an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 15, Fall 2018,
ISSN 1552-5112
Jean Baudrillard on Guy Debord
An excerpt from the
newly released book, From
Achilles to Zarathustra: Jean Baudrillard on Theorists, Artists, Intellectuals
and Others.
Debord, Guy
(1931-1994, leftist founder of Situationist International). We learn in Fragments (15) that Baudrillard never
met Debord. In Baudrillard
Live he said that the kind of hyper-critical sensibility of those like Debord is out of date today – radicality is now in events –
“reality is Situationist, not us!” (170; The
Conspiracy of Art: 54). Baudrillard believed that for Debord
there was still a chance of dis-alienation – but today, in our virtual world we
have passed beyond alienation into a “state of radical deprivation of the other,
or indeed, of otherness, alterity or negativity” (The Vital Illusion: 66). Today “Disney merely has to stoop down to
pick up reality as it is. ‘Built-in spectacle’, as Guy Debord
would say” (Screened Out: 152).
Baudrillard noted that Debord foresaw the kind of
integrated criticism that exists today. It involves the reduction of evil to
misfortune – “we have to give evil back its radicalism” (Fragments: 33).
an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 15, Fall 2018,
ISSN 1552-5112