France has decided to classify the archives of the situationist philosopher coveted by an American university. Guy Debord erected as a national monument. . . .
The French state has refused to allow the personal archives of the founder of the Situationist International to leave France. The injunction of 29 January [2009], signed by the Minister of Culture, Christine Albane, and published on Thursday in The Official Journal, stipulates that the archives assume "a great importance for the history of the ideas of the second half of the 20th century and for the knowledge of the still-controversial work of one of the last great French intellectuals of the period." A major and symbolic decision. "This classification as a national treasure reveals a recognition by the State of what Debord represents in the intellectual and artistic life of the just-ended century," emphasized Bruno Racine, President of the National Library of France, who has worked to keep the archives in France.
A paradox. Astonishing posterity for Guy Debord, who preferred the secret over neon lights, gave no press interviews and abhorred awards [honnissait les distinctions]. At most, he finally left Editions Gallimard the care of publishing his works, after having been the emblematic author for Editions Champ Libre. "I have merited universal hatred from the society of my time," he wrote in 1978, "and I am angry that I have had other merits in the eyes of such a society." Today, in the most lively paradox, he has become its "treasure." Guy Debord shot himself in the heart on 30 November 1994 at the age of 62, in his home in the Haute-Loire. Born in Paris in 1931, he founded in 1957 the Situationist International, a movement of thought in the line of Lettrism that he scuttled in 1972. This theoretician of revolution continued to write and make films. Since his death, his wife and legatee Alice Debord has guarded his archives, which have been rarely consulted. She herself has worked to bring out the correspondence of the author of Panegyrique, the seventh volume of which, published by Fayard in 2008, covers the final period from January 1988 to November 1994.
Two years ago, Yale University in the United States manifested its desire to acquire the totality of the personal archives of the author. The Americans are hooked [friands] on contemporary French intellectuals. The university wanted to base its research center on the avant-garde upon this purchase; the Debord assets would be one its diamonds. Because these assets are quite beautiful (see below). They include the quasi-totality of the works of the writer and filmmaker from 1950 to 1994. The masterpiece is of course the manuscript of The Society of the Spectacle, published in 1967, which watered May 68 and all as a sociological and philosophical current.
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