RIP Raoul Vaneigem

Raoul Vaneigem is one of those thinkers whose thinkige had a massive effect on me for a while - and then dropped away almost completely as other influences came along and my thinking grew more complicated. Having initially believed The Situationists were a rock band, the ultimate subversive rock band (I first came across their name in a Melody Maker profile of Malcolm McLaren), I found Leaving the 20th Century: The Incomplete Work of the Situationist Internationale in Blackwells, the Oxford book shop, when I was up for interviews at colleges. I think I stumbled upon it in their huge cavernous basement. This must have been the same day that John Lennon's murder was all over the news. As one symbol of the Sixties dream died, I started an infatuation with another set of Sixties dreaming. Over the next few months I read and reread the slim green large-size volume (that's my well-worn copy above). It's wonderfully illustrated with photographs of Situationist graffiti and Situationist comic…