Regis Debray

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Debray 2016
Régis Debray around 1970

Régis Jules Debray (born September 2, 1940 in Paris ) is a French philosopher , journalist, writer, professor and comrade-in-arms of Che Guevaras .

Life

Régis Debray is the son of the lawyer Georges Debray and his wife, the lawyer and politician Janine Alexandre-Debray (1910-2000). He was a student of the Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris and a student of the École normal supérieure (Paris) and the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne .

Debray studied philosophy with Louis Althusser and participated in 1967 in Bolivia in the guerrilla war led by Che Guevara. In the same year he was captured in Bolivia and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Following the intervention of the French government, Debray, son of an influential family, was released on December 23, 1970 after three years in Bolivian prisons during the short reign of left-wing General Juan José Torres . Afterwards he was one of the friends and advisers of the Chilean President Salvador Allende , whose politics he later presented and analyzed in books and writings. After Allende's overthrow , he returned to his native France and processed initially his experiences in Latin America in numerous revolutionary theoretical works ( Revolution in the Revolution , criticism of weapons ), but also with novels such as L'indésirable or La neige brûle (dt. A life für ein Leben ), with which he erected a literary memorial to the German guerrilla fighter Monika Ertl who died in Bolivia and for which he received the Prix Fémina in 1977.

It is disputed whether the later RAF co- founders Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader found shelter in Debray's Paris apartment. His influence on the German New Left was made possible by the quick translation of his “guevarist” book Revolution in der Revolution bei Trikont in Munich (1967), the influence of this book is also made possible by the student film How do I build a Molotov cocktail? of the later RAF member Holger Meins .

In the 1980s, Debray advised French President François Mitterrand on foreign policy issues. Under Jacques Chirac he was a member of a commission that dealt with religious symbols in schools and recommended a ban on veils in schools.

His foundation of mediology , which he developed and propagated as a comprehensive media theory since the 1990s, is significant in terms of the history of science . In contrast to the history of technology or anthropologically centered media theories, this one concentrates primarily on the diverse, also pre-electrical methods of transmission ( French transmission ).

In May 2010, Flammarion in Paris published his book À un ami israélien, which is critical of Israel, with an answer from Elie Barnavi , historian and former Israeli ambassador to France.

Prizes and awards

Régis Debray was a member of the Académie Goncourt from 2011 to 2016 . His successor is Virginie Despentes . In 2013 he was awarded the Manès Sperber Prize .

Private

Debray was married to the Venezuelan anthropologist Elizabeth Burgos (* 1941) and has a daughter with her, the writer Laurence Debray (* 1976).

Movie and TV

Fonts (selection)

  • 1968 with Fidel Castro The long march. Ways of Revolution in Latin America . Trikont-Verlag, Munich
  • 1972 with Salvador Allende, The Chilean Way . Luchterhand, Neuwied
  • 1984 Voltaire is not arrested. The intellectuals and the power in France . Edition Maschke, Hohenheim
  • 1999, 2007, 2013 Beyond the Pictures. A history of image viewing in the West . Avinus Verlag, Rodenbach (Original: Vie et mort de l'image. Une histoire du regard en Occident . Gallimard, Paris 1992)
  • 2003 Introduction to Mediology. Facets of media culture . Haupt, Bern. ISBN 978-3-930064-79-3
  • 2011 letter to an Israeli friend . Laika-Verlag, Hamburg. ISBN 978-3-942281-03-4 (Original: À un ami israélien: Avec une réponse d'Elie Barnavi. Flammarion, Paris 2010)
  • 2016 In Praise of the Limits . Laika-Verlag Hamburg. ISBN 978-3-944233-60-4

Web links

Commons : Régis Debray  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Excerpt from the book Fidel Castro. Mein Leben , published by Rotbuch Verlag (PDF; 355 kB), requested on December 22, 2010
  2. ↑ Regis Debray receives the Manes Sperber Prize 2013 . APA article on derstandard.at , December 11, 2013, accessed on December 14, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Debray, Regis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Debray, Régis Jules (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French intellectual, journalist and professor
DATE OF BIRTH September 2, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris