{"id":2387,"date":"2009-11-17T09:43:24","date_gmt":"2009-11-17T13:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=2387"},"modified":"2009-11-17T09:43:24","modified_gmt":"2009-11-17T13:43:24","slug":"conversation-with-raoul-vaneigem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/conversation-with-raoul-vaneigem\/","title":{"rendered":"Conversation with Raoul Vaneigem"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"VaneigemCartoon\"<\/a>Alerted to this by Mak Thwaite’s excellent ReadySteady<\/a> blog, here are the opening paras of Hans Ulrich Obrist’s recent interview with Raoul Vaneigem. You can read the full text on the Interactvist site here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Conversation with Raoul Vaneigem
\nHans Ulrich Obrist<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hans Ulrich Obrist:<\/strong> I just visited Edouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau, who have written an appeal to Barack Obama. What would your appeal and\/or advice be to Obama?<\/em><\/p>\n

Raoul Vaneigem:<\/strong> I refuse to cultivate any relationship whatsoever with people of power. I agree with the Zapatistas from Chiapas who want nothing to do with either the state or its masters, the multinational mafias. I call for civil disobedience so that local communities can form, coordinate, and begin self-producing natural power, a more natural form of farming, and public services that are finally liberated from the scams of government by the Left or the Right. On the other hand, I welcome the appeal by Chamoiseau, Glissant, and their friends for the creation of an existence in which the poetry of a life rediscovered will put an end to the deadly stranglehold of the commodity.<\/p>\n

HUO:<\/strong> Could we talk about your beginnings? How did your participation in situationism begin, and what was your fundamental contribution? At the outset of your relationship with the SI, there was the figure of Henri Lefebvre. What did he mean to you at the time? Why did you decide to send him poetic essays?<\/em><\/p>\n

RV:<\/strong> I would first like to clarify that situationism is an ideology that the situationists were unanimous in rejecting. The term \u201csituationist\u201d was ever only a token of identification. Its particularity kept us from being mistaken for the throngs of ideologues. I have nothing in common with the spectacular recuperation of a project that, in my case, has remained revolutionary throughout. My participation in a group that has now disappeared was an important moment in my personal evolution, an evolution I have personally pressed on with in the spirit of the situationist project at its most revolutionary. My own radicality absolves me from any label. I grew up in an environment in which our fighting spirit was fueled by working class consciousness and a rather festive conception of existence. I found Lefebvre\u2019s Critique of Everyday Life captivating. When La Somme et le reste [The Sum and the Remainder] was published, I sent him an essay of sorts on \u201cpoetry and revolution\u201d that was an attempt to unify radical concepts, Lettrist language, music, and film imagery by crediting them all with the common virtue of making the people\u2019s blood boil. Lefebvre kindly responded by putting me in touch with Guy Debord who immediately invited me to Paris. The two of us had very different temperaments, but we would agree over a period of nearly ten years on the need to bring consumer society to an end and to found a new society on the principle of self-management, where life supersedes survival and the existential angst that it generates.<\/p>\n

HUO:<\/strong> Which situationist projects remain unrealized?<\/em><\/p>\n

RV: <\/strong>Psychogeography, the construction of situations, the superseding of predatory behavior. The radicality, which, notwithstanding some lapses, never ceased to motivate us, remains a source of inspiration to this day. Its effects are just beginning to manifest themselves in the autonomous groups that are now coming to grips with the collapse of financial capitalism.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alerted to this by Mak Thwaite’s excellent ReadySteady blog, here are the opening paras of Hans Ulrich Obrist’s recent interview with Raoul Vaneigem. You can read the full text on the Interactvist site here....<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,56,99],"tags":[629,669],"class_list":["post-2387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agitprop","category-interview","category-situationist-international","tag-raoul-vaneigem","tag-situationism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}