Détournement, réinvention du collage

Authors

  • Gabriel Ferreira Zacarias University of Campinas, Brazil

Abstract

The present paper analyzes the situationist practice of ‘detournement’ in its relationship to the heritage of modern avant-gardes, and notably surrealism. First, it revisits the foundations of that notion, as it was laid out by Guy Debord and Gil Wolman in the 1956 text Mode d’emploi du detournement, and briefly studies the use of the procedure in the collaborative work of Guy Debord and Asger Jorn, that soon followed. After that, the essay moves to the study of unpublished reading notes from the archives of Guy Debord, in order to reassess the author’s relationship to surrealism. The readings of Genèse de la pensée moderne (1950) by Marcel Jean and Arpad Mezei will be of importance, as well as the significance attributed to Lautreamont. Finally, the article discusses the situationist idea that “collage is a particular case of detournement”, as a part of the SI’s perception of postwar avant-garde context. The place of memory in the use of detournement will emerge here as an opening for a new reading of the situationist practice, beyond the self-understanding of the group.

Author Biography

Gabriel Ferreira Zacarias , University of Campinas, Brazil

Gabriel Ferreira Zacarias is Professor of Art History at the University of Campinas, Brazil, and a Fellow of Humboldt Stiftung in Germany. He has been a Fellow of the Erasmus Mundus Program, in Italy and in France, and a Visiting Research Fellow at Yale University. He has studied Guy Debord's archives at the French National Library, and the Situationist Papers at the Beinecke Library. With Alastair Hemmens, he has edited the volume The Situationist International: a Critical Handbook (London: Pluto Press, 2020). He has also written the postface to Guy Debord’s notes on literature, on the volume edited by Laurence Le Bras, Poésie, etc. (Paris: L’Échappée, 2019). He has published essays on the domain of Critical Theory, notably No espelho do terror: jihad e espetáculo (São Paulo: Elefante, 2018), and De Virus Illustribus. Crise du coronavirus et épuisement structurel du capitalisme (Crise et Critique, 2020), coauthored with A. Jappe, C. Homs and S. Aumercier.

Published

31-12-2021

How to Cite

Zacarias , G. F. (2021). Détournement, réinvention du collage. Elephant & Castle, (26). Retrieved from https://elephantandcastle.unibg.it/index.php/eac/article/view/56