In Irish the word for twilight is trathnona. It was one of my uncle's favourite words, and when I walked behind his coffin through the main street of a town in the south of Ireland a few years ago, I said to my cousin about how he had loved the word, and what a spectacularly beautiful twilight it was that night. Guy Debord's life was bookended by the twilight, being born in the very west of Paris at the drift into evening, and dying in Champot, twenty five years ago today, just as evening was setting in. In his incredibly beautiful farewell book, Panegyric, Debord talks about the owl that hooted in the Square des Missions Etrangeres in October 1988, the same square that Michèle Bernstein had written about in Potlatch, the Lettrist journal, in 1955, where she said the square could be used for "receiving visitors, for being stormed by night and for other psychogeographical purposes." Writing Panegyric in the late 80s, the psychogeographical purpose of the square was to take Debord back to a time before he was approaching old age, was in much worse health, and when he was only starting the game of the SI.
It's twenty five years ago tonight that Debord shot himself, at twilight, and in the middle of nowhere, in the house on that vastly open plain surrounded by inactive volcanos, the land of storms and loneliness that he describes so beautifully, and is so violently different to the tiny backstreets of Paris. I often say, in response to current happenings, that Debord must be spinning in his grave - obviously untrue, since he doesn't have a grave, as his ashes were poured into the Seine, by Alice, whilst standing in another psychogeographical space of importance for the Lettrists, the Square du Vert-Galant. One of the things that made me say this was the Gucci promotional video for their fashion range that referenced the events of May 68 last year :
And all of this leads me to what would Debord have thought of the world today? I really hope he would have hated it, and he probably would. When he died the notion of psychogeography was just starting to be used and misused, so that it has now become something unrecognisable. People carry books through the countryside to read them at a pre-arranged spot, and this is called psychogeography; there is a World Congress of Psychogeography that meets in the north of England every year; Ian Sinclair writes endlessly about walking, or travelling on trains or something else as though he invented the idea; Merlin Coverley has written a ludicrous book which delves into the arcane side of what is now termed psychogeography which would, I feel, enrage Debord. So, one of the main theories of the SI commodified and totally recouped. Even Teresa May said that she'd decided to call a general election after walking. It's touted as a cure-all for all ills, and has lost any message as a revolutionary tool. Debord said this would happen - the Spectacle recoups and re-sells us all methods of protest and revolution, but as a spineless, easy, non-threatening activity. Which is what psychogeography is now reduced to.
The concept of the Spectacle is likewise paraded and mentioned by rich intellectuals in passing with an ironic smile and a nod of the head. The Spectacle has been recouped, regurgitated and sold back to us. Art students reference the SI, while participating in work supposedly inspired by them, but that only prop up the edifice. For a couple of years I would lecture business students about the Spectacle, social control, ways to resist it. I honestly think most of them thought I was off my head. A few students, every year, would come up to me, shyly, and say they got what I was on about. One boy only saw the light after a while, and what he wrote is here
Someone said that nowadays talk of the Spectacle is often used as a cultural critique. Yes, Debord did critique culture, but he never wanted it to be the only thing, but of course, the Spectacle grabs protest and manages it. And if you're talking about culture, you probably aren't talking about politics. On the Liminal Residency at Heathrow I pointed out a whole series of adverts which used Situationist tactics - disrupt without disruption, that sort of thing, the style that bored Michèle. Without the SI, modern advertising would be lost.
I sometimes feel glad that Debord never lived long enough to see the total control of the internet, of people living a half life looking at their phones, not engaging with everyday life or with the city they are walking through, believing crap that anyone can spout, believing that people should be cancelled because they did something years ago and are now being held to account. Me Too? Moi non plus. I am surprised there hasn't been a flood of women coming forward with increasingly wild stories about sexual awfulness concerning Debord, and that more feminist flack hasn't been aimed at him than it has. We are hurling ourselves back into Victorian morality with all the attendant hypocrisy that that entailed the first time.
Politically the world is stupid, we all know that. The internet has made people more stupid, because if people read something that looks 'right' they tend to believe it. I know, I know, wild generalisations. If you repeat a lie often enough people believe it. The Illuminati, Hollywood celebrities drinking babies' blood, MK Ultra, people believe all this rubbish. But people always have, but it's easier to read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion now than it was before. I walked up the rue Cujas a couple of years ago - where Debord had lain in the gutter in a rainstorm and asked Barbara Rosenthal to help him to drown - and where the Studio Cujas played Debords' films to empty cinemas, and in the window of a bookshop was a book called 'The Jihadi Handbook'. Spinning in his grave.
The massive flood of possessions that we can all own thanks to Amazon, the staggering amounts of tat the Spectacle can dull us with to tempt us into submission, would have staggered even Debord. If he thought that 1960s consumerist France was bad enough, think what he'd feel about online shopping. The endless advertising, the waste of buying something that isn't quite right, the attendant hassle of sending it back, so you don't always bother.
The reality, recuperation and revolution of everyday life. This was something frequently talked about by the SI, and was central to their theory. Debord shot himself sitting in his favourite armchair, dying in the midst of his and Alice's everyday life, possibly giving the act much more importance than people have ever written about. Okay, given that it was extremely painful for him to move around by that point, it was probably more out of necessity, but maybe not.
I found out about Debord's death through the Anarchist Research Group's newsletter, then edited by Karen Goaman. It was during an extremely difficult part of my life, a part I don't like remembering, and it was part of that difficulty. Rather ironically, it was Karen's son who told her about Debord death, after reading about it on the early internet. At that time I read little about Situationist studies, largely because little was being published in English, although things were starting to appear. One day I woke up from years of having children and people dying, and bought Andrew Hussey's book The Game of War, the first English language biography of Debord. I haven't really stopped reading about the SI since.
Of course the internet is now awash with SI information, a lot of archive material that is invaluable. And some of it shows us a totally different side to Debord, including this lovely postcard he sent to Anita Blanc, and isn't shared enough on the internet :
And the cat is obviously right in front of one of the things hated by Debord, the nightmarish pyramid outside the Louvre. What's not to like?
So when that owl of Minerva starts hooting tonight, heralding the onset of twilight, read something Debord actually wrote, not something someone else wrote, but something of his. Panegyric is probably his most accessible, most beautifully written, lucid work, and you can do no worse than to read it. And then go for an aimless walk.
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