from Guy Debord

To Gerard Guegan
17 April 1972
Dear Guegan:

Please find attached the text that I proposed to you for your habitual mimeographed notice.

Given the character of this book [The Veritable Split in the International], it will be necessary for me to send out more review copies, that is to say, copies to all of the people on the list used for [The Society of the] Spectacle, plus the names on the second list that I am currently communicating to you. I insist on the necessity of sending out all of these review copies at the same time; and of course as soon as possible.

Can you write to me the day on which I can pick up the copies?

Quite cordially,
Guy Debord

Situationist International. The Veritable Split in the International.

Without doubt, the Situationist International constitutes the most extreme current of an era that, on all sides, becomes extreme. The Veritable Split in the International is its most recent expression.[1]

One will find in this book an analysis of the current revolutionary period as well as a theorization of the action of the SI -- notably its own "autocritique" and the exposition of its most recent purge, which are the first responses to the success that it begins to encounter.

The situationists claim to have brought back the thought of history to a time that had need of it. This book exactly provides the measure of this kind of historical thought and its destiny.

Never has what has been called the "cynicism" of the SI gone so far. This is particularly impressive because this "cynicism" has developed itself to such a degree exactly on the basis of the confirmations of the SI's excesses and "extravagant" theses that recent history have provided.

[1] Note well the use of the present tense throughout this text and the idea that this book is not the SI's last expression. As of this (late) date, the organization continues to exist.


(Published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 4, 1969-1972. Translated from the French and footnoted by NOT BORED! June 2005.)



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