Guy Debord: revolution in the service of poetry

Abstract

"Writer, artist, filmmaker, provocateur, revolutionary, and impresario of the Situationist International, Guy Debord shunned the apparatus of publicity he dissected so brilliantly in his most influential work, The Society of the Spectacle. In this biography, Vincent Kaufmann places Debord's very hostility toward the inquisitive, biographical gaze at the center of an investigation into his subject's diverse output - from his earliest films to his landmark works of social theory and political provocation - and the poetic sensibility that informed both his work and his life."

Contents

Lost children -- Origins -- Scratched negatives and the game of appearances -- Passing through lettrism -- Having boarded at night the lightest of crafts -- I wanted to speak the beautiful language of my century -- The golden age -- Bernard, Bernard, this bloom of youth will not last forever -- My child, my sister ... No turning back -- Whatever was directly experienced has been distanced through representation -- An art without works -- The end of art -- Cartes du Tendre -- The poetics of the dérive -- Psychogeography and psychoanalysis -- Unitary urbanism: between utopia and architecture -- The light brigade -- Means of communication -- The poetics of revolution -- From Stasbourg to Segovia -- The greater the fame of our arguments, the greater our obscurity -- The last guardian -- Strategy -- The moving surface of the River of Time -- Descriptions of battle -- How to be disliked -- Refutations -- Considerations on an assassination -- Against interpretation -- Shadows, secrets, and mirrors -- The game of war, Gondi -- Conclusion: Debord, against type.