The Master of the Revolutionary Subject: Some Passages from the Life of Guy Debord

Born in Paris in 1931, Guy Debord grew up in the Mediterranean city of Cannes as the child of a formerly well-to-do family. After the world-wide economic crisis, his family was able to retain only a negligible part of their former means and possessions, and Debord spent his youth conscious that he would soon be without the secure life to which he had been accustomed. He moved—as he later wrote—”slowly, but unceasingly towards a life of adventure, keeping his eyes wide open,” for he had decided to undertake nothing that might improve his prospects, such as a degree or a career or anything whereby one trades for a future those elements that block the way to it. As a consequence, he passed over the promises of a regulated bourgeois life and began to free his actions from economic ties.