D’une révolution à l’autre. Correspondance Debord-Straram suivi de Cahier pour un paysage à inventer et autres textes [2023]

DEBORD, Guy; STRARAM, Patrick. (Ed. Sylvano Santini). D’une révolution à l’autre. Correspondance Debord-Straram suivi de Cahier pour un paysage à inventer et autres textes. Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal (PUM), 27 March 2023. 416 p.; ill.; 21.5 x 15 cm.; white wrappers with text in blue.

With the exception of perhaps two dozen publications in academic journals, a couple of dissertations, a biography by Marc Vachon (L’arpenteur de la ville : l’utopie urbaine situationniste et Patrick Straram, 2003), Patrick Straram has remained an unjustly neglected figure of the twentieth century avant-garde. Further, and with the exception of Lettre à Guy Debord de Patrick Straram and La veuve blanche et noire un peu détournée (Sens & Tonka, 2006, for both) many of Straram’s writings remain either out-of-print or unpublished.

D’une révolution à l’autre. Correspondance Debord-Straram suivi de Cahier pour un paysage à inventer et autres textes, released last month by the Presses de l’Université de Montréal, attempts to remedy this gap. The book focuses on Straram’s intellectual development in the years following his immigration to Canada (1954) through the publication of the Cahier pour un paysage à inventer (1960).

D’une révolution à l’autre is structured in five sections:

1. A critical text by Sylvano Santini
2. A reproduction of the letters between Guy Debord and Patrick Straram (1954-1963)
3. A reproduction of the full text of the Cahier pour un paysage à inventer
4. A reproduction of a select number of other texts by Straram from the 1953-1963 period
5. A postface by Guillaume Bellehumeur

Santini’s text is a comparative study of Debord and Straram’s friendship and intellectual development from 1953 to 1963, and contextualizes the two men’s relationship within their respective milieu. Having accessed Straram’s letters to the actor Jacques Blot (1951-1960), Santini sheds a new light on a very poorly understood part of the man’s life: his 4 years working at a lumberjack in British Columbia, prior to his arrival in Montreal in June 1958. For instance, one is surprised to learn about Straram’s interest in Ayn Rand, and the strong influence the character of  Howard Roark in The Fountainhead (1943) had on him at the time. For this reason, and many others, Santini’s article is an innovative and welcome contribution to Situationist scholarship.

The reproduction of the letters between Debord and Straram is useful, though with one exception, those had already appeared in either Guy Debord’s Correspondance or Lettre à Guy Debord de Patrick Straram. It may have been judicious to include the yet-unpublished letters between Straram and Blot instead.

The reproduction of the full text of the Cahier pour un paysage à inventer, should be celebrated. The first and only issue of the Situationist-influenced, Quebec-based periodical has remained extremely scarce, with only three copies on OCLC, all in Canada (Sherbrooke, Montreal, UQAM). This publication includes articles, poems and critical texts by Quebec writers (Gaston Miron, Marie-France O’Leary, Paul-Marie Lapointe, Gilles Hénault, Serge Garant, Marcel Dubé…) and members of the Internationale Situationniste (Asger Jorn, Gilles Ivain, Guy-Ernest Debord…).

The penultimate section of the book includes several hard-to-find texts by Straram. The reprint of Straram’s mythical article in Tremplin, the bulletin of the patients of the psychiatric hospital of Ville-Evrard (where the author was briefly interned), is very worthwhile. Likewise, Quelque part Salt Spring had never been published before, and appears here for the first time. These are important milestones in Straram’s intellectual journey, and help us better understand his personal trajectory.

Finally, a postface by Guillaume Bellehumeur with the tongue-and-cheek title of “De la diffusion de la pensée de l’IS en milieu québécois, considérée sous ses aspects culturel, cinématographique et notamment littéraire, et de quelques figures qui y ont contribué” (a reference to Mustapha Khayat’s pamphlet), demonstrates the ways in which the Situationist International influenced Quebecois intellectual culture, and how a second issue of the Cahier had been well underway.

Overall, D’une révolution à l’autre is an important for those interested in Guy Debord, Patrick Straram, the Quebecois counterculture of the early 1960s, and the intersection of all three.

Note: Our review copy was graciously provided by the Presses de l’Université de Montréal

[DEBORD, Guy] Proletarietet som subjekt och som representation (brochure) [1970]

[DEBORD, GUY]. [la Société du Spectacle] Proletarietet som subjekt och som representation. Stockholm: Gyllene Flottan, November 1970. 48 p.; 21 x 14.5 cm.; black ink on yellow stock.

Translation by the Swedish pro-Situationist group Gyllene Flottan (“The Golden Fleet”, a reference to J.V. Martin’s geopolitical paintings) of the fourth chapter of Guy Debord’s La Société du spectacle (theses 73-125). The translation is preceded by a short preface by Gyllene Flottan.

More on Gyllene Flottan (from Wikipedia):

The Golden Fleet (Swedish: Gyllene Flottan) was a minor left-wing group in Sweden, existing during the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. It was ideologically aligned with the Situationist International, an avant-garde revolutionary movement. The Situationists, whose intellectual foundations were derived primarily from libertarian Marxism and the avant-garde art movements of the early 20th century (particularly Dada and Surrealism),^[1] initially put its emphasis on concepts like unitary urbanism and psychogeography. Gradually the focus moved more towards revolutionary and political theory. Much like the main organ of that particular ideological current, the Situationist International, the Golden Fleet had its heyday around the protests of 1968, gradually disappearing by the first years of the 1970s.

Extremely little is known about the Golden Fleet, yet still it became notorious, this to such an extent that it has been labelled “legendary”.^[2] Nothing is known about its establishment, composition, and disestablishment. The name was most likely taken from an art exhibit in Denmark by the Situationist Jeppesen Victor Martin, which consisted of geopolitical paintings featuring coastlines, strategic arrows and toy battleships sprayed over with metallic paint.^[3] The group was centered in the capital Stockholm, although some members appear to have been from Gothenburg. It is primarily notable through the fact that its members were those that introduced situationist writings to Sweden by its brief but hectic work with publishing political texts. Among them were Instruktion i vapendragning in 1970 (a translation of “Instructions for an Insurrection”, originally published 1961), as well as longer translations of texts by Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem among others.^[4]

The group also produced a number of works on its own, prominent among them the poster “Hang the Stalinists High” (Swedish: Häng stalinisterna högt, on the subject of the contemporary left-wing) and the brochure “King Gustaf’s Sardines” (Swedish: Kung Gustafs sardiner) which discussed the “meaningful meaninglessness of the Swedish students”. Another Situationist group existed in Sweden, the Second Situationist International of Jørgen Nash, but there appears to have been no connection between the Golden Fleet and the Nashists.

We do not locate any reference to this leaflet in any know bibliographies or on OCLC. However, Monoskop refers to it.

[DEBORD, Guy] Proletarietet som subjekt och som representation (leaflet) [1970]

[DEBORD, GUY]. Proletarietet som subjekt och som representation. n.p. [Stockholm]: n.p. [Gyllene Flottan], n.d. [1970]. 1 p.; ill.; 21 x 29.5 cm.; black ink on white stock.

Translation by the Swedish pro-Situationist group Gyllene Flottan (“The Golden Fleet”, a reference to J.V. Martin’s geopolitical paintings) of a French-language detourned comic that announced the publication of Guy Debord’s La Société du spectacle. The text in is from the fourth chapter, thesis no. 123 of the book. The détourned comic is from the American action-adventure comic strip Terry and the Pirates.

This leaflet was likely released alongside the first partial Swedish language translation of Debord’s book, specifically of Chapter 4 (also titled “Proletarietet som subjekt och som representation”). We do not locate any reference to this leaflet in any know bibliographies or on OCLC.