[.ca] Considerations on the Assassination of Gerard Lebovici (ISBN 0966234626)

Review from Contemporary 2002:
The very name Guy Debord conjures with it a multitude of images, from Situationist radical to drunken intellectual, capitalist critic to avant-garde filmmaker. This multitude of images, which are themselves caught up in a mechanism of fantasy--for the one who speaks the name "Guy Debord" in turn conjures the very fabrication of that person-is the very subject of his Considerations on the Assassination of Gérard Lebovici. A recent and thoroughly welcomed translation and publication by TamTam Books (an independent publisher in Los Angeles whose growing catalogue is sure to entice and thrill the eager readers of idiosyncratic French literature) of this later writing of Debord's is a testament to both the ongoing "image" of Debord as cultural critic, as well as a strangely touching portrait of a man on the absolute fringe of the culture he in so many ways enables us to see. The book is essentially an analysis of the surrounding media coverage on the mysterious death in 1984 of one of France's biggest film producers, Gérard Lebovici of whom Debord was close friends. The mysterious death--or assassination--of Lebovici subsequently is depicted in numerous French magazines and newspapers as being inextricably linked to the producers "association" with the "notorious" Debord. Equating the death with Debord was brought to such a high-pitched fervor as to render Debord a specter of death itself, as if any contact with such a fringe element would leave an indelible mark on one's being. As Le Journal du Dimanche announces: "Behind the most hidden face of Gérard Lebovici, there is always Guy Debord." There, Debord lurks, as a force of extreme criminality, a kind of black magic through which death could be administered without a trace. In his Considerations Debord essentially sets the stage for a conversation between the media's rampant output of untruths about his person and himself, as holder of truth, for who would know himself better? Dissecting each article, highlighting and deconstructing paragraphs and sentences by a plethora of journalists, what Debord ultimately enacts is a further analysis of the Society of The Spectacle--by showing the machinery of media as a player in the output of the spectacle itself, which for Debord has no grounding in finding truth, or in representing facts, but rather functions as an implicit wielder of the spectacle itself. As Robert Greene eloquently points out in his introduction to the book, Debord's determination to actually remain aloof--a non-celebrity to a culture that desires and creates celebrities for its own amusement, as a perpetuation of the spectacular--ultimately marks Debord as "sinister", a culprit of uncertain powers. For obviously someone so aloof must have something to hide. Psychologizing Debord, the media in effect treat him as an object for its own play, replacing the actual death of an individual and the process of investigation with the heightened reportage of tabloid gossip. In this way, the media finds Debord everywhere, a lingering and ghostly figure looming over not only Lebovici but an entire network of terrorist organizations, mobs and secret societies--Debord as The Devil himself. Yet Debord counters: "The simple truth, however, perhaps more painful for the amateurs or the barons of the present social spectacle, is that in all my life I have never appeared anywhere." It's this "having never appeared" which Debord reluctantly overcomes in writing Considerations--to once again show that reality is a political arena in which language signifies more than itself. As one paper quoted from Debord's past writings: "In reality one never contests the existence of an organization without contesting all of the forms of language that belong to this organization." Brandon LaBelle, Contemporary Summer 2002

Blurb from Richard Hell:
"It cannot be said too often and it's never said enough that the mass news-media have low-to-no standards of accuracy, whether in relatively minor or peripheral areas of their reporting where their interests may not be obviously at stake (except in that it's in their interest not to go to the expense of bothering to check facts, and to conceal this) or in the larger matters where their prejudices are more apparent. And, as the media leaders know, since almost all news becomes "old" the moment it's broadcast, most victims of their misrepresentations are at a disadvantage not only because of a power mismatch, but because a protester looks like a fool to be challenging yesterday's papers. But the consequences of the media's irresponsibility and maliciousness are real to their victims. Guy Debord finally had to react. A rare and nice touch is where he mentions that he actually has no higher opinion of the consumers of the media than he does of the disseminators of it. Heh heh. The tract is full of these sudden sharp insights into Debord. It's great as well for its evocation of the whole intense time and place (Paris art/life radicalism, 1957-84)." Richard Hell

Blurb from Richard Hell:
"It cannot be said too often and it's never said enough that the mass news-media have low-to-no standards of accuracy, whether in relatively minor or peripheral areas of their reporting where their interests may not be obviously at stake (except in that it's in their interest not to go to the expense of bothering to check facts, and to conceal this) or in the larger matters where their prejudices are more apparent. And, as the media leaders know, since almost all news becomes "old" the moment it's broadcast, most victims of their misrepresentations are at a disadvantage not only because of a power mismatch, but because a protester looks like a fool to be challenging yesterday's papers. But the consequences of the media's irresponsibility and maliciousness are real to their victims. Guy Debord finally had to react. A rare and nice touch is where he mentions that he actually has no higher opinion of the consumers of the media than he does of the disseminators of it. Heh heh. The tract is full of these sudden sharp insights into Debord. It's great as well for its evocation of the whole intense time and place (Paris art/life radicalism, 1957-84)." Richard Hell

Blurb from Richard Hell:
"It cannot be said too often and it's never said enough that the mass news-media have low-to-no standards of accuracy, whether in relatively minor or peripheral areas of their reporting where their interests may not be obviously at stake (except in that it's in their interest not to go to the expense of bothering to check facts, and to conceal this) or in the larger matters where their prejudices are more apparent. And, as the media leaders know, since almost all news becomes "old" the moment it's broadcast, most victims of their misrepresentations are at a disadvantage not only because of a power mismatch, but because a protester looks like a fool to be challenging yesterday's papers. But the consequences of the media's irresponsibility and maliciousness are real to their victims. Guy Debord finally had to react. A rare and nice touch is where he mentions that he actually has no higher opinion of the consumers of the media than he does of the disseminators of it. Heh heh. The tract is full of these sudden sharp insights into Debord. It's great as well for its evocation of the whole intense time and place (Paris art/life radicalism, 1957-84)." Richard Hell