25. Guy DeBord's Memoires

I won't claim to know a lot about the Situationist International or Guy DeBord. But I appreciate his sandpaper-bound Memoires, a book that destroys other books.

The truth is I hardly know what Memoires is about. It hasn't been translated, and my French is so poor that even if I had a copy I wouldn't get much from it. A few essays discuss its contents, but most people talk about the cover.

Among other things, books are meant to be shelved, to be organized by some shared properties, and to be placed together accordingly. Whatever merit they might have on their own, books have greater value when they're considered with their peers. Except this book, which can't be shelved without damaging its neighbours, the shelf and, to a certain extent, the shelver.

The essay Books of War discusses DeBord's two books with Asger Jorn, Memoires and Fin de Copenhague. (As it turns out, DeBord didn't even come up with the idea of the sandpaper cover.) And if you can stand to read about theory, the essay Activist Desire, Cultural Criticism, and the Situationist International (section 21 and on) talks about Memoires in some detail.

"By means of the spectacle, the ruling order discourses endlessly upon itself in an uninterrupted monologue of self-praise"