As the complete non-response to what are only "calumnies," EdN #12,[1] refrains from speaking about the occupation of the Sorbonne and the organizational aspect of its own harmful [nuisante] activity. It is sufficient for it to describe the first as not having been the occupation participated in by the Enrages-SI Committee of [19]68 (but who ever claimed this?) -- by opportunely deforming, and in the smallest details, what one calls a "rough sketch of an attempted occupation," in the way that one refers to the "appearance of a riot" -- so as to hide the essential: that it mattered to use to refuse [Guy] Fargette's detractions, and then the EdN's approval of them, because "it is better to try what one perceives as possible, rather than not doing anything."[2] Still a forest that tries to hide the tree.
As for the organizational aspect -- their "shared activity" on a :limited terrain" -- one now sees more clearly what is served by, for example, the abandonment of the ad hominem critique (in this sense, the History of the SI[3] will also constitute a response in itself to this very imposture). What presents itself as a "surpassing" of the SI is already constituted, even more dangerously that L'Antenne,[4] as a vast enterprise of disinformation (an enterprise worthy of the current spectacle, which one will encounter, I suppose, in your Comments on . . .[5]). Having become the best ally of what it claims to combat, this coagulation of the pro-situ milieu -- which will not likely collapse on its own, it seems to me, in the short term -- can be, like an objective trap set to stop a new departure of radical critique, the Trojan Horse that future struggles will unveil.
You will certainly say to me that we still aren't there yet. And that, obviously, the dissolution of the SI could not indefinitely prevent what it refused for itself (becoming the most recent form of the revolutionary spectacle) from reconstituting itself on the outside and worse. But one is forced to ascertain that our pamphlet,[6] and the relatively clever mystifications of [EdN] #12, will not suffice to demolish the phenomenon.
When this group[7] of neo-Stalinists, after ambushing me in front of my door, now takes itself to be Andre Breton and compares me to Ehrenbourg,[8] this isn't simply a matter of a fortuitous inversion: this lie, in itself, summarizes the EdN's entire enterprise. The communique issued by the Irradiated Committee[9] on 11 February [1988] seems to announce other, similar, "spectacular arguments." Thus, the following week, at 4 o'clock in the morning, there was a telephone call, supposedly from the police, that tried to draw me outside of my apartment -- lacking any better place (a parking lot, for example[10]) -- under the pretext of neighbors who had made noise in the building, a "burglary" in progress. . . .
The Report (...) with respect to F. Goldbronn and B. Largueze[11] informs us that Goldbronn had already criticized the Stalinist style of the Irradiated-Nuisances, in their relations to practice. But as we are in complete disagreement with Goldbronn about the rest, we refused all amalgamation with him. While the Resolution of the 20 December lets it be understood that the enemies of our enemies are inevitably our friends.
But I imagine that we will have the occasion to speak of all this again. I hope that you carry yourself well.
Best wishes,[1] The twelfth issue of the Encyclopedia of Nuisances.
[2] See letter from Jaime Semprun to Jean-Pierre Baudet dated 2 March 1987.
[3] Written by Jean-Francois Martos and published by Editions Gerard Lebovici in 1989.
[4] In 1985, a publisher named L'Antenne came out with White Book on New Caledonia, which appears to have been written by Serge Thion, a "historical revisionist" (Holocaust-denier).
[5] Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, which Guy Debord was then writing.
[6] The Encyclopedia of Powers, published December 1987.
[7] The word employed here, muete, seems to be a typo (?). We have thus inserted a word that fits the sense of the sentence.
[8] Ilya Ehrenbourg (1891-1967), a Russian writer who literally came to blows with Andre Breton on 14 June 1935.
[9] The Irradiated of All Countries, Unite Committee.
[10] A reference to the assassination of Gerard Lebovici, who was ambushed and shot to death in a parking garage on 5 March 1984.
[11] Author's note: an "internal" document. [Translator's note: Frederic Goldbronn (a filmmaker) and Brigette Largueze (a sociologist), both Leftists.]
(Published in Jean-Francois Martos, Correspondance avec Guy Debord, Le fin mot de l'Histoire, August 1998. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! July 2007. Footnotes by the translator, except where noted.)