"The bourgeois parliamentary Republic having been swept away in France without any resistance, revolutionary intellectuals have denounced with a single voice the collapse of the workers' parties, the unions, the somnambulant ideologies and the myths of the Left. The only thing that has appeared unworthy of being mentioned is their own collapse." -- Internationale Situationniste.[1]
Implicitly, the EdN [Encyclopedia of Nuisances] has always wanted to present itself -- with a kind of false modesty -- as the worthy and legitimate inheritor of situationist thought, the "thought of the collapse of a world," as Debord and Sanguinetti described it in 1972,[2] and it is also in this form that it has generally been perceived by both its adepts and by its detractors. Thus the EdN has, over the course of the last two decades of the century that has just come to an end, not only assured the continuity of the theoretico-practical work begun by the Situationist International in the 1950s and 1960s, but has also permitted its surpassing as well, especially by disengaging from its "modernist" illusions. In this representation, the EdN would constitute the becoming-truth of the SI. But, in historical reality, the EdN -- far from inacrnating this "thought of the collapse of a world" and its profound renewal -- has instead revealed itself to be a collapse when faced with the world.
Thus, despite its wish to again take up the situationist project of "reinventing the revolution," the EdN has from the beginning insisted on the necessity of taking into consideration the diverse obstacles to such a reprise. According to the EdN, one has seen a real "historical turning point" that is characterized by the reinforcement of social alienation in all of its aspects, supported by the systematic destruction of "all that, in the lives of individuals, is capable of supporting a resumption of critical practice: language, behaviors, the urban terrain, memory -- all that was a stategic reserve for the revolution in the clandestinity of the lived everyday."[3] It is no longer a question of the incessant overthrow of the social structures that capitalism engenders through its own development and which, according to Marx's celebrated phrase, opens "an era of social revolution," but rather an operation founded on an "explicit program (...) of producing an undivertible [indetournable world, prohibiting for eternity all revolutionary reappropriation," which the State has tasked itself with executing so as to definitively close the history of revolution, if not history itself.[4] From such an analysis of the historical situation,. a central fact constantly obsesses the EdN and determines the orientation of its discourse: the uneasiness and feelings of powerlessness among its contemporaries, which impede the possibilities for revolt.[5] With sad faces and a glum air, the protagonists of the members of the EdN -- knights of social contestation wandering the ghastly lands [les terres gastes] of the modern world -- see themselves in a great quest for disappeared critical thought, the Grail of the new times that escapes them: "Our enterprise is no doubt extremely ambitious but, in the manner in which we have exposed its historical necessity, we have -- we hope -- convinced the reader that we possess the qualities required for conducting it for the best. We are so little presumptuous that we do not claim to be equally intelligent on all the points in which it is necessary for to reappropriate for ourselves the knowledge monopolized by this mode of production, but we uniquely have the inclination to advance as scouts for the social movement that must accomplish this task in practice. It is a question of a difficult enterprise, but we flatter ourselves that we will see its importance recognized by its enemies as well as by its partisans by the end of the century."[6]
Unfortunately for these valiant knights, the only importance recognized in their noble enterprise is that of having contributed to the quasi-general renunciation of the "revolutionary project that haunts history." Lacking a Grail, they have only come up with a vulgar magic powder. In 1993, Jaime Seprun, one of the founders of this new brotherhood of the Round Table, serious as a pope, could thus affirm: " Decidedly, we do not want to say that it is useless to overthrow market society: it is collapsing before our eyes. We should let it collapse and make an inventory of the tools that will be necessary to reconstruct the world."[7] This shopkeepers' fable thenceforth works as a "critical theory"; the requirement for a revolutionary movement thus makes room for the hollowest commonplaces that only several dustbins of history could manage to swallow. Thus, it is no longer a question of "advancing as scouts for the social movement" -- which already had a boy scout[8] quality -- but "to begin to save oneself,"[9] "to cultivate one's garden,"[10] "to know oneself"[11] or even to invite "each person to make his own arrangements."[12]
Thus, here "revolutionary theory" succumbs under the weight of the powerlessness and unease that it claimed to combat. This simple fact already suffices to reveal the nature of the little EdN enterprise, its properly "pro-situ" character (in the sense given to this term by Debord and Sanguinetti in 1972[13]). As a result, one could expound at great length on the psychological confusions from which it proceeds. But the most important thing still remains the fact that the EdN appears as the revelation of the general decomposition of the revolutionary movement that was sketched out round 1968 and of which the situationists were among the principal protagonists.
The situationist movement was certainly not born with May '68, but its history remains indissolubly linked to it. From the beginning, all of the SI's activity aimed at showing that the modern world -- despite the diverse spectacular surfaces of a society of abundance and happiness in consumption -- could actually fall under the blows of revolutionary critique. May '68 not only confirmed this critique, but also allowed the situationists to make it more widely known.[14] Moreover, from their own avowals, they recognized what they had always advocated in the revolution or at least in this emerging expression of the revolution: "The occupations movement was the rough sketch of a 'situationist' revolution, but it was only a sketch of the practice of a revolution and the situationist consciousness of history. It was at this moment that, internationally, a generation began to be situationist."[15] But this generation hardly began to engage in this practice and have this consciousness, and for those who wanted to pursue the sketch-out work, it was perhaps necessary to ask about its finalities. The situationism that developed after this date essentially showed itself to be a miserable ideological phenomenon. The fact that one called it "situationist," "pro-situationist," "post-situationist" or anything else matter little; it is necessary to simply note that it was characterized by a fascination with the SI, by which it wanted to be inspired so as to edify its "projects."[16] But this very fascination had always prevented the many groups that were formed from going further than parodic repetition of this organization. And their search to acquire an aura similar to that of the SI could only prove to be unfortunate. The historical evolution of the situationist movement after 1968, that is to say, the dissolution of the SI between 1970 and 1972,[17] was that of decomposition. One one side, the principal protagonists (Debord, Vaneigem) were almost only cavalier, each one developing their singularity on the basis of a personal body of work that wanted to be the logical consequence of the collective work of the SI; on the other side, a certain number of followers attempted to take over, always with the same lack of success.[18] In these conditions, a generation finally remained "pro-situationist" only.[19]
Of course, it was on these bases that the EdN formed in 1984: the flagrant failure of the situationist movement following the disappearance of the SI in 1972.[20] What was announced as the revolutionary theory of modern times had never seized "the masses" nor "the proletariat," just a few heads. With the EdN, there appeared the first "pro-situ" self-critique. In covert words, the EdN denounced the wanderings and errors of the "pro-situ" milieu, principally the conduct that had brought it to real political isolation and that the EdN claimed was still essentially avant-garde activity, an activity of "purists who withdraw haughtily under the tent of the totality" and scorn diverse particular struggles and consequently abstain from participating in them. But if the EdN thus pursued several truths about the situation of what it preferred to call a "radical" current, it did so from within this disastrous situation in which it was placed; from then on, the EdN found itself unable to grasp the profound causes of such a failure. Its condemnation of the degeneration of the so-called "radical" movement remained essentially centered upon the psychological weaknesses of the "pro-situ." Its first impulse wasn't to break with such a grotesque movement, but to groom it by trying to restore to it a reality principle. "The infantile disorder of situationism" thus found its Leninism and its Freudianism. In the mission that it had assigned itself, the EdN (as one can see) sought to restore the authority of several totems, principally that of the legendary purity of situationist theory.[21] Its historical reason for existing thus found itself, essentially, in ideological reaction.
This reaction did not take place by chance. Thus, in one of its first texts, the EdN clearly indicated what precipitated its constitution: "In 1984, the assassination of Gerard Lebovici, publisher of George Orwell, among others, and the campaign of paid informing undertaken against Guy Debord showed that the liquidation of social critique is the order of the day and, if need be, against its few declared partisans." One certainly did not kill the head of Editions Champ Libre to prevent him from publishing the celebrated prophetic novel by Orwell,[22] but it is clear that such a murder could be read as a sign of troubled and threatening times. A reading of this sign also shows that, in what remained of the situationist movement, Guy Debord could hardly figure as the representative of its critical intelligence. Certainly, from 1972 to 1984 Debord was quite discreet (few new texts),[23] but -- through the production of a film such as In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978) -- he also showed that he had not stopped at the conclusions he had reached when, in 1972, he put an end to the history of the SI: "I must at first reject the falsest of legends, according to which I would be a kind of theoretician of revolution. They, the little men, have at the moment the air of believing that I have grasped things through theory, that I am a constructer of theory, of a scholarly architecture that one could inhabit as soon as one knows the address and of which one could even slightly modify one or two bases, ten years later, and by moving three sheets of paper, to thereby attain the definitive perfection of the theory that would perform their salvation." It is no less the case that it was around this "falsest of legends" that the EdN found its real motive. In the isolation and distress in which those who formed this famous Encyclopedia found themselves, Debord's thought appeared as a last hope, a quasi-perfect theory that in 1984 was urgent to save, when Debord became the target of a calumny-filled press campaign, as one would do for an animal species in danger of disappearance. The formation of the EdN was a question, neither more nor less, of a profession of faith in the Debordian orientation of the evolution of situationist ideas. By contributing to the writing of several articles in the EdN's journal, Debord had perhaps momentarily believed that he had found allies in his consistent project of deepening and actualizing his reflections, but -- by no doubt recognizing "little men" in the EdN -- he was led to rapidly distance himself from them.[24] "Above all," this group seeks the old public of the pro-situs, who were always their commensals, by playing them music that they love," he declared in a letter that is now known.[25] But he did not perceive at the time that this ridiculous grouping was not uniquely a resurgence of the "pro-situ" phenomenon, but announced the transformation of it into a pro-Debordism that would later become the ideology of the "sixty-eighter" intellectuals converted [back] into worldly skeptics. Thus, Debord noted that "The discourse of the EdN, which does not envision a new departure of the revolution (...) is only abstract critiques of the restoration, greatly modernized by the accumulation of repressive procedures, but not at all new as theory, after '68" and that "the EdN wanted to be -- was actually, until now -- owners of the sub-critique of such an era of restoration. (In the political sense of the word, they are indignant liberals who pretend to discover unexpected and unheard-of excesses.)" Nevertheless, this sub-critique found its cement in his own personal legend, so well that it finally contributed to the dogmatization of his own thought, of which the EdN is a flagrant example.[26]
[1] Translator's note: "L'effondrement des intellectuels revolutionnaires" ("The Collapse of the Revolutionary Intellectuals"), December 1958.
[2] "Theses on the Situationist International and Its Times," in The Veritable Split in the International.
[3] "History of Ten Years," Encyclopedia of Nuisances.
[4] "Preliminary Discourse."
[5] "When we think about these ten years, in the form that they have given to the spirit of the times, to the web that have have woven, on which the figures of unconsciousness embroider their foreseeable lines, we at first think of powerlessness, then unease. The powerlessness of the individuals whose entire lives are more than ever subjected to the delirious requirements of the current system of production and to its pitiful self-justifying gossip, like their false cynicism and their affectation of euphoria, are only made more manifest. The unease that seizes them when they see, and they see it almost every moment, that the compensations that they have received for their renunciation are both very poor material satisfactions and extremely precarious: because everywhere they are poisoned by the reality of the alienated labor that is at their origin and their proliferation only spreads poverty and noxiousness." History of Ten Years.
[6] "Preliminary Discourse."
[7] J. Semprun, "Dialogues on the Completion of Modern Times."
[8] Translator's note: English in the original.
[9] "Remarks on the Paralysis of December 1995."
[10] "Remarks on Genetically Modified Agriculture and the Degradation of the Species."
[11] J.-M. Mandosio, "After the Collapse: Notes on Neo-Technological Utopia."
[12] "In the Name of Reason," tract of 12 January 2001.
[13] See especially the "Theses on the Situationist International and Its Time." More particular, one can retain, in the same text, page 47: "The pro-situs erect their impatience and their powerlessness as criteria for history and the revolution; and consequently they almost never progress beyond their closed greenhouse, in which nothing really changes. In the final analysis, all of the pro-situs are blinded by the SI's success, which for them is truly something spectacular, and which they bitterly envy."
[14] It is obviously necessary to relativize this assertion by recalling that the situationist influence on the social movements of the epoch were very marginal. On the other hand, it is necessary to recall that it was often present in the most radical expressions of struggle, which was, alas, too rare. [Translator's note: the first assertion is contradicted by Greil Marcus' study of the influence of the situationists on the British social movement called "punk," while the second assertion might apply to the 1950s, but certainly not to the 1960s or 1970s.]
[15] The Veritable Split in the International.
[16] Translator's note: We can't accept this. Situationism can or, rather, must be differentiated from "pro-situationist" because, unlike the former (which deliberately seeks to change situationist theory and practice so that it becomes inoffensive), the latter seeks to leave situationist theory and practice perfectly intact, which has the unintended effect of rendering it inoffensive.
[17] The "self-dissolution" of the SI proclaimed by Debord and Sanguinetti only ratified an internal process of decomposition of the SI that perhaps began before 1968, but which did not become obvious until the organizational crisis of 1970-1971. [Translator's note: in the absence of a definition of "decomposition," it is impossible to evaluate the truthfulness of such a claim.]
[18] Translator's note: This is appallingly inaccurate. Debord and Vaneigem were most definitely not on the same side: in fact, they were the principal antagonists in the "orientation debate" of 1970-1972. Far from being "cavalier," Debord was dead serious, and had been about the issues at stake in this "debate" since 1966; Vaneigem was simply silent. Other than the books each had published in 1967, neither man had a "personal body of work" that existed outside the collective framework of the SI. As for their respective "followers," they certainly didn't try to "take over": in fact, none of them did anything other than sit on their laurels. That's why issue #13 of Internationale Situationniste never came out.
[19] Translator's note: We can't accept this. If a whole generation of people remained "pro-situationist," this wasn't the fault of the members of the Situationist International: it was their own fault. As a matter of fact, Debord dissolved the organization precisely so that this generation could no longer use the SI as an object for spectacular contemplation and self-justification.
[20] Translator's note: This is not accurate. As the authors will note in the next paragraph of their text, the EdN formed in response to the assassination of Gerard Lebovici on 5 March 1984 and the outrageous slander to which Debord was subjected in its immediate aftermath. And so the EdN was both a defensive act (to defend Debord) and an offensive one (to punish either Lebovici's killers or the society that allowed them to remain uncaught or both). One wonders: what D. Caboret, P. Dumontier, P. Garrone and R. Labarriere do at the time? Did they demand that Lebovici's murderers be found and prosecuted? Did they speak up against the scurrilous conduct of the French press? As for the situationist movement, it did not "fail" in the aftermath of the dissolution of the SI. Despite -- or precisely because of -- the absence of a situationist organization, the movement (or, shall we say, the influence of situationist ideas) grew quite strong in Italy, and had a certain role in diverse events in Portugal, Spain and England. As one can see from the letters that Debord wrote after 1972, he could have re-formed the SI at any time and it would have included members in Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, England, Holland and France.
[21] Translator's note: The SI never saw its own theory as "pure." Here it is apparently necessary to remind the authors of what they themselves relayed in the Introduction to this very volume: "'You know that a creation is never pure,' Debord wrote in 1957."
[22] Translator's note: No, of course not, but "one" might well have killed Lebovici because -- in January 1984 -- he had published Jacques Mesrine's autobiography, which had been officially banded only five years previously.
[23] Translator's note: A ridiculous assertion. Between 1972 and 1984, Debord directed three films (two of them feature-length); authored the Preface to the Fourth Italian Edition of "The Society of the Spectacle," an appeal concerning imprisoned libertarians in Spain (which succeeded in getting these prisoners released), and a great many letters, some of which were published in Editions Champ Libre: Correspondance, Vol I; translated Jorge Manrique's poetry and a text from 1937 from Spanish into French, and translated Sanguinetti's "Censor" pamphlet from Italian into French; created a cabinet game called kriegspiel; etc. etc.
[24] Translator's note: Here the authors are referring to the letter from Debord to Jean-Pierre Baudet and Jean-Francois Martos, which was written three years after the foundation of the EdN. This was hardly a "rapid" turn-around on Debord's part.
[25] Letter from Debord to Baudet and Martos, 9 September 1987, Correspondances Martos-Debord. [Translator's note: as a matter of fact, the name of this volume is My Correspondence with Guy Debord. Furthermore, the authors do not mention that this letter was written to assist in the drafting of Baudet and Martos's Encyclopedia of Powers, which was the very first critique of the EdN and -- despite its many faults -- much better than theirs.]
[26] Translator's note: This text doesn't end here; indeed, we have only translated one-fourth of this chapter, and this chapter is only one of three (equally long) chapters in this book. But what we have translated so far is so poorly informed and so boring that we refuse to waste any more of our time on it.
Written by D. Caboret, P. Dumontier, P. Garrone and R. Labarriere. Published in Paris, 2001. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! 28 September 2007. All footnotes by the authors, except where noted.