Guy Debord : revolution in the service of poetry /
Kaufmann, Vincent,1955-
Minneapolis, Minn. : University of Minnesota Press,
c2006.
"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.".
"Instead of providing a conventional day-to-day account of Debord's life, Kaufmann locates his subject within the historical and intellectual context of the radical social, political, and artistic movements in which he participated. He traces Debord's development as an intellectual: his involvement with the leftist movement in the early 1950s, his central role in the Situationist International from 1957 to 1971 and in the events of May 1968, and the productive and frequently misunderstood period between the dissolution of the situationists and his suicide, during which time Debord clarified the roles of his war against inauthenticity.".
"As Kaufmann makes clear, for Debord political thought and action were inseparable from aesthetics and poetic expression. Whether envisioning the recovery of a lost, protocommunist age of authenticity and transparency in The Society of the Spectacle or critically assessing the possibility of revolution against postmodern capitalism two decades later, Debord advocated and practiced an art of defiance, a concurrently martial and melancholic poetics. Avoiding the mythologies about Debord that both admirers and critics have cultivated, Kaufmann provides an assessment of Debord and his uncompromising struggle against a corrupt civilization."--BOOK JACKET.
"Originally published in French as Guy Debord: la révolution au service de la poésie. Copyright 2001 Librairie Arthème Fayard"--T.p. verso.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 323-329) and index.
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.
"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.".
"Instead of providing a conventional day-to-day account of Debord's life, Kaufmann locates his subject within the historical and intellectual context of the radical social, political, and artistic movements in which he participated. He traces Debord's development as an intellectual: his involvement with the leftist movement in the early 1950s, his central role in the Situationist International from 1957 to 1971 and in the events of May 1968, and the productive and frequently misunderstood period between the dissolution of the situationists and his suicide, during which time Debord clarified the roles of his war against inauthenticity.".
"As Kaufmann makes clear, for Debord political thought and action were inseparable from aesthetics and poetic expression. Whether envisioning the recovery of a lost, protocommunist age of authenticity and transparency in The Society of the Spectacle or critically assessing the possibility of revolution against postmodern capitalism two decades later, Debord advocated and practiced an art of defiance, a concurrently martial and melancholic poetics. Avoiding the mythologies about Debord that both admirers and critics have cultivated, Kaufmann provides an assessment of Debord and his uncompromising struggle against a corrupt civilization."--BOOK JACKET.
Debord, Guy, 1931-1994.
Radicals
Filmkunst.
Filmregisseurs.
Guy Debord.