Tuesday, August 09, 2005

R.I.P. Alain Guillerm

Just learned of the death of Alain Guillerm on June 24th. Guillerm was a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie from 1962 to 67 and cofounder in 1967-68 of Communisme ou Barbarie following the dissolution of the former organization in June 1967.

From NotBored!

"Alain Guillerm was among the four members of the S. ou B. group who opposed the suspension of publication of the review and tried to continue the S. ou B. project under another name: it was Guillerm who, in the wake of Guy Debord's departure in 1961, wanted to form a "situationist tendency" within S. ou B., but was unsuccessful. In 1967, David Ames Curtis reports,

"the group formed by the dissenting S. ou B. members called itself Communisme ou Barbarie [a.k.a. Groupe Bororo]. It met frequently in the Marais section of Paris, managed to be denounced by the Situationist International during its brief existence, and picked up a few members, including Dominique Frager, who had wanted to join S. ou B. soon before its dissolution. Contacts also were establsihed with people from Noir et Rouge, the Situationists, and radical students from Germany, among others. Right before Christmas, 1967, Frager introduced the group to the soon-to-be student leader of May '68, Daniel Cohn-Bendit. Cohn-Bendit [...] thus was in direct contact with the group that made itself the continuator of Socialisme ou Barbarie in the months leading to the March 22 takeover of the Nanterre University Administration building and to May '68. To my knowledge, this quite slender, but significant, thread of historical continuity has never before been revealed in print. Also of significance, Guillerm participated in the Nanterre occupation on March 22 and in the formation of the March 22d Movement. He was on the barricades the first evening in Paris."

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