Critique of Separation Our era accumulates powers and imagines by Guy Debord itself as rational. But no one recognizes these powers as their own. Nowhere is (film soundtrack ) there any entry to adulthood. The only thing that happens is that this long restlessness sometimes eventually evolves into a routinized sleep. Because no one We don’t know what to say. Sequences of ceases to be kept under guardianship. The words are repeated; gestures are point is not to recognize that some people recognized. Outside us. Of course some live more or less poorly than others, but methods are mastered, some results are that we all live in ways that are out of our verified. Often it’s amusing. But so many control. things we wanted have not been attained, or only partially and not like we imagined. At the same time, it is a world that has What communication have we desired, or taught us how things change. Nothing stays experienced, or only simulated? What real the same. The world changes more rapidly project has been lost? every day; and I have no doubt that those who day after day produce it against The cinematic spectacle has its rules, its themselves can appropriate it for reliable methods for producing satisfactory themselves. products. But the reality that must be taken as a point of departure is dissatisfaction. The only adventure, we said, is to contest The function of the cinema, whether the totality, whose center is this way of dramatic or documentary, is to present a living, where we can test our strength but false and isolated coherence as a substitute never use it. No adventure is directly for a communication and activity that are created for us. The adventures that are absent. To demystify documentary cinema presented to us form part of the mass of it is necessary to dissolve its “subject legends transmitted by the cinema or in matter.” other ways; part of the whole spectacular sham of history. A well-established rule is that any statement in a film that is not illustrated by Until the environment is collectively images must be repeated or else the dominated, there will be no real individuals spectators will miss it. That may be true. — only specters haunting the objects But this same type of miscommunication anarchically presented to them by others. In constantly occurs in everyday encounters. chance situations we meet separated people Something must be specified but there’s not moving randomly. Their divergent enough time, and you are not sure you emotions neutralize each other and have been understood. Before you have reinforce their solid environment of said or done what was necessary, the other boredom. As long as we are unable to make person has already gone. Across the street. our own history, to freely create situations, Overseas. Too late for any rectification. our striving toward unity will give rise to other separations. The quest for a unified After all the empty time, all the lost activity leads to the formation of new moments, there remain these endlessly specializations. traversed postcard landscapes; this distance organized between each and everyone. And only a few encounters were like Childhood? Why, it’s right here — we have signals emanating from a more intense life, never emerged from it. a life that has not really been found. What cannot be forgotten reappears in our chance? We haven’t found the arms we dreams. At the end of this type of dream, needed. We’ve let things slip away. half asleep, the events are still for a brief moment taken as real. Then the reactions I have let time slip away. I have lost what I they give rise to become clearer, more should have defended. distinct, more reasonable; like on so many mornings the memory of what you drank This general critique of separation the night before. Then comes the awareness obviously contains, and conceals, some that it’s all false, that “it was only a dream,” particular memories. A less recognized that the new realities were illusory and you pain, a less explicable feeling of shame. Just can’t get back into them. Nothing you can what separation was it? How quickly we hold on to. These dreams are flashes from have lived! It is to this point in our the unresolved past, flashes that illuminate haphazard story that we now return. moments previously lived in confusion and doubt. They provide a blunt revelation of Everything involving the sphere of loss — our unfulfilled needs. that is, what I have lost of myself, the time that has gone; and disappearance, flight; Here we see daylight, and perspectives that and the general evanescence of things, and now no longer have any meaning. The even what in the prevalent and therefore sectors of a city are to some extent most vulgar social sense of time is called decipherable. But the personal meaning wasted time — all this finds in that they have had for us is incommunicable, as strangely apt old military term, lost children, is the secrecy of private life in general, its intersection with the sphere of regarding which we possess nothing but discovery, of the exploration of unknown pitiful documents. terrains, and with all the forms of quest, adventure, avant-garde. This is the Official news is elsewhere. Society crossroads where we have found ourselves broadcasts to itself its own image of its own and lost our way. history, a history reduced to a superficial and static pageant of its rulers — the It must be admitted that none of this is very persons who embody the apparent clear. It is a completely typical drunken inevitability of whatever happens. The monologue, with its incomprehensible world of the rulers is the world of the allusions and tiresome delivery. With its spectacle. The cinema suits them well. vain phrases that do not await response Regardless of its subject matter, the cinema and its overbearing explanations. And its presents heroes and exemplary conduct silences. modeled on the same old pattern as the rulers. The poverty of means is intended to reveal the scandalous poverty of the subject This dominant equilibrium is brought back matter. into question each time unknown people The events that occur in our individual try to live differently. But it was always far existence as it is now organized, the events away. We learn of it through the papers that really concern us and require our and newscasts. We remain outside it, participation, generally merit nothing more relating to it as just another spectacle. We than our indifference as distant and bored are separated from it by our own spectators. In contrast, the situations nonintervention. And end up being rather presented in artistic works are often disappointed in ourselves. At what moment attractive, situations that would merit our was choice postponed? When did we miss active participation. This is a paradox to reverse, to put back on its feet. This is what No one returns from an enterprise with the must be realized in practice. As for this ardor they had upon setting out. Fair idiotic spectacle of the filtered and companions, adventure is dead. fragmented past, full of sound and fury, it is not a question now of transforming Who will resist? It is necessary to go or “adapting” it into another neatly ordered beyond this partial defeat. Of course. And spectacle that would play the game of how to do it? neatly ordered comprehension and participation. No. A coherent artistic This is a film that interrupts itself and does expression expresses nothing but the not come to an end. coherence of the past, nothing but passivity. All conclusions remain to be drawn; It is necessary to destroy memory in art. To everything has to be recalculated. undermine the conventions of its communication. To demoralize its fans. The problem continues to be posed — in What a task! As in a blurry drunken vision, continually more complicated terms. We the memory and language of the film fade have to resort to other measures. out simultaneously. At the extreme, miserable subjectivity is reversed into a Just as there was no profound reason to certain sort of objectivity: a documentation begin this formless message, so there is of the conditions of noncommunication. none for concluding it.

For example, I don’t talk about her. False I have scarcely begun to make you face. False relation. A real person is understand that I don’t intend to play the separated from the interpreter of that game. person, if only by the time passed between the event and its evocation, by a distance that continually increases, a distance that is increasing at this very moment. Just as a New translation by Ken Knabb of the voice- conserved expression remains separate over soundtrack of Guy Debord’s third from those who hear it abstractly and film, Critique de la séparation (1961). without any power over it. The complete script of this film, with The spectacle as a whole is nothing other illustrations, detailed descriptions of the than this era, an era in which a certain images, and extensive annotations, is youth has recognized itself. It is the gap included in Debord’s Complete Cinematic between that image and its consequences; Works (AK Press, 2003). For further the gap between the visions, tastes, refusals information, see Guy Debord’s Films . and projects that previously characterized this youth and the way it has advanced into Translation copyright 2003 by Ken Knabb. ordinary life. (This copyright will not be enforced against personal or noncommercial use.) We have invented nothing. We adapt ourselves, with a few variations, into the network of possible itineraries. We get used to it, it seems.