Régis Debray

Régis Debray
Born	September 2, 1940 (1940-09-02) Paris
Occupation	Journalist, Writer, Academic
Language	French
Nationality	France
Alma mater	École Normale Supérieure
Genres	Philosophy, Current Events
Notable award(s)	Prix Femina Prix Décembre

Jules Régis Debray (born September 2, 1940) is a French intellectual, journalist, government official and professor. He is known for his theorization of mediology, a critical theory of the long-term transmission of cultural meaning in human society; and for having fought in 1967 with Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in Bolivia.

Life

1967 to 1973

Born in Paris, Regis Debray studied at the École Normale Supérieure under Louis Althusser, and became "agrégé de philosophie" in 1965.

In the late 1960s he was a professor of philosophy at the University of Havana in Cuba, and became an associate of Che Guevara in Bolivia. He wrote the book Revolution in the Revolution?, which analysed the tactical and strategic doctrines then prevailing among militant socialist movements in Latin America, and acted as a handbook for guerrilla warfare that supplemented Guevara's own manual on the subject. It was published by Maspero in Paris in 1967 and in the same year in New York (Monthly Review Press and Grove), Montevideo (Sandino), Milan (Feltrinelli) and Munich (Trikont). Guevara was captured in Bolivia early in October, 1967; on April 20, 1967, Debray had been arrested in the small town of Muyupampa, also in Bolivia. Convicted of having been part of Guevara's guerrilla group Debray on November 17 was sentenced to 30 years in prison. He was released in 1970 after an international campaign for his release which included Jean-Paul Sartre, André Malraux, General Charles de Gaulle and Pope Paul VI. He sought refuge in Chile, where he wrote The Chilean Revolution (1972) after interviews with Salvador Allende. Debray returned to France in 1973 following the coup by Augusto Pinochet in Chile.

1981 to 1995

Following the election of President François Mitterrand, in 1981, he became an official adviser to the Président on Foreign Affairs. In this capacity he developed a policy that sought to increase France's freedom of action in the world, decrease dependence on the United States, and promote closeness with the former colonies. He was also involved in the development of the government's official ceremonies and recognition of the bicentennial of the French Revolution. He resigned in 1988. Until the mid-1990s he held a number of official posts in France.

In 1996 he published a memoir of his life, translated into English as Régis Debray, Praised Be Our Lords (Verso, 2007).

2003 onwards

Debray was a member of the 2003 Stasi Commission, named after Bernard Stasi, which examined the origins of the 2003 French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools. Debray supported the 2003 law. This was in defense of French laïcité (separation of church and state) which aims to maintain citizens' equality through the prohibition of religious proselytism within the school system. Debray, however, appears to have encouraged a more subtle treatment of religious issues within school history teaching in France.

Debray is preoccupied with the situation of Christian minorities in the Near East (and with the status of the Holy Places in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and elsewhere), a traditional interest of the French state, and has established an 'observatory' to monitor the situation. His recent work deals thoroughly with the religious paradigm as a social nexus able to support collective orientation on a wide, centuries-long scale. This led him to propose the project of an Institut Européen en Sciences des Religions, a French institute founded in 2005 aimed at monitoring sociological religious dynamics and informing the public on religion through conferences and publications.

Work: mediology

Debray is the founder and chief exponent of the discipline of médiologie or "mediology", which attempts to scientifically study transmission of cultural meaning in society, whether through language or images. Mediology is characterized by its multi-disciplinary approach. It is expounded best in the English-language book Transmitting Culture (Columbia University Press, 2004). In Vie et mort de l'image (Life and Death of Image, 1995), an attempted history of gaze, where he distinguished three regimes of the images (icon, idol and vision), he explicitly prevented misunderstandings by differentiating mediology from a simple sociology of mass media. He also criticized the basic assumptions of history of art which present art as an atemporal and universal phenomenon. According to Debray, art is a product of the Renaissance with the invention of the artist as producer of images, in contrast with previous acheiropoieta icons or other types of so-called "art," where these "works of art" did not fulfil an artistic function but rather a religious one.

Current political views

In a February 2007 op-ed in Le Monde, Régis Debray criticized the tendency of the whole French political class to move toward the right-wing of politics. He also deplored the influence of the "videosphere" on modern politics, which he claimed has a tendency to individualize everything, forgetting both past and future (although he praised the loss of the 1960s messianism), outside of any common national project. He criticized the new generation in politics as being competent but without character, and lacking ideas: "So they [think they] recruit philosophy with André Glucksmann or Bernard-Henri Lévy and literature with Christine Angot or Jean d'Ormesson". He called for a vote to the "left of the left," in order to attempt to block a modern "anti-politics" which has turned into political marketing.

Bibliography

Books

• Révolution dans la révolution? et autres essais (1967)
• La Frontière, suivi de Un jeune homme à la page [littérature] (1967)
• Nous les Tupamaros, suivi d'apprendre d'eux (1971)
• L'Indésirable [littérature](1975)
• Les rendez-vous manqués (pour Pierre Goldman) [littérature] (1975)
• Journal d'un petit bourgeois entre deux feux et quatre murs [littérature] (1976)
• La neige brûle prix Femina [littérature] (1977)
• Le pouvoir intellectuel en France (1979)
• Critique de la raison politique (1981)
• Comète ma comète [littérature] (1986)
• Christophe Colomb, le visiteur de l'aube, suivi des Traités de Tordesillas [littérature] (1991)
• Contretemps : Eloge des idéaux perdus (1992)
• Trilogie "Le temps d'apprendre à vivre" I: Les Masques, une éducation amoureuse [littérature] (1992)
• Vie et mort de l'image (1995)
• Contre Venise [littérature](1995)
• L'œil naïf (1994)
• A demain de Gaulle (1996)
• La guérilla du Che (1996)
• L'État séducteur (1997)
• La République expliquée à ma fille (1998)
• L'abus monumental (1999)
• Shangaï, dernières nouvelles [littérature] (1999)
• Trilogie "Le temps d'apprendre à vivre" II: Loués soient nos seigneurs, une éducation politique [littérature] (2000)
• Trilogie "Le temps d'apprendre à vivre" III: Par amour de l'art, une éducation intellectuelle [littérature] (2000)
• Dieu, un itinéraire (2001, Prix Combourg 2003)
• L'Enseignement du fait religieux dans l'école laïque (2002)
• Le Feu sacré : Fonction du religieux (2003)
• L’Ancien testament à travers 100 chefs-d’œuvre de la peinture (2003)
• Le Nouveau testament à travers 100 chefs-d’œuvre de la peinture (2003)
• À l'ombre des lumières : Débat entre un philosophe et un scientifique (2003) (Entretien avec Jean Bricmont).
• Ce que nous voile le voile (2004)
• Le plan vermeil [littérature](2004)
• Empire 2.0 [littérature] (2004)
• Le siècle et la règle [littérature](2004)
• Le siècle et la règle. Une correspondance avec le frère Gilles-Dominique o. p.
• Julien le Fidèle ou Le banquet des démons [théâtre] (2005)
• Sur le pont d'Avignon, Flammarion, 2005.
• Les communions humaines (2005)
• Supplique aux nouveaux progressistes du XXIe siècle, Gallimard, (2006).
• Aveuglantes Lumières, Journal en clair-obscur, Gallimard, (2006).
• Un candide en Terre sainte, Gallimard, (2008)

In English:

• Transmitting Culture (Columbia University Press, 2004).
• Against Venice (Pushkin Press, 2002).

Articles

• "This Was an Intellectual". TELOS 44 (Summer 1980). New York: Telos Press

Reports

• Rapport au Ministre des affaires étrangères M. Dominique de Villepin du Comité indépendant de réflexion et de propositions sur les relations Franco-Haïtiennes - Janvier 2004

Further reading

• T. J. Clark and Donald Nicholson-Smith (Winter, 1997). "Why Art Can't Kill the Situationist International". October. http://www.notbored.org/why-art.html. Retrieved 2008-04-12.  Also published at pp. 467–488 of book Tom McDonough (2004) (Editor) Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents. The MIT Press (April 1, 2004) 514 pages ISBN 0-262-63300-0 ISBN 978-0-262-63300-0

Videos

• Éloge du spectacle, 04/12/2007, Center for international research University of Montréal
• Quelle éthique pour les relations Nord-Sud ? Politique humanitaire politique étrangère, convergences et divergences 04/14/2007,Center for international research University of Montréal
• Dramaturgies engagées, un tabou ? 04/13/2007,Center for international research University of Montréal

External links

• "Che’s Guerrilla War", 1973
• Institut Européen en Sciences des Religions
• Regis Debray - Revolution in the Revolution?
• www.regisdebray.com Article subject's website (Français)
• Symposium Théâtre, religion, politique: Les liaisons dangereuses, Centre d’études et de recherches internationales de l'Université de Montréal, April the 12, 2007
• Debray Growls At A World In Chaos The Times of India, December 19, 2009
• Communication and Transmission: Régis Debray Daily Times, January 18, 2010