Making Sense of the Global 1960s: The Situationist International and the Navel of the World¹

ABSTRACT

This article revisits the history of the Situationist International (SI) from the perspective of its relationship with the Third World, with a specific focus on the Congo and, to lesser degree, Algeria. The SI is most often remembered for its critique of alienation in the West. Yet, the questions of decolonization, the Third World, and Third-Worldism were at the center of its political project, including its conceptualization of everyday life and of the society of spectacle. This project was not static and the SI went from a warm embrace of Third World revolutions to a position of strong skepticism, which was further accentuated after the uprisings of May 1968 in France. In its analysis of this evolution, the article revisits the works of Guy Debord, Raoul Vaneigem, Mustapha Khayati, and René Vienet; it also draws from the journal of the SI, the published correspondence of Debord, and various archival documents about the group. A strong focus is put on the importance of the notion of totality in the situationist critique. The article argues that this notion offers an interesting entry point into the current historiographical debate about the periodization of the global 1960s.

KEYWORDS:

• Third-Worldism
• global sixties
• totality
• Congo
• Guy Debord
• situationist international

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. A previous version of this text was presented at the African History Workshop Group at the University of California, Berkeley, in May 2023. I am grateful for the useful feedback I received at this occasion, as well for the comments from the two anonymous reviewers of the article, from participants at an earlier discussion on the article’s topic at the Friday History Seminar at NYU in 2018, and from Vincent Meessen, Bertrand Metton, and A.S. Dillingham.

2. ”’Je suis forcé d’admettre que tout continue’ (Hegel),” Internationale Situationniste 9, August 1964, p.20.

3. Milo, Trahir le temps and Milo and Boureau, Alter histoire.

4. Milo, “Pour une histoire expérimentale,” 717.

5. Mohandesi, “Thinking the Global Sixties,” 10–11.

6. Mohandesi, Red Internationalism.

7. Brown, “1968 in Longue Durée,” 29; Pensado, “Teaching the Global Sixties,” 33; and Wu, “Response to Salar Mohandesi,” 21.

8. Lee, “X and X,” 40.

9. See Jay, Marxism and Totality.

10. Horn, The Spirit of ’68, 5–42.

11. See Trespeuch-Berthelot, “The Shadow on May ’68”

12. Overviews of the history of the SI are numerous. Some of the most useful include: Jappe, Guy Debord; Hemmens and Zacharias, The Situationist International; Marcoloni, Le mouvement situationniste; Trespeuch-Berthelot, L’internationale situationniste; and Wark, The Spectacle of Disintegration.

13. Jameson, “Periodizing the Sixties”

14. Mohandesi, “Thinking the Global Sixties,” 7.

15. Jameson, “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic”

16. Jameson, “Periodizing the Sixties,” 197.

17. Idem, 201.

18. For the critical responses to Jameson’s theorization of third-world literature, which he developed in the aftermath of the “Periodization” piece (Jameson, “Third-World Literature”), see Schulenberg, “Jameson’s Neo-Marxism,” and Dirlik, “The Postcolonial Aura”

19. Kalter, “From global to local.” On this question, see also Gordon, Immigrants and Intellectuals; and Dedieu and Mbodj-Pouye, “The Fabric of Transnational Political Activism.”

20. Mohandesi, Red Internationalism.

21. A recent exception is Hemmens and Zacharias, The Situationist International , and particularly the chapter by Dolto and Sidi Moussa on anti-colonialism

22. On the situationist references to the Congo as simple jests, see, for instance, Hussey, The Game of War, 180.

23. “Les luttes de classes en Algérie,” Internationale Situationniste 10 (March 1966), p.12.

24. Debord, Correspondance: Volume 0, 266.

25. Several of the branches that were cut by Debord as he streamlined the orientation of the SI ended up playing important roles in various contexts. See, for instance, the influence of one of these branches, the Munich-based SPUR group, on the political radicalization of the German student movement in Klimke, The Other Alliance, 54–56.

26. Judt, Marxism and the French Left, 189. See also Marcolini, Le mouvement situationniste, 140–142.

27. Elden, “Mondialisation before Globalization.”

28. Jay, Marxism and Totality, 13. On Debord’s Marxist readings, see Jappe, “Debord, lecteur de Marx.” And for a stimulating Marxist reading of Debord, see Bensaid, Le spectacle.

29. See Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism, 24–48.

30. Klimke and Nolan, “Introduction,” 1.

31. “Notes Editoriales,” Internationale Situationniste 4, June 1960, 9.

32. Debord, Correspondance: Volume II, 256.

33. See Kalter, Discovery of Third World.

34. See, for instance, Ross, “Ethics and Imperialism;” Ross, May ’68 and its Afterlives, 158–169; Ticktin, Casualties of Care, 60–88; Szczepanski-Huillery, “L’idéologie tiers-mondiste;” Kalter, Discovery of the Third World, 99–103; Mohandesi, Red Internationalism; Bourg, From Revolution to Ethics.

35. It is therefore important not to freeze the SI either in its early enthusiasm for the Third World or in its later critique of Third-Worldism; see, for example, Brun, Les situationnistes, 371–372.

36. Kaufmann, Guy Debord, 170.

37. Mension, La Tribu, 32.

38. See, for instance, Abdelhafid Khatib, “L’expression de la révolution algérienne et l’imposteur Kateb Yacine,” Potlatch 27, 2 November 1956 (reprinted in Berréby, Documents relatifs, 243). See also Abdelhafid Khatib, “Essai de description psychogéographique des Halles,” Internationale Situationniste 2, December 1958, 18. On the importance of North Africa in the history of the Lettrist group, see Dolto and Sidi Moussa, “The Situationists’ Anti-Colonialism,” 104–106.

39. See Debord, Correspondance: Volume 0, 78, 110, and 124; Debord, Correspondance: Volume I, 34; Guy Debord, Letter to Gil Wolman, 30 August 1954, Gil Wolman papers, General Collections, Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Box 2; Guy-Ernest Debord, “Deux comptes rendus de derive,” in Les lèvres nues, November 1956 (reproduced in Berréby, Documents relatifs, 316–319). See also Apostolidès, Debord, 163–164. On the association of North African masculinity with violence in French politics, see Sheppard, Sex, France, and Arab Men.

40. See Debord, Guy Debord présente.

41. “Notes éditoriales,” Internationale Situationniste 7, April 1962, 21–22.

42. See Debord, Correspondance: Volume I, 94–172; Brun, Les situationnistes, 321–324; “L’effondrement des intellectuels révolutionnaires,” Internationale Situationniste 2, December 1958, 40–42.

43. Trespeuch-Berthelot, L’internationale situationniste, 89–91.

44. See Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Congo, 94–120.

45. S. Chatel [pseud. of Sébastien de Diesbach], “Le vide Congolais,” Socialisme ou Barbarie VI:31, December 1960-January 1961, 12.

46. Debord, Correspondance: volume I, 357.

47. On the resonance of the Mexican revolution with the German student Left of the 1960s – through the mediation of Louis Malle’s Viva Maria! comedy – see Klimke, The Other Alliance, 65–69.

48. “Notes éditoriales,” Internationale Situationniste 8, January 1963, 31.

49. “Notes éditoriales,” Internationale Situationniste 7, April 1962, 23.

50. On the global resonances of the Congo crisis and of Lumumba’s murder, see Monaville, Students of the World and Monaville, “A History of Glory.”

51. The claim that this segment showed a Congolese scene appear in the film’s screenplay (see Debord, Contre le cinema, 57–87). Yet what the images show is the repression of a strike in Liberia, not in the Congo, which can be inferred from the uniform of the policemen and the flags that appear at some point during the sequence. Whether or not Debord knew about the images’ actual provenance is not known. All the scholars who have written about the film have uncritically reproduced the claim the sequence showed images from the Congo; see Danesi, Le cinéma de Debord, 75; and Levin, “Dismantling the Spectacle,” 369.

52. “Critique de la séparation : générique,” Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Fonds Guy Debord, NAF 28,603.

53. Debord, Contre le cinéma, 69–70.

54. See, for instance, the inclusion of a paragraph about the recent arrests of two Lumumbist figures – Colonel Pakassa and Antoine Gizenga – in an article dedicated to covering the activities of the SI in 1962 (“Renseignements situationistes,” Internationale Situationniste 7, April 1962, p.51), or Debord’s suggestion the following year to use “Long Live Marx and Lumumba!” as the title of a painting for an exhibition at Odense in Denmark (Bolt Rasmussen, “The Situationist Offensive in Scandinavia,” 305–307).

55. It is interesting to note that Régis Debray articulated a very similar critique of Third-Worldism in 1962 (before himself later turning into a Third-Worldist icon). At the time, Debray had not yet broken with the French Communist Party. He was displeased with the leftist orientation of French Third-Worldists and framed his critique as a defense of the Soviet Union; see Kalter, Discovery of Third World, 244–245.

56. On Vaneigem’s biography and his relationship with Debord, see Berréby and Vaneigem, Rien n’est fini.

57. Raoul Vaneigem, “Fragments pour une poétique (suivi de quatre poèmes à parfaire),” 12. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Fonds Guy Debord, NAF 28,603.

58. Vaneigem, Traité de savoir-vivre, 352.

59. Jameson, “Periodizing the Sixties,” 160.

60. Vaneigem, Traité de savoir-vivre, 352. The lack of gender inclusivity in the quote is partly a reflection of grammatical usage in the French language. But it is worth pointing to the complicated gender discourse of the SI and the uneven presence of women among its membership. See Baumeister, “Gender and Sexuality.”

61. Vaneigem, Traité de savoir-vivre, 45.

62. See “La pratique de la théorie,” Internationale Situationniste 11, October 1967, p.54; “Adresse aux révolutionnaires d’Algérie et des tous les pays,” Internationale Situationniste 10, March 1966, 47; and [Khayati], De la misère, 16.

63. “Le déclin et la chute de l’économie spectaculaire-marchande,” Internationale Situationniste 10, March 1966, 11.

64. Vaneigem, Traité de savoir-vivre, 95.

65. Debord, La société du spectacle, 21, 52–53.

66. Idem, 58.

67. On future-oriented internationalism, see Goswami “Imaginary Futures”

68. Monde (world) and mondialement (worldly) appear ninety-two times in the original version of the book; totalité (totality), twenty-six; global or globalement (globally), fourteen; and universel (universal), twelve.

69. “La pratique de la théorie,” Internationale Situationniste 11, October 1967, 54.

70. See also Mustapha Khayati, “Contributions servant à rectifier l’opinion du public sur la révolution dans les pays sous-développés,” Internationale Situationniste 11, October 1967, 40.

71. Khayati, De la misère.

72. See Michel, Nour le voilé.

73. Vaneigem, Letter to Debord, s.d. [c. April 1964], Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Fonds Guy Debord, NAF 28,603.

74. Ibid.

75. Ibid. Fantômas is the name of a well-known fictional character in French popular literature, a criminal mastermind who masters the art of disguise and fool the police by assuming changing identities. In the 1920s, Fantômas inspired the surrealist painter René Magritte; see Rooney and Plattner, René Magritte, 24.

76. Debord, Correspondance: Volume III, 57.

77. “Adresse aux révolutionnaires d’Algérie et des tous les pays,” Internationale Situationniste 10, March 1966, 47.

78. See Byrne, Mecca of Revolution.

79. Debord, Correspondance: Volume III, 66. Debord claimed that the group had been misled by the enthusiasm of its envoy in Algeria. What happened should serve as a warning: “The whole world is for us like this Algeria, where everything depends on what we will be able to accomplish with whomever comes first, and where, therefore, we must all be more able to judge these people practically and to create conditions for such encounters” (“Rapport de Guy Debord à la VIIe conference de l’IS à Paris,” in Debord, Oeuvres, 1168).

80. “Adresse aux révolutionnaires d’Algérie et des tous les pays,” Internationale Situationniste 10, March 1966, 49.

81. On the rebellions, see De Witte, L’ascension de Mobutu and Kalema, “Scars.” On their international resonances, see Monaville, “Making a ‘Second Vietnam” and Slobodian, Foreign Front, 135–169.

82. “Les Luttes de Classes en Algérie,” Internationale Situationniste 10, March 1966, 13. Debord collected newspaper clippings that mocked the “superstitious” practices of the Congolese rebels and used some of these in the journal; see “Je suis forcé d’admettre que tout continue,” Internationale Situationniste 9, August 1964, 22.

83. In a fascinating book about youth subculture in late colonial Kinshasa, historian Didier Gondola also suggests interesting parallels between the young urban rebels in late colonial Kinshasa and the Situationist notion practice of détournement: Gondola, Tropical Cowboys, 3.

84. Vaneigem, Letter to Debord, sd [c. January 1965], Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Fonds Guy Debord, NAF 28,603.

85. See Debord, Correspondance: Volume 2, p.311 and Debord, Correspondance, Volume 3, p.15.

86. Vaneigem, Letter to Debord, sd [c. December 1965], Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Fonds Guy Debord, NAF 28,603.

87. Simon Lungela, “La révolution dans les pays de l’Afrique noire,” 3, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Fonds Guy Debord, NAF 28,603.

88. “Conditions du mouvement révolutionnaire congolais,” in Debord, Oeuvres, 697.

89. Idem, 698.

90. “Définition minimum des organisations révolutionnaires,” Internationale Situationniste 11, October 1967, 54–55

91. “De l’aliénation: Examen de plusieurs aspects concrets,” Internationale Situationniste 10, March 1966, 65.

92. On the French genealogy of the idea of the Third World, see Kalter, Discovery of the Third World.

93. Viénet, Enragés et situationnistes, 208. A student in Sinology, Viénet had taught French in China in 1965 and his insights proved useful to the situationist critique of Maoism and the cultural revolution. See, notably, “Le point d’explosion de l’idéologie en Chine,” Internationale Situationniste 11, October 1967, 3–12), or attacks against the “illusionists” who tried to “depict Mao as a Chinese Rimbaud” in “Dans le Cul de la balayette,” [1971], 2, Gianfranco Sanguinetti papers, Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Box 50. See also Wark, The Spectacle of Disintegration, 85–103.

94. An article in Internationale Situationniste argued that the 1967 student occupation at the University of Kinshasa, “in the course of which some situationist influences could be detected,” had been the precursor to all similar protests in Europe, including the one in Paris: “La pratique de la théorie,” Internationale Situationniste 12, September 1969, 85. On the actual event, see Monaville, Students of the World, 171–175.

95. Viénet, Enragés et situationnistes, 130.

96. Mbelolo ya Mpiku, “Marchez Debout,” May 68, Raoul Vaneigem papers, BPS 22, Musée d’Art de la Province de Hainaut, Charleroi. I am grateful to Vincent Meessen for sharing this document with me. The song is the focus of his video installation One.Two.Three, which he created for the 56th Vennice Biennale in 2015: see Meessen, The Other Country.

97. Viénet et al., Letter to Edouard Rothe, n.d. [July 1969], Gianfranco Sanguinetti papers, Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Box 2.

98. See for instance Danesi, Le mythe brisé, 95–96.

99. Viénet, Enragés et situationnistes, 140, 19, and 154. Viénet also rejoiced that Arab protesters in Paris chanted the famous “We are all German Jews” slogan. For Viénet, this showed that Arabs could see through the diversion of the Israeli-Arab conflict and promised alliances in the future that had the potential of finally avenging the police massacre of Algerian supporters of the FLN in October 1961 in Paris (133).

100. See Passerini, Autobiography of a Generation.

101. Debord, Correspondance: Volume IV, 71.

102. Passerini, “Critica della vita quotidiana,” 33.

103. Mustapha Khayati, Letter to the IS, 9 October 1969, Gianfranco Sanguinetti papers, Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Box 3.

104. “Averstissement,” [1971], 6–7, Gianfranco Sanguinetti papers, Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Box 50.

105. Idem, 5. In the decades that followed the dissolution of the SI, Debord remained strongly invested in shaping the movement’s legacy by organizing its archives, but also through multiple editorial projects. It is striking to notice the near absence of Algeria, the Congo, or the Third World in the first project of situationist anthology that the elaborated in the early 1970s. This erasure of the Third World in narratives about the SI sanctioned by Debord foreshadow and maybe explain the relative lack of interest in these questions in the later historiography: Debord, Oeuvres, 973–1062.

106. On the Katanguese secession, see Kennes and Larmer, The Katangese Gendarmes, 41–60. Joël Berlé, a former friend of Debord and former member of the Lettrist International, also worked as a mercenary for the Tshombe regime in the early 1960s; see Brau, Le singe appliqué. On the other hand, former German members of the SI organized several anti-Tshombe protests in 1964 that were instrumental in the radicalization of West German student politics; see Brown, West Germany, 21–78.

107. See Chollet, Les situationnistes, 68–69.

108. See Viénet, Enragés et situationnistes, 193–195. Armand Gatti, who had been a prominent voice of French Third-Worldism in the 1960s, also became a staunch supporter of the Katanguese. A few months after the Sorbonne’s occupation, the Katangese returned to the headlines in France when a fight in a commune they had established in rural Normandy left one of them dead. Gatti wrote the script of a film based on these events, in which he showed the former mercenaries as the real picaresque heroes of ’68 and the true successors of the ultimate revolutionary underdogs, and indeed figures of the situationist pantheon, Makhno and Durutti: Gatti, “Les Katangais (scénario).”

109. On more recent refractions of the situationist imagination, see Marcoloni, Le mouvement situationniste, 207–307; and Warck, The Spectacle of Disintegration. On situationist refractions in the Prague uprising of 1968, see Bodnar, “What’s Left,” 76–78.

110. Illades and Velazquez, Izquierdas radicales en Mexico, chap. 3; and Castaneda, Spectacular Mexico, 125.

111. Tract du Comité anti-olimpico de subversión, 1968, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Fonds Guy Debord, NAF 28,603.

112. “Adresses I.S, liste ajournée par Guy, liste de août 69 annulant les précédentes,” Gianfranco Sanguinetti papers, Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Box 1.

113. Personal interview with Joseph Mbelolo ya Mpiku, Kinshasa, 11 July 2015.

114. The exchange is captured in the Belgian artist Vincent Meessen’s digital video installation One.Two.Three; see Meessen, The Other Country.

115. See Monaville, “On the Passage”

116. Hendrickson, Decolonizing 1968.

117. For a different reading of the SI that contest its eurocentrism, see Dolto and Sidi Moussa, “The Situationists’ Anti-Colonialism.” And for takes on the Eurocentric question in the history of Third-Worldism, see Kalter, Discovery of Third World, 430–434; Slobodian, Foreign Front, 200–208; and Garavini, “The Colonies Strike Back.”