Ken Knabb – författare

A stunning autobiographical account of the fight for freedom in Ho Chi Min''s Vietnam.

Guy Debord was the founder of the Situationist International, the notorious avant-garde group that helped trigger the May 1968 revolt in France, which brought the entire country to a standstill for several weeks. His book The Society of the Spectacle, originally published in Paris in 1967, has been translated into more than twenty other languages and is arguably the most important radical work of the twentieth century. Ken Knabb's meticulous new translation is the first edition in any language to include extensive annotations, clarifying the historical allusions and revealing the sources of Debord's quotations and 'detournements.' Contrary to popular misconceptions, Debord's book is neither an ivory tower 'philosophical' discourse nor a mere expression of 'protest.' This makes the book more of a challenge, but it is also why it remains so pertinent more than half a century after its original publication, while countless other social theories and intellectual fads have come and gone. It has, in fact, become even more pertinent than ever, because the spectacle has become more all-pervading and glaringly obvious than ever. As Debord noted in his follow-up work, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1988), 'spectacular domination has succeeded in raising an entire generation moulded to its laws.' Debord's book remains the best guidebook to understanding that Mold and breaking it.

In 1957 a few European avant-garde groups came together to form the Situationist International. Picking up where the dadaists and surrealists had left off, the situationists challenged people's passive conditioning with carefully calculated scandals and the playful tactic of detournement. Seeking a more extreme social revolution than was dreamed of by most leftists, they developed an incisive critique of the global spectacle-commodity system and of its 'Communist' pseudo-opposition, and their new methods of agitation helped trigger the May 1968 revolt in France. Since then situationist theories and tactics have continued to inspire radical currents all over the world. The Situationist International Anthology is the most comprehensive and accurately translated collection of situationist writings in English. It presents a rich variety of articles, leaflets, graffiti, and internal documents, ranging from experiments in 'psychogeography' to lucid analyses of the Watts riot, the Vietnam War, the Prague Spring, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and other crises and upheavals of the sixties. For this new edition the translations have all been fine-tuned and over 100 pages of new material have been added.

Guy Debord, founder of the Situationist International, fomenter of the May 1968 revolt in France, and author of The Society of the Spectacle, was also the creator of six tantalizingly inaccessible films. Technically and aesthetically, these films are among the most brilliantly innovative works in the history of the cinema. But they are not so much 'works of art' as carefully calculated subversive provocations. Following the still-unsolved Mafia-style assassination of the films' financer and producer in 1984, all the films were withdrawn from circulation for nearly twenty years. One of the films is an adaptation of Debord's book The Society of the Spectacle. Others evoke his adventures in the bohemian underworld of 1950s Paris, which he contrasts with the increasingly ignorant, ugly, and alienated world that has since been produced by modern capitalism. In each case Debord simultaneously attacks the film medium itself, challenging spectators to create their own adventures instead of passively consuming the pseudo-adventures that are presented to them. Ken Knabb's meticulous translation of all the filmscripts (which Debord's widow Alice asked him to make to accompany the long-awaited rerelease of the films, beginning with a complete retrospective at the Venice Film Festival) is supplemented with numerous illustrations and documents and elucidated by extensive annotations. For this new edition Knabb has revised the translations, updated the filmography, and added the scathing video that Debord made shortly before his death: Guy Debord, His Art and His Time

'It may seem absurd to talk about revolution. But all the alternatives assume the continuation of the present system, which is even more absurd.' Best known for his meticulous translations of numerous works by Guy Debord and the Situationist International, Ken Knabb is also the author of numerous radical texts. The Joy of Revolution is widely considered his masterpiece. While there have been numerous histories of past revolutions and countless debates about the merits and drawbacks of different radical tactics, it would be difficult to name a single book that more clearly and concisely explores the problems and possibilities of a modern, situationist-type revolution. Beginning with a brief overview of the absurdity of the present society and the failures of various efforts to change it, it examines the pros and cons of a wide range of radical tactics, first in the context of 'normal' or 'ordinary' conditions, then in the very different context of radical situations - those rare breakthroughs where numbers of people start to call everything into question and real change becomes possible. The book then concludes with some speculations on how a global liberated society might work, and what it might be like to live in. For this new edition, Knabb has updated his book (originally published in 1997) and appended several of his more recent texts, including a series of articles on the Occupy movement, in which he was an enthusiastic participant.