Régis Debray

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Jules Régis Debray (born 1940) is a French intellectual, journalist, government official and professor. He formerly 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 signs and transmission of signs in human society, 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.

1 1960s-1980s
2 1980s-2000s
3 Bibliography
4 References
5 Videos
6 External links

[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 an associate of Che Guevara. He later wrote a book entitled Revolution in the Revolution?. This book analysed the tactical and strategic doctrines then prevailing among militant socialist movements in Latin America, and acted as a handbook for guerrilla warfare. Shortly before 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 coup by General Pinochet in Chile. 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 transmission of signs in society, whether through language or images. Mediology is characterized by its multi-disciplinary approach. In Vie et mort de l'image (Life and Death of Image, 1995), an attempted history of gaze, where he distinguished three regimes of the images (icon, idol and vision), he explicitly prevented misunderstandings by differentiating mediology from a simple sociology of mass media. He also criticized the basic assumptions of history of art which present art as an atemporal and universal phenomena. According to Debray, art is a product of the Renaissance with the invention of the artist as productor of images, in contrast with previous acheiropoieta icons or other types of so-called "art," where these "work of art" did not fulfill an artistic function but rather a religious one.

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. Debray however appears to have influenced a more subtle treatment of religious issues within French school history programmes.

Debray is currently 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.

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 led 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 literature 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 in passing Jacques Chirac for not having taken part in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and ultimately, calling for a second-round "fidelity" vote for the Socialist Party's candidate, Ségolène Royal ^[1].

[edit] Bibliography

Révolution dans la révolution? et autres essais (1967)
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)
Empire 2.0 [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).