Guy Louis Debord (1931–94) was a French Marxist, activist, filmmaker, social commentator, and philosopher. He was a founding member of the Situationist International, an international organization of social revolutionaries.
Born in Paris, Debord attended the University of Paris to study law; he never took the study seriously, choosing a Bohemian life instead. He was the most prominent member of the Situationist International—an intellectual cabal who were moved by all kinds of influences. Their dominant philosophy combined two elements: identification of alienation noticeable to the young Marx, and an emphasis on the desire-driven pointlessness celebrated by the dadaists and surrealists.
Debord’s work constituted a revolutionary response to the postwar advances of capitalism and was based around the need to reestablish vitality, creativity, and self-determination into human experience. His most influential work is La Société du spectacle (1967; Society of the Spectacle, 1970,) which made the famous forecast that postmodernity seems to have realized in full—specifically that the final form of the commodity would be the image.
Debord also made provocative films such as Howlings in Favour of de Sade (1952,) a film version of The Society of the Spectacle (1973,) and Refutation of all Judgments, Pro or Con, Thus Far Rendered on the Film (1975.) In the last decade, the publication of his many monographs and biographies has attracted attention to the philosophical and technical content of his work.
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Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.
—Guy Debord
Topics: Plagiarism
It is hardly surprising that children should enthusiastically start their education at an early age with the Absolute Knowledge of computer science; while they are unable to read, for reading demands making judgments at every line. Conversation is almost dead, and soon so too will be those who knew how to speak.
—Guy Debord
Topics: Computers
In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.
—Guy Debord
Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.
—Guy Debord
Topics: Quotations
Art need no longer be an account of past sensations. It can become the direct organization of more highly evolved sensations. It is a question of producing ourselves, not things that enslave us.
—Guy Debord
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