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Ken Knabb,
the Situationist International,
and the American Counterculture
The Originality of the American Left and Counterculture
The United States is very different from Europe while at the same time being
the quintessence of it. There is nothing surprising about this, since it was
constituted from continuous immigrations of European peoples and ideas — peoples
and ideas that
came to America precisely because they did not fit in in their countries of
origin. The United States was formed out of what was unacceptable in Europe.
It’s a synthesis of all the excesses of Europe.
This American “extremism” nevertheless has a certain moderate,
level-headed quality compared with Europe, where there have
traditionally been greater temptations to try to make everyone march to the same beat. E
pluribus unum (“Out of many, one”) remains the motto of the
United States. The American left thus appears both more radical and more
“good-natured” than elsewhere.
The workers movement in the USA was also a synthesis of the European workers movements. The main theorists and activists intersected there toward the end of
the nineteenth century, following
extensive migrations triggered by European repressions or by poverty. It is no
accident that May 1, 1886, in Chicago became an international holiday.
There is yet another aspect of the United States that is generally forgotten:
It emerged from a revolution that was never crushed. This is quite different
from the countries of Europe, which fall into three different groups: those that
went through such revolutions earlier but with less firmly established constitutional principles
(the Netherlands, Switzerland, Great Britain); those that have
experienced cycles of revolutions and counterrevolutions, such as France; and
those that have arrived at “democratic regimes” only very belatedly, and often
under foreign influence. In this European context, revolution is often seen as the minimal threshold
short of which nothing is possible; and reformism is seen as the alternative.
The IWW slogan, “Building a new world within the shell of the old,” reflects a
more original state of mind.
On the other hand, the United States for a long time gave the impression of
being culturally primitive. This is not to say that it lacked great
authors, philosophers or artists (Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson, Charles Sanders
Peirce, William James), but that its culture retained an element of the wildness of the
New World. Concord, the capital of American culture, was a small rural
town located not far from neolithic tribes.
American culture, thought, and social criticism are “wild” in comparison to the “urbanity” (in both senses of the
term) of those of Europe. Kenneth Rexroth, one of the fathers of
the American counterculture and the person who certainly had the greatest
influence on Ken Knabb, was a perfect example of this America. He had
been in the IWW, he had worked as a farmer and a lumberjack, and yet this
exile from all civilization wrote all the more profoundly about the most diverse expressions of world culture.
The Situationist International and the American Counterculture
It is often forgotten that the Situationist International (SI) had its
origins in the artistic avant-garde, more or less in the trajectory of the
surrealist movement and the COBRA group (derived from the initial letters of
Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam). The situationists’ originality consisted in a
radical renewal of the relations between art and social struggle. This is what
made for its success and, less visibly, also its failure.
Its success? The extent to which some of the SI’s basic positions had
long-term consequences, shaking conventional ideas with an implacable logic
whose power was at least intuitively evident. Its failure? The fact that these
corrosive effects did not notably modify the direction of social struggles.
The relations between culture and the revolutionary workers movement have
always been ambiguous. Sometimes culture is seen as submissive to the ruling
class and is thus viewed with suspicion; at other times it is
seen as a sanctuary, a space sheltered from class divisions. Sometimes artists or
intellectuals are suspected of being “class enemies”;
at other times they are expected to be “socially
engaged” and to put the potential impact of their cultural position to good
use, though it is not always clear how their own pursuits could be expected to
give rise to such an engagement.
From the very beginning, the SI put itself above and beyond this double
impasse. How so? First, by criticizing art as a separate activity, as a
“market” of art separated from other aspects of life (other aspects that were
themselves being increasingly reduced to market terms). This commodified separation
was
also becoming increasingly “spectacular,” confining each person in strictly
defined roles as producers of the commodity spectacle, or as consumers or
clients or spectators of it. Secondly, by producing “situationist” works and
theories, i.e. works and theories that were not prisoners of the situations
in which they were produced, but that tackled such situations in
order to change them.
It is in this latter regard that the SI’s failure is most evident, since very
little has actually been changed. But “changed” in what way? To ask this
question is to realize that this failure has also been a success: the
fact that situationist productions have proved so indigestible that neither the art markets nor
the ruling modes of thought have been capable of exploiting them or of completely hiding
them.
The Subversive Power of the Counterculture . . .
The SI was a contemporary of the Beat Generation. I don’t claim that these
two phenomena were equivalent, or even very similar; but they do at least have in
common the fact that they were the two most significant intellectual adventures
of the sixties. In many respects the American counterculture was
already very antispectacular, without knowing it. It nevertheless ended up creating its
own spectacle, a spectacle whose evident global success ultimately served as a
significant reinforcement of American imperialism.
It was antispectacular in the sense that it openly saw itself as a
critique of the various separations of life, rather than itself being a
separate aspect or “market.” It represented a much freer manner of living
and thinking. In this respect, as with the SI, the borders between culture and
social engagement were blurred, as were the borders between creators and audiences.
Unfortunately, the borders were also blurred between changes of life and mere
changes of lifestyle.
The American counterculture was also much more of a “popular,” grassroots
movement than in Europe, filled with a more vibrant poetry of the everyday than
anything in Europe apart from the best folksongs. This was reinforced by the
fact that the United States has never had a truly “elite culture,” but only a
“spontaneous” culture, on one hand, and an industrialized mass culture on the
other.
Genuine French (or European) culture is of course quite different from the illusory
images of “elite culture,” mass culture, folklore, or even the odd
notion of
“mass elitism.” It exists, but it is not identified. Thus,
in Europe the SI and other similar movements are very difficult to
pigeonhole in museums or within academic categories.
If the student movements of 1968 provided the SI with a certain audience,
this encounter was full of misunderstandings. In any case, the SI did not
succeed in breaking through the rigid frameworks of militantism or
culture, or in overthrowing the pontificate of structuralism, or in undermining the habits of consumerism.
The counterculture in the United States had a far broader and more profound
impact, spreading into every aspect of life — ghetto struggles, class relations,
the freedom and dignity of minorities, artistic, literary, scientific and
technical invention... Even the most conservative American citizens could
scarcely deny its stimulating and regenerative effects. It would be equally
difficult to deny the fact that it ended up being absorbed into the commodity spectacle.
. . . and Its Unconscious Critique of the Spectacle
In the sixties a wind of freedom and imagination blew across America, particularly on
the West Coast. It could be summed up in the eminently concise phrase “Do it!” It is
disturbing to realize that this freedom and imagination have ended up being
packaged within a spectacular industry that plays an increasingly enormous and
strategic role in the global market.
The underground ways of “getting by” engendered alternative lifestyles and
economies that have ended up profoundly altering the dominant ones. This is
also true to a certain extent even of the
development of the personal computer, the Internet, and open-source
programming.
Ken Knabb’s Public Secrets is one of the works that best understand
and describe this dual process. To be sure, he doesn’t do this like a
sociologist or a “specialist.” The social sciences forget that if objective
observation is an important factor of knowledge, experience is an even more
important one, because in the final analysis experience reveals to us what can
and should be observed. Knabb speaks on the basis of his own engaged experiences, however modest
they may be.
The American counterculture was antispectacular without knowing it. Knabb
knew it. He also wanted it to know it. His first real “action” was
rather modest: the distribution of a leaflet at a 1970 public reading by the poet
Gary Snyder.
“We don’t need poet-priests” was both the title and the substance of this
disruption. In Public Secrets Knabb recounts the event in the most candid
detail. It is clear that the author was criticizing himself as much
as anyone else, inasmuch as he too had been a fan of Snyder. And that if his critique attained its aim and
succeeded in changing anyone, it was first of all himself.
Such remarks may seem ironic. But Knabb is right to stress the fact that one does
not really learn something without being personally implicated in it.
This empiricist and subjectivist choice has often been misunderstood, leading
certain situs and pro-situs to become rather obnoxious spiritual advisors. This misunderstanding has been further reinforced
by the overly simplistic opposition between “life” and “survival” cultivated
by the SI, notably in Vaneigem’s The Revolution of Everyday Life.
All coercive systems offer survival in exchange for subordination. The
commodity spectacle, however, hides the brutality of this exchange behind a
culture of petty envies and trivial utilitarian needs that no longer have much
to do with literal survival.
This results in one of the blind-spots of situationist theories, a blind-spot
that tends to reduce the critique of militantism — as activity separated from
life — to a sort of hedonistic antimorality that resembles a flip side of
traditional morality. This misunderstanding goes back to the foundation of the
SI.
Changing Life
The SI was founded in 1957 as an artistic avant-garde. It consisted of
painters, architects, filmmakers, etc. From the middle of the sixties on, these
origins were played down and it began to appear as an extreme leftist movement
only a little more bizarre than other similar movements. Far from trying to hide this ambiguity, it
took ironic pride in presenting itself as a vanguard of the working class.
In reality, however, the SI had been born out of a break with surrealism, out of a
critique and supersession of surrealism (and of art in general). This critique
preceded, and ultimately laid the groundwork for, the situationists’ later critique of
“Communist” and “revolutionary” movements and institutions.
We could sum up the SI’s position by slightly modifying Marx’s statement:
Artists have only depicted the world, the point now is to change
it. In this perspective, the situationists were artists in the same sense that
Marx was a philosopher.
There’s no reason to limit ourselves to philosophy and art. Science, too,
like many other forms of human endeavor, aims to change the world. This
desire for change does not imply ignoring or rejecting philosophy, art,
science, etc.; it is simply a matter of criticizing their separation within the
commodity spectacle.
Needless to say, one changes nothing by merely ceasing to paint, to film,
to
think, to work, to investigate, etc. The point, obviously, is that one must act in such a way
that such productions and discoveries do not slip into the framework of supply and demand, into
the circulation of abstract values that do nothing but quantify submission.
Nor is it even a matter of refusing to buy or sell things that have to pay
for themselves, such as the journal in which this article is appearing. Rather,
as the situationists themselves did, beginning with their artistic practices,
the point is to cultivate the broadest and freest collaborations, to avoid being
dispossessed or subordinated to others.
Knabb, belonging to a later generation, was never particularly influenced by
the earlier, more strictly artistic content of the SI (just as the latter paid
little attention to American culture). His own literary and artistic tastes were at once more
“classical” (by his own admission) and less “Eurocentric.” But this question of taste
is obviously of no great importance.
If we stop viewing art as a separate activity, what remains of the artistic
avant-garde, except a revolutionary vanguard? The artistic
preliminary, however, implies a different conception of revolution. What remains
of the latter once we have superseded art?
The SI for Dummies
In any case, Knabb cannot be pigeonholed as a follower of the SI or of
Kenneth Rexroth, or as a veteran of the American counterculture. As he has always done, he
continues to pursue his own way without paying much attention to labels or memberships.
Let us simply say that his path has passed through those areas.
This manner of proceeding without striking a pose as a
“personality” or presenting himself as a “spokesman,” much less hiding
behind an anonymous “collective,” is his most distinctive
characteristic.
It is also in perfect accord with his positions.
From this results two other distinctive qualities: clarity and simplicity —
qualities that distinguish him from the situationists yet at the same time
mark him as one of their authentic successors.
Complexity, of course, is not necessarily a vice; but it tends to provoke
reactive arguments that are even more complex and obscure. Ultimately, it
depends on the competences of those involved in the discussion. It is more difficult to pick apart a
simple and clearly expressed idea, assuming that it is sound. And if it has some weak
points, that has never killed anyone. Why should one fear well-founded
critiques?
Moreover, there are all sorts of ways to fail to understand, and therefore to
fail to be understandable. One of those ways is even to present an apparent
simplicity. When an ad claims that a product is “easy to use,” this
is in most cases a way of saying that you don’t have to understand anything in
order to use it — which means that it is in actuality incomprehensible, and
thus often unusable. Political, cultural and intellectual advertising are no
exceptions to this rule.
This is the main reason that situationist theories were not “simple.” But
their complexity was actually much exaggerated. They were never all that
difficult to understand, nor therefore to criticize. Criticizing them was in
fact one of the conditions for becoming a member of the SI. This is why most
would-be critiques of the SI had already been made and answered years in
advance, up to and including the final dissolution of the group. This is
also why, strictly
speaking, there has never been any such thing as “situationism.” The
situationists’ practice was sufficiently flexible and dynamic that no doctrine
was able to take fixed form during the fifteen years of the SI’s existence;
nor even during all the time that has passed since then.
In his most personal style, Ken Knabb is thus both a successor of the SI and very distant
from it. To put it more precisely, his most distinctive characteristic — his manner of
speaking simply and unpretentiously about the world from his own personal
standpoint within it — seems to me paradoxically to also be a sign of a more general
change of eras.
Dissolving the Spectacle
Ideas are never totally separable from the experiences and practices of those
who articulate them, nor from the manner in which they are articulated and
propagated. Ken Knabb is among those who have best understood this and who have
succeeded in transitioning most smoothly from one era to another. He has done this without
saying much about it, as if the appropriate methods and techniques were
obvious.
He knows how to make the best use of the more “personal” resources of computers
and the Internet, just as the situationists were past masters in using the more
“group-oriented” resources of pamphlets, leaflets and journals. And like them,
he knows how to link the content with the appropriate means. All of his writings
are online in easily reproducible open-source format and in multiple languages at his
“Bureau of Public Secrets” website, along with his translations of the
Situationist International and a large portion of the works of Kenneth Rexroth.
Many people assume that the change of eras I am
discussing is determined by new communications technologies, or perhaps even more
specifically by the new companies that market those
technologies. This amounts to forgetting that all these issues
were already in play back in the era of photocopying, or even earlier, in the
era of mimeographing. Above
all, this amounts to ignoring the fact that no technology enables the economy to
predict how
it can be used or what it can be used for.
When we understand how and for what these new technologies can be used, they
no longer present any problem. If it sufficed to obtain expensive
equipment or to become an expert in computer programming, this understanding
would be more common. Programming languages, personal computers and the Internet
are remarkable tools for writing and thinking, enabling each
person to be the center of a network in which all the others who link up can in
their turn be the center of their own networks, so that each can pursue his or
her own path without being hindered by others pursuing their own paths; so that the
freedom of each
reinforces, rather than limits, the freedom of all. Still, it is necessary
(and virtually sufficient) that people know what they want to do with these means!
To speak from my own experience, I have rarely found a more flexible and effective
manner of working together than in my exchanges with Ken Knabb,
notably regarding translations. Although we live on opposite sides of the globe,
our collaboration has been in striking contrast with the boredom and
burdensomeness
typical of comparable activities in a more professional context.
Again, such a remark may seem trivial. But I mention it intentionally in
connection
with a certain impression of unrealism that one finds in Knabb’s theories,
an unrealism that he scarcely bothers to hide. Because in the final analysis, what
is unrealistic about his positions? Only the notion that the current social
system could easily and pleasantly be replaced by a new way of organizing human
activity.
This impression of “unreality” should not hide this other, more practical
aspect: Leaving aside the fact that the mode of organization Knabb proposes is certainly freer and
more playful and more worthy of mankind, is it effective and inventive? If it
is more effective and more inventive than the coercive and hierarchical
structures that blocks the way
to it, it may take a while, but it will indeed spread and eventually prevail.
JEAN-PIERRE DEPÉTRIS
October 2008
English version of Jean-Pierre Depétris’s
article Ken Knabb, l’Internationale Situationniste et la contre-culture nord-américaine,
which originally appeared in the French journal
Gavroche (October 2008). Translated December 2008 by Ken Knabb in collaboration with the author.
No copyright.
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