One More Try If You Want to Be Situationists

(The S.I. in and against Decomposition)*

GUY DEBORD
To Mohamed Dahou
The collective task we have set ourselves is the creation of a new cultural
theater of operations, placed hypothetically at the level of an eventual general
construction of its surroundings through the preparation, depending on circumstances, of the terms of the environment/behavior dialectic. The depletion of
modern forms of art and style is all too obvious; and analysis of this steady trend
leads us to the conclusion that in order to overcome the general cultural picture,
wherein we see a state of decomposition
that has arrived at its final historical stage (for
the definition of this term, cf. "Rapport sur la construction des situations"), one
must seek a higher organization of the means of action in this period of our culture.
That is, we must foresee and experiment with what lies beyond the present atomization of wornout traditional arts, with a new state of the world whose most consistent
premise will be urbanism and the daily life of an emerging society-and not go back
to some coherent unity or other. We can clearly see that the development of this
task presupposes a revolution that has yet to take place, and that any research is
restricted by the contradictions of the present. The Situationist International exists
in name, but that means nothing but the beginning of an attempt to build beyond
the decomposition in which we, like everyone else, are completely involved.
Becoming aware of our real possibilities requires both the recognition of the preSituationist-in the strict sense of the word-nature of whatever we can attempt,
and the rupture, without looking back, with the division of laborin the arts.The main
danger lies in these two errors: the pursuit of fragmentary works combined with
simple-minded proclamations of an alleged new stage.
At this moment the decomposition shows nothing more than a slow radicalization of moderate innovators toward positions where outcast extremists had
already found themselves eight or ten years ago. But far from drawing a lesson
from those fruitless experiments, the "respectable" innovators further dilute their
importance. I will take examples from France, which surely is undergoing the
most advanced phenomena of the general cultural decomposition that, for various
reasons, is being manifested in its pureststatein Western Europe.
*

Potlatch29 (November 5, 1957), n.p.

OCTOBER79, Winter1997, pp. 85-142. Translation? 1997 OctoberMagazine,Ltd. and Massachusetts

Instituteof Technology.

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OCTOBER

first two columns in France-Observateur

Reading Alain Robbe-Grillet's
(October 10 and 17),1 one is struck by the fact that he is a timid Isou (in his
arguments, as in the "daring" spirit of his novels), as when he claims "to belong
to the History of forms, which in the final analysis is the best (and perhaps only)
criterion for recognizing a work of art." With a banality of thought and expression that ends up being quite personal ("let me repeat, it is better to take risks
than to settle for a sure error"), and much less invention and audacity, he hearkens back to the same linear perception of artistic movement, a mechanistic idea
whose function is to reassure: "Art goes on, or else it dies. We are among those
who have chosen to go on." To go straight on. Who, in 1957, reminds him by
direct analogy of Baudelaire? Claude Simon-"all
the values of the past ...
would seem in any case to prove it." (This appearance of proof in claims for a
direct lineage is due precisely to the denial of all dialectics, of any real change.)
Indeed, everything that has been put forward, of any interest at all, since the last
war naturally takes its place in the extreme decomposition,
but with more or less
of a desire to look beyond. This desire gets smothered by economic and cultural
ostracism and also by the lack of ideas and proposals-these
two aspects being
interdependent. The best-known art appearing in our time is controlled by those
who know "how far to go too far." (See the endless and profitable death throes
of post-Dadaist painting, which is usually presented as a Dadaism in reverse, and
each other. Their aspirations and their
whereby they mutually congratulate
enemies are cut to size.) Robbe-Grillet modestly renounces the title of avantgardist (when one does not even have an authentic "avant-garde" view of the
1.
Alain Robbe-Grillet, "Ecrire pour son temps," France-Observateur,
October 10, 1957, p. 17, and
"Litteratureaujourd'hui: I1n'y a pas 'd'avant-garde',"France-Observateur,
October 17, 1957, p. 19. Ed.

;!ii.

AsgerJorn.

"Welive subject to change, because if you

will allow me to say so, that is the law of
the country we live in."
Bossuet

87

The S.I. in and against Decomposition

decomposition
phase, one might as well reject its inconveniences-especially
the noncommercial
aspect). He will be content to be a "novelist of today," but,
outside the little cohort of his fellows, it must be admitted that the others are
takes issue with Michel de
quite simply a "rearguard." And he courageously
Saint-Pierre, which suggests that by talking about cinema he would bestow on
himself the glory of insulting Gourguet, while hailing the present-day cinema of
an Astruc. Actually, Robbe-Grillet is up to date for a certain social group, just as
Michel de Saint-Pierre is up to date for a public made up of another class. Both
are very much "of today" in relation to their audiences, and nothing more, to
the extent to which they exploit, with different sensibilities,
neighboring
degrees of a traditional mode of cultural action. It is no big deal to be up to date:
one is only more or less part of the decomposition. Originality now wholly depends
on a leap to a higher level.
It is their timidity that keeps people from looking beyond the decomposition.
Unable to see anything after the present structures, and knowing them well enough
to sense that they are doomed, they would like to destroythempiecemeal, while leaving
something for the next generation. They are comparable to political reformers,
impotent but just as harmful: living on the sale of false remedies. Anyone who cannot conceive a radical transformation is propping up the arrangements of the status
with elegance-and
is separated only by a few chronological preferquo-practiced
ences from those consistent reactionaries who (whether politically of the right or
the left) would like to see a return to earlier (more solid) stages of the culture that is
breaking down. Francoise Choay's naive art criticism is quite representative of the
tastes of the "free intellectuals of the left" who constitute the chief social base of
this timid cultural decomposition,
and when she writes (France-Observateur,
October 17) "The path taken by Francken ... is presently one of painting's

Michble
Bernstein.

~~i~ ~

-!i-.

: t:

This medleyof bluesashes,ladies,cuirasses,

violins in the hall, and trumpets in the
square,provideda spectaclemoreoftenseen
in novelsthan elsewhere."
Retz

88

OCTOBER

chances for survival,"2 she betrays concerns fundamentally akin to those of Zhdanov
("Did we do the right thing ... in putting to rout the liquidators of painting?").
We are locked into relations of production that contradict the necessary
development of productive forces, in the sphere of culture as well. We must breach
these traditional relations, the arguments and fashions they support. We must direct
ourselves beyond present-day culture, by a clear-eyedcritique of existing spheresand their
integration into a single space-time construction (the situation: a dynamic system in
an environment and playful behavior) that will bring about a higher harmony ofform
and content.
But these prospects, in themselves, cannot in any way validate current productions that naturally take on meaning in relation to the prevailing confusion, and
that includes in our own minds as well. Among us, useful theoretical propositions
may be contradicted by actual works limited to old sectors (on which it is necessary
to act first, since for the moment they are alone in possessing a common reality).
Or often other comrades, who have made interesting experiments on particular
points, get sidetracked in outdated theories: thus W. Olmo, who is not lacking in
good will, in order to connect his experiments in sound with the construction of
environments, employs such defective formulations in a recent text submitted to the
Situationist International ("For a Concept of Musical Experimentation") that the
whole thing had to be refocused ("Remarks on the Concept of Experimental Art"),
a discussion that, in my opinion, no longer offers even the memory of a reality.3
October 17,
2.
Francoise Choay, "Lavie des arts: Actualit6 de l'expressionisme," France-Observateur,
1957, p. 20. Choay was speaking of the painter Ruth Francken, who was exhibiting work with two other
artists at the Galerie Stadler. Ed.
3.
Walter Olmo, a member of the Italian section of the S.I., had presented his text to the group in
September 1957. Debord's response was issued on October 15, 1957, and denounced Olmo and his
supporters for their idealism and conservatism. When Olmo refused to retract the text, he was

J"i':~~~~

i
"':, ...

'i

"I rose early above the chimeras of religion,

perfectly convinced that the existence of the
creatoris a revolting absurdity that children

no longer
evenbelievein."

Sade

The SI. in and against Decomposition

89

Just as there is no "Situationism" as doctrine, one must not let certain former
be called Situationist achievements-or
everything to which our
experiments
ideological and practical weakness now limits us. But, on the other hand, we
cannot concede even a temporary value to mystification. The abstract empirical
of today's decayed culture only
fact that constitutes this or that manifestation
the overall vision of an end or a
on
its
connection
with
takes
concrete meaning by
that
in
the
civilization.
is
to
Which
say
long run our seriousness can
beginning of
as
well
as
whatever
and
surpass mystification,
promotes it as evidence of
integrate
an actual historical state of decayed thought. LastJune witnessed a scandal when a
film I had made in 1952 was screened in London.4 It was not a hoax and still less a
Situationist achievement, but one that depended on complex literary motivations
of that time (works on the cinema of Isou, Marco, Wolman), and thus fully
participated in the phase of decay, precisely in its most extreme form, without
allusions-the
wish for positive
for a few programmatic
even having-except
the
works
to
which
I've
alluded.
that
characterized
Afterward,
just
developments
the same London audience (Institute of Contemporary Arts) was treated to some
which bear comparison with respectable
paintings executed by chimpanzees,
action painting. This proximity seems to me instructive. Passive consumers of culture
(one can well understand why we count on the possibility of active participation
in a world in which "aesthetes" will be forgotten) can love any manifestation of
decomposition
(they would be right in the sense that these manifestations are
those
that
best express their period of crisis and decline, but one can
precisely
see that they prefer those that slightly disguise this state). I believe that in another
five or six years they will come to love my film and the paintings of apes, just as
they already love Robbe-Grillet. The only real difference between the paintings
of apes and my complete cinematographic work to date is its possible threatening
meaning for the culture around us, namely, a wager on certain formations of the
future. And I wouldn't know on which side to put Robbe-Grillet, when you stop to
think that at certain moments of rupture one is either aware or not of a qualitative
turning point; and if not, the nuances don't matter.
But our wager always has to be renewed, and it is we ourselves who produce
the various chances to respond. We wish to transform these times (to which
everything we love, beginning with our experimental attitude, also belongs) and
not to "write for it," as self-satisfied vulgarity intends: Robbe-Grillet and his times
are made for each other. On the contrary, our ambitions are clearly megalomaniac,
but perhaps not measurable by the prevailing criteria of success. I believe all my
friends would be content to work anonymously at the Ministry of Leisure in a
government that would finally undertake to change life, along with the salaries of
qualified workers.
excluded from the group in January 1958. Cf. Steward Home, The Assault on Culture (Stirling,
Scotland: AIC Press, 1991), p. 32. Ed.
4.
For an account of the June 1957 screening of Hurlementsen faveur de Sade, see Guy Atkins, Asger
Jorn: The CrucialYears,1954-1964 (London: Lund Humphries, 1977), pp. 57-58. Ed.