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A Users Guide to Dtournement(1)

by Guy Debord

Every reasonably aware person of ourtime is aware of the obvious fact thatart can no longer be justified as asuperior activity, or even as acompensatory activity to which onemight honorably devote oneself. Thereason for this deterioration is clearlythe emergence of productive forcesthat necessitate other productionrelations and a new practice of life. Inthe civil-war phase we are engaged in,and in close connection with theorientation we are discovering forcertain superior activities to come, webelieve that all known means ofexpression are going to converge in ageneral movement of propagandathat must encompass all theperpetually interacting aspects ofsocial reality.

There are several conflicting opinionsabout the forms and even the verynature of educative propaganda,opinions that generally reflect one or

another currently fashionable varietyof reformist politics. Suffice it to saythat in our view the premises forrevolution, on the cultural as well asthe strictly political level, are not onlyripe, they have begun to rot. It is notjust returning to the past which isreactionary; even modern culturalobjectives are ultimately reactionarysince they depend on ideologicalformulations of a past society that hasprolonged its death agony to thepresent. The only historically justified

tactic is extremist innovation.

The literary and artistic heritage ofhumanity should be used for partisanpropaganda purposes. It is, of course,necessary to go beyond any idea ofmere scandal. Since opposition to thebourgeois notion of art and artisticgenius has become pretty much oldhat, [Marcel Duchamps] drawing of amustache on the Mona Lisa is no moreinteresting than the original version ofthat painting. We must now push this

process to the point of negating the

negation. Bertolt Brecht, revealing ina recent interview in France-Observateurthat he makes cuts in theclassics of the theater in order tomake the performances more

educative, is much closer thanDuchamp to the revolutionaryorientation we are calling for. Wemust note, however, that in Brechtscase these salutary alterations arenarrowly limited by his unfortunaterespect for culture as defined by theruling class that same respect,taught in the newspapers of theworkers parties as well as in theprimary schools of the bourgeoisie,which leads even the reddest workerdistricts of Paris always to prefer TheCid over [Brechts] Mother Courage.

It is in fact necessary to eliminate allremnants of the notion of personalproperty in this area. The appearanceof new necessities outmodes previousinspired works. They becomeobstacles, dangerous habits. The pointis not whether we like them or not. Wehave to go beyond them.

Any elements, no matter where they

are taken from, can be used to makenew combinations. The discoveries ofmodern poetry regarding theanalogical structure of imagesdemonstrate that when two objectsare brought together, no matter howfar apart their original contexts maybe, a relationship is always formed.Restricting oneself to a personalarrangement of words is mereconvention. The mutual interferenceof two worlds of feeling, or thejuxtaposition of two independent

expressions, supersedes the originalelements and produces a syntheticorganization of greater efficacy.Anything can be used.

It goes without saying that one is notlimited to correcting a work or tointegrating diverse fragments of out-of-date works into a new one; one canalso alter the meaning of thosefragments in any appropriate way,leaving the imbeciles to their slavishreference to citations.

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Such parodistic methods have oftenbeen used to obtain comical effects.But such humor is the result ofcontradictions within a conditionwhose existence is taken for granted.

Since the world of literature seems tous almost as distant as the Stone Age,such contradictions dont make uslaugh. It is thus necessary to envisagea parodic-serious stage where theaccumulation of detourned elements,far from aiming to arouse indignationor laughter by alluding to someoriginal work, will express ourindifference toward a meaninglessand forgotten original, and concernitself with rendering a certainsublimity.

Lautramont advanced so far in thisdirection that he is still partiallymisunderstood even by his mostostentatious admirers. In spite of hisobvious application of this method totheoretical language in Posies where Lautramont (drawingparticularly on the maxims of Pascaland Vauvenargues) strives to reducethe argument, through successiveconcentrations, to maxims alone a

certain Viroux caused considerableastonishment three or four years agoby conclusively demonstrating thatMaldororis one vast dtournement ofBuffon and other works of naturalhistory, among other things. The factthat the prosaists ofFigaro, like Virouxhimself, were able to see this as ajustification for disparagingLautramont, and that others believedthey had to defend him by praising hisinsolence, only testifies to the senilityof these two camps of dotards in

courtly combat with each other. Aslogan like Plagiarism is necessary,progress implies it is still as poorlyunderstood, and for the same reasons,as the famous phrase about thepoetry that must be made by all.(2)

Apart from Lautramonts work whose appearance so far ahead of itstime has to a great extent preservedit from a detailed examination thetendencies toward dtournement thatcan be observed in contemporary

expression are for the most part

unconscious or accidental. It is in theadvertising industry, more than in thedomain of decaying aestheticproduction, that one can find the bestexamples.

We can first of all define two maincategories of detourned elements,without considering whether or nottheir being brought together isaccompanied by correctionsintroduced in the originals. These areminor dtournements and deceptivedtournements.

Minor dtournement is thedtournement of an element whichhas no importance in itself and whichthus draws all its meaning from thenew context in which it has beenplaced. For example, a press clipping,a neutral phrase, a commonplacephotograph.

Deceptive dtournement, also termedpremonitory-propositiondtournement, is in contrast thedtournement of an intrinsicallysignificant element, which derives adifferent scope from the new context.

A slogan of Saint-Just, for example, ora film sequence from Eisenstein.

Extensive detourned works will thususually be composed of one or moreseries of deceptive and minordtournements.

Several laws on the use ofdtournement can now be formulated.

It is the most distant detournedelement which contributes most

sharply to the overall impression, andnot the elements that directlydetermine the nature of thisimpression. For example, in ametagraph relating to the SpanishCivil War the phrase with the mostdistinctly revolutionary sense is afragment from a lipstick ad: Prettylips are red. In another metagraph(The Death of J.H.) 125 classified adsof bars for sale express a suicide morestrikingly than the newspaper articlesthat recount it.(3)

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The distortions introduced in thedetourned elements must be assimplified as possible, since the mainimpact of a dtournement is directlyrelated to the conscious or

semiconscious recollection of theoriginal contexts of the elements. Thisis well known. Let us simply note thatif this dependence on memory impliesthat one must determine ones publicbefore devising a dtournement, thisis only a particular case of a generallaw that governs not onlydtournement but also any other formof action on the world. The idea ofpure, absolute expression is dead; itonly temporarily survives in parodicform as long as our other enemies

survive.

Dtournement is less effective themore it approaches a rational reply.This is the case with a rather largenumber of Lautramonts alteredmaxims. The more the rationalcharacter of the reply is apparent, themore indistinguishable it becomesfrom the ordinary spirit of repartee,which similarly uses the opponentswords against him. This is naturally

not limited to spoken language. It wasin this connection that we objected tothe project of some of our comradeswho proposed to detourn an anti-Soviet poster of the fascistorganization Peace and Liberty which proclaimed, amid images ofoverlapping flags of the Westernpowers, Union makes strength byadding onto it a smaller sheet with thephrase and coalitions make war.

Dtournement by simple reversal is

always the most direct and the leasteffective. Thus, the Black Mass reactsagainst the construction of anambience based on a givenmetaphysics by constructing anambience within the same frameworkthat merely reverses and thussimultaneously conserves thevalues of that metaphysics. Suchreversals may nevertheless have acertain progressive aspect. Forexample, Clemenceau [nicknamedThe Tiger] could be referred to as

The Tiger Named Clemenceau.

Of the four laws that have just beenset forth, the first is essential andapplies universally. The other threeare practically applicable only todeceptive detourned elements.

The first visible consequences of awidespread use of dtournement,apart from its intrinsic propagandapowers, will be the revival of amultitude of bad books, and thus theextensive (unintended) participationof their unknown authors; anincreasingly extensive transformationof phrases or plastic works thathappen to be in fashion; and above allan ease of production far surpassingin quantity, variety and quality theautomatic writing that has bored usfor so long.

Dtournement not only leads to thediscovery of new aspects of talent; inaddition, clashing head-on with allsocial and legal conventions, it cannotfail to be a powerful cultural weaponin the service of a real class struggle.The cheapness of its products is theheavy artillery that breaks through allthe Chinese walls of understanding.(4)

It is a real means of proletarian artisticeducation, the first step toward aliterary communism.

Ideas and creations in the realm ofdtournement can be multiplied atwill. For the moment we will limitourselves to showing a few concretepossibilities in various current sectorsof communication it beingunderstood that these separatesectors are significant only in relationto present-day technologies, and are

all tending to merge into superiorsyntheses with the advance of thesetechnologies.

Apart from the various direct uses ofdetourned phrases in posters, recordsand radio broadcasts, the two mainapplications of detourned prose aremetagraphic writings and, to a lesserdegree, the adroit perversion of theclassical novel form.

There is not much future in the

dtournement of complete novels, but

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during the transitional phase theremight be a certain number ofundertakings of this sort. Such adtournement gains by beingaccompanied by illustrations whose

relationships to the text are notimmediately obvious. In spite ofundeniable difficulties, we believe itwould be possible to produce aninstructive psychogeographicaldtournement of George SandsConsuelo, which thus decked outcould be relaunched on the literarymarket disguised under someinnocuous title like Life in theSuburbs, or even under a title itselfdetourned, such as The Lost Patrol.(It would be a good idea to reuse in

this way many titles of deterioratedold films of which nothing elseremains, or of the films that continueto deaden the minds of young peoplein the cinema clubs.)

Metagraphic writing, no matter howoutdated its plastic framework maybe, presents far richer opportunitiesfor detourning prose, as well as otherappropriate objects or images. Onecan get some idea of this from the

project, conceived in 1951 buteventually abandoned for lack ofsufficient financial means, whichenvisaged a pinball machine arrangedin such a way that the play of thelights and the more or less predictabletrajectories of the balls would form ametagraphic-spatial compositionentitled Thermal Sensations andDesires of People Passing by theGates of the Cluny Museum Around anHour after Sunset in November. Wehave since come to realize that a

situationist-analytic enterprise cannotscientifically advance by way of suchworks. The means neverthelessremain suitable for less ambitiousgoals.

It is obviously in the realm of thecinema that dtournement can attainits greatest effectiveness and, forthose concerned with this aspect, itsgreatest beauty.

The powers of film are so extensive,

and the absence of coordination of

those powers is so glaring, thatvirtually any film that is above themiserable average can provide matterfor endless polemics amongspectators or professional critics. Only

the conformism of those peopleprevents them from discoveringequally appealing charms and equallyglaring faults even in the worst films.To cut through this absurd confusionof values, we can observe thatGriffiths Birth of a Nation is one of themost important films in the history ofthe cinema because of its wealth ofinnovations. On the other hand, it is aracist film and therefore absolutelydoes not merit being shown in itspresent form. But its total prohibition

could be seen as regrettable from thepoint of view of the secondary, butpotentially worthier, domain of thecinema. It would be better to detournit as a whole, without necessarily evenaltering the montage, by adding asoundtrack that made a powerfuldenunciation of the horrors ofimperialist war and of the activities ofthe Ku Klux Klan, which are continuingin the United States even now.

Such a dtournement a verymoderate one is in the finalanalysis nothing more than the moralequivalent of the restoration of oldpaintings in museums. But most filmsonly merit being cut up to composeother works. This reconversion ofpreexisting sequences will obviouslybe accompanied by other elements,musical or pictorial as well ashistorical. While the cinematicrewriting of history has until now beenlargely along the lines of Sacha

Guitrys burlesque re-creations, onecould have Robespierre say, beforehis execution: In spite of so manytrials, my experience and thegrandeur of my task convinces methat all is well. If in this case anappropriate reuse of a Greek tragedyenables us to exalt Robespierre, wecan conversely imagine a neorealist-type sequence, at the counter of atruck stop bar, for example, with oneof the truck drivers saying seriously toanother: Ethics was formerly

confined to the books of the

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philosophers; we have introduced itinto the governing of nations. Onecan see that this juxtapositionilluminates Maximiliens idea, the ideaof a dictatorship of the proletariat.(5)

The light of dtournement ispropagated in a straight line. To theextent that new architecture seems tohave to begin with an experimentalbaroque stage, the architecturalcomplex which we conceive as theconstruction of a dynamicenvironment related to styles ofbehavior will probably detournexisting architectural forms, and inany case will make plastic andemotional use of all sorts of detournedobjects: careful arrangements of suchthings as cranes or metal scaffoldingreplacing a defunct sculpturaltradition. This is shocking only to themost fanatical admirers of French-style gardens. It is said that in his oldage DAnnunzio, that pro-fascistswine, had the prow of a torpedo boatin his park. Leaving aside his patrioticmotives, the idea of such a monumentis not without a certain charm.

If dtournement were extended tourbanistic realizations, not manypeople would remain unaffected by anexact reconstruction in one city of anentire neighborhood of another. Lifecan never be too disorienting:dtournement on this level wouldreally spice it up.

Titles themselves, as we have alreadyseen, are a basic element ofdtournement. This follows from twogeneral observations: that all titles are

interchangeable and that they have adecisive importance in several genres.The detective stories in the SrieNoir are all extremely similar, yetmerely continually changing the titlessuffices to hold a considerableaudience. In music a title alwaysexerts a great influence, yet thechoice of one is quite arbitrary. Thus itwouldnt be a bad idea to make a finalcorrection to the title of the EroicaSymphony by changing it, forexample, to Lenin Symphony.(6)

The title contributes strongly to thedtournement of a work, but there isan inevitable counteraction of thework on the title. Thus one can makeextensive use of specific titles taken

from scientific publications (CoastalBiology of Temperate Seas) ormilitary ones (Night Combat of SmallInfantry Units), or even of manyphrases found in illustrated childrensbooks (Marvelous Landscapes Greetthe Voyagers).

In closing, we should briefly mentionsome aspects of what we call ultra-dtournement, that is, the tendenciesfor dtournement to operate ineveryday social life. Gestures andwords can be given other meanings,and have been throughout history forvarious practical reasons. The secretsocieties of ancient China made use ofquite subtle recognition signalsencompassing the greater part ofsocial behavior (the manner ofarranging cups; of drinking;quotations of poems interrupted atagreed-on points). The need for asecret language, for passwords, isinseparable from a tendency toward

play. Ultimately, any sign or word issusceptible to being converted intosomething else, even into its opposite.The royalist insurgents of the Vende,(7) because they bore the disgustingimage of the Sacred Heart of Jesus,were called the Red Army. In thelimited domain of political warvocabulary this expression wascompletely detourned within acentury.

Outside of language, it is possible to

use the same methods to detournclothing, with all its strong emotionalconnotations. Here again we find thenotion of disguise closely linked toplay. Finally, when we have got to thestage of constructing situations theultimate goal of all our activity everyone will be free to detourn entiresituations by deliberately changingthis or that determinant condition ofthem.

The methods that we have briefly

examined here are presented not as

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our own invention, but as a generallywidespread practice which we proposeto systematize.

In itself, the theory of dtournement

scarcely interests us. But we find itlinked to almost all the constructiveaspects of the presituationist period oftransition. Thus its enrichment,through practice, seems necessary.

We will postpone the development ofthese theses until later.

GUY DEBORD, GIL J WOLMAN1956

[TRANSLATORS NOTES]

1. The French word dtournementmeans deflection, diversion, rerouting,distortion, misuse, misappropriation,hijacking, or otherwise turningsomething aside from its normalcourse or purpose. It has sometimesbeen translated as diversion, butthis word is confusing because of itsmore common meaning of idleentertainment. Like most otherEnglish-speaking people who have

actually practiced dtournement, Ihave chosen simply to anglicize theFrench word. For more ondtournement, see theses 204-209 ofThe Society of the Spectacle.

2. The two quoted phrases are fromIsidore Ducasses Posies.Lautramont was the pseudonymused by Ducasse for his other work,Maldoror. The Plagiarism isnecessary passage was laterplagiarized by Debord in thesis #207

ofThe Society of the Spectacle.

3. The metagraph, a genredeveloped by the lettrists, is a sort ofcollage with largely textual elements.The two metagraphs mentioned hereare both by Debord, and can be foundin his Oeuvres (p. 127).

4. The authors are detourning asentence from the CommunistManifesto: The cheapness of thebourgeoisies commodities is the

heavy artillery with which it batters

down all Chinese walls, with which itforces the barbarians intenselyobstinate hatred of foreigners tocapitulate.

5. In the first imagined scene a phrasefrom a Greek tragedy (SophoclessOedipus at Colonus) is put in themouth of French Revolution leaderMaximilien Robespierre. In the second,a phrase from Robespierre is put inthe mouth of a truck driver.

6. Beethoven originally named histhird symphony after Napoleon (seenas a defender of the FrenchRevolution), but when Napoleoncrowned himself emperor he angrilytore up the dedication to him andrenamed it Eroica. The impliedrespect in this passage for Lenin (likethe passing references to workersstates in Debords Report on theConstruction of Situations) is avestige of the lettrists early, lesspolitically sophisticated period, whenthey seem to have been sort ofanarcho-Trotskyist.

7. The Vende: region in southwestern

France, locale of a pro-monarchistrevolt against the Revolutionarygovernment (1793-1796).

Mode demploi du dtournementoriginally appeared in the Belgiansurrealist journal Les Lvres Nues #8(May 1956). This translation by KenKnabb is from the SituationistInternational Anthology (Revised andExpanded Edition, 2006). Nocopyright.

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