Guy Debord was a radical political activist, filmmaker, theorist, bohemian, and provocateur. His various activities, mainly in France between 1952 and 1990, were all unified by his ambition to develop a truly radical and revolutionary strategy to overturn capitalist society. In fact, Debord regarded himself primarily as a strategist and read and quoted widely from military thinkers, even creating his own war game (
Kriegspiel) known as
A Game of War(2007). His major theoretical achievement is
La Société du spectacle(
The Society of the Spectacle) (1967), which analysed capitalist society as structured by the social form of the “spectacle”, whereby capitalism ensured its dominance by reducing the masses to passive and alienated spectators. He argued that revolutionary resistance…
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Citation: Noys, Benjamin. "Guy Debord". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 March 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5766, accessed 21 November 2024.]
