A divertimento for crabs, butterflies, moths, foxes and chickens. Clandestine life and autobiography in Guy Debord according to Giorgio Agamben

Abstract

This paper offers an interpretation of Agamben's reading of Guy Debord's “private life” within the framework of the last volume of the Homo Sacer saga, as well as Agamben's recent work. In the first place, we analyze the mention of "Guy" in Self-portrait in the study, the strange autoheterography the philosopher published after he abandoned the saga. Secondly, we assess the biographical sketch/profile the Roman philosopher presents of his friend in the context of his reflections on the form-of-life through a review of the Debordian topics Agamben has taken up in many of his writings, and resorting to the notion of détournement as well as to the Agambenian considerations about comedy. In this way, the characterization of Debord is approached in the "Prologue" of The use of bodies from two axes that could allow to measure its importance for the development of that book: on the one hand, the question of the necessary ridiculousness of all documentation of private life; and on the other, the Debordian way of life as a fundamental contribution to the definition of the elusive idea of form-of-life that, as he will say later, is "something that does not yet exist in its fullness and can be witnessed only in places not necessarily edifying".