Philippe Muray's 'Causes toujours' collects his subversive newspaper chronicles

A posthumous collection of Philippe Muray's newspaper columns, 'Causes toujours', has been published, gathering his regular contributions to the French regional daily La Montagne from May 2000 to February 2006. Muray, a longtime collaborator of art press, took over the column from his predecessor Alexandre Vialatte. The pieces, written in the final years of his life, display his characteristic ironic and corrosive style, targeting both major historical events—such as the Iraq war, conflicts in former Yugoslavia, and the election of a new pope—and seemingly trivial daily occurrences like heatwaves, TV series, football matches, Paris Plage, rave parties, and cigarette packaging labels. Muray's central philosophical battle, as described by Jean Baudrillard in a necrology reprinted as preface, was against the erasure of evil and negativity from human thought and life. Baudrillard coined the phrase 'extension du Domaine de la TERREUR' to encapsulate Muray's critique. The collection reaffirms Muray's positions as a staunch anti-European, anti-American, skeptic of contemporary art, critic of human rights discourse and the International Criminal Court, and an early opponent of same-sex marriage. The book is published by Descartes & Cie / La Montagne.