The Most Dangerous Man in Italy

 I was told very quickly about the death of Gianfranco Sanguinetti, and I'm very glad I learned about it from one of his friends who knew how much I'd want to know, and the news was sent to me from inside the doorway where Debord and Sanguinetti are pictured sitting here. While I never actually sat on the doorstep, I know it very well, and have stepped over it. 

Talking about a doorstep when someone of Gianfranco's importance is strange, I know, but when I was staying so close to the doorstep it took on an importance I'd never have imagined.

So Gianfranco, Debord's last most trusted accomplice, and the only other member of the Situationist International at its end, seems to have been quite different to the swaggering, hard drinking, smoking, womanising person who emerges through the letters he wrote and received to and from Debord, reminiscences and gossip. Gianfranco talked to me via emails and sent me material that I have not seen elsewhere, and some of that material included photographs of his re-creating this photograph with other people. I'd never have imagined this level of sentimentality and love of a place from him, but I'd obviously got Gianfranco wrong, and now I know better.

Since his death in October of this year some people have written about his shyness and reticence, and one of those articles is by Joe Feinberg and can be found here. While I knew that Sanguinetti had been ill last summer, I was unaware that he had been involved in a road accident in July and which ultimately led to his death. Last night was the anniversary of Guy Debord's suicide in 1994, and it is also the Polish celebration November Night, when the spirits of the dead revisit you, and while I'm not too sure that either Guy or Gianfranco were anywhere close to me it made me quite sad that Gianfranco had his life ended by stupid circumstance. But there's not much you can do about that.

Last year I spent some time living in the house pictured above, and spending another night in Debord's residence in the via delle Caldaie in Florence. Both experiences were a mixture of excitement, hard work, tiredness, feeling a bit like a groupie and much laughter and drinking and eating. I have made quite a lot of progress about finding out through living there what their lives were like in the 1970s, in those mysterious years when no one is very clear about what they did in Italy, and this is all future work for a book about their everyday lives that I am writing at present. 

Guy Debord called Gianfranco the most dangerous man in Italy after the publication of The Real Report on the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy, his arguably most important piece of work which made the government of Italy look like a bunch of reactionary, wicked fools and which caused all sorts of trouble for Sanguinetti. But if you look at everything Gianfranco wrote, it is all equally important. During the Corona virus pandemic it was magnificent hearing the voice of the Situationist International again speaking out in his article A Virus Removes the Veil of Bourgeois Democracy, which can be found here, and his article about a part of women's bodies which if I discussed it more would probably get me banned from here but parts of which makes you feel quite uncomfortable and difficult to sit still while you are reading it, but can be found here. He also wrote about - among other things - state sanctioned terrorism, expulsion of Jews in history and a review of a biography about Debord which was excoriating. 

Debord also said in his calling Gianfranco the most dangerous man in Italy about how proud he was of knowing him and being with him, and although later events happened that caused them to fall out, their letters often reveal a still huge love for each other - Debord still calling him Niccolo (i.e. Machiavelli, and Debord often called himself Hegel in letters to dear trusted ones) and impassioned letters saying how much they'd missed each other. Debord was famous for expulsions of members, and even though Gianfranco was no longer a member who could be expelled he was sometimes and ultimately no longer a friend of Debord, and the effect on both of them was probably awful. All I will say is that I felt the love of his time with Debord in Italy was still very palpable, even after fifty years.

So Gianfranco is dead, and the numbers of members of the SI gets less as the years go on. Many of the members came and went without making a great impression, but its last member, Gianfranco, left an onward life to the Situationist experience and the loss of that voice is huge. Ora Basta, Gianfranco, you are missed already.