This is the first and best intellectual biography of Guy Debord, prime
mover of the Situationist International (1957–1972) and author of The Society of the Spectacle,
perhaps 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's
focus, to the contrary, is 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 supplies a superb gloss that has never been rivaled
despite the great flood of writing on the Situationists in recent
decades.
At the same time, Debord is placed squarely in context
among the Letterist and Situationist anti-artists who, in the aftermath
of World War II, sought to criticize and transcend the legacy of Dada
and Surrealism. Jappe's book offers a lively account of the
Situationists' theory and practice as this “last avant-garde” made its
way from radical bohemianism to revolutionary theory and action.
Guy Debord
has been translated into many languages. This PM Press reprint edition
benefits from a new author's preface and a bibliographical update.
Guy Debord - Anselm Jappe & T.J. Clark
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£19.99