Debord Sometime after this first meeting and this by Pierre Guillaume memorable demonstration, by what was not really chance, I again met Guy Debord, this time accompanied by Michele Bernstein, sitting outside a small cafe (gone I first met Guy Debord on October 27, 1960. now) on St. Germain Boulevard, near St. We had called each other two days before Guillaume Street. They had just visited an to fix a meeting date. A demonstration artist's exhibition, on Pre-au-Clerc Street, in against the war in Algeria that looked like it the summarily outfitted cave of a building. would be particularly important was This building happened to belong to the scheduled to take place two days later. It family of a childhood friend of mine, whom was to start at Mutuality Hall. I lived with I had not seen in many years. I met him my parents, near the Pantheon, not so far again with pleasure. He had come to Paris from the Mutuality. Debord and I had for his studies, as I had done. I had received arranged to meet at my place, and then go an invitation to this exhibition, and had together to the demonstration. We talked believed, looking at the address, that it had for about an hour, before joining the crowd, been sent by this friend. In fact, it had been where we were soon separated by riots and addressed by Debord and the situationists. police charges. This first meeting was to be When I met Debord and Michele Bernstein followed by many others. outside this cafe, I had visited the exhibition the day before, but didn't know I was nineteen. I had just joined Socialisme that they had been or were still in contact ou Barbarie through Jean-Francois Lyotard. with this artist, despite the fact that they I had arrived from my province and thrown had just come out of the exhibition, which myself body and soul into "revolutionary" they told me in order to explain their being activity, passionate and naive as are youth. there. Socialism ou Barbarie opened to me the perspective of a radical critique of the It was thus with all liberty that I declared to capitalist world, in its Western as well as its them how indifferent I was to this kind of "Soviet" pattern. The very idea of getting activity; and that I despised decomposing involved in politics without adopting that art, in a society that I didn't yet know that minimum platform was to me unthinkable, was [in Debord's terms] "decomposing." Of and I believed the "communist" party to be this exhibition, which could have displayed a far right party, much like the others. a kind of plastic and pictoral talent, I don't remember anything except for the fact that David Blanchard , alias Canjuers, who somewhere in a remote place where preceded me at S.ou B., had joined the everybody didn't go -- and that my friend national service as a civilian volunteer in had shown me uneasily -- was a Christ on Guinea. Before he left, he had been in touch the cross, blasphemous in that He was with Guy Debord. From their meeting was painted naked and in that a little electrical born a collective text called "Preliminaries engine behind the canvas made his toward a definition of the revolutionary cardboard arms raise, pumping up the program." Canjuers had passed this text biceps, while the usual Saint Sulpician G- round, but S. ou B. had only paid distant string slip (made of cardboard as well) was and even condescending attention to it. I falling down. had nevertheless been appointed and very officially put in charge, at the demand of I told Guy Debord and Michele Bernstein Canjuers, to keep in touch with Guy that this blasphemous intention seemed to Debord, who had himself been informed. me the exact oposite of a critical revolutionary activity. Not only was it of Debord in S. ou B. -- despite the fact that counter-productive, but it revealed an issues of Internationale Situationniste obession with Christianity, even though it constitute a rather exhaustive and reliable looked like a protest. I remember telling chronicle of what needed to be known of them about the Italian and Spanish people the situationists' lives and thoughts. This for whom blasphemy goes together with friend even asserted that, as far as he knew, Christian impregnation, of which it is only, most situationists were unaware of and nothing but the ransom, or rather, the Debord's membership in S. ou B. other side of the coin. Guy Debord and Nevertheless, this membership was the Michele Bernstein agreed immediately, origin of a real change in the S.I., which can with perhaps some reserve from Michele be easily ascertained by reading the review; Bernstein, as far as I remember. this membership alone explains the audience the review acquired. In the many subsequent meetings I had with Debord, the topic at hand was never Anyway, I insist on the fact that Debord again the question of art or artists. You can was a member of S. ou B. He took part in verify, by simply reading issues of the group's meetings at Le Tambour cafe, Internationale Situationniste, the change of on Bastille Place, and at the review's Debord's attitude toward art as a separate editorship committees, as well as at those of activity, the need to go beyond art -- the Pouvoir Ouvrier Bulletin. starting with the 5th issue (December 1960), in which an advertisement for the I can't specify exactly when this publication of the joint text by Debord and membership took shape. But on December Canjuers appears (page 11). I'm not sure if 20, 1960 powerful strikes started in my own positions on this matter had any Belgium. After the 1953 strikes in East influence at all on Debord, but I doubt it. Germany, of which I'd heard by reading the Even if I had some influence, it would have back issues of S. ou B. , and the great 1956 appeared at the end of a well-broached Hungarian uprising, in which worker's process, if not completely finished before councils played a major part (see S. ou B. , we met. #20 and #21), we had no doubts about the ineluctable breakdown of the Stalinist After that, my meetings with Debord regime and were waiting for the European multiplied. Traces of their influence can working classes to wake up, so that we easily be followed in the 5th, 6th and 7th could "hang [French Communist Party issues of Internationale Situationniste. Thus, I Secretary General] Maurice Thorez to a brought Debord to formally join S. ou B. street lamp with the guts of [C.G.T. Secretary General] Benoit Frachon." As I was evoking those memories in answer to the questions of a friend who happens to The group met on Saturday, December 31, be a great expert in the history, 1960 with an English comrade from publications, and polemics surrounding the Solidarity, who had just come back from Situationist International, he displayed a Belgium, and the group decided to send me real amazement. He thought he knew there, to "cover" the events and to make as almost everything on the matter, but was many contacts as I could. Guy Debord took unaware of this episode. He then thought part in that meeting. He had himself just that Debord had tried to hide or erase this received a letter from a Belgian, addressed fact. It was this expert's amazement that to the review Internationale Situationniste. made me think that no text or anything Debord imparted to me both this letter and exists that refers to the formal membership the task of meeting the author, on behalf of the S.I. as well as that of S. ou B. That Tambour" cafe, gave his official resignation, author was Raoul Vaneigem. (By the way, payed his contribution for the earlier month much later -- when Vaneigem had and the current, and said in a few words hurriedly left Belgium with one of his that he appreciated that the group existed, female students, because the police were but that for himself he had no will to be after him for the "abduction of a minor" -- involved in it! He thanked us for all he had my wife loaned clothes to this quite adult learned. And disappeared. "minor." But if I sometimes liked Vaneigem's articles in I.S. , I can't remember It was a nice bit of a scandal. As soon as he any interesting conversations -- I mean, that had left, rumors started spreading. I was interested in -- with Vaneigem, and I Sarcasms, suspicions of the most incredible never read his book). Sometime later, kind, were given free rein. As for me, I Debord took part in a collective trip declared that Debord looked faultless. Full sponsored by the group, a trip in which we stop! But it was then that I discovered tried to structure an "organisation" out of there's nothing worse than being faultless! our contacts in Belgium and met Robert Dehoux. The escapade had been rather In small groups (and Socialisme et Barbarie loony, and disappointing, but this is off the was nothing but a small group, though the subject. Spirit was still blowing in at this time), resignations and secessions are real As for the date of Debord's intent to resign divorces, in which each side needs to treat from S. ou B., it is unquestionable: May 22, the other as "absolute evil." Both splitting 1961 -- in the evening, at the end of a three- factions, or the resigner and the day-long "international conference" (a big organisation, charge each other with all the name for a small thing) that was held in sins of the world.