Régis Debray
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Jules Régis Debray (born 1940) is a French intellectual, journalist, government official and professor. He formally engaged in Che Guevara's activities, especially in Bolivia where he was arrested and jailed in 1967. He is today better known for his theorization of mediology, a critical studies of medias, and was a member of the 2003 Stasi Commission, named after Bernard Stasi, which was at the origins of the 2003 French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools.
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[edit] 1960s-1980s
Regis Debray studied at the École Normale Supérieure and became "agrégé de philosophie" in 1965.
In the 1960s he was a professor of philosophy at the University of Havana, and a friend of Che Guevara as a young man in the 1960s. He later wrote a book entitled Revolution in the Revolution?. This book critiqued the tactical and strategic doctrines then prevailing among militant socialist movements in Latin America, and acted as a handbook for guerrilla warfare. When Guevara was captured in Bolivia, 1967, Debray (also in Bolivia at the time) was imprisoned, convicted of having been part of Guevara's guerrilla group and on November 17 sentenced to 30 years in prison, but was released in 1970 after an international campaign for his release which included Jean-Paul Sartre, André Malraux, Général De Gaulle and Pope Paul VI.
He sought refuge in Chile, where he wrote The Chilean Revolution (1972) after interviews with Salvador Allende.
[edit] 1980s-2000s
Debray returned to France in 1973. Following the election of Président François Mitterrand, in 1981, he became an adviser of 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. Until the mid-1990s he held a number of official posts in France.
Founder of the discipline of médiologie or "mediology", which attempts to scientifically study mass media and power.
Debray was recently in the news for his support of the 2003 French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools. This was in defense of French laïcité which aims to maintain citizens' equality through the prohibition of proselytism within the school system.
He was rebuked, on behalf of then-French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, for his alleged involvement in the overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former President of Haiti, a charge that Debray strongly denied.
His recent work deals thoroughly with the religious paradigma as social nexus able to support collective orientation on a wide, time passing scale. This lead 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.
In a February 2007 op-ed in Le Monde, Régis Debray criticized the tendency of the whole French political class to move to the right-wing and the influence of the "videosphere" on modern politics, which had a tendency to individualize everything, forgetting both past and future (although he praised the loss of the 1960s messianism), and the necessity of a common project. He criticized the new generation in politics, competent but without character, and the lack of ideas: "So they are sure of having recruited philosophy with André Glucksmann or Bernard-Henri Lévy and litterature with Christine Angot or Jean d'Ormesson," could he said, criticizing the pseudo-political positions of such mediatic authors. Finally, he criticized the small breathing space left for electors in the 2007 presidential election: either Nicolas Sarkozy, and a "conservative revolution" with a complete alignement on the "Empire," or Ségolène Royal and an alignement on Washington with a stop in Oslo before. Praising François Bayrou's character, who is posing as the "third man", in the center, he recalled however his old "MRP" smell and Catholic writer François Mauriac's Blocnote 's (or op-eds in the 1950s). Thus, he finally called for a vote to the "left of the left," in order to attempt to block desperating modern "anti-politics" which have turned into political marketing, thanking passing by Jacques Chirac for not having taken part in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and ultimately, calling to vote, by "fidelity" at the second turn for the Socialist Party's candidate, Ségolène Royal [1].
[edit] Bibliography
- 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)
- Critique de la raison politique (1981)
- Le pouvoir intellectuel en France (1986)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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).
[edit] References
- ^ La Coupe de l'Elysée 2007, par Régis Debray, Le Monde, 27 February 2007 (French)
