You're on the wrong track, Mr. Bueno

You are on the wrong track once again, Mr Bueno. It isn't my own concept of show which is at the heart of our argument, but Debord's own conception. My challenge was: please, quote to me one single line from Debord concerning the show, one which wasn't following the same guidelines as those of the mass-media. I didn't intend you to quote some of my own numerous ones on this subject, unsatisfactory they remain. They have all failed to satisfy me.

Then, the passage you quoted brought water to my mill: for ages the thought has occurred to me that the word show meant something else than what it did for the mass-media, and that this meaning had evaded me. The passage you quoted, is a witness to my struggle, finding a meaning to the word show. As you can see, what a pitiful result.

The only meaning I was able to fathom is Plato's: what really exists doesn't appear, thus, what we see is an illusion, a show. As years go by, I have seen the appearance of poverty. This is demonstrated by Houellebecq. The denial of the visibility of poverty doesn't generally occur in the world itself, but, once again, in advertising and the mass-media. And it is here -in the publishing world- that Houellebecq hits the fan.

Generally speaking, the word "show" was used by me as "a show of something", neither using the intransitive or incantation like impersonations favoured by Debord and a bunch of parrots. An example of this is the infamous vichy-socialist staging of anti racism which is a show of racism, and demonstrations made by puffs and film makers, which are a show of revolt.

Stop press: under NATO pressures, the Serbs have withdrawn from Mrs. Levy.

The fluttering of a butterfly's wings will never abolish the weather.

Jean-Pierre Voyer

M. Ripley s'amuse