Debray, [Jules] Régis (1940–)

[Jules] Régis Debray (b. 2 September 1940), French intellectual and Marxist philosopher. Debray was Ché Guevara's most articulate interpreter, but after Guevara's death in the disastrous 1967 Bolivian revolution, he synthesized the Leninist traditional view of revolution and Guevarist focoismo (revolution from a rural guerrilla center, or foco).

Debray became a student of the French Communist ideologue Louis Althusser in the early 1960s. While traveling in revolutionary Latin America, he became convinced that only insurrection, conducted according to local conditions, could bring successful revolution. One of Debray's most influential books, Revolution in the Revolution? (1967), popularized the foco philosophy of Guevara.

Three years in a Bolivian prison (1967–1970) and Marxist successes achieved without focoismo caused Debray to admit strategic mistakes. Nonetheless, he never criticized Guevara, but did criticize Chilean president Salvador Allende and Uruguay's urban guerrilla Tupamaros for not adhering to the Cuban position. Many insist that his novel of revolutionary alienation, The Undesirable (1975), is autobiographical.

Since the 1980s, Debray has published numerous essays and books on philosophy and French politics. In the 1990s he founded the discipline of médiologie, which aims to "elucidate the mysteries and paradoxes of cultural transmission." Debray also founded the journal Cahiers de Médiologie (1996–2004). Recent works include Introduction à la médiologie (2000) and Transmettre (1997; Transmitting Culture, 2000).

See alsoAllende Gossens, Salvador; Communism; Guevara, Ernesto "Che"; Philosophy: Overview.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy, eds., Régis Debray and the Latin American Revolution (1968).

Richard Gott, Guerrilla Movements in Latin America (1970).

Hartmut Ramm, The Marxism of Régis Debray (1978).

Additional Bibliography

Harris, Richard L. Death of a Revolutionary: Che Guevara's Last Mission. Revised ed. New York: Norton, 2000.

Spoiden, Stéphanie. Régis Debray et la médiologie. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007.

                                             Pat Konrad