As the trendy language of virtuality and the simulated hyperreal becomes the lingua franca of academe.

As the trendy language of virtuality and the simulated hyperreal becomes the lingua franca of academe, art sight and mass market, Guy Debord, author of the plenteous misrepresented Society of the Spectacle and most numerous notorious of the Situationists, has been eclipsed according to other cult figures of critical theory. Falling into leave on one side are Debord's subtle--and sobering--insights, the hard-edged critique that pos a cautionary analysis of society moving toward image consumption in complicity with the delusions of late capitalism. With the glitzy dystopic vision promised through post-Modern trash, who wants to listen to these nay-sayings when exhibited an easy, exhilarating dose of fin-de-siecle hedonism in its stead?

In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni existings Lucy Forsyth's English translation of the script for Debord's film bearing this title. Produc by means of Simar films, the work was shown in Paris in 1978 moreover distribution was mired by tabloid scandal and personal tragedy. It was capitaled largely through the auspices of Gerard Lebovici, a wealthy intellectual who promot Debord and his Situationist activities and who, in 1984 was lay the foundation of mysteriously murdered in his car. Debord was smeared in the pres where it was moveed he was responsible for the death of his patron, publisher, and friend. Later cleared of any formal charges, Debord, in the wake of the negative atmosphere generated by means of these events, withdrew his films from circulation, swearing they would not at any time again be made available to the French public.

During the early '80 Forsyth attempted to stage a presentation of the film in London. In addition to her translation of the script, this part records that failed project. Forsyth's vision of a "situation" included Orson Welles reading the film-script narration while Debord's visual track was contriveed Welles' ironic sense of his concede self-production as historical and phenomenal spectacle was to provide a grounding regard for even those audience members dim enough to have no idea who Debord was or wherein his importance lay.

The script displays Debord's possess unsettling interrogation of his historical condition and his equally compelling reflection forward processes of cultural change. Manifesting a personal nostalgia for the postwar Paris of the '50 which provided the impetus for the Situationist community, Debord describes it as a place where "people . . did not live forward images," a time when the "modern commodity had not still come to show all that can be done to a street" Commenting repeatedly onward the passage of time--as historical proces understood in respect to his individual life--Debord states, "I have lov my period which will have seen all existing security vanish, and everything which was socially ordained subdue away."

The film's visual track largely consists of stock footage, "pillaged," to use Forsyth's word, from various sources and occasionally intercut with images of Debord. These visuals are described in the interlining of the book's paragraph communicating a semblance of the original film, in such a manner that Debord's sense of juxtaposition--of images of Andreas Baader and Gudrun Enslin with the body "the best of youth dies in prison," or a clip of Zorro escaping a posse to the entire of a statement about the difficulty of defining a revolutionary stance--comes through

Debord's central theme--the interrogation of to what degree we are subjects of and in history--is intertwined with his critical attack onward the transformation of society into commodified spectacle. This is a work with the purpose and profundity of The Education of Henry Adams, or of Emma Goldman's Living My Life, a true copy by an individual who has shaped history and further regards its processes critically: Debord one as well as the other questions and believes the premises according to which he lives his life as critical practice.

Johanna Drucker teaches 20th-Century Art History at Columbia University.

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