The Legacy of Debord ‘à la dérive’. Without Inheritance, without Salvation

Abstract

Sale of the possessions of Guy Debord – jealously organized and preserved by him during his lifetime – to the French State, which claimed them as National Treasure and denied their departure from the country to the University of Yale, and their later exhibition by his widow, from our perspective, brings up the question of its timeliness and the possibility of its reviving a legacy that betrays the will of its originator, because of its content and because of the character of the controversial Situationist philosopher. It not only questions the validity of his work, but an understanding of the world based on it and the evolution of a time marked by neoliberalism, which allows nothing to escape from its order. Observing the acquisition process and the way the exhibition, entitled, “Guy Debord: un art de la guerre”, is being managed, we believe that it is no longer possible to support a position described as a clash between positive and negative in that broader diagnosis of our time. From a genealogy that also attempts to clarify some not very well-known questions about the Situationist International, we explain another underlying motif, which would set the question of the importance of the legacy of Debord and whether or not it was a betrayal to one side. Hence, we position our approach in the emerging concepts which would today outline other essentials for thinking about our time and that would exclude neither those of the IS nor those of Debord’s work itself. Another parallel genealogy, from the Marxian theory that does not speak about the city, but faces the articulation of our still reference 20^th century, towards the various derivative Marxian lines, which are indeed concerned with the urban question, to offer a reflective alternative to the political approach. The political approach, as observed in the Debord-State confrontation, kept up in the process of elevation to National Treasure of his legacy, and the way in which the exhibition cynically supports this positive vs. negative duality, shifts towards a definition of Noopolitics for architectural action in the city, from primarily revising the differences that would open other possible worlds -in Lefebvre’s words- for the present.