Edward John Matthews provides us with yet another enlightening analysis, this time in a book which is addressed to the situationist Guy Debord, thereby continuing the intellectual concerns discussed in his recently published Arts and Politics of the Situationist International 1957-1972. Featuring extensive reference to what is clearly an exhaustive bibliography of Debord sources, Matthews quite literally ‘situates’ Debord as he takes the reader on what only appears to be a chronologically-based study of this key figure in both the letterist and situationist movements. The result makes it abundantly clear just how important the Situationist International’s critique of late capitalist society was for the development of European sensibilities on the matter and how central Debord’s role was in the generation of this critique

H. Thomas Wilson, York University, Toronto, Canada

Edward John Matthews’ Guy Debord’s Politics of Communication: Liberating Language from Power is not only a welcome follow-up to his 2021 Arts and Politics of the Situationist International 1957-1972 but also a deeply insightful and urgent reassessment of Debord’s project to unmoor language and communication from the steering forces of neoliberal capitalism. Rigorously researched, historically rooted, and lucidly written, this book reminds readers that the ongoing struggle against the vague and inane in contemporary communications continues to demand as a counterforce the formation of autonomous, dialogical subjectivities who seek to emancipate poetry from poesis and redirect its potency towards political poiesis.

Andrew C. Wenaus, University of Western Ontario