Raoul Vaneigem

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Raoul Vaneigem (* 1934 in Lessines , Belgium ) is an artist, author and cultural philosopher . (Dutch pronunciation: [raul vɑnɛi̯ɣəm])

Life

Vaneigem first studied Romance languages .

In the 1960s he was one of the most influential theorists of the Situationist International (SI) alongside Guy Debord and Asger Jorn . He was editor of several issues of the magazine internationale situationniste . He wrote u. a. the basic banalities and the manual of the art of living for the young generations (1967).

In contrast to Debord's more theoretical-abstract philosophical work, his texts are characterized by a more lyrical style and are considered more accessible. Influenced by anarchism and Georges Bataille , he calls for a lifestyle for everyone that is based on the luxurious lifestyle of the former aristocracy ( masters without slaves ).

In his handbook , Vaneigem emphasizes passion and subjectivity as the driving forces behind artistic and political action. He deals with the individual and society, with emotionality, with power and freedom, with sacrifice and poetry. He asks about the possibility of realizing oneself in modern technologized society and propagates a radical rejection of all restrictions that these unjustifiably impose on the individual. He quotes Lautreamont , Marx , Rabelais , anarchist literature, Søren Kierkegaard and Wassili Rosanow , Albert Einstein and Friedrich Nietzsche , Wilhelm Reich and artists of Surrealism and Dadaism .

According to his own demands, he does not present a cold analysis of society , but a decidedly subjective, passionate position against modern technocracy, he does not see himself as a philosopher.

Vaneigem's ideas influenced the demands of the student movement in France in 1968 , and newspapers blamed his books for the uproar.

In 1970 he left the SI and justified this in his suicide note with the failure of the group and himself, which Debord angrily rejected.

To this day author, he wrote the book To the Living in 1998 , in which he again vigorously advocates the free nature of needs and individual experience and criticizes the tyrannical power of work and money . The canonization of the economy negates the concrete individual , brings about the sleep of his reason , cripples his emotionality . At the same time, he distanced himself from an earlier enthusiasm for violent anarchism and also propagated ecology and feminism.

Vaneigem also wrote treatises on the history of surrealism ("The radioactive cadaver", under the pseudonym Jules Francois Dupuis ) and on heretical currents of Christian mysticism in the early Middle Ages of the brothers and sisters of the free spirit ("The Movement of the Free Spirit").

The Fischer-Verlag wanted the "Manual of the art of living" publish in Germany, first in 1972, his plan drew but then back again. The first German edition appeared in Düsseldorf in 1973, translated and edited by the Gegengesellschaft project group. A revised new edition was published by Nautilus in August 2008.

His song La vie s'écoule, la vie s'enfuit can be found on music platforms .

French bibliography

  • Traité du savoir-vivre à l'usage des jeunes générations. 1967
  • Le livre des plaisirs. 1979
  • Le mouvement du libre-esprit. 1986
  • Address aux vivants sur la mort qui les gouverne et l'opportunité de s'en défaire . 1990
  • Lettre de Staline à ses enfants enfin réconciliés de l'Est et de l'Ouest. 1992
  • Le livre des plaisirs. 1993
  • La resistance au christianisme. Les hérésies des origines au XVIIIe siècle. 1993
  • Les hérésies. 1994
  • Avertissement aux écoliers et lycéens . 1995
  • Nous qui désirons sans fin. 1996
  • La Paresse. 1996
  • Notes sans portée. 1997
  • Dictionnaire de citations pour servir au divertissement et à l'intelligence du temps. 1998
  • Declaration of the droits de l'être humain. De la souveraineté de la vie comme dépassement des droits de le l'homme. 2001
  • Pour une international you genre humain. 2001
  • Declaration universelle des droits de l'être humain. 2001
  • Pour l'abolition de la société marchande pour une société vivante. 2002
  • Salut à Rabelais! Une lecture au présent. 2003
  • Rien n'est sacré, tout peut se dire. 2003
  • Le Chevalier, la Dame, le Diable et la Mort. 2003

German bibliography (excerpt)

  • Handbook of the art of living for the young generations. Project group Gegengesellschaft, Düsseldorf 1973; Verlag Association, Hamburg 1977, ISBN 3-88032-054-3 ; Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-89401-584-8
  • Advice (pseud.): From wildcat strike to generalized self-administration. MaD-Verlag Schulenburg, Hamburg 1975
  • Jules Francois Dupuis (pseud.): The radioactive carcass, a story of surrealism. Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 1979, ISBN 3-921523-45-1
  • The book of lusts. Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 1984, ISBN 3-921523-71-0
  • To the living. A polemic against the world of economics. Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-89401-288-9
  • Between the mourning for the world and the lust for life. The situationists and the change in attitudes. Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-89401-746-0

Quotes

  • People who talk about revolution, or about class struggle, without explicit reference to everyday life, who don't understand what's subversive about love and what's positive about rejecting restrictions, people like that have a corpse in their mouth .
  • In the perspective of power, a stone, a tree, a mixer and an electron accelerator are all equally dead objects ... [...] Nevertheless, I know that objects beyond their given meaning will inspire me again; I know how exciting a machine can be if it is used for play, imagination and freedom. In a world where everything is alive, including trees and stones, there are no more passively viewed signs. Everything begins to speak with joy ...
  • We do not want a world in which the guarantee of not starvation is bought with the risk of dying of boredom.
  • When the artist - who is everyone who tries to live - sacrifices the experienced moment to the beautiful appearance, then he also follows his wish to expand his dreams further into the representational world of other people. Seen in this way, he gives the object he creates the mission of completing his own individual realization in the community. Creativity is revolutionary in nature .

("Handbook of the art of living for the young generations", 1967)

  • Thirty years later, at the first glance from one end of the globe to the other, one grasps the dilapidated stage, the worn spectacle, the power that has become ridiculous, the frayed roles of a patched up, stingy economy.

("To the Living", 1997)

  • At every opportunity we are required to be submissive and obey a mechanistic economy governed by commodities. We agree to get used to manipulated objects, to being sold on the job market, according to the criteria of salability, competition, competitiveness, exchange, price, spectacular packaging. Against this economized life, which conditions us physically and psychologically at the same time, I try to break through the boredom of the routine and the choices that I am faced with every minute - in a labyrinth of possibilities that is based on my own disposition and the Laws of the dominant world open or close.

(2003 in an interview with Le Monde )

  • The wit of Vaneigem's pamphlet lies less in the analytical penetration of the capitalist 'air-conditioned vestibule of death' than in the authentic pathos with which it appeals to the power of the living.

( The time about Vaneigem's book "To the Living")

See also

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Vaneigem, Raoul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dupuis, Jules-François (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian artist, author and cultural philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Lessines , Belgium