I thank you for your note of the 22d (as well as the specifications of your preceding letter).
Isou's efforts merit little reaction: the development of a group of false postulates of 137 or 137,000 pages remains derisive. And contesting a crowd of faked details would be a lengthy enterprise that has been duped by this non-entity disguised as a tribunal. Asger Jorn, who has brought me [a copy of] this journal,[2] has also given me a response to it.[3] And I have nothing to add to it.
The root of the problem is that Isou still believes that it is possible to make several advances to us, evoking the possibility of an eventual discussion with the SI [Situationist International], at least on reduced questions. But the truth is that, since the Chaplin affair[4] in October 1952, neither I nor anyone in contact with me has a "tacit accord" with Isou, nor allows the least possibilty of a discussion with him. And we will never engage in a discussion in the future, no matter what the price. Perhaps you find this anti-scientific -- haughty -- but I persist in believing in the truth of an inevitable global judgment that interventions in human relations can not sincerely adopt the objectivity of the exact sciences in their examinations of separate phenomena.
I am quite in agreement with you that you are on our side, that is, if it is necessary to choose between the experiment that we try to define and Isouian theology.
The disagreements between you and me, which aren't slight, arise from a difficult but real dialogue. In contrast to my decision concerning Isou -- and many other people whom we, for good reasons, have chosen to treat as enemies -- I have never said nor thought that the dialogue with you was over or forever impossible. I have only refused certain current conditions of this dialogue (in its main issues and its form) that prevent it from being clear and useful. I don't foreclose the future.
P.S. The fact that we've rejected your "Center of Confrontation" from "Sunshine in the Head" naturally doesn't mean that we don't want to send out 10 copies of our publication (even more, if you want) to the Grammes journal.
[1] This letter has been placed among those of 1960. Mr Estivals, surprised by not seeing it placed in Volume I [of Guy Debord: Correspondance], dated it from 1959, but didn't furnish any clarifications of his "note of the 22d" nor his "preceding letter." Furthermore, an extract from his "letter to Debord on the consequences of meglomania . . ." appeared in issue #5 of I.S. [Internationale Situationniste] in December 1960.
[2] Poesie nouvelle [New Poetry] #10 (first quarter of 1960).
[3] "Originality and grandeur (On Isou's system)," cf. I.S. #4, p. 26.
[4] Isidore Isou was not in solidarity with the attack launched by the "Lettrist Left" against Charlie Chaplin (No More Flat Feet, October 1952). This split produced the Lettrist International.
(Published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 2, 1960-1964. Footnotes by Alice Debord. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! May 2005.)