Raoul Vaneigem
Raoul Vaneigem (born 1934) is a Belgian writer and philosopher. He was born in Lessines (Hainaut, Belgium). After studying romance philology at the Free University of Brussels (now split into the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel) from 1952 to 1956, he participated in the Situationist International from 1961 to 1970. He currently resides in Belgium and is the father of four children.
Vaneigem and Guy Debord were the two principal theoreticians of the Situationist movement. Although Debord was the more disciplined thinker, Vaneigem's slogans frequently made it onto the walls of Paris during the May 1968 uprisings. His most famous book, and the one that contains the famous slogans, is The Revolution of Everyday Life (in French the title was more elaborate: Traité du savoir-vivre à l'usage des jeunes générations).
After leaving the Situationist movement Vaneigem wrote a series of polemical books defending the idea of a free and self-regulating social order. He frequently made use of pseudonyms, including "Julienne de Cherisy," "Robert Desessarts," "Jules-François Dupuis," "Tristan Hannaniel," "Anne de Launay," "Ratgeb," and "Michel Thorgal." Recently he has been an advocate of a new type of strike, in which service and transportation workers provide services for free and refuse to collect payment or fares.
From www.nothingness.org: "Along with Guy Debord, the voice of Raoul Vaneigem was one of the strongest of the Situationists. Counterpoised to Debord's political and polemic style, Vaneigem offered a more poetic and spirited prose. The Revolution of Everyday Life (Traité de savoir-vivre à l'usage des jeunes générations), published in the same year as The Society of the Spectacle, helped broaden and balance the presentation of the SI's theories and practices. One of the longest SI members, and frequent editor of the journal Internationale Situationniste, Vaneigem finally left the SI in November of 1970, citing their failures as well as his own in his letter of resignation. Soon after, Debord issued a typically scathing response denouncing both Vaneigem and his critique of the Situationist International."
Further biographical information can be found at www.nothingness.org and www.notbored.org.
“there is something admirable ... to have to coexist ... some thousands of souls for whom even the hope of a last judgment has been taken away.”
“Suffering is the pain of constraints. An atom of pure delight, no matter how small, can hold it at bay.”
“Daydreaming subverts the world.”
“Purchasing power is a license to purchase power. The old proletariat sold its labour power in order to subsist; what little leisure time it had was passed pleasantly enough in conversations, arguments, drinking, making love, wandering, celebrating and rioting. The new proletarian sells his labour power in order to consume. When he’s not flogging himself to death to get promoted in the labour hierarchy, he’s being persuaded to buy himself objects to distinguish himself in the social hierarchy. The ideology of consumption becomes the consumption of ideology.”
“O trabalho foi aquilo que o homem achou de melhor para nada fazer da sua vida.”
“Kendimi ararken hangi sapa yollarda yolumu yitiririm? Beni koruma numarasıyla, beni kendimden ayıran perde ne? Beni oluşturan bu ufalanmış parçaların içinde kendimi nasıl yeniden keşfedebilirim? Kendimi kavrama konusunda asla bilmediğim bir belirsizliğe doğru ilerliyorum. Sanki önümdeki yol önceden belirlenmiş. Sanki iç dünyam, kendi yarattığını sandığı; ama gerçekte onu biçimlendiren zihinsel bir manzaranın çizgilerinin bir parçası. Saçma -dünyanın rasyonelliğini onayladığı ve tartışmasız kabul edildiği için saçmalar saçması- bir güç beni durmaksızın sıçramaya zorluyor; ama asla terk edemediğim sert bir zeminde ayaklarım. Ve kendime doğru yaptığım bu yararsız atlayışımla, sadece bugünle olan bağımı yitirme başarısını gösteriyorum: çoğu kez, kendimden uzakta, ölü zamanın ritmiyle yaşarım.”
“The millions of human beings who were shot, tortured, starved, treated like animals and made the object of a conspiracy of ridicule, can sleep in peace in their communal graves, for at least the struggle in which they died has enabled their descendants, isolated in their air-conditioned apartments, to believe, on the strength of their daily dose of television, that they are happy and free. The Communards went down, fighting to the last, so that you too could qualify for a Caribbean cruise.”
“The same people who are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work are also arguing, singing, drinking, dancing, making love, holding the streets, picking up weapons and inventing a new poetry.”
“Down with a world in which the guarantee that we will not die of starvation has been purchased with the guarantee that we will die of boredom.”
“To talk of a modern work of art enduring is sillier than talking of the eternal values of Standard Oil.”
“People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth”
“Qu’est-ce que le nihilisme ? Rozanov répond parfaitement à la question quand il écrit : “La représentation est terminée. Le public se lève. Il est temps d’enfiler son manteau et de rentrer à la maison. On se retourne : plus de manteau ni de maison.”
“It is much more a lack of fun which batters us than over abundance and indulgence”
“Who wants a world in which the guarantee that we shall not die of starvation entails the risk of dying of boredom?”
“To be rich nowadays merely means to possess a large number of poor objects.”