Guy Debord

Guy Debord was a revolutionary theorist, a film-maker, the indisputable head of the Situationists, and a key figure in the constellation of French theorists and intellectuals from the 1960s onwards. He committed suicide in 1995 at the age of 63. Identifying everyday life as the terrain of revolutionary activity, he added new and apposite dimensions to Marxist thinking in the late 20th century: "The Society of the Spectacle", his seminal work, characterized a society resting not only on the alienated labour of workers, but on the alienated lives of spectators. In this guide to the complex and innovative work of a key 20th-century theorist, Phil Edwards offers an integrated account of Debord's extraordinary life and work - examining not only his theoretical writings but his output as a prose stylist and film-maker. Where other commentators have been content to gloss some of the more flamboyant aspects of Debord's work, Edwards reconsiders it as a whole, in a comprehensive critical introduction to one of the most controversial and sometimes baffling of this century's radical thinkers.

Guy Debord - a chronology; "go home Mister Chaplin" - the Lettrist International, 1952-57; "we will only organize the detonation" - the Situationist International, 1957-72; the spectacle in crisis - Debord after 1972; "I have written much less than most..." - the writings; "...and we are consumed by fire" - the films; the life.

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