Jules Régis Debray (French:[ʒylʁeʒisdəbʁɛ]; born 2 September 1940) is a French philosopher, journalist, formergovernment official and academic.[1] He is known for his theorization ofmediology, a critical theory of the long-term transmission of cultural meaning in human society, and for associating withMarxist revolutionaryChe Guevara in Bolivia in 1967 and advancingSalvador Allende'spresidency in Chile in the early 1970s.[2] He returned to France in 1973 and later held various official posts in the French government.
During the late 1960s, he was a professor of philosophy at theUniversity of Havana in Cuba and became an associate ofChe Guevara in Bolivia. He wrote the bookRevolution in the Revolution?, which analysed the tactical and strategic doctrines then prevailing among militant socialist movements in Latin America, and acted as a handbook forguerrilla warfare that supplemented Guevara's own manual concerning the topic. It was published in Cuba in the "Cuadernos" collection byCasa de las Americas in 1967, by Maspero in Paris, in New York (Monthly Review Press andGrove Press), Montevideo (Sandino), Milan (Feltrinelli), and Munich (Trikont).
Debray criticising his Bolivia incarceration after release.
Guevara was captured in Bolivia in October 1967; on 20 April 1967 Debray had been arrested in the small town ofMuyupampa, also in Bolivia. Convicted of having been part of Guevara's guerrilla group, Debray was sentenced on 17 November to 30 years in prison. He was released in 1970 after an international campaign for his release which included appeals byJean-Paul Sartre,André Malraux, GeneralCharles de Gaulle, andPope Paul VI. He sought refuge in Chile, where he wroteThe Chilean Revolution (1972) after interviews withSalvador Allende.
After the election in France of PresidentFrançois Mitterrand in 1981, he became an official adviser to 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 theFrench Revolution. He resigned in 1988.
Until the mid-1990s he held a number of official positions in France, including an honorary counselorship at France's supreme administrative court,Conseil d'État.
In 1996, he published a memoir of his life, translated into English asRégis Debray, Praised Be Our Lords (Verso, 2007).
In 2002, Debray travelled to Haiti as the head of a commission appointed by French Foreign MinisterDominique de Villepin. The Commission's official purpose was to find ways to improve relations between Haiti and France, but as the New York Times reported, another objective was to divert discussions away from Haiti'sindependence debt extorted by France in 1825.[3]
Debray was a member of the 2003Stasi Commission, named forBernard Stasi, which examined the origins of the 2003French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools. Debray endorsed the 2003 law. This was in defence of Frenchlaïcité (separation of church and state) which intends to maintain citizens' equality by the prohibition of religiousproselytism in the school system. Debray, however, seems to have encouraged a more subtle treatment of religious issues with regard to school history teaching in France.
Debray is preoccupied with the situation of Christian minorities in the Near East (and with the status of the Holy Places in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and elsewhere), a traditional interest of the French state, and has established an observatory to monitor the situation. His recent work investigates the religious paradigm as a socialnexus able to assist collective orientation on a wide, centuries-long scale. This caused him to propose the project of anInstitut Européen en Sciences des Religions, a French institute founded in 2005 for monitoring sociological religious dynamics, and informing the public about religious issues through conferences and publications.
Debray is the initiator and chief exponent of the discipline ofmédiologie or "mediology", which attempts to scientifically study the transmission of cultural meaning in society, whether through language or images. Mediology is characterized by its multi-disciplinary approach. It is expounded best in the English-language bookTransmitting Culture (Columbia University Press, 2004). InVie et mort de l'image (Life and Death of Image, 1995), an attempted history of the gaze, he distinguished three regimes of the images (icon, idol and vision). He also strove explicitly to prevent misunderstandings by differentiating mediology from a simple sociology of mass media. He also criticized the basic assumptions of thehistory of art which present art as an atemporal and universal phenomenon. According to Debray, art is a product of theRenaissance with the invention of the artist as producer of images, in contrast with previousacheiropoieta icons or other types of so-called "art," which did not primarily fulfil an artistic function but rather a religious one.[citation needed]
In a February 2007 opinion-editorial in the newspaperLe Monde, Debray criticized the tendency of the entire French political class towards conservatism. He also deplored the influence of the "videosphere" on modern politics, which he claimed has a tendency to individualize everything, forgetting both past and future (although he praised the loss of 1960s "messianism"), and rejecting any common national project. He criticized the new generation in politics as competent but without character, and lacking ideas: "So they [think they] have recruited philosophy withAndré Glucksmann orBernard-Henri Lévy and literature withChristine Angot orJean d'Ormesson". He asked voters to endorse the "left of the left," in an attempt to end a modern "anti-politics" which has become political marketing.[4]
La guérilla du Che (Paris, Le Seuil, 1974, series: Histoire immédiate)[7]
L'Indésirable [littérature](Paris, Le Seuil, 1975)
Les rendez-vous manqués (pour Pierre Goldman) [littérature] (Paris, Le Seuil, 1975, series: Combats)[8]
Journal d'un petit bourgeois entre deux feux et quatre murs [littérature] (Paris, Le Seuil, 1976)[9]
La neige brûle [littérature] (Paris, Grasset, 1977)[10]Prix Femina
Le pouvoir intellectuel en France (Paris, Ramsay, 1979)
Critique de la raison politique (Paris, Gallimard, 1981, series: Bibliothèque des idées)[11]
La Puissance et les Rêves (Paris, Gallimard, 1984)
Comète ma comète [littérature] (Paris, Gallimard, 1986)[12]
Christophe Colomb, le visiteur de l'aube, suivi des Traités de Tordesillas [littérature] (Paris, La Différence, 1991, series: Les voies du Sud: histoire)[13]
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 : matériaux pour l'histoire de l'éternel en occident (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2001, series: Champ médiologique;[22] Paris, Odile Jacob, 2003, series: Poches Odile Jacob;Prix Combourg 2003)
L'Enseignement du fait religieux dans l'école laïque: rapport au ministre de l'Education nationale (Paris, Ministère de l'éducation nationale, 2002)[23]
Le Feu sacré : Fonction du religieux (Paris, Fayard, 2003)
L'Ancien et le Nouveau Testament à travers 200 chefs-d'œuvre de la peinture (Paris, Presses de la Renaissance, 2003), 2 volumes: Tome I:L’Ancien testament à travers 100 chefs-d’œuvre de la peinture (2003); Tome II:Le Nouveau testament à travers 100 chefs-d’œuvre de la peinture (2003)[25]
À l'ombre des lumières : Débat entre un philosophe et un scientifique (2003) (Entretien avec Jean Bricmont).
Ce que nous voile le voile (Paris, Gallimard, 2004)[26]
Le plan vermeil: modeste proposition [littérature](Paris, Gallimard, 2004)[27]
Le siècle et la règle. Une correspondance avec le frère Gilles-Dominique o. p. (Paris, Fayard, 2004)
Julien le Fidèle ou Le banquet des démons [théâtre] (Paris, Gallimard, 2005, series: NRF)[28]
Sur le pont d'Avignon (Paris, Flammarion, 2005, series: Café Voltaire)[29]
Les communions humaines (Paris, Fayard, 2005, series: Les dieux dans la Cité - Bibliothèque de culture religieuse)[30]
Supplique aux nouveaux progressistes du XXIe siècle (Paris, Gallimard, 2006)[31]
La Puissance et les Rêves: 3 Intermezzos, translated into English by Sian Reynolds, in Parker, Geoff (ed.),Cencrastus No. 19, Winter 1984, pp. 17 – 22,ISSN0264-0856
"This Was an Intellectual".TELOS 44 (Summer 1980). New York:Telos Press
Maxwell, Stephen (1981),Le Pouvoir Intellectuel, review ofTeachers, Writers and Celebrities: The Intellectuals of Modern France, in Murray, Glen (ed.),Cencrastus, No. 7, Winter 1981-82, pp. 41 & 42,ISSN0264-0856
