Hurlements en faveur de Sade : The Negation and Surpassing of “Discrepant Cinema”

“Le problème de l’avant-garde se découvre toujours entre le rien et le tout-petit-peu.

“— Isidore Isou¹

Asger Jorn writes in his introduction to Debord’s Contre Le Cinéma that Debord’s films “are like long experimental notes on the development of the general theory of détournement“(6).² The Situationist practice of détournement was one of the most important and widespread techniques employed in their artistic and political endeavors, reaching its apex during the events of May 1968. Détournement comprises both an aesthetic and political critique. The technique is defined by Guy Debord and Gil Wolman as the “mutual interference of two worlds of feeling, or the bringing together of two independent expressions” which, through this juxtaposition, “supersedes the original elements and produces a synthetic organization of greater efficacy” (Knabb 9). Debord employed détournement cinematically, since his films are mostly comprised of preexisting materials. The images in his 1973 film version of La Société du Spectacle are taken from preexisting films, advertisements, newsreels and still photographs. These images appear as he reads the text of the book on the soundtrack.