Correspondence ─ The Foundation of the Situationist International June 1957-august 1960

Yesterday, the police interrogated me at length about the journal and otherSituationist organizations. It was only a beginning. This is, I think, one of the principal threatsthat came up quickly during the discussion: the police want to consider the S.I. as an associationto bring about the destruction of France.--from CorrespondenceThis volume traces the dynamic firstyears of the Situationist International movement--a cultural avant-garde that continues to inspirenew generations of artists, theorists, and writers more than half a century later. Debord'sletters--published here for the first time in English--provide a fascinating insider's view of justhow this seemingly disorganized group drifting around a newly consumerized Paris became one of themost defining cultural movements of the twentieth century. Circumstances, personalities, andambitions all come into play as the group develops its strategy of anarchic, conceptual, but highlypolitical "intervention." Brilliantly conceived, this collection of letters offers thebest available introduction to the Situationist International movement by detailing, throughoriginal documents, how the group formed and defined its cultural mission: to bring about, "byany means possible, even artistic," a complete transformation of personal life within theSociety of the Spectacle.

Writer, filmmaker, and cultural revolutionary, Guy Debord (1931--1994) was a founding member of the Lettrist International and Situationist International groups. His films and books, including Society of the Spectacle (1967), were major catalysts for philosophical and political changes in the twentieth century, and helped trigger the May 1968 rebellion in France.