Le Clézio’s La Guerre and Les Géants: Counter-Hegemonic, Situationist, User Manuals for the Post-Modern Subject?

Abstract

This article proposes a Situationist reading of Le Clézio’s novels La Guerre (1970) and Les Géants (1973). Debord and Le Clézio illustrate that it is not by accident that the rise of multinational capitalism coincides with the birth of hyperreality and the post-truth era. Faced with the realistic possibility of losing their power and influence, the masters or the giants shifted their approach in order to survive. Debord and Le Clézio denounce the devastating ripple effects of this structural adaptation that would redefine society and the entirety of social relations through the skillful imposition of commercial simulacra. Even if both authors engage in hyperbolic discourse to underscore their main points, they are cognizant of what is at stake in the age of (dis-) information. Without providing any facile optimism that the road ahead will be easy, Debord and Le Clézio urge the alienated, post-modern subject to revolt. Despite the apparent limitations of the user manuals for contestation that they promote, their counter-hegemonic techniques could be a preliminary blueprint for combatting the commodification of the social, the death of the subject, and the subjugation of the populace through signs in consumer republics.

Keywords:

• Guy Debord
• J.M.G. Le Clézio
• late capitalism
• post-truth era
• hyperreality

Notes

1 I employ the terms “purchaser citizen” and “consumer citizen” interchangeably throughout the essay like many other theorists in the field of cultural studies.

2 All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.

3 The historian Lizabeth Cohen coined this expression in Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America.

4 The name of this fictitious company is capitalized in the original.

5 This expression is capitalized in the original.

6 This expression is capitalized in the original.

7 Although the English translation is excellent overall, this phrase should read “The man who is no longer called Machines.”

8 See the cover of Keith Moser’s book entitled J.M.G. Le Clézio: A Concerned Citizen of the Global Village.