from Guy Debord

To the Council of Nantes
21 June 1969
Comrades:

We haven't found your response, expedited 14 June, to our letter of the 3rd to be satisfactory.[1]

You didn't inform us that it was a book published by Maspero; that it was written by a student; [or] that it was about the small risks of life in Nantes. If Guin[2] knew the Nantais and slandered them, it is up to them to defend themselves or accept it.

We content ourselves with defending ourselves by ourselves. We certify that your fine response, according to which Guin lives "at his address," in fact only serves to protect him very provisionally.

One begins to see that we have a very different conception of "revolutionary duty" than you do. And yours smells of the student.

As a consequence, the situationists will refuse all contact in the future with all of the members of the current Council of Nantes, with the possible exception of those who will have sent us a correct response within eight days.

For the SI,
[Alain] Chevalier, [Guy] Debord, [Rene] Riesel

(Letter written on the letterhead of the Situationist International.)

[1] The SI had demanded to know of the group convened as the General Association of the Students of Nantes -- re-erected as the Council of Nantes -- how it planned to react to a calumny made against Raoul Vaneigem in a book that was about to be published (cf. I.S. #12, p. 101-103). This letter hasn't been found.

[2] Yannick Guin, author of The Nantes Commune (Editions Maspero, May 1969).


(Published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 4, 1969-1972. Footnotes by Alice Debord. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! July 2005.)



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