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A Few Extra Remarks |
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3 . l e n b r a c k e n
ANYWAY, I ONCE SPOKE TO GREIL on the phone about the link
between Bataille and Debord; he led me to Gˇrard Berreby's
Documents relatifs a la fondation de l'internationale
situationniste for a copy of Potlatch (one of the fruits of
my research was finding the relevant thesis in Society of
the Spectacle related to Bataille's conception of waste).
During our brief conversation, I picked up the vibe that
Marcus didn't want to be bothered by the likes of me - he
seemed to be afraid that I would try to break into his
house to steal his books. This is reasonable enough given
the times in which we live. I assured him that I live on
the other coast and never called again. I thanked him in
notes that went along with the first few issues of my zine
Extraphile.
IN A STRATAGEM CALCULATED TO ELICIT a response to
my book from Marcus, I wrote a long footnote in Guy Debord
-Revolutionary on his use of the phrase"reversible
connecting factor" in the context of my discussion of
Debord's interpretation of history. Of course I could only
pretend to have read all of Debord's work - I mention, for
example, that I failed to find his message to the
Portuguese revolutionaries. My statement "nowhere does
Debord use the phrase 'reversible connecting factor' as
Marcus claims" was a gambit. To use a boxing metaphor, I
was ready to take a punch to pick a fight on the broader
issue brought into the ring. Yet it turns out that I wasn't
incorrect, as I will demonstrate below. Besides, "What
fun?"I asked Marcus, "is it to write about Debord without
polemicizing a little?" especially when there are
fundamental issues at stake.
FIRST, THE QUESTION of the confusionist references in
Lipstick Traces: although the index cites the "reversible
connecting factor" as appearing first on page 237 (where
one finds the outrageous photograph of cadavers at
Buchenwald, April 24, 1945), Marcus actually first mentions
the "reversible connecting factor" on page 141. At no point
on page 141 does he give any indication that he made an end
note on the phrase. How would a reader know to look for the
note without a number or an asterisk or some other sign? I
suppose it would be wrong to blame Marcus for the erroneous
index, but the combined effects of the lack of any
indication of an end note and the index error amount to
hiding a needle in a proverbial pile of hay.
WHY DOES MARCUS COVER his tracks like this? Is it because
he took a phrase from one of Debord's minor essays that,
when properly translated, means nothing more or less than
"revolution," although in Debord's case it could probably
be better expressed as smashing the spectacle to bits in a
revolutionary explosion of life. To my mind, Marcus used
this poorly translated euphemism in a mystifying way. It
surprises me that the supposedly informed readers of
Lipstick Traces have failed to recognize the completely
unacknowledged methodenstreit (the conflict of opposing
ideologies) between Marcus' ahistorical work and that of
Debord. What I'm saying is that if you believe what Marcus
has to say about Debord and the "reversible connecting
factor," you've been had because Debord's conception of
history is based on the principle of historical change as
being irreversible, not a "reversible connecting factor."
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