Alice Becker-Ho

French poet

Alice Becker Ho, also known as Alice Debord (born August 6, 1941), is a Chinese born French intellectual closely associated with the Situationist International. Among other works, she has written poetry, a scholarly study of slang, and a travel memoir. The widow of Guy Debord, she is best known for being the editor of his complete letters, which have been published in eight volumes.

Becker Ho was born in Shanghai to a Chinese mother and a father originally from Alsace Lorraine, a territory under dispute between France and Germany until the end of the First World War. In 1947, claiming French citizenship, her father moved the family to France.

In 1963 Becker Ho became involved in the Situationist International. She began what would be a long lasting relationship with Guy Debord; they married August 5, 1972 and were together until his death in 1994. They co authored Le Jeu de la Guerre (A Game of War) in 1987, an expanded edition of which was republished by éditions Gallimard, Paris, in 2006. An English edition appeared in 2008. Becker Ho has published several works of poetry in French: D'azur au triangle vidé de sable (Cognac: Le Temps qu'il fait, 2000); Paroles de Gitans (Paris: Albin Michel, 2000); and Au Pays du sommeil paradoxal (Cognac: Le Temps qu'il fait, 2000). She has also written a three volume study of Western European slang. The first volume, Les Princes du Jargon (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), was translated into English as The Princes of Jargon by John McHale and published in 2004 by Edwin Mellen Press. The other two volumes, L’Essence du Jargon and Du Jargon, héritier en bastardie (Paris: Gallimard), have not appeared in English. She also authored Au Pays du Sommeil Paradoxal (translated as In Slumberpuzzleland) and Là s'en vont les seigneuries, an account of her travels with Guy Debord in Rello, Spain, with photos by Emmanuel Rioufol (2003). Further works include 2004's Le premier ghetto ou l'exemplarité vénitienne, a book about the Venetian Ghetto, translated into English by John McHale and published by 1968 Press in 2022, and 2018's La part maudite dans l'œuvre de François Villon. After Debord's death in 1994, Becker Ho began the process of assembling and editing his letters. Starting in 1999, they were published by Fayard as eight volumes of Correspondance, the final volume appearing in 2010.