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Against Venice
This is the first book in a new Anti-Voyages series which aims to subvert the clichés of travel and travel writing. In a world glutted with books extolling foreign lands and intrepid travelers, Against Venice stands alone. Noted intellectual Regis Debray evokes a vivid picture for us in hyperbolic, tongue-in-cheek prose of a cultural amusement park, a kind of Euro-Disney for snobs. In this ostentatious sanctuary of the Beautiful, the Artificial, and the Picturesque, the tired senior exec or stockbroker feels rejuvenated, transfigured by the glow of Art; the Tourist, caught up in the festive unreality of the city's "ongoing fancy dress ball," feels free on the very spot where the native inhabitant feels imprisoned. Venice only plays the city and we play at discovering it. And, as the introduction points out, it is not finally Venice itself, but rather this repertoire of poses, temptations, daydreams, and alibis it so easily encourages that is Debray's real target. Kill this "inner Venice," he urges, or it will surely kill you.
128 pages, Paperback
First published September 6, 1995
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About the author
Régis Debray
282 books110 followersIntellectual, journalist, government official and professor. He is known for his theorization of mediology, a critical theory of the long-term transmission of cultural meaning in human society; and for having fought in 1967 with Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in Bolivia.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 9, 2024
A silly little tongue-in-cheek pocket polemic against the city of Venice, (which serves as a synecdoche for “the looming specter of a wholly museumified Europe, 74”) couched in absurdly but knowingly baroque prose, e.g.:
“I have myself sometimes been seized with a sort of ambivalence, not knowing how to prise the nugget out of the surrounding matrix. I have sometimes dreamed not of death in Venice but of a thoroughly dead Venice, with all its overbearing domes, pinnacles and lantern-skylights fallen, and only the triangular pediments of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco left standing.” (11)
For Debray, the counterpoint to Venice is Naples (and I agree!): “Venice has style. It might even be said that it has too many of them, seven or eight at least; but the disposition of the mosaic and the predominance of one material, white stone from Istria, make the composite of facades and architectures acceptable. Naples has something better: a tone. Here we have an exercise in composition; there, the imprint of a vital individuality, the unintended, irrepressible, vehement mark of a blind force. The Parthénopéenne has no need to visit the hairdresser, or check its Rimmel in the glass every fifteen minutes like a rich lady with her compact after dinner. Naples depends on a temperament; Venice requires an education.” (22)
“Venice is a discouragement: abdication from Utopia, renunciation of adolescence. It is the one place in Europe that best verifies the observation: ‘The tourist is a person who, unable to change the world, changes his location within it.’ All hopes shipwrecked long ago, all values liquefied into a weary Donjuanesque shambles, an old Prince of the left came to hang about and dream there, toying with the idea of acquiring a small palace on the Giudecca.” (35-36)
“Perhaps this egocentric microcosm, which has always been a few centuries ahead of the rest which invented the ghetto long before the camps, a department for monitoring correspondence long before telephone tapping and the letter of credit long before cashflow-is in the process of inventing before our unseeing eyes the insular Europe of tomorrow, reduced to picturesque features like half-timbering, wrought iron and inns but dead to space exploration, the planet and its century: a monocultural peninsula set in its lagoon, forgetting the open sea, suffocated by memory, and in which the tertiary sector will have eclipsed the primary and secondary (Venice, too, in the time of its supremacy, lived on the income from its lands and industries). The memory-store of a century hence, preserved in its reliquaries, painting and polishing its decorative details, organising commemorations: centenaries of this, millenaries of that.” (68-69)
“I have myself sometimes been seized with a sort of ambivalence, not knowing how to prise the nugget out of the surrounding matrix. I have sometimes dreamed not of death in Venice but of a thoroughly dead Venice, with all its overbearing domes, pinnacles and lantern-skylights fallen, and only the triangular pediments of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco left standing.” (11)
For Debray, the counterpoint to Venice is Naples (and I agree!): “Venice has style. It might even be said that it has too many of them, seven or eight at least; but the disposition of the mosaic and the predominance of one material, white stone from Istria, make the composite of facades and architectures acceptable. Naples has something better: a tone. Here we have an exercise in composition; there, the imprint of a vital individuality, the unintended, irrepressible, vehement mark of a blind force. The Parthénopéenne has no need to visit the hairdresser, or check its Rimmel in the glass every fifteen minutes like a rich lady with her compact after dinner. Naples depends on a temperament; Venice requires an education.” (22)
“Venice is a discouragement: abdication from Utopia, renunciation of adolescence. It is the one place in Europe that best verifies the observation: ‘The tourist is a person who, unable to change the world, changes his location within it.’ All hopes shipwrecked long ago, all values liquefied into a weary Donjuanesque shambles, an old Prince of the left came to hang about and dream there, toying with the idea of acquiring a small palace on the Giudecca.” (35-36)
“Perhaps this egocentric microcosm, which has always been a few centuries ahead of the rest which invented the ghetto long before the camps, a department for monitoring correspondence long before telephone tapping and the letter of credit long before cashflow-is in the process of inventing before our unseeing eyes the insular Europe of tomorrow, reduced to picturesque features like half-timbering, wrought iron and inns but dead to space exploration, the planet and its century: a monocultural peninsula set in its lagoon, forgetting the open sea, suffocated by memory, and in which the tertiary sector will have eclipsed the primary and secondary (Venice, too, in the time of its supremacy, lived on the income from its lands and industries). The memory-store of a century hence, preserved in its reliquaries, painting and polishing its decorative details, organising commemorations: centenaries of this, millenaries of that.” (68-69)
March 21, 2016
يبدو انه رسالة من الكاتب للعالم وبالاخص بيروت في نعيه لسمير قصير، يظهر من خلالها المفارقات الموجودة بالعالم الغربي وقوانينه وبين بيروت كنموذج للتعايش .
يعرض حدود الحرية في البلاد الليبرالية، والتي يظنها البعض انها مطلقة .
التعددية والفردية بالمجتمع وكيفية التوازن بينها، والتعددية الفكرية في الفرد وتغير التوجه حسب الزمن والمعطيات.
الإعلام وسلطته على العقول وتوجيه الشعوب، وموضع المفكر من هذا الوسط الهائج.
يعرض حدود الحرية في البلاد الليبرالية، والتي يظنها البعض انها مطلقة .
التعددية والفردية بالمجتمع وكيفية التوازن بينها، والتعددية الفكرية في الفرد وتغير التوجه حسب الزمن والمعطيات.
الإعلام وسلطته على العقول وتوجيه الشعوب، وموضع المفكر من هذا الوسط الهائج.
June 12, 2023
My man should just have gone to Trieste. Enjoyable polemic, with which I largely agree on the big issues (falsity and inauthenticity, over-aestheticisation, tourism as destructive force, the creeping Baudrillardian banalisation of everything, the inherent ugliness of Baroque architecture) but disagree with in nitty-gritty details.
The thing is that the quest for true authenticity is, itself, the first stumble down the slide of Veniceification. The implied contrast between the self-proclaimed 'aristocracy of taste' weeping over Tintoretto and ghastly putti and the Rialto, & un-aestheticised, real life in Naples fails for several reasons — first, because this is just a way to establish a new 'aristocracy of taste' (q.v. all other projects of consciously scorning the consensus taste of the rich and tacky); and second, because it aestheticises away the fact that the transition out of the ordinary and into simulacrum is a transition out of the isolation of poverty and into the world. The problem is that the real people of Naples, Lisbon, Palermo, anywhere left in Europe still praised by those-in-the-know for its singular way of living, its maintenance of its connection to the vanished world, its resistance to IKEA chipboard furniture and chain stores: those people do not desire the vanished world at all, they contain in themselves all the same old banal desires that we do, they crave the median of the taste of the global middle class, they genuinely welcome the Dread Mouse of Disney. Where do we go from there?
The thing is that the quest for true authenticity is, itself, the first stumble down the slide of Veniceification. The implied contrast between the self-proclaimed 'aristocracy of taste' weeping over Tintoretto and ghastly putti and the Rialto, & un-aestheticised, real life in Naples fails for several reasons — first, because this is just a way to establish a new 'aristocracy of taste' (q.v. all other projects of consciously scorning the consensus taste of the rich and tacky); and second, because it aestheticises away the fact that the transition out of the ordinary and into simulacrum is a transition out of the isolation of poverty and into the world. The problem is that the real people of Naples, Lisbon, Palermo, anywhere left in Europe still praised by those-in-the-know for its singular way of living, its maintenance of its connection to the vanished world, its resistance to IKEA chipboard furniture and chain stores: those people do not desire the vanished world at all, they contain in themselves all the same old banal desires that we do, they crave the median of the taste of the global middle class, they genuinely welcome the Dread Mouse of Disney. Where do we go from there?
January 22, 2022
Ироничное эссе раздраженного интеллектуала, возмущенного мифологизацией Венеции. В его глазах Светлейшая становится Пошлейшей, городом, старательно играющим в город, где турист лишь играет в туриста. Иммерсивная, омертвелая, искусственная Венеция противопоставлена тут самоуверенному и темпераментному Неаполю, ничего не теряющему в отсутствие вздыхающей толпы визитеров. Эти города-антиподы, "Вода и Огонь, питающие ил и лаву", справедливо становятся полюсами авторского восприятия. Больше всех достается даже не самой Венеции, а ее обожателям - "больным Венецией", как их называет автор. "Все любят Венецию, чтобы не быть как все", - ядовито язвит Дербе, обвиняя "мелкопоместных щеголей" в обесценивании предмета их веры. "Венеция, как и "Джоконда", - это общее место, не существующее само по себе и неуклонно теряющее собственное содержание".
И все же - эссе заканчивается неожиданным признанием. Писатель расписывается в том, что этот зов сердца - "ваш, наш, <...> не терпящий возражений". Можно осуждать Венецию, но сомневаться в ее уникальности не приходится. Эта "Джоконда" у нас одна )
И все же - эссе заканчивается неожиданным признанием. Писатель расписывается в том, что этот зов сердца - "ваш, наш, <...> не терпящий возражений". Можно осуждать Венецию, но сомневаться в ее уникальности не приходится. Эта "Джоконда" у нас одна )
July 11, 2019
Irritante dall'inizio alla fine, quando conclude dicendo "lo so benissimo che dò fastidio". Dà fastidio il tono saccente, anche quando parla di cose che non conosce "Napoli esibisce lenzuola e mutande in mezzo alla strada, a Venezia la biancheria si fa asciugare in cortile, come vuole la buona creanza".
Buona parte del libro è dedicato al confronto fra Napoli e Venezia, e le preferenze dell'autore sono per Napoli. "Venezia ha stile. Napoli ha di meglio: possiede un tono".
Consiglio nonostante tutto la lettura, le osservazioni stimolanti non mancano.
Buona parte del libro è dedicato al confronto fra Napoli e Venezia, e le preferenze dell'autore sono per Napoli. "Venezia ha stile. Napoli ha di meglio: possiede un tono".
Consiglio nonostante tutto la lettura, le osservazioni stimolanti non mancano.
April 26, 2024
Short, but could have been shorter. This is translated from the French, so that could be a factor. The overall message, which I took to be that the Venice that is fetishized, or rather the fetiscization, is distasteful, is approached from several points, but ultimately comes to the same conclusion. This won't keep me from going to Venice for the second time next month, but it's certainly something to think about. To have once been a force to reckon with and to now be a sort of European Disneyland would certainly not be a welcome transition.
August 29, 2019
This is an unusual individual look at Venice unfavorably compared to Naples. The author tries to tone it down a bit in the Afterword as satire but that is unconvincing. The writer is natural rebel and spent some time in prison as a Che Guevara fighter in Bolivia. With so many books of praise from John Ruskin and a wealth of writing talent, a contrarian view is a tiny counter view with limited equivalence.
May 14, 2024
Could also be called pro-Naples in some parts.
A bracing polemic against places becoming a Disneyland of themselves and of humanity becoming Narcissus on tour — looking only at how a place reflects ourselves back at us.
A bracing polemic against places becoming a Disneyland of themselves and of humanity becoming Narcissus on tour — looking only at how a place reflects ourselves back at us.
November 29, 2024
Librino di grandi pretese ed esiti spesso scontati, che aggiunge davvero poso rispetto al dibattito sull'idea e sul destino di Venezia.
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July 24, 2011Pamphlet engagé et engageant contre la cité des Doges. « Ne consommez pas du Venise, s’exclame Debray, drogue qui n’est douce qu’au premier « voyage ». (p. 13) »
Debray oppose Naples, cité du vivant, à Venise, formolisée, qui par delà toute fierté, est devenue le Walhalla d’une « civilisation des loisirs » mondialisée. Mais l’« occident fabuleux des jeunes mariés japonais (p. 63)» symbolise également, pour le pratiquant occidental, l’«ultime sanctification du laïque (p. 81) », soumis à la religion de l’art – « la plus socialement valorisante des crédulités en circulation (p. 60). »
Aussi, davantage que la cité des masques, Venise est celle des miroirs, on y vient pour s’y voir : Venise « donne à chacun licence de faire la roue. (p. 75) » – le touriste y subissant un traitement esthétothérapeutique.
Moins caustique qu’il n’y paraît de prime abord, Debray dresse le constat cinglant d’une ville avant-courrière du futur européen le plus probable: « Peut être ce microcosme égocentrique qui a toujours eu quelques siècles d’avance, qui a inventé le ghetto bien avant les camps (…) et la lettre de change avant le cash-flow, est-elle en train d’inventer sous nos yeux endormis l’Europe insulaire de demain, réduite à son pittoresque. (p. 90) ».
Examen sans pitié d’un Debray définitivement (?) « revenu » de Venise, vous faisant constater que les pigeons de la place Saint-Marc – cette véritable mise en abîme de la cité – ont ce je-ne-sais-quoi d’êtres supérieurs.
Examen sans pitié d’un Debray définitivement (?) « revenu » de Venise, vous faisant constater que les pigeons de la place Saint-Marc – cette véritable mise en abyme de la cité – ont ce je-ne-sais-quoi d’êtres supérieurs.
Debray oppose Naples, cité du vivant, à Venise, formolisée, qui par delà toute fierté, est devenue le Walhalla d’une « civilisation des loisirs » mondialisée. Mais l’« occident fabuleux des jeunes mariés japonais (p. 63)» symbolise également, pour le pratiquant occidental, l’«ultime sanctification du laïque (p. 81) », soumis à la religion de l’art – « la plus socialement valorisante des crédulités en circulation (p. 60). »
Aussi, davantage que la cité des masques, Venise est celle des miroirs, on y vient pour s’y voir : Venise « donne à chacun licence de faire la roue. (p. 75) » – le touriste y subissant un traitement esthétothérapeutique.
Moins caustique qu’il n’y paraît de prime abord, Debray dresse le constat cinglant d’une ville avant-courrière du futur européen le plus probable: « Peut être ce microcosme égocentrique qui a toujours eu quelques siècles d’avance, qui a inventé le ghetto bien avant les camps (…) et la lettre de change avant le cash-flow, est-elle en train d’inventer sous nos yeux endormis l’Europe insulaire de demain, réduite à son pittoresque. (p. 90) ».
Examen sans pitié d’un Debray définitivement (?) « revenu » de Venise, vous faisant constater que les pigeons de la place Saint-Marc – cette véritable mise en abîme de la cité – ont ce je-ne-sais-quoi d’êtres supérieurs.
Examen sans pitié d’un Debray définitivement (?) « revenu » de Venise, vous faisant constater que les pigeons de la place Saint-Marc – cette véritable mise en abyme de la cité – ont ce je-ne-sais-quoi d’êtres supérieurs.
December 13, 2022
Ensayo lúcido sobre la decandencia de Venecia. El texto hace una comparativa entre la vitalidad de Nápoles donde la gente reza, con la quietud de Venecia en donde sobran las iglesias pero falta gente devota. El turismo, la economía, el arte está muy presenre. Contro Venezia es un grito desesperado por uan ciudad que se está vaciando. Aquel museo "a cielo abierto", pierde su alma. Debray tiene una mirada interesante sobre esta ciudad. Lo recomiendo para leer como guía, te acerca mucho más a la realidad de la zona que cualquier texto meramente turístico. La edición de Wetlands es hermosa.
June 14, 2008
I like the idea, that tourism has become nothing but an obstacle for culture to pursue. though it reads like a fake travel guide. which is stupid. We'll see.
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