Raoul Vaneigem

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born

March 21, 1934

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male

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Lessines Hainaut, Belgium, Belgium

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Raoul Vaneigem (born 1934) is a Belgian writer and philosopher. He was born in Lessines (Hainaut, Belgium). After studying romance philology at the Free University of Brussels (now split into the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel) from 1952 to 1956, he participated in the Situationist International from 1961 to 1970. He currently resides in Belgium and is the father of four children.

Vaneigem and Guy Debord were the two principal theoreticians of the Situationist movement. Although Debord was the more disciplined thinker, 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 famous slogans, is The Revolution of Every...more

[close] Raoul Vaneigem (born 1934) is a Belgian writer and philosopher. He was born in Lessines (Hainaut, Belgium). After studying romance philology at the Free University of Brussels (now split into the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel) from 1952 to 1956, he participated in the Situationist International from 1961 to 1970. He currently resides in Belgium and is the father of four children.

Vaneigem and Guy Debord were the two principal theoreticians of the Situationist movement. Although Debord was the more disciplined thinker, 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 famous slogans, is The Revolution of Everyday Life (in French the title was more elaborate: Traité du savoir-vivre à l'usage des jeunes générations).

After leaving the Situationist movement 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 "Julienne de Cherisy," "Robert Desessarts," "Jules-François Dupuis," "Tristan Hannaniel," "Anne de Launay," "Ratgeb," and "Michel Thorgal." Recently he has been an advocate of a new type of strike, in which service and transportation workers provide services for free and refuse to collect payment or fares.

From www.nothingness.org: "Along with Guy Debord, the voice of Raoul Vaneigem was one of the strongest of the Situationists. Counterpoised to 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 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 of 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."

Further biographical information can be found at www.nothingness.org and www.notbored.org.
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books by Raoul Vaneigem

avg rating: 4.11 | 36 reviews | 167 ratings | 43 distinct works

	Revolution of Everyday Life (Paperback) by Raoul Vaneigem avg rating 4.02 — 148 ratings — published 1983	my rating:
	The Revolution of Everyday Life (Paperback) by Raoul Vaneigem, Donald Nicholson-Smith (translator) avg rating 4.53 — 79 ratings — published 2001	my rating:
	The Movement of the Free Spirit (Paperback) by Raoul Vaneigem avg rating 3.50 — 22 ratings — published 1998 2 editions	my rating:
	A Cavalier History of Surrealism (Paperback) by Raoul Vaneigem avg rating 4.00 — 13 ratings — published 1999	my rating:
	Contributions To The Revolutionary Struggle - Intended To Be Discussed, Corrected, And Principally Put Into Practice Without Delay (Paperback) by Raoul Vaneigem avg rating 3.57 — 7 ratings — published 1990	my rating:
	A Declaration of the Rights of Human Beings (Paperback) by Raoul Vaneigem avg rating 4.40 — 8 ratings — published 2004 2 editions	my rating:
	Le livre des plaisirs (The book of pleasures) by Raoul Vaneigem avg rating 4.67 — 6 ratings — published 1993	my rating:
	The Bad Days Will End (Pamphlet) by Raoul Vaneigem avg rating 5.00 — 5 ratings — published 1992	my rating:
	Traité de savoir-vivre à l'usage des jeunes générations (Mass Market Paperback) by Raoul Vaneigem avg rating 4.50 — 7 ratings — published 1992	my rating:
	La résistance au christianisme: Les hérésies des origines au XVIIIe siècle (Unknown Binding) by Raoul Vaneigem avg rating 4.00 — 1 ratings — published 1993	my rating:

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quotes by Raoul Vaneigem

"Who wants a world in which the guarantee that we shall not die of starvation entails the risk of dying of boredom?"
— Raoul Vaneigem

4 people liked it

"To be rich nowadays merely means to possess a large number of poor objects."
— Raoul Vaneigem

2 people liked it

"The nihilist makes one mistake: he does not realise that other people are also nihilists, and that the nihilism of other people is now an active historical factor. He has no consciousness of the possibility of transcendence. The fact is, however, that the present reign of survival, in which all the talk about progress expresses nothing so much as the fear that progress may be impossible, is itself a product of history, is itself the outcome of all the renunciations of humanity that have been made over the centuries. Indeed, the history of survival is the historical movement which will eventually undo history itself. For clear awareness of just how nightmarish life has become is on the point of fusing with a consciousness of the successive renunciations of the past, and thus too with the real desire to pick up the movement of transcendence everywhere in space and time where it has been prematurely interrupted."
— Raoul Vaneigem

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