Class War Games Presents: Guy Debord’s The Game of War

John Barker — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 16:39:03 +0000

This 80 page book by Richard Barbrook and Fabian Thompsett is an extension of the film script that forms the basis of Ilze Black’s film. Of the same name. It describes how a group was formed to popularize and play the Game of War which GuyDebord spent the last 10 years of his life developing and playing with Alice Becker-Ho. It lists the various public venues where the group has played the game in real time, but also describes the game in detail and hints at why they think it is important. The first, unstated, is to rescue Debord, long term member and survivor of the Situationist International (SI), from the ironic recuperation of him and the SI by the cultural establishment they despised. Ironic because they were so hot on any kind of politics that could be, as they called it, recuperated, that is, absorbed by the very ‘Spectacle’ they had described. To have an exhibition devoted to them at the Pompidou Centre in 1987, and then for his personal archive to be described as ‘a national treasure’ by the French Minister of Culture in 2009 was the unkindest cut for someone who lived by the sword. The Game of War however does not fit this Debord-made safe, just as he himself truly did live by the sword, ripping of the bourgeoisie whenever possible and including with his own suicide that meant Alice would have some money. Instead, the Game claims a seriousness about not just analyzing capitalism and its monologue, but thinking strategically about how to go about participating in its downfall.

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Class War Games Presents: Guy Debord’s The Game of War