Constructing Situations: Guy Debord's detournement of fiction

Paolo Plotegher — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 23:00:43 +0000

At the beginning of an essay on Debord’s cinema, Agamben recalls a conversation that he had with Debord himself. He says: “when I was tempted (as I still am) to consider Guy Debord a philosopher, he told me: ‘I’m not a philosopher, I’m a strategist.’ Debord saw his time as an incessant war that engaged his entire life in a strategy.” [1]
‘I’m not a philosopher, I’m a strategist.’ Of this statement made by Debord on Debord, and directed to Agamben the philosopher, we could try to read the drive, in relation with its context: I’m not interested in establishing an ontology, or defining a contemporary state of things, but rather in moving some “pieces” of a Game of War, some elements available to me, in a certain way. [2]

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Constructing Situations: Guy Debord's detournement of fiction