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Title: Anatomy of a Scandal
Author: Miguel Amorós
Date: February 10, 2018
Language: en
Topics: Guy Debord, situationist, Mustapha Khayati, France, students, universities
Source: Retrieved on 11th May 2021 from https://libcom.org/history/anatomy-scandal-miguel-amor-s
Notes: Translated in February 2018 from the Spanish text obtained from the author.

Miguel Amorós

Anatomy of a Scandal

Now that the integration of young people into the society of the

spectacle is an obvious fact, when the substitutes for protest, often

inspired by its most despicable sector, the universities, can hardly

conceal the desire to incorporate their participants into the prosaic

world of consumers, a scandal like that of Strasbourg tends to be

interpreted as a large-scale esthetic operation, a kind of high-level

performance, by means of which the Situationist International attained a

preeminently artistic notoriety. Nothing could be further from the

truth: it was “by no means a spectacular action, but a scandalous

intervention carried out by enemies of the spectacle”.[1] The purpose of

the scandal was to reveal the rejection of the standardized, servile and

alienated lifestyle that was making inroads among the youth, by means of

an unacceptable action against the educational institutions. It did not

originate so much in the dissolution of a handful of bureaucratized

student associations in precipitous decline, as in the opportunity to

disseminate a radical critique of the living conditions within a

developing commodity society. The main goal was therefore the

publication of the “most scandalous pamphlet of the century”, but the

circumstances that preceded its publication, and persisted for some

time, were not merely incidental backdrops. We must not forget that the

Strasbourg scandal was the precursor to a scandal on a much greater

scale: the scandal of May ’68. As we delve into the details of its

origins and subsequent development and attempt to shed some light on its

little corner of history, we do not encounter a uniform group of clever

intellectuals in complete lockstep with their associated team of young

people who were eager to “practice theory” come hell or high water.

Personality conflicts, a desire to have some fun, various states of

mind, elective affinities, antipathies and resentments—in short, all

kinds of differences and degrees of consciousness—played an important

role in the whole affair, as we shall see, for, as someone once said,

history is not made without passion, and therefore even the most

rational intervention conceivable, the intervention whose goal is the

revolution, is more the product of enthusiasms, longings and fits of

passion than of cold calculation.

If everything has a beginning, the beginning to this story must be

sought in the friendship struck up among a group of Henri Lefebvre’s

students, Béchir Tlili, Mustapha Khayati, Jean Garnault and the brother

and sister, Theo and Edith Frey, who shared “the same ideas and the same

preoccupations”. They were impressed when they read the first

installment of “Basic Banalities”, a text by Vaneigem that was published

in the seventh issue of the journal, Internationale Situationniste.

Béchir, who was enrolled in the PhD program in sociology, had obtained a

copy of the journal for his comrades. He was personally acquainted with

Debord, since he had worked with him in Socialisme ou Barbarie, and had

supported Debord’s criticisms of Castoriadis, the group’s Pope. As

Khayati said, with respect to the group’s fascination with Vaneigem’s

text, “we didn’t stop discussing it during our daily meetings in the

cafeteria of the university restaurant, Gallia, called the

‘Minotaur’”.[2] The eighth issue of the journal came out in January 1963

and this small group of friends was then able to read the second part of

“Basic Banalities”, and acquired a more in-depth understanding of the

situationist critique. Béchir and Mustapha contacted Debord, as did

other sympathizers over the course of the years 1963–1964, including the

Englishman Sean Wilder, and André Bertrand, an anarchist involved with

the Anarchist Federation. Daniel Joubert—former editor of the Bordeaux

journal, Critical Notes—and Béchir Tlili were known at the University of

Strasbourg as “the situationists”,[3] despite Debord’s mistrust of, and

scorn for, Joubert. The Tunisians had other interests besides agitation

in France, however: Mustapha, who had even fantasized about the

formation of a Maquis in The Vosges mountains to support the Algerian

insurrection,[4] had been in contact with the editors of Perspectives

tunisiennes, a socialist publication directed by a handful of Tunisian

students that was open to all “leftist” tendencies. On this question,

Mustapha openly disagreed with Béchir. In August 1964, the ninth issue

of Internationale Situationniste was published, which contained the

article, “Correspondence with a Cybernetician”, a scathing critique of

the professor Abraham Moles, a friend of Lefebvre’s. Debord had broken

off relations with Lefebvre for various reasons: on the one hand, due to

the discrepancies between the radicality demanded by their

investigations on urbanism and everyday life, and the conformism of an

academic lifestyle compounded from concessions; on the other hand,

because of petty grudges. The ostensible reason was Lefebvre’s

plagiarism of certain situationist theses on the Paris Commune, which

the situationists denounced in a pamphlet.[5] Moles was scheduled to

preside at a conference at the university with the techno-artist Nicolas

Schöffer, and for Debord this seemed to be a perfect opportunity for

sabotage. This plan met with the enthusiastic approval of the Strasbourg

group, except for Béchir, whose reservations about Mustapha’s relations

with the [Tunisian] “Perspectivists” led him to tacitly cut off

relations with Khayati. Debord, however, who considered Béchir to be the

representative of the SI in Strasbourg “simply in his capacity as a

‘Marxist’”, decided to set this problem aside and plunge ahead.

Arrangements were made with Khayati and his comrades to print

“Correspondence with a Cybernetician” as a separate pamphlet, along with

another pamphlet signed by Khayati’s group, for distribution on the day

of the conference. Debord and Michèle Bernstein respectively suggested

the titles, “Dialogue between the Robot and the Sign” (Moles being the

Robot, and Schöffer the Sign), and “The Tortoise in the Showcase”, since

“the tortoise is the preeminently cybernetic animal, and the showcase is

Schöffer’s artistic ideal, and also a well-known vehicle for exhibiting

prostitutes in Hamburg”.[6] On March 24, Moles’ speech was interrupted

by the distribution of the “Correspondence” and the “Tortoise” pamphlet

signed by Theo, Edith, Jean and Mustapha. Debord was elated: “This is

the tone to employ with these robots; it is necessary to worry them

about the future; to insult them in the present on several selected

occasions and not to enter into a too serious refutation of what isn’t

serious (on the theoretical level).”[7] After this incident, the

Strasbourgers entered into a closer collaboration with the SI as soon as

the opportunity to intervene in the Algerian crisis arose.

Debord had already considered approaching the Arab world through a

critique of the authoritarian and bureaucratic populism of Ben Bella,

which was responsible for the defeat of the Algerian revolution. Khayati

came up with the idea of distributing a pamphlet at the Festival of

Youth in Algiers. He discussed its possible contents with Debord, who

said that “the main thing is to give the impression of a new

revolutionary frame of reference that will extend its critique and

encounter everywhere the real movement that abolishes the existing

conditions, but which is still largely unaware of its goals and the

choices they imply.”[8] Boumedienne’s successful June 19^(th) coup

d’état against Ben Bella, rather than aborting the plan to produce the

pamphlet, only gave it some new contents. On June 30, thanks to Theo

Frey’s assistance in drafting the text, it was now ready for printing;

the title adopted was “Address to the Revolutionaries of Algeria and of

All Countries”. An Algerian student, Nasri Boumechal, went to Algiers

and distributed it through the mail in Algeria. Debord and Garnault were

trying to identify people in Europe who should receive the pamphlet by

mail. The project’s scope expanded, as the text of the “Address…” was

intended to be published in pamphlet form in various languages. Theo and

Edith attempted to translate it into German and Polish; meanwhile, an

Argentinian artist was supposed to translate it into Spanish. By the

summer of 1965, the Strasbourg group, after making the requisite trips

to Paris and Brussels, was now part of the SI and was planning various

contributions for the tenth issue of the journal. The Strasbourgers were

invited to pursue their studies in the capital so they could collaborate

more closely with the Parisian nucleus (Debord, Viénet, Bernstein).

Garnault, at least, rented an apartment in Paris for a while. The

translations proved to be difficult; the Arab version posed specific

typographical problems; the Polish and Danish versions were never

satisfactorily completed, but the German version turned out to be a

success because the situationists could count on the assistance of a

young German-speaking individual, Herbert Holl, who was familiar with

the situationist theses. Garnault let Holl stay at his apartment

temporarily while he was in Algiers, where he verified, in situ, the

warm welcome that greeted the pamphlet. Khayati had also received

positive reports. Far from constituting an obstacle to understanding,

the SI’s Marxist-Hegelian language “can be understood wherever

conditions lead people to pose real revolutionary problems”.[9] In

November, the pamphlet was ready for distribution, and an analytical

text on the next stage of development of the new regime, “The Class

Struggles in Algeria”, written by Debord and Khayati, was also

discussed; the latter text would be printed in the form of a poster one

month later. The situation was favorable: Vaneigem had finished his

Traité de savoir-vivre…, Debord was almost finished with his Society of

the Spectacle, two new members had just joined the SI (the Romanian

exile, Anton Hartstein, and Holl), and a new project was taking shape, a

pamphlet in English celebrating the uprising in Watts, a neighborhood in

southern Los Angeles inhabited by people of color, as an illustration of

the social collapse of capitalism at its American pole. The title was

inspired by Gibbon’s masterpiece, The Decline and Fall of the Roman

Empire.[10] At first, Sean Wilder, a subscriber to the journal, was

asked to translate the text, but since he lived in Toulouse, the task

was assigned to a bilingual Englishman living in Paris, Donald

Nicholson-Smith. Finally, the Strasbourg group traveled to Paris to help

finish drafting the texts for the tenth issue of the journal, and two

Strasbourgers served on its editorial committee (Khayati and Frey). The

tenth issue went on sale in March of 1966.

The Strasbourg group fulfilled their obligations and the journal

contained three of their articles, written on a reasonably high

theoretical level. The texts by Theo (“Perspectives for a Generation”)

and Jean (“The Elementary Structures of Reification”) clearly reflected

their readings of Marx, Lukacs and the SI, as well as the

yet-unpublished manuscripts of Debord and Vaneigem. Mustapha drafted an

outline project for liberating words (“Captive Words. Preface to a

Situationist Dictionary”). These texts undoubtedly served as a spur for

the recent arrivals, Anton, Herbert and Donald, who plunged into reading

without pause to attain “sufficient theoretical knowledge” and to

confront the task of writing some of the entries for Khayati’s

situationist dictionary, or the further elaboration of some of the

themes evoked by Vaneigem in his text, “Some Theoretical Topics That

Need To Be Dealt With Without Academic Debate or Idle Speculation”. Jean

and Mustapha made plans to move to Paris. Everything was taking place in

a congenial atmosphere characterized by shared goals, with solid

analyses and exemplary interventions upon which those analyses were

based. Even Herbert seemed to overcome his problems communicating with

Debord. At the University of Strasbourg, meanwhile, all kinds of people

were to be seen: Daniel Joubert, who had renounced his Christian faith;

Sean Wilder, André Bertrand and René Fugler, well-known anarchists; and

a whole gang of vaguely libertarian persons, whose sympathies extended

from Stirner to Makhno and Durruti, by way of the Dadaists and

Surrealists. They did not associate with the local situationists; when

they came across them in the Minotaure cafeteria they ignored them, and

the situationists treated them the same way. Fugler was not viewed with

approval by the situationists, who accused him of not understanding, and

distorting, their ideas; and they did not like Joubert, either.

When the autumn elections for AFGES were announced (General Federated

Association of the Students of Strasbourg, the local branch of UNEF),

some of Fugler’s comrades along with a few other like-minded persons

registered as candidates. They had no program but they clearly

manifested their intention to criticize in acts the old student

unionism.[11] It must be said that this student unionism was for the

most part disregarded by the students. Of the 16,000 students at

Strasbourg, only 350 were members of AFGES. Thus, on May 15, with all of

35 votes in their favor, five against and ten abstentions, a slate of

six candidates was elected to lead AFGES (André Schneider, Bruno

Vayr-Piova, Marlene Badener, Dominique Lambert, Roby Grunenwals and

André Simon). Anxious lest these newly-elected officials should founder

without any direction because of their lack of specific plans, Bertrand,

who was in close contact with the victorious candidates, informed Debord

of the “seizure of power” at the Strasbourg chapter of UNEF, which

placed significant funds, facilities and other resources at the disposal

of the new executive bureau of the local student union. In June,

Bertrand and Sean met with Debord in Paris, at a café on the Place de

Contrescarpe, to explain the affair in detail. Debord then suggested the

possibility of publishing a scandalous text that would subject both the

student milieu and class society to ridicule. A couple of weeks of

meetings with the SI would suffice. Of course, Debord asked for a

substantial sum of money for the situationists, for their “advisors” and

their experts in demolition. He delegated Khayati and the other

Strasbourg situationists to serve as mediators with those whom he

referred to as the “neo-Strasbourgers”.

At that time, the SI’s most pressing concern was to find a way to

overcome its status as a vanguard by re-defining itself as a

revolutionary organization, a stage in the radical critique destined to

self-dissolution in the revolutionary movement as soon as the latter is

unleashed and is deeply imbued with that critique. The Seventh

Conference of the SI took place in Paris on July 9–11; it was attended

by Michèle Bernstein, Guy Debord, Edith Frey, Theo Frey, Herbert Holl,

Jean Garnault, Mustapha Khayati, Anton Hartstein, Ndjangani Lungela,

J.V. Martin, Jan Strijbosch, Donald Nicholson-Smith, Raoul Vaneigem and

René Viénet. The first point on the agenda, and the most important, was

naturally the question of organization. The serious problem of the

inactivity of some of the members of the SI was denounced, along with

the theoretical inadequacy of other members. The SI was not an

“intellectual guild”, a group of “thinkers” spinning theories alien to

everyday life. Nor was it a haven for radical ideologues whose

ideologies stood in stark contrast to the misery of their daily lives,

or for sectarians incapable of communicating their theories to the

forces that were seeking to realize them in practice. The revolutionary

organization cannot reproduce within its ranks the hierarchies typical

of domination. Its members must prove themselves to be consistent with

the critique that they produce and this can only be achieved by

practicing it. The document, “Minimum Definition of Revolutionary

Organizations”,[12] approved at the conclusion of the Conference, was a

perfect synthesis of the discussions that had taken place there.[13] Jan

Strijbosch and Rudi Renson were given their walking papers for being

contemplatives. Anton was sent packing shortly afterwards, as much for

his theoretical deficiencies as for a certain indiscretion involving the

organization’s finances. Lungela left for the Congo in August. In

compensation, Christopher Gray and Charles Radcliffe, the editors of

Heatwave, published in London, were in contact with the SI. The actual

manner by which the situationist analysis was supposed to penetrate—“as

their own unknown theory”—the masses while the latter are fully engaged

in a frontal assault against this society, had yet to be discerned, but

one fortuitous circumstance, the AFGES election, would provide a unique

opportunity to try to get a glimpse of what it might be like.

Once the students and the Strasbourg situationists agreed on the

advisability of producing the pamphlet, a series of meetings was

scheduled to write it collectively. The very heterogeneity of the group

that composed the new leadership of AFGES prevented anything of quality

from being written collectively with its members in such a short

time-frame. As a result, Khayati was forced to write it himself. Their

understanding of the situationist theses left much to be desired, and so

did the resolve on the part of some of the students to stay the course

to the end. Debord contributed some ideas by mail. The pamphlet should

have very long title, with an explicit reference to UNEF, and should be

divided into three parts, each of which should be introduced by a

quotation from Marx. It must excoriate with contempt the student as

such, it must contain insults against religion, since the students are

just like provincial old ladies when it comes to Christianity, and it

must sustain a violent tone from beginning to end. It should not contain

any comic strips, although they would be good for publicity, in the form

of leaflets or a posters. The pamphlet was written and ready for the

printer by the end of October.

In the meantime, on October 26, taking advantage of the opportunity

afforded by the first class of the year in social psychology taught by a

professor who had long been known to the situationists, certain

assailants pelted their helpless victim Abraham Moles with tomatoes, and

Debord ironically named the action, “Operation Robot”; “you could say

that Moles has finally seen the Spirit of the Time appear in the form of

a tomato”.[14] The plot almost didn’t come off: some of the conspirators

refused to participate in the tomato barrage or to follow through with

the plan to the end. Khayati had to work hard to convince the hesitant

that scandals are not made half-way.[15] Insensible to discouragement,

Debord recommended the further politicization of the atmosphere with a

provocative telegram expressing UNEF’s solidarity with the Zengakuren

and the Revolutionary Communist League of Japan, which would be recited

over a loudspeaker at the university restaurant, Gallia, the property of

AFGES. In addition, the AFGES students’ cultural center, “Le Caveau”,

was transformed into a rock music venue and opened up to working class

youths and “blousons noirs”.[16] The first issue of the mimeographed

AFGES bulletin remained firmly entrenched in the policy of provocation,

featuring a communiqué from the American group, Black Mask, on the Watts

riots, an article in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the

Hungarian revolution against the Soviet bureaucracy, a critique of the

“Provo” movement in Holland, and an article praising the Zengakuren. An

impressive comic strip constructed of detournements, the work of André

Bertrand—“The Return of the Durruti Column”—was plastered all over the

walls of the university. An evocative title: the Column, when it entered

a town, liquidated the ruling class and proclaimed the social

revolution.

On November 22, during the official inaugural celebration of the

beginning of the academic year at the University, in the presence of

academic authorities and other prominent figures, with the professors in

their gowns and the public divided into two halves, men on one side and

women on the other, while the Marseillaise was being played, a pamphlet

was distributed as a supplement to issue No. 16 of 21–27 Étudiants de

France. The pamphlet had a green cover, and bore a strange title: De la

misère en milieu étudiant considérée sous ses aspects économique,

politique, psychologique, sexuel et notamment intellectuel et de

quelques moyens pour y remédier [On the Poverty of Student Life

Considered in Its Economic, Political, Psychological, Sexual, and

Especially Intellectual Aspects, With a Modest Proposal for Its Remedy].

Ten thousand copies of the pamphlet were printed, and the printer was

paid with AFGES funds. The content, of an incomparable extremism,

according to Le Monde (December 9, 1966), “constitutes a systematic

rejection of all forms of social and political organization in the West

and the East, and of all the groups that are currently trying to change

them”.

The next day, André Schneider, the president of the Strasbourg chapter

of AFGES, flanked by Joubert and Khayati, announced a press conference

to read a communiqué. Only three local reporters showed up. The

communiqué began as follows: “In view of the extremely decomposed

condition of student unionism, we took over the General Federated

Association of the Students of Strasbourg, although no one can say that

they were deceived with regard to our intentions. We never concealed our

contempt for student unionism, the caricature of a working class trade

unionism that was defeated a long time ago; we took possession of the

General Association to confirm its demise, rather than rebuild it from

its ruins. The dissolution of the Association is one of our principal

objectives.” Schneider disavowed any connection with the “beatniks”

(“rather like our extreme right wing”), or with the “provos” (“too

bourgeois”). The Revolutionary Communist League of Japan was more to his

taste, for it is training “the kamikazes of the great moment that is to

come”.

“On the Poverty of Student Life…” was extensively quoted in the media

and the reaction was immediate: “The Student Association of Strasbourg

Has Been Handed Over to Situationist Beatniks” (Le Nouvel Alsacien); “A

Handful of Anarchist Dreamers Has Taken Control of UNEF” (L’Aurore);

“after its May elections AFGES became the prisoner of a group of

illuminati, with revolutionary or in any case nihilist pretensions,

since they believe that the revolution is carried out by dissolving and

destroying all social structures, beginning with student and working

class trade unionism” (L’Alsace); “The ‘situationism’ International has

seized power among the students at Strasbourg … thanks to the general

silence of the Strasbourg students who, in their vast majority, do not

participate in the activities of the local UNEF chapter” (Le Monde);

“the beatniks have seized power in the Strasbourg students’ association”

(Le Figaro); finally, according to Rector Bayen, “these students, half

provos, half beatniks, only represent a tiny minority of the students.

They should be dealt with by psychiatrists” (París-Presse).

The new AFGES executive bureau thought that it was important to set the

record straight concerning its relation to the situationists and to

refute certain false allegations. In its communiqué of November 29 they

stated: “None of the members of our Bureau belongs to the Situationist

International, a movement which for some time has published a journal of

the same name, but we declare ourselves in complete solidarity with its

analyses and perspectives.” And they added: “the situationist movement

can by no means be defined as ‘anarchist’, and even less as

post-surrealist. The positions that it has elaborated are clearly

Marxist. At the present time, it can be said that they are the only real

Marxists, to the best of our knowledge.” The SI expressed its complete

support for everything the executive bureau of AFGES did, in a letter

sent to Schneider and Vayr-Piova, President and Vice President of AFGES,

respectively.

The attacks in the press had only just begun: “The stupid end of UNEF….

Order no longer reigns in Strasbourg. It doesn’t matter! The fact that

so many years of progressive militantism have handed over student

unionism to such riffraff says a great deal about the failure of UNEF”

(Minute). “The revolutionary students of Strasbourg have engaged in an

operation whose purpose is the systematic destruction of social

structures” (Le Figaro); “Is Student Unionism on Vacation?” (once again,

Le Figaro); “Let’s get one thing straight; the situationist youths of

Strasbourg are against everything […] against the university that

according to them manufactures the managerial cadres of a society

without freedom; against the professors, the cadres of the factory in

question” (Le Figaro, again). Le Nouvel Observateur and Le Monde, the

preferred newspapers of the student milieu, were somewhat more

objective.

Debord and Donald Nicholson-Smith discreetly journeyed to Strasbourg in

December, discussing the next moves with their comrades, getting

updates, attempting to provide some practical advice, making contact

with a Dutch student who had been attracted to the affair, Tony Verlaan,

a future member of the American Section, etc. Throughout the month of

December, there was a series of journeys back and forth between

Strasbourg and Paris made by Garnault, Frey, Holl and Mustapha, and also

others, such as Tony, Bertrand and Joubert. The approaching judicial

offensive was nothing to fear. There still remained the real crowning

moment of the scandal, slated for UNEF’s upcoming national congress.

The right wing associations of the Friends of AFGES held a press

conference at the School of Law and announced their intention to seek

legal redress against the new executive bureau of AFGES and at the same

time to form a kind of parallel administration supported by the

students. Business interests that depended on the union were at stake.

On December 7, these associations, along with the association of former

members of AFGES, the Vice-Mayor and a handful of prominent local

figures, filed a complaint with the Supreme Court of Strasbourg. On

December 13, the chief magistrate, judge Llabador, issued an injunction

to place AFGES under the proxy supervision of a judicial administrator,

shut down its offices and other facilities and prohibit the convening of

the general assembly scheduled for December 16. His justification for

these measures merits repeating: “One need only read what the accused

have written for it to be obvious that these five students, scarcely

more than adolescents, lacking any experience of real life, their minds

confused by ill-digested philosophical, social, political and economic

theories and bored by the drab monotony of their everyday life, have the

pathetic arrogance to make sweeping denunciations of their fellow

students, their professors, God, religion, the clergy, and the

governments and political and social systems of the entire world.

Rejecting all morality and legal restraint, these cynics do not shrink

from to advocating theft, the destruction of scholarship, the abolition

of work, total subversion and a permanent worldwide proletarian

revolution with ‘unrestrained pleasure’ as its only goal.”[17] The

executive bureau filed an appeal against the injunction and also decided

to convene the general assembly scheduled for the 16^(th). Four hundred

people attended the general assembly. They voted to defy the judge’s

order and condemned the machinations of the Friends of AFGES.

Significantly, no vote was taken on the question of the dissolution of

AFGES, which was the original reason for holding the assembly, and

further debate on the issue was postponed until the upcoming UNEF

congress, where a more far-reaching motion to dissolve UNEF itself would

be proposed.

At the end of December the second issue of Nouvelles, the bulletin of

AFGES, was distributed, featuring a report by the executive bureau

entitled, “Balance Sheet and Prospects”. The bureau circulated a

manifesto signed by Jean and Theo, from the SI, and by Schneider and

Vayr-Piova, on behalf of the bureau, which bore the title, “And It’s

Only Just Begun” [“Et ça ne fait que commencer”]. It began with the

quotation from judge Llabador reproduced above and then continued as

follows: “A specter haunts the world: the specter of revolution. All the

powers of the old world have joined forces in a Holy Alliance to destroy

it: the Judiciary and the Press, the self-proclaimed communists leashed

to the priests, the senator and his ‘students’. This alliance needs the

scandal of our presence. And every new stage of repression is forced to

confirm our analysis in every detail. The public reactions that have

greeted our declared project of sabotaging this miserable union have

unmasked complicities that are shocking to those who do not know how to

read them. Afraid of losing their ritual and imaginary opposition, the

powers that be have come to the rescue of the last of the Mohicans of

UNEF. […] Now that the judiciary and the moribund UNEF have awakened to

refurbish their tarnished reputations, AFGES is already dead. Our job is

done here; we will arise again somewhere else, on other terrains. You

have not heard the last from the Situationist International, and you

will continue to hear about it until the advent of the international

power of the Workers Councils.” And while the affair was still front

page news, the Christmas holidays put the movement on hold. The pamphlet

was distributed as widely as possible and the first edition was soon out

of print.

When the schools reopened in January, the first session of the annual

general assembly of the National Students Union of France (UNEF)

convened in Paris, attended by a delegation from Strasbourg. On January

11, Vayr-Piova, in his capacity as President of the Administrative

Council of the MNEF, the National Mutual Fund of the Students of France,

which was the funding source for the operations of the university

psychological clinics, the BAPU [Bureau d’aide psychologique

universitaire], read a “Notice” decreeing the closing of the BAPU at

Strasbourg: “considering that the BAPUs are the manifestation in the

student milieu of repressive psychiatry’s parapolice control, whose

obvious function is to maintain ... the passivity of all exploited

sectors…. The BAPU tend to adapt the student to certain unacceptable

existing conditions, which generate problems for which society itself is

responsible. We demand above all a radical transformation of this

society”, and he also called for the closure of all BAPU facilities and

for all their funds to be used instead for paying for a new edition of

the pamphlet, “On the Poverty of Student Life…”. And if this was not

clear enough for the stunned audience, René Viénet, who had been

appointed to serve on the Strasbourg delegation, then slowly and

deliberately read the text of the pamphlet aloud to the assembled

delegates. The bureaucrats of the student associations, especially the

Stalinists, began to shout and scream at the top of their lungs. But

this insult was only followed by another.

At the beginning of the UNEF general assembly session on the 14^(th),

the Strasbourg delegation demanded an immediate vote on the motion to

dissolve UNEF in its entirety, “considering that the UNEF declared

itself a union uniting the vanguard of youth (Charter of Grenoble, 1946)

at a time when labor unionism had long since been defeated and turned

into a tool for the self-regulation of modern capitalism, working to

integrate the working class into the commodity system; ... considering

that the vanguardist pretension of the UNEF is constantly belied by its

subreformist slogans and practice; ... considering that student unionism

is a pure and simple farce and that it is urgent to put an end to it.”

The motion concluded with an appeal “to all revolutionary students of

the world ... to join all the exploited people of their countries in

undertaking a relentless struggle against all aspects of the old world,

with the aim of contributing toward the international power of workers

councils”. The motion was rejected, of course, but it did win the

support of the delegation from Nantes and of the students in

convalescent homes. The scandal had spread from the local to the

national arena, but then an incident occurred that put an end to the

situationist intervention.

A circular of the SI summarized the proceedings of a meeting held on the

15^(th) at which it was established that Khayati was the target of

slanderous accusations leveled at him by Theo Frey, Garnault and Holl,

“for tactical reasons and to camouflage their own maneuvers”, which

resulted in the expulsion of Khayati’s accusers from the SI. On January

16, those same individuals, along with Edith Frey, who was not present

at the meeting, submitted their resignations, offering “post festum”

justifications for their actions, the main ones being the inability of

the SI to overcome its status as “a group of theoreticians” and to

transform itself into a serious revolutionary organization, the mediator

between theory and practice; the SI’s refusal to dissolve and discuss

the next step towards a “higher form of organization”; and the existence

of an “occult hierarchy” that necessarily led to a “sub-bolshevik”

practice.[18] The group of students associated with the former executive

bureau of AFGES expressed their support for the excluded or resigned

members: Christine Ballivet, Nasri, Christian Millot, René Geiler,

Robert Fischer, Bruno Vayr-Piova, and Schneider himself, who switched

sides a few days earlier, alleging that he had been deceived. In a

communiqué issued at almost the same time, “You Are Laughing at Us, But

Not for Long”, they accused the SI of displaying an unjustifiable

contempt towards their theoretical capacities, insofar as they were

oriented towards action, as a result of “the SI’s own defects”. Taking

the side of the SI in Paris were Joubert, Bertrand and Tony.

Long-repressed resentments, grudges and enmities suddenly rose to the

surface, unleashing a spate of low blows and turgid analyses that could

hardly be understood by outsiders. In a devastating declaration,

“Warning! Three Provocateurs” [“Attention! Trois provocateurs”], the SI

accused the Alsatian group of having formed “a secret fraction” to “to

reinforce democracy and the equal participation of all in the

situationist project”, or, should this prove to be impossible, to

dissolve the SI. “They were sure that all the situationists are equal,

but they found themselves less equal than the others.” Feeling offended

at “finding themselves beneath the level of real participation in the

SI”, they proposed “to valorize the abstract experience of total,

immediate participation”, at the cost of disseminating despicable

falsehoods. The exclusion took on a disagreeable, violent tone, with

personal attacks and insults: “for the first time ever, a group was

identified as a nest of traitors, and given a name that was intended to

serve as a synonym for infamy”,[19] Vaneigem would observe much later,

although at the time he, too, supported the official version of “a

secret fraction [that] was able to form among us” but “was rapidly

exposed”.[20] The SI’s opponents responded in kind, using the same kind

of language and hurling identical accusations.[21] The existence of a

directive situationist nucleus in Paris, and of a subordinate nucleus in

Strasbourg that executed the commands issued from Paris, had awakened

suspicions in the SI’s new members, which, despite the proclaimed

internal democracy, were not brought to light at the time. Furthermore,

these suspicions spread to the former executive bureau of AFGES and

their friends, and were only exacerbated by Khayati’s cold and distant

approach towards them. The students felt uncomfortable with the leading

role that their own theoretical shortcomings had granted to the “Paris”

SI and felt that they were not being treated with the consideration they

deserved as the people who were actually implementing the SI’s tactics.

The local situs contemplated the scene with their hands tied. On the one

hand, there was the lack of autonomy of the group led by Garnault and

the Freys; on the other hand, there was Debord’s mistrust of Holl and

his scorn for “irresponsible people” who “progressed so laboriously

during this small scandal, and en bloc, though they were completely

opposed to each other”.[22] Faced with such irreconcilable

contradictions, Debord, who was not at all prone to yielding to

sentimentalism towards just anyone and who was even less accustomed to

trusting those whom he considered to be irresponsible, decided to make a

clean break, dispensing with the recently acquired sympathizers and

publicly chastising the dissenters. He conferred upon them the

humiliating sobriquet of “Garnaultins”. This truly Bolshevik procedure

was indicative of a scorched earth tactic. The sympathizers who had

demonstrated enough merit to be admitted into the SI (Joubert, Bertrand,

Schneider) must depart from Strasbourg and leave their impoverishment

behind them. But they never did. As for the excluded members, or those

who were considered to be excluded, their continued presence in a quiet

little provincial city within the well-trodden confines of the

university did not favor their plans for advancing to a new stage of

being “more extremist than the SI”, an effect aggravated by their sparse

endowments with respect to agitation, but which nonetheless drove them

to engage in a kind of naive activism—unsuccessfully repeating their old

electoral tactics—which was further distorted by an increasingly more

abstract mode of thought, which explains why their little excursion on

the wild side did not last very long.

The “Garnaultin” affair caused the SI to turn inward, requiring a

greater degree of internal control, a demand for more coherence in

participating in its activities and for more stringent requirements for

relations with other autonomous groups; these initiatives were

ineffective and failed to resolve the contradictions generated within

the SI by the emergence of multiple opportunities for revolutionary

intervention that were not always successfully addressed, and which were

often left unexploited. After the dissolution of the International,

Debord’s animosity towards his former comrades revealed a will to

belittle them, and to erase their presence from his memory. Mustapha

Khayati’s protest against the publication of the pamphlet, “On the

Poverty of Student Life…”, by Champ Libre in late 1976 provided Debord

with an occasion to give free rein to his hostility towards Khayati, and

towards Vaneigem, as well, when he even went so far as to cast doubts on

Khayati’s authorship of the pamphlet in a text entitled, “Fuck!”,

derisively signed, “Some Proletarians”. Debord’s self-aggrandizement and

thinly-veiled defeatist attitude rose to the surface in the film, In

Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni, produced in 1978. The ebb of the

workers movement, with the concomitant disappearance of any prospect for

the universal power of the Workers Councils, contributed to this

development. Gianfranco Sanguinetti, the last of Debord’s comrades to

feel the sting of his calumny, expressed the opinion, thirty-three years

later, that this personality change in Debord that entailed the

annihilation of the reality of the other persons who were involved in

the situationist adventure, “naturally affected those who had made the

greatest contributions to the subversion of which the SI was the

standard-bearer. He wanted to stand alone. It would be no exaggeration

to say that from that moment on, he engaged in systematic efforts to

minimize the role played by all the other members of the group”.[23]

Vaneigem jokingly suggested that the key to this enigma might be found

in Orson Welles’ film, Mr. Arkadin. The plot of that film, so admired by

Debord, tells the story of a business magnate who hires a small-time

smuggler to uncover the facts concerning his past, which he claims he

cannot remember. This improvised private investigator accepts the job,

but as he discovers material witnesses to the past of his client, an

unknown party kills them, one after another.

Now that the generalized disaster that has followed in the wake of the

complete globalization of the economy demands a culture of catastrophe

that is equal to the circumstances, the invisible hand of spectacular

domination whose purpose is to liquidate the subversive legacy of the

situationists is embodied in a whole constellation of prostitute

historians, careerist biographers, mercenary academics, cultural

cheerleaders and Debordologists of every stripe, all prepared to raise a

monument to the glory of the artist in order to all the more effectively

distort and erase the example of the revolutionary. In a way, Debord

sought out his own self-destruction. The recuperative labors of the

pack, involving essentially the sophisticated distortion of the past,

are currently being prosecuted in conjunction with vast efforts of

institutionalization and commercialization, but we can at least be sure

of the fact that they will only convince those who are easily convinced,

that is, fools, and those who were already convinced, that is, knaves.

[1] Letter from Debord to Hervé Vernay, December 26, 1966,

Correspondance, Vol. 3, Fayard, 2003.

[2] Interview with Mustapha Khayati conducted by Gérard Berréby,

Brussels, July 4, 2014, in Rien n’est fini], tout commence, by Gérard

Berréby and Raoul Vaneigem, Allia, Paris, 2014.

[3] Letter from Debord to B. Tlili, April 15, 1964, Correspondance, Vol.

2, Fayard, Paris, 2003.

[4] At least this is what Lefebvre claimed in an interview published in

the catalog, Figures de la négation, Avant-gardes du dépassement de

l’art que faisait suite à l’exposition, VV.AA., Paris Musées, 2004.

[5] “Aux poubelles de l’histoire!”, published in issue No. 12 of

Internationale Situationniste.

[6] Letter from Debord to M. Khayati, March 20, 1965, Correspondance,

Vol. 3.

[7] Letter to M. Khayati, March 31, 1965.

[8] Letter to M. Khayati, June 7, 1965.

[9] Letter to M. Khayati, October 22, 1965.

[10] “The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy”.

[11] René Furth (Fugler), “Souvenirs d’un militant”, Le Monde

libertaire, No. 1411, June 25, 2006.

[12] Published in Internationale Situationniste, No. 11.

[13] A good analysis of the Conference may be found in Gianfranco

Marelli, L’amère victoire du situationnisme, Editions Sulliver, Arles,

1998.

[14] Letter to M. Khayati, October 27, 1966.

[15] Pascal Dumontier, Les Situationnistes et mai 1968. Théorie et

pratique de la révolution, éditions Gérard Lebovici, Paris, 1990. A

manuscript of the book was consulted at the IISH in Amsterdam.

[16] Christophe Bourseiller, Vie et mort de Guy Debord, Plon, Paris,

1999.

[17] Olivier Todd, “Strasbourg en situation…”, Le Nouvel Observateur,

December 21, 1966.

[18] “La Vérité est révolutionnaire” [The Truth Is Revolutionary], in

Pour une critique d l’avanguardisme. L’unique et sa propiété, May 1967,

Haguenau.

[19] Rien n’est fini, tout commence.

[20] “Avoir pour but la vérite pratique”, Internationale Situationniste,

No. 11.

[21] Mario Perniola, I situazionisti, Alberto Castelvecchi editore,

Roma, 1998. The Spanish edition of this work is unreadable.

[22] Letter to André Bertrand and Daniel Joubert, January 22, 1967, in

the Daniel Guérin archives of the Library of the University of Nanterre.

Vaneigem added the detail that Theo Frey was a teetotaler, which might

appear trivial at first sight, but which was of some importance in a

group of drinkers.

[23] Letter from Sanguinetti to M. Khayati, December 10, 2012, available

on the website of Jules Bonnot de la Bande,

julesbonnotdelabande.blogspot.com