Guy Debord
1985/2001
Tam Tam books
Translated and Introduced by Robert Green
81 pages
Gerard Lebovici was a French film producer, book publisher, and a personal friend to Situationist International figurehead, Guy Debord. Lebovici managed a publishing company called Editions Champs Libre (renamed Editions Gerard Lebovici after the publisher’s death) which published many works of leftist literature, among them Debord’s revolutionary The Society of the Spectacle. Debord was a film maker known for creating completely abstract films,and also a cultural theorist. Lebovici financed three of the radical thinker’s later (that is, post 1968) films. Guy Debord and the other members of the Situationist International are considered critically influential figures in the erruption of the May 68’ Paris Uprisings.
On March 7, 1984, Lebovici was murdered in a parking garage in Paris. The crime was never solved. A number of French newspapers contained commentary upon the murder often involving wild speculation upon the relationship between the ill fated film producer and Guy Debord. Numerous newspapers considered the meaning of their friendship, the dangerous social connections a man like Debord could provide, Debord's refusal to be a public figure, his manner of living, etc. All of the speculations regarding Debord’s character and lifestyle were the grounds upon which newspaper personnel built their case that the former Situationist was responsible in some way for Lebovici’s death. Considerations on the Assassination of Gerard Lebovici was Debord's response to these accusations and his treatment by agents of media following the death of his friend. At the time of publication for Considerations, Debord had not published any written work (aside from the scripts for his experimental films) since 1972.
Considerations on the Assassination of Gerard Lebovici is a survey of the misinformation and invective spread by French newspapers about Debord after Lebovici's murder. Debord felt compelled to respond to the speculations, if only to ridicule them and demonstrate how the cultural conditions identified in The Society of the Spectacle have accelerated since 1967. Debord notes, for example, that many of the editorials condemn his ‘silence’ as a point of suspicion. Some considered it a strategy by which the radical theorist could maintain or expand his notoriety while others simply considered it a reason to believe he is involved in underworld activities. Debord notes that this focus on his absence from the spotlight indicates a widespread attitude that it is not permitted for an individual to disengage from the ‘spectacle’, that one ‘appears’ if one is a part of society. (note: see Jean Baudrillard’s essay: The Ecstasy of Communication for a similar discussion of appearance in media as social participation).
Debord’s ‘silence’ was used as an empty space into which journalists could project all of their assumptions about him. The Situationist International disbanded in 1972, but many of the journalists did not know that, and wondered what the group is up to now, in secret. One journalist presumed that the Situationists are now involved in international terrorism, and they maintain connections with other terror groups, including the Red Brigades and the Red Army Faction. The journalists described chains of imaginary social connections, developed out of the grounds of Debord’s ‘silence’ and his former activities. Their inventions lead many of the journalists to wonder who, exactly, in this web of terrorist and criminal networks that Debord was speculated to have introduced Lebovici to, was slighted in some way by the film producer that a murderous ambush was an appropriate response? Many journalists considered the slighted party to be Debord himself, who was often speculated as the man who pulled the strings. Debord noted at one point in his text that he successfully sued a number of newspapers in a libel suit, and felt compelled to do so because he had never before been accused of killing a friend.
The text is a criticism of the practice of journalism and the power journalists hold to make the unreal appear real. Many journalists seemed to have taken this murder case as an opportunity to attack an individual, as Debord’s films, writings, and former glories were all subjects for editorial slander, regardless of whether or not a connection to the murder was alleged in a particular piece. Many of the editorialists attempted to attack the Situationist from all angles, simultaneously characterizing him as an irrelevant egomaniac and also as a puppet-master of the contemporary (extremist) left. Editorialists deployed slanted language to give the most banal aspects of Debord’s life a sinister edge, making the fact that he enjoys good food, for example, sound like he was hypocritical or incorrigibly decadent. Debord’s short book launches a caustic critique of journalists as frontline agents to the Society of the Spectacle from the vista of his own experience. Considerations is fundamentally media criticism, and while it emanates from a radical-left point of view, and focuses on the personal issues of its author, it is much more nuanced than much of the existing radical-left media criticism which tends to simply charge such media with brainwashing.
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