - helped to make more mysterious, more evanescent more elsewhere. Paradoxically one could say that in reality death has brought him back to life, in the sense t hat it has re-established the human reality (death being our common destiny) of a character whose notoriety and uncompromising stance of refusal would make of e xistence a long theatrical piece, in which he would improvise up until the end. But who was Guy Debord? There are several answers, but at the same time such ans wers would preclude the understanding of his identity as indefinable. Writer? Film director? Situationalist? 'Doctor in nothing...' as he liked to define himsel f in one of his latest books? Of course all those things, but simply because they are 'things' - which comes down to things he did - they certainly do not reveal the whole man. It isn't for nothing that the numerous French dailie s which reported the news of his suicide, not only didn't say how or why he died, neither did they say anything about him, limiting themselves to an inventory o f the things he did, the things he said, how he did them, how he said them but forgetting to say who, Guy Debord, was. In reality it was the self-imposed mystery which created the impenetrable and adventurist aura, barely availabl e to the media and prone to violent argument; Guy Debord liked to hide his true self behind a blanket of gossip, speculation and even spite in his dealings with others, and to never let it see daylight. For the rest, for someone who wrote a book: The Society of the Spectacle, where the world is seen as a spectacle - wh ich is to say a false image which the economic system produces of itself in order to dominate society - visibility was to be totally denied. Thus the rare photo s which he consciously planned so that they should be published in his lifetime - were the most hazy in the world and to a fair degree made him look younger than his real age. Certainly, invisibility was imperative! It was not by chance that his first public work was a film Hurlement en faveur de Sade (1952), in which there is no picture and the spectator - truly stupefied by this purely surrealist provocation - watched an alternated sequence of white and then black screens, whilst listening to a mixture of atonal dialogues invol ving numerous people leading up to a silent, black screen for 24 minutes. This was the first gauntlet against the spectacle thrown down by Guy Debord who fought this battle throughout his life; a death sentence for the cinema, at the time considered as the essence of the artistic product of bourgeois society and for th at reason the extreme synthesis of its values in full decomposition, since it expressed not the construction of a situation which aimed to shed light on everyda y life but rather a system of falsification of reality in order to suppress it and supplant it by means of a series of images aimed at cutting the individual off from his daily existence and making of him an illusory participan t in the spectacle of consumer society in his role as good/product of the spectacle. The setting up in 1957 of the Situationist International was partly the logical consequence of these artistic presuppositions. Coming out of the European cultural milieu as the convergence of several artistic experiences (COBRA, the Lettrist International, the Movement for Bauhaus Cinema, the London Psychogeographical Society) the SI from day one aimed to represent - above all via Debord w ho was the editor of its statement of principles - a critique of art brought into being by the necessity of superseding it by creating liberated situations in w hich life can effectively experience its own possibilities and not become enclosed in the repetitive role models that the society of the spectacle constructs in order to dominate and exploit. But already in those early years the different heads of the SI quarrelled amongst themselves and Debord - who alone amongst them represented the most coherent position with his objective of achievi ng a total critique of art and a whole culture skewered towards the production of values separated from everyday life (and for that reason incapable of achievin g its own radical transformation) - came out better from confrontations with those who presupposed the replacement of art as simply a repeat of the architectur al and urban argument which aimed to make works of art no longer on canvas but in the physical space of a city. But the first years of the 60s saw a U turn in the politics of the SI, and coincided with Debord's political phase, which saw an achievement of sorts in making of the organisation - now nearly purged of any artistic content - the r allying point between the experience of the European cultural avant guard and the experience of politico- revolutionary groupings, in France represented by some journals (Arguments and Socialisme et Barbarie) of a revisionary Marxist leaning. These were the years when Debord participated in the seminars of Lefebvre at Nanterre and during which he developed his critique of daily life which ha d already been expounded by this philosopher and sociologist from Nanterre in the late 50s. The critique of everyday life - the baby sister of theories of alien ation/separation produced by the spectacular society, became the theoretical underpinnings of the SI and the theme of his most famous book, already mentioned, i n which the theoretical and organisational experience of the workers council ... represented the political and revolutionary dnouement of the situationist theo ry. The Strasbourg scandal and Paris 68 showed not so much that Debord and the SI were gaining influence (as has always been claimed by the historical hagiograp her of the movement), but rather the fortuitous meeting - and in many ways prospicious - between the combative and revolutionary practice of the movement of 68 and the necessity to find an outlet for situationist theory. If there had been no May 68 in France, would the SI have become what it seemed to be after the event (that is the high point of modern revolution)? And would the work of Deb ord have come to seem clairvoyant and prophetic, as was claimed by numerous commentators who proclaim his books on the social spectacle to be the only texts abl e to give a sense - sorry: a vision - to what happened in the East as well as the West? All these considerations lead back to the unanswered question of who Guy Debord was; a man who, at the age of 62, decided to put an end to his life and to foreclose his real life story asking forgiveness for his own mistakes. But th e truth of his story will still have to be reconstructed by reference to his work which he has left to posterity with the intention of becoming the first invisible personality of the society of the spectacle. Will we ever know the tr uth? GIANFRANCO MARELLI FAI Milan Translated from Le Monde Libertaire 21 Dec. 94 >From uburoi-AT-panix.com Date: Mon, 3 Apr 1995 12:42:44 -0400 (EDT) From: Alex Trotter <uburoi-AT-panix.com> Subject: Debord suicide Bill, here is some info about Debord, taken from the avant-garde list. I'm surprised that you didn't hear about this as soon as it happened. --AT >From jfr10-AT-columbia.edu Sat Dec 3 12:00:52 1994 Date: Sat, 3 Dec 1994 12:01:26 -0500 (EST) From: fido <jfr10-AT-columbia.edu> To: Alan Sondheim <sondheim-AT-panix.com>, Alex Trotter <uburoi-AT-panix.com>, Tad Kepley <tkepley-AT-bigcat.missouri.edu> Subject: cnet clip, Essayist Debord Kills Himself (fwd) Here's the obit from AP. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 3 Dec 1994 11:59:14 -0500 From: jfr10-AT-columbia.edu To: jfr10-AT-columbia.edu Subject: cnet clip, Essayist Debord Kills Himself This section is from the document '/clari/world/europe/france/5397'. Approved: jill-AT-clarinet.com From: C-ap-AT-clarinet.com (AP) Newsgroups: clari.world.europe.france,clari.living.books Distribution: clari.apo Subject: Essayist Debord Kills Himself Copyright: 1994 by The Associated Press, R Date: Thu, 1 Dec 94 9:30:33 PST PARIS (AP) -- Guy Debord, an avant-garde essayist who influenced the upheavals of French society in the late 1960s, has committed suicide. He was 62. Town officials in the village of Champot where Debord lived announced an investigation Thursday into the suicide. No details about how Debord took his life Wednesday were disclosed. Little-known outside France, Debord denounced what he called ``the show-biz society'' and declared that performing arts should be based on powerful emotions, passions and sexual desire. His ideas were influential among theoreticians and essayists who achieved prominence in the May 1968 student-led cultural revolt that shook French society. >From avant-garde-approval-AT-world.std.com Sat Dec 3 21:40:07 1994 Date: Sat, 3 Dec 1994 21:29:21 -0500 (EST) From: "Edward A. Shanken" <giftwrap-AT-acpub.duke.edu> Subject: Re: the death of Debord - suicide or murder? To: cybermind-AT-world.std.com Cc: avant-garde-AT-world.std.com, fiction-of-philosophy-AT-world.std.com, film-theory-AT-world.std.com, Derrida and Deconstruction <derrida-AT-CFRVM.BITNET>, cybercom-AT-acpub.duke.edu GUY DEBORD DID NOT KILL HIMSELF. HE WAS MURDERED!!! Sure, he pulled the trigger (or whatever he did) but he was murdered by the thoughtlessness and selfishness of so-called scholars (primarily trendy lit-critters) who colonized his brilliant ideas and transformed his radical politics into an academic status symbol not worth the pulp it's printed on. In the 60's Debord and the Situationists mounted an attack on the French academy at Strasbourg, vilifying, among other things, the critical theory (such as Barthes and Foucault) that students were being force-fed at the time. Now Debord is bandied about in that very same company that he despised by a highly conservative group of mis-directed and erroneously self-proclaimed liberals in the contemporary academy. No, Debord didn't kill himself. He was tortured and suffered a slow death over the last few decades by a bunch of idiots who didn't have the sense they were born with. The AP article perpetuates that myth and more. See comment inserts below. > This section is from the document '/clari/world/europe/france/5397'. > > PARIS (AP) -- Guy Debord, an avant-garde essayist who influenced > the upheavals of French society in the late 1960s, has committed > suicide. MURDER!!! He was 62. > Town officials in the village of Champot where Debord lived > announced an investigation Thursday into the suicide. No details > about how Debord took his life Wednesday were disclosed. > Little-known outside France, NOT TRUE!!! FOR BETTER OR WORSE, HE IS INTERNATIONALLY REKNOWN IN ANY LIT OR ART HISTORY PROGRAM WORTH A DAMN (OR WORTH DAMNING, DAMMING, ETC.) Debord denounced what he called > ``the show-biz society'' NOW HE'S BEEN TRANFSORMED INTO A STAR OF THE LIT CRIT SPECTACLE and declared that performing arts AND LIFE ITSELF!!! should > be based on powerful emotions, passions and sexual desire. AS OPPOSED TO THE COLD, DISTANCED REMOVE OF DECONSTRUCTIONISM, AKA THE SPECTER/SPHINCTER OF DERRIDA> His ideas were influential among theoreticians and essayists who > achieved prominence in the May 1968 student-led cultural revolt > that shook French society. HIS IDEAS WERE MOST INFLUENTIAL AMONGST THE STUDENTS WHO REVOLTED AND IN THE FORMATION OF A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS!!! THE PROMINENT ASSHOLES WHO TOOK HIS IDEAS AND CUT OFF THEIR BALLS ARE MURDERERS. THE BLOOD IS ON THEIR HANDS!!! > > Eddie Shanken >From avant-garde-approval-AT-world.std.com Sat Dec 3 22:40:34 1994 Date: Sat, 3 Dec 1994 21:46:53 -0500 (EST) From: Calum Selkirk <cselkirk-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us> Subject: Re: the death of Debord - suicide or murder? To: fiction-of-philosophy-AT-world.std.com Cc: cybermind-AT-world.std.com, avant-garde-AT-world.std.com, fiction-of-philosophy-AT-world.std.com, film-theory-AT-world.std.com, Derrida and Deconstruction <derrida-AT-CFRVM.BITNET>, cybercom-AT-acpub.duke.edu On Sat, 3 Dec 1994, Edward A. Shanken wrote: > > GUY DEBORD DID NOT KILL HIMSELF. HE WAS MURDERED!!! > > Sure, he pulled the trigger (or whatever he did) but he was murdered by > the thoughtlessness and selfishness of so-called scholars (primarily > trendy lit-critters) who colonized his brilliant ideas and transformed his > radical politics into an academic status symbol not worth the pulp it's > printed on. In the 60's Debord and the Situationists mounted an attack on > the French academy at Strasbourg, vilifying, among other things, the > critical theory (such as Barthes and Foucault) that students were being > force-fed at the time. Now Debord is bandied about in that very same > company that he despised by a highly conservative group of mis-directed > and erroneously self-proclaimed liberals in the contemporary academy. > > No, Debord didn't kill himself. He was tortured and suffered a slow death > over the last few decades by a bunch of idiots who didn't have the sense > they were born with. > .....poor debord....kinda funny..... it's really not that ironic that he should die a spectacle..... do you think that publishers like Verso could publish SOtheS without his permission? ..... or that he was so drunk that he could'nt figure the implications of such...... .....it could be said that debord lent himself to comodification and to the visibility that being an avant-leader of minions brings..... thats not to say that i think he should'nt have been published or that he fell into the arms of the spectacle but the content of SOtheS can't be seen in isolation.....to do so would be to give undue regard to ideas...... now don't be standing up claiming responciblity for any riots ok..... calum >From avant-garde-approval-AT-world.std.com Sat Dec 3 23:55:56 1994 Date: Sat, 3 Dec 94 23:50:39 -0500 From: rapotter-AT-COLBY.EDU (Russell A. Potter) To: avant-garde-AT-world.std.com, bataille-AT-world.std.com, deleuze-guattari-AT-world.std.com Subject: Re: Re: the death of Debord - suicide or murder? (fwd) Cc: rapotter-AT-host0.COLBY.EDU Hmm. If Guy Debord killed himself over the misinterpreation inflicted upon his writings by people who wanted to turn them into the sort of academic drivel he detested, he must have thought more of their drivel than it seems he (or the note poster) supposedly *did*. It has always seemed ironic that the SI and Debord were so readily eaten by the very mouths they ought to have poisoned, but that's how it goes ... ========================================================================"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies" --Friedrich Nietzsche =======Russell A. Potter========<rapotter-AT-colby.edu>==================== >From avant-garde-approval-AT-world.std.com Sun Dec 4 00:55:37 1994 Date: Sun, 4 Dec 1994 00:28:42 -0500 (EST) From: aka bookish <swilbur-AT-bgsuvax.bgsu.edu> Subject: Re: the death of Debord - suicide or murder? To: avant-garde-AT-world.std.com Cc: bataille-AT-world.std.com, cybermind-AT-world.std.com Poor St. Guy. It was the pro-situs that got him in the end... Isn't this sort of hagiographic nonsense - which recapitulates the worst aspects of Debord's own writing - the very saddest memorial that one could erect for a writer as inspiring and, dare i say it, important as Guy Debord? Where is the critical eye for all of the ways in which Debord and the French SI allowed themselves to be recuperated, set themselves up as specialists of revolution, failed to follow up on the programs set out in their early work, dissolved into squabble, exerting more force on potential allies than on the state (or state of affairs) that they despised? I see some echo of Debord's violence, his excess, but isn't it just reduced here to attitude, to style? It is, in its way, a passable pastiche of the late Debord - a tempting form, and one which i have no doubt flirted dangerously with in my own writings. But wouldn't a more radical detournment of the obit have been more satisfying? more of Debord's humor, his joy in life, even his drunkenness, and less of his paranoia... We can only hope that he has left several more volumes of his memoirs - further revenge on those who would try to domesticate our not so saintly Guy... -shawn <swilbur-AT-bgsuvax.bgsu.edu> On Sat, 3 Dec 1994, Edward A. Shanken wrote: > > GUY DEBORD DID NOT KILL HIMSELF. HE WAS MURDERED!!! > > Sure, he pulled the trigger (or whatever he did) but he was murdered by > the thoughtlessness and selfishness of so-called scholars (primarily > trendy lit-critters) who colonized his brilliant ideas and transformed his > radical politics into an academic status symbol not worth the pulp it's > printed on. In the 60's Debord and the Situationists mounted an attack on > the French academy at Strasbourg, vilifying, among other things, the > critical theory (such as Barthes and Foucault) that students were being > force-fed at the time. Now Debord is bandied about in that very same > company that he despised by a highly conservative group of mis-directed > and erroneously self-proclaimed liberals in the contemporary academy. > > No, Debord didn't kill himself. He was tortured and suffered a slow death > over the last few decades by a bunch of idiots who didn't have the sense > they were born with. > > The AP article perpetuates that myth and more. See comment inserts below. > > > > This section is from the document '/clari/world/europe/france/5397'. > > > PARIS (AP) -- Guy Debord, an avant-garde essayist who influenced > the > upheavals of French society in the late 1960s, has committed > suicide. > MURDER!!! He was 62. > Town officials in the village of Champot where > Debord lived > announced an investigation Thursday into the suicide. No > details > about how Debord took his life Wednesday were disclosed. > > Little-known outside France, NOT TRUE!!! FOR BETTER OR WORSE, HE IS > INTERNATIONALLY REKNOWN IN ANY LIT OR ART HISTORY PROGRAM WORTH A DAMN > (OR WORTH DAMNING, DAMMING, ETC.) Debord denounced what he called > > ``the show-biz society'' NOW HE'S BEEN TRANFSORMED INTO A STAR OF THE LIT > CRIT SPECTACLE and declared that performing arts AND LIFE ITSELF!!! should > > be based on powerful emotions, passions and sexual desire. AS OPPOSED TO > THE COLD, DISTANCED REMOVE OF DECONSTRUCTIONISM, AKA THE SPECTER/SPHINCTER > OF DERRIDA> His ideas were influential among theoreticians and essayists > who > achieved prominence in the May 1968 student-led cultural revolt > > that shook French society. HIS IDEAS WERE MOST INFLUENTIAL AMONGST THE > STUDENTS WHO REVOLTED AND IN THE FORMATION OF A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS!!! THE > PROMINENT ASSHOLES WHO TOOK HIS IDEAS AND CUT OFF THEIR BALLS ARE > MURDERERS. THE BLOOD IS ON THEIR HANDS!!! > > > > Eddie Shanken >From avant-garde-approval-AT-world.std.com Sun Dec 4 06:24:56 1994 To: avant-garde-AT-world.std.com Subject: DEBORD'S DEATH From: alastair.dickson-AT-almac.co.uk (ALASTAIR DICKSON) Date: Sun, 04 Dec 94 10:56:00 +0100 On Sat, 3 Dec 1994, Edward A. Shanken wrote: ES> GUY DEBORD DID NOT KILL HIMSELF. HE WAS MURDERED!!! Oh no, please no return to "Jim Morrison/Ian Curtis/Kurt Cobain Died For You"! On Sat, 3 Dec 1994 Calum Selkirk <cselkirk-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us> wrote CS>do you think that publishers like Verso would CS>publish SOtheS without his permission? The news of the suicide prompts some speculation. Two years ago, GD stopped his books being published by Champ Libre / Gerard Lebovici (which was one step from self-publishing) and sold them to Gallimard. Similarly, the English versions had been solidified into respectable editions from MIT/Zone and Verso (despite his blowing hot and cold over allowing them to publish). Less a sell-out than securing their future? CS>.....it could be said that debord lent himself to comodification and CS>to the visibility that being an avant-leader of minions brings..... So much of Debord's post-SI activity was concerned with fixing the snapshot of his past: from his glosses on "Society of the Spectacle" through "In Girum" to the "Panegyric". Especially interesting in this respect is his 1985 "Considerations sur l'Assassinat de Gerard Lebovici", e.g. in his justification of his legal actions to sue the press for libel. __________________________________________________________________ -- Alastair Dickson I <alastair.dickson-AT-almac.co.uk> -- Stirling, Scotland I ________________________________I_________________________________ --- * Orator V1.14 #31 * >From avant-garde-approval-AT-world.std.com Sun Dec 4 06:24:58 1994 To: avant-garde-AT-world.std.com Subject: DEBORD From: alastair.dickson-AT-almac.co.uk (ALASTAIR DICKSON) Date: Sun, 04 Dec 94 10:30:00 +0100 Timely or untimely, here's a copy of the review of Debord's Panegyric from Here & Now 12. In context, this review was mirrored with one using exactly the same words for "Time To Declare" by Dr. David Owen, founder and then splitter of the 1980s Social Democratic Party (a conjunction which irritated some people): "At the time, the new-found unity was presented as an inauguration of the radically-new. The new politics would build on the founders' past experiences but would also utilise ideas from outside traditional politics - but ideas in everyone's heads. This unity was both inclusive and exclusive: inclusive in the belief that everyone discuss, be involved in what afected them most, and act decisively together; exclusive in the projection of a single organisational line. Collegial beginnings hid personal conflicts among the leadership, conflicts which were to lay waste to the entire enterprise. The relationships of inclusion-exclusion,the weapons of criticism and the criticism ofweapons propelled one figure towards the centre, a man convinced of his own destiny. His growing confidence and sense of vision brought an ever-more-apparent intransigence, which would ultimately seek to preserve the organisation by smashing it. And after the fall, there remained only a small coterie of supporters, convinced thatthe fit with the historical moment had vindicated that one man's vision. What remains? Only to document the moments which had been." __________________________________________________________________ -- Alastair Dickson I <alastair.dickson-AT-almac.co.uk> -- Stirling, Scotland I ________________________________I_________________________________ --- * Orator V1.14 #31 * >From avant-garde-approval-AT-world.std.com Sun Dec 4 13:56:32 1994 Date: Sun, 4 Dec 1994 13:43:11 -0500 (EST) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim-AT-panix.com> To: avant-garde-AT-world.std.com, cybermind-AT-world.std.com Subject: Re: the death of Debord - suicide or murder? (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 4 Dec 1994 01:04:33 -0500 From: John Young <jya-AT-pipeline.com> To: fiction-of-philosophy-AT-world.std.com Subject: Re: the death of Debord - suicide or murder? Guy Debord, if I'm not mistaken, did some work for The Mossad which fostered his infamous celebrity as a cover. I learned this from Philip Roth who spends time now and then here on the Upper West Side and we talk about literary matters -- he knows that I'm a groupie of his art and I affectionately encourage his passion for architecture. We wander in our talks about our different but related professions and the weird situations we get involved in, especially involving strange wealthy people who want to do something important in the world with their money. Philip first told me about Guy's Mossad link when he was working on his own book on that role for himself. He said candidly that Guy was the model for himself in the writer's spy role, spying on himself and having himself double himself, as single double-crossing over to another self. You recall that Philip wrote in his book of threats on him for telling his Mossad fictional role, or real role fictionally, or at least not telling as it really was The Mossad said. Guy, Philip said, told Philip that The Mossad promoted Guy's public career including the various controversies and disputes as a carefully written script which Guy was given to study, even to modify within certain limitations as the need arose. The interactive high intellectual nature and worldly stakes of the script came to engage Guy like no academic intellectual study had ever done. The very intelligent intelligence agents who handled Debord were well beyond Guy's level so he said, he was a student to these wise hard men and women who met with him regularly for over twenty-two years. He told Philip that he had never met such down-to-earth intellects and very strong minds in any of the French haute-ecole system. He envied the unrelieving attention they gave to every worldly matter from the most minute to the grandest. The philosophical grounding of these long-drawn sessions came to haunt Guy, he said to Philip, for he came to believe that what was happening to him was not new, not unique, but was part of a long-term, wide-spread relationship between people of the mind and world power. This dazzling and humbling association with real world power beyond the soft minded literary and philosophical worlds totally mesmerized Debord, Guy told Philip, and turned into a believer of a faith almost beyond explanation. The elixirate mix of sacred and profane literally made Guy drunk with intellectual stimulation and shared worldly risk, made him feel totally grounded and elevated stratospherically. Guy told Philip that the intrigue and daring bond of high mind and base reality was an alchemic transformation of mental to physical like no head-wrought book could come near. No thought was too ephermeral, no fact was too real, the doubling over of spirit and rock, the switching back and forth, the evidence of ideas made into hard deeds, lives saved and destroyed in trans-categorical intra- warfare drove him almost insane with passion for knowing and feeling and doing everything he once only dreamed. Philip said Guy recently told him that he thought he was losing his mind in the fray, that he may no longer keep up with the endlessly exhausting demands on his role. Guy said that his stamina was waning for the doubling, cross- doubling and re-doubling of understanding, misunderstanding, creative misunderstanding, the treacherous attempt to keep track of the ficitonal and the real and the really fictional and the fictonal really real, the almost stupefying shifting, intra-active-shifting, of hard bed reality and its imaginative gloss for special effects, acting, reacting, overreacting, and the spiral of deceit and confession and confessional misrepresentations. Philip has deftly covered all this in his book and the dizzying effect it had on his fictional real self. I've not seen Philip for over a week but he will probably call when poor Guy has been finally put to a well- earned rest. Suicide or murder, I suspect that in Guy's case they are the same, that he murdered himself to finally absolutely, precisely, wed mind and matter in total success of conflating self and other. Rest in peace Debord. We all know that this is the grand modern French condition of anal retentive finest of minds. I admire French intellectuals immensely for their ability to fictionalize reality in their own high-risk lifestyles and pay the hautest of prices for the privilege. >From avant-garde-approval-AT-world.std.com Sun Dec 4 18:54:32 1994 To: avant-garde-AT-world.std.com Subject: Re: Debord & MOSSAD? From: alastair.dickson-AT-almac.co.uk (ALASTAIR DICKSON) Date: Sun, 04 Dec 94 23:35:00 +0100 Alan Sondheim <sondheim-AT-panix.com> forwarded a message from John Young <jya-AT-pipeline.com> suggesting that: > Guy Debord, if I'm not mistaken, did some work for The > Mossad which fostered his infamous celebrity as a cover. There's a long and hoary past of suggested Sit.-intelligence links. For example, Lyndon LaRoche's "New Solidarity" in 1974 pushed a CIA smear. This re-emerged in the "Times" review of the London leg of the Paris-London-Boston Sit.Int. show at the end of the 80s - and even provoked Michelle Bernstein out of silence in response. (By contrast, I've heard that part of the delay in publication of the MIT/Zone edition of "Society of the Spectacle" was that Debord regarded _them_ as having CIA links.) Unfortunately, that kind of smear has been par for the course in inter-group rivalries. The blend of the Sits. "specialists in revolt" self-presentation and subsequent near-complete silence may even encourage it. But does the hypothesis explain anything? Does Mossad-work explain anything in Debord's conduct / activity? Did he have any skills likely to fit with Mossad's needs? (OK, intelligence services have had a propensity to recruiting hardened drinkers - from Cambridge on - but really...) Just about the only fit I can think of is that both aspire(d) to be master-strategists playing The Great Game. But that, I think, is less an indication of active affinity than of the fault-line in Situationism (a deliberate -ism here!) itself. > You recall that Philip wrote in his book of threats on him > for telling his Mossad fictional role, or real role > fictionally, or at least not telling as it really was The > Mossad said. If Roth himself did play such a role, there seems to be an excess of models here... > Guy, Philip said, told Philip that The Mossad promoted > Guy's public career including the various controversies and > disputes as a carefully written script which Guy was given > to study The period covered by the 22 years isn't specified: 50-92? which would show a nurturing of precocious talent in Lettrist film-making, turning to politics, and including breaks with people for active involvement in the Palestinian cause (hardly what an agent would do) 72-94? in which case Mossad got a terrible deal in terms of GD's rejection of any public career. It would indeed be interesting if Roth comes forward with something to say on all this, especially if it was more concrete tan the coy interviews he did to promote his book. But in the absence of that, I think it's most helpful to evaluate the achievements and limitations of Debord's visible activity without recourse to conspiratorialism. __________________________________________________________________ -- Alastair Dickson I <alastair.dickson-AT-almac.co.uk> -- Stirling, Scotland I ________________________________I_________________________________ --- * Orator V1.14 #31 * >From avant-garde-approval-AT-world.std.com Mon Dec 5 03:40:17 1994 To: avant-garde-AT-world.std.com Subject: DEBORD OBIT. From: alastair.dickson-AT-almac.co.uk (ALASTAIR DICKSON) Date: Mon, 05 Dec 94 07:50:00 +0100 The conclusion to Malcolm Imrie's obit.in this morning's Guardian: "Debord has left us withtheworld which hedescribed better than anyone I know. A ubiquitous despicable social order, and the distractions of pulp fiction, cyber-stupidities and national lotteries. Debord saw them coming, the Berlusconis and the Blairs. I hope all those,like me, who were helped and inspired by his extraordinary writing will live long enough to see them go." __________________________________________________________________ -- Alastair Dickson I <alastair.dickson-AT-almac.co.uk> -- Stirling, Scotland I ________________________________I_________________________________ --- * Orator V1.14 #31 * >From avant-garde-approval-AT-world.std.com Tue Dec 6 04:25:12 1994 To: avant-garde-AT-world.std.com Subject: Re: Debord & MOSSAD? From: alastair.dickson-AT-almac.co.uk (ALASTAIR DICKSON) Forwarded message from John Young <jya-AT-pipeline.com>: ----- Responding to msg by alastair.dickson-AT-almac.co.uk (ALASTAIR DICKSON) on Mon, 05 Dec 6:32 PM My Dear Mr. Dickson, Thank you for the forward of your comments on Debord's speculative Mossadian-scripted self-murder. I certainly did not intend to "smear" Debord and regret that my message was so inept and inapt that it might be used or abused or interpreted or misinterpreted that way. I apologize Apollonianly to other admirers and emulators of M. Debord like myself before he became corporeally, for me at least, inaccessibly remote (I am an atheist). I shall miss his earthly companionship very much. Smearing or slurring or chuck-spearing by ass-kissingering any of the world's pernicious "intelligence" agencies is odious as well as a well-crafted counter-intelligence contra-device oft tattooed by these aquaria of shark-chompers and their dolphinal professorian celebrity-faux-hautest-cerebity apeish imps. My own suspicion is that Guy Debord was fooled about The Mossad by imposters who enjoyed deceiving him. This is based on my intimate knowledge of how Philip Roth thinks so highly of himself, and tries to hide it helplessly, that he is easily tricked by people of lesser intelligence. Philip and I have discussed his and this fault in people of finest mind who find it inconceivable that they are not on top of things and who thereby get beat everytime by crafty single-minded gangsters. Philip, you will recall, uses such characters to cheat the over-smart innocents. Philip soberly admits that he frequently gets so drunk on multifarous fictional possibilities that he cannot stick to the main story he's trying to write. He has his down-to-earth keeper Claire lock him out of his studio until he crashes from his strongest addictive drug, himself as superior mind free from base low-born declasse material gentile-reality. It is possible that Debord suffered from this adrenalin-limitless mental supremacy as well and may have thought that he could outsmart his own Self-Murder, or be reborn anew, like so many mistaken, or maybe correct, suicidal narcissists do, so I read, as they slip the plastic bag over head, grasp St John or St Joan amourly and kick the chair away, thrashing about to eternally blissful superiority. Did not M. Camus once espouse something like this before his own S-M? For me, I prefer a slightly open mind on this all too Francophile melodramatic theory. Would you be so kind as to forward this to the fora you posted yours. I shall post to my original forum <fiction-of-philosophy>. I shall warmly welcome your answer or any others. Sincerely, John Young <jya-AT-pipeline.com> Upper West Side NYC ------------------- __________________________________________________________________ -- Alastair Dickson I <alastair.dickson-AT-almac.co.uk> -- Stirling, Scotland I ________________________________I_________________________________ --- * Orator V1.14 #31 * ******* Sorry for the bad formatting. These are as I received them. --BK ------------------ --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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