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Raoul Vaneigem
Raoul Vaneigem
Born	21 March 1934 (age 90); Lessines, Hainaut, Belgium
Nationality	Belgian
Education	Free University of Brussels (1952–1956)
Notable work	The Revolution of Everyday Life
Movement	The Situationist International

Raoul Vaneigem (French: [vanegɛm]; Dutch: [raːˈʋul vɑnˈɛiɣəm, raːˈʔul -]; born 21 March 1934) is a Belgian writer known for his 1967 book The Revolution of Everyday Life.

Biography

Vaneigem was born in Lessines (in Hainaut, Belgium) and studied romance philology at the Free University of Brussels from 1952 to 1956. He was a member of the Situationist International from 1961 to 1970.^[1]

Vaneigem and Guy Debord were two of the principal theorists of the Situationist movement. Vaneigem's slogans frequently made it onto the walls of Paris during the May 1968 uprisings. His most famous book, and the one that contains the most famous slogans, is The Revolution of Everyday Life. In it, he challenged what he called "passive nihilism", a passive acceptance of the absurdities of modernism which he considered "an overture to conformism".^[2]

According to the website nothingness.org,

The voice of Raoul Vaneigem was one of the strongest of the Situationists. Counterpoised to Guy Debord's political and polemic style, Vaneigem offered a more poetic and spirited prose. The Revolution of Everyday Life (Traité de savoir-vivre à l'usage des jeunes générations), published in the same year as [Debord's] The Society of the Spectacle, helped broaden and balance the presentation of the SI's theories and practices. One of the longest SI members, and frequent editor of the journal Internationale Situationniste, Vaneigem finally left the SI in November 1970, citing their failures as well as his own in his letter of resignation. Soon after, Debord issued a typically scathing response denouncing both Vaneigem and his critique of the Situationist International.^[3]

After leaving the Situationist International, Vaneigem wrote a series of polemical books defending the idea of a free and self-regulating social order. He frequently made use of pseudonyms, including "Ratgeb", "Julienne de Cherisy," "Robert Desessarts," "Jules-François Dupuis," "Tristan Hannaniel," "Anne de Launay," and "Michel Thorgal." Further on, he defended freedom of speech in Nothing is sacred, everything can be said, edited by Robert and Emmanuelle Ménard, to whom the philosopher Michel Onfray dedicated his Traité d'athéologie, and later on Bruno Gaccio and Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, responded in Can everything can be said ?, prefaced again by Robert Ménard.

Partial bibliography

The Revolution of Everyday Life (Traité de savoir-vivre à l'usage des jeunes générations)
Traité de savoir-vivre à l'usage des jeunes générations
Le livre des plaisirs (The Book of Pleasures), 1979, reprinted 1993.
L'Ile aux delices (The Island of Delights), an erotic novel, 1979.
Le mouvement du libre-esprit (The Movement of the Free Spirit), 1986.
Adresse aux vivants sur la mort qui les gouverne et l'opportunité de s'en défaire, 1990
Lettre de Staline à ses enfants enfin réconciliés de l'Est et de l'Ouest, 1992
La résistance au christianisme. Les hérésies des origines au XVIIIe siècle, 1993
Les hérésies, 1994
Avertissement aux écoliers et lycéens, 1995
Nous qui désirons sans fin, 1996
La Paresse, 1996
Notes sans portée, 1997
Dictionnaire de citations pour servir au divertissement et à l'intelligence du temps, 1998
Déclaration des droits de l'être humain. De la souveraineté de la vie comme dépassement des droits de le l'homme, 2001
Pour une internationale du genre humain, 2001
Salut à Rabelais ! Une lecture au présent, 2003
Rien n'est sacré, tout peut se dire. Réflexions sur la liberté d'expression, 2003
Le Chevalier, la Dame, le Diable et la Mort, 2003
Modestes propositions aux grévistes, 2004
Journal imaginaire, 2005

References

^ "Raoul Vaneigem". www.notbored.org. Retrieved 2017-03-21.
^ S. Critchley (2004), Very Little... Almost Nothing. p. 13.
^ www.nothingness.org, which also has additional biographical material. See also www.notbored.org.