Driftin’ with Guy Debord
December 3rd, 2009Some characters in France have written a book Derives pour Guy Debord. It seem easier to write such a book than drift with Guy Debord. Around 1979, Lucy Forsyth and myself translated Debord’s Preface to the 4th Italian translation to the Society of the spectacle.( Very few people today can claim to have drifted with Guy Debord, most of those who did are no longer with us, the passage of time has taken care of them. The grim reaper never stops working it seems!) So we sent him the preface in English , he was very happy that we had done it. In the first edition we used pseudonyms to fox the enemy, I became Michael Forsyth and Lucy became Frances Parker. It was a bit of situ fun. In the second edition we used our names. So Guy Debord invited us to see him in Arles. (Even Andrew Hussey in his book The Game of War) has related this. I had met Guy Debord previously around March 1972, in Paris. And remained in contact with him all that time, especially since the Piranha group had managed to translate and publish the first English translation of The Veritable Split in the International -public circular of the situationist international. (Paris, 1972, London 1974). [today that edition is often omitted by goons who claim to be situationist inspired, Debord liked the list of all those who refused our first edition, a bit different from the one published by Pluto Press with the help of the French Foreign office, and translated by a certain John Mcquail, someone that we have not seen).
Recently I wrote that Guy Debord was an advanced orthodox marxist. There is alot of truth in that especially since he was unable to get out of the classist framework completely. And yet it doesn’t reflect what Guy Debord was all about. The ten authors of DERIVES POUR GUY DEBORD no doubt will describe all the different aspects of Debord’s interests. Notably his critique of art, which he started developing when he was around with Isidore ISOU in the lettrist group. He told me he had learnt alot from Isou, especially about architecture, ecology, cinema. Later in the early fifties, the young lettrists split from ISOU over the Charlie Chaplin affair. It was the beginning of Internationale lettriste. The critique of art was in full swing. ART HAD BEEN IN A CRISIS FOR A LONG TIME. You only have to look at what passes as art today to realise that the international lettrists and situationists were right to say that art was dead. But later in the eighties Debord had neglected rereading Marx’s Capital and Grundrisse where Marx develops his critique of value. And yet Debord’s critique touched many more disciplines, like for example: the critique of everyday life, an idea he got from meeting Henri Lefebvre. Debord was also interested in architecture, urbanism, ecology. The idea of situations he pinched from Jean-Paul Sartre who was not able to develop it.
Debord was also a keen drifter, who explored many cities, notably Paris. He was also an early exponent of diversion (detournement), diverting everything he could to advance his critique (all this took place at the time of Internationale Lettriste). Those who took part in this game were Gil J Wolman, Ivan Chtcheglov, Michele Bernstein, Jean-Michel Mension, etc. Debord was also interested in aesthetics, form and content; situationists were always interested in language. The reason their critique appealed to people was because it was some kind of poetical critical prose. Whilst many pinko-leftists still wrote and still write in a kind of wooden linguo that hardly anyone can get into. The famous langue de bois which belongs to politicians all over the world and which Debord denounced many times.
As for himself he was always careful to remain in the background, avoiding the limelight that appealed so much to Chaplin and many others. In any case he was too busy with his films , translations, writings.
He took up the idea of Sergei Eisenstein who wanted to shoot Marx’s Capital. But in Stalin’s USSR such a project was not on the FIVE YEAR PLAN! Stalin was even of the opinion that Chapter 1 of Capital was not necessary, all that stuff about the fetishism of the commodity did not apply in the glorious workers’ State.
So Debord managed to make a film of his book The Society of the spectacle. Not many people on the left have been able to film their books, let alone write one.
So it seems that Guy Debord was more marxian than orthodox marxist, but his Commentaries on the society of the spectacle let the cat out of the bag. It was clear that Debord was in a real mess. And yet he was aware that the revolution was on hold, since we were going through a period of change. But he was not able to reach the conclusion that the subject today is capital. So he remained in his classist trench with his fixed bayonet ie. with his game of war in his hands. It is very sad. It would take Moishe Postone to unravel the entire new development; in 1993 he published his Time, labor and social domination.
So let’s go back to 1982, we went back to Arles -after the debacle of the Spanish campaign to free libertarians prisoners- one character did alot of damage with his actions, he and others had translated songs that Debord had written, but his Spanish was not as good as his French, so they corrected some of them. When Arthur Marchadier came back from Spain with us, he showed the booklet with the songs in Spanish. Debord flipped and accused those who had published the songs of having changed the words when in fact they had improved them, they could not publish the songs as they were, they sounded too French. But Arthur instead of being able to explain this quietly, panicked and blamed others, notably some of the Incontrolados. that was his mistake. More than 80 letters would be written about this affair and yet our campaign managed to free quite a few people who had been arrested for “liberating money from banks”.
There was alot of enthusiasm in Spain after the death of Franco. He ruled that country for 40 years with an iron fist. Today all his statues have been taken down. It is too shameful. And they are digging up pits where thousands of poor people were shot by the Spanish fascists. Debord since 1953 always had the idea that one had to restart the Spanish revolution. All that was valid until the death of Franco, but Spain had changed dramatically, thirty million tourists visited that country every year, bringing ideas and new ways of living. Franco’s regime had been undermined by tourists! I did point out to Debord that Spain had changed. The Tejero attempted coup failed, the King did not follow the three cornered hat of Tejero. Only one general, a certain Milan del Bosch , of the armoured division in Valencia backed Tejero. (Bosch had been on the side of Hitler in the division azul which fought in the USSR). Bosch was arrested, Tejero also.
Debord was going to do a film about Spain, but he never did it. Maybe he would have had to relate all the stuff I spoke about earlier.
I had lived in Arles around 1967, on a fishing boat that was going to bring medical supplies to Vietnam. But the crisis in the middle east put an end to that project. I went to Arles to meet the crew, but they had already gone back to London, so I stayed on the boat from June to November, until the boat sank in the canal. How that took place remains a mystery to this day. Rats were gnawing at the wood, I fed them regular poison pellets, but they seem to get accustomed to the stuff, maybe they liked those sweets. But one day, around 2 in the morning, the boat started to sink, I managed to throw a few things on the riverbank. And I ran to alert the fire brigade , I told them to bring a pump, in order to refloat the boat. They brought one, but it was too small. The next day they brought a bigger one , and the boat was refloated. Some story. To this day people speak about it.
The day it sank , I had just come back from meeting some friends in some bar in the place du forum , at Mr Romano’s cafe. The cops would come round midnight to see if the joint was closed, so we would huddle in the kitchen until les poulets were gone. Mr Romano would then carry on serving wine by the meter. A sort of situationist way of serving up beverages. Remember how Pinot-Gallizio (An early SI member ) would sell his industrial paintings by the meter. So one day Guy Debord wanted to see where the boat had sunk. So we drifted down to the canal (Alice was with us), but the canal had been redesigned, it was now a motorway. That drift was not too pleasant. That is what you have to expect these days. Everything changes all the time, capitalism eats up canals,memories etc. What is left is not for the best!
Someone took photographs during that drift, I reckon it was Lucy. Debord was hiding behing a big Andy Capp hat. Then we repaired to some inn for some refreshments. We often used to walk along the Rhone. On the way to visit a friend -whom Debord had met- I had met Fernand Guigonis in 1967, we would take a taxi to his place, since it was uphill and Debord had difficulties in walking because of gout (the legendary illness of generals) . He would say :” we will walk on the wayback since it is downhill all the way”.
Poetry was central to Debord, and the SI , but it wasn’t a formal poetry, that very one which had failed-, it was different, it was poetry in motion. Political prose was poetical and critical of politics. No one can say that LA SOCIETE DU SPECTACLE was badly written. That was its force and the content was radical for that time. Unfortunately he had not known how to supersede his book, he regressed into the conspiracy theory of history. At the level of the State there are always secrets, plots etc. But commodity society is an automaton, no one controls it. As Robert Kurz said somewhere if you are not able to understand capital, you fall back unto conspiracy. An easy way out, but a costly one. That was Debord’s dilemma despite all his wide-ranging theory. which included many elements, in the end it was found wanting. No wonder the French State wants to buy his entire archives and this before an American University does exactly that. He would be appalled by such an undertaking, he who refused the Prix Saint-Beuve in 1967 for his book La societe du spectacle. How times have changed. Those who can’t criticize modern capital are invariably coopted by it. As long as Debord was alive he tried by all means to resist against the tentacles of the system. But by 1989, the date his Commentaries came out in France, his critique was a pale version of 1967.
Today we await what those who have written Drifts for Guy Debord have to say. No doubt we will have to come back to that book in the near future.
Written by MPW Prigent as part of the memoirs of a situationist drummer, 2nd of December 2009.
December 4th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Le bonjour de France,
un texte du livre ” Dérives pour Guy Debord “, de Gérard Briche, proche d’Anselm Jappe, est déjà disponible ici : palim-psao.over-blog.fr/article–le-spectacle-comme-illusion-et-realite-debord-et-la-critique-de-la-valeur-par-gerard-briche–39150891.html
Merci pour votre très bon site.