Guy deBord
Guy deBord
French Marxist theorist and philosopher who was most remembered for being one of the principal members of the Letterist International.
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth28 December 1931
cutting order tree
No longer is science asked to understand the world, or to improve any part of it. It is asked instead to immediately justify everything that happens....spectacular domination has cut down the vast tree of scientific knowledge in order to make itself a truncheon.
desire acting gestures
The more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him.
organization people speech
An organization must always remember that its objective is not getting people to listen to speeches by experts, but getting them to speak for themselves.
civilization youth made
In the zone of perdition where my youth went as if to complete its education, one would have said that the portents of an imminent collapse of the whole edifice of civilization had made an appointment.
reflection advertisements intermission
The advertisements during intermissions are the truest reflection of an intermission from life.
gossip boredom sage
The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a "global village" instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle's present vulgarity.
leisure emptiness justified
Work is only justified by leisure time. To admit the emptiness of leisure time is to admit the impossibility of life.
progress plagiarism
Plagiarism is necessary, progress implies it
army police violence
Looting is a natural response to the unnatural and inhuman society of commodity abundance. It instantly undermines the commodity as such, and it also exposes what the commodity ultimately implies: the army, the police and the other specialized detachments of the state's monopoly of armed violence.
dream sleep wish
The spectacle is the bad dream of a modern society in chains and ultimately expresses nothing more than its wish for sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of that sleep.
language familiar
He will essentially follow the language of the spectacle, for it is the only one he is familiar with.
stories terrorism states
The story of terrorism is written by the state and it is therefore highly instructive… compared with terrorism, everything else must be acceptable, or in any case more rational and democratic.
hype world deceit
There is nothing more natural than to consider everything as starting from oneself, chosen as the center of the world; one finds oneself thus capable of condemning the world without even wanting to hear its deceitful chatter.
writing expression ideas
Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author's phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.