CATALOG
(Books written or translated by Ken Knabb)
Public Secrets:
Collected Skirmishes of Ken Knabb
Bureau of Public Secrets, 1997
ISBN 978-0-93968-203-4
408 pages. $15.00
Ken Knabb is best known for his meticulous translations of numerous works by Guy
Debord and the Situationist International. Public Secrets
is a comprehensive collection of his own writings
over a period of three decades.
The first half of the book consists
of two major new texts. “The Joy of Revolution” is a series of observations on the
problems and possibilities of a global antihierarchical revolution. Beginning with a brief
overview of the failures of Bolshevism and the inadequacies of reformism, it examines the
pros and cons of a wide range of radical tactics, then concludes with some
provocative speculations on
what a liberated society might be like. “Confessions of a Mild-Mannered Enemy of the
State” is largely concerned with Knabb’s situationist activities, but it also
includes reminiscences of the sixties counterculture and accounts of his Zen practice and
other later ventures.
The second half of the book
presents a variety of pamphlets, posters, comics, and articles on Wilhelm Reich,
Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, radical Buddhists,
Japanese anarchists, Chinese dissidents, the 1970 Polish revolt, the 1979 Iranian
uprising, and the 1991 Gulf war. The aim throughout is to bring the
real choices into the open and to incite people to make their own radical experiments.
Order this book directly from AK Distribution.
[Table of Contents and online texts]
Situationist
International Anthology
Revised and Expanded Edition
Edited and translated by Ken Knabb
Bureau of Public Secrets, 2006
ISBN 978-0-93968-204-1
532 pages. $20.00
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 détournement.
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 (although the SI itself was dissolved in 1972) 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 the
situationists’ early
experiments in “psychogeography” to their 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.
Order this book directly from AK Distribution. This title is also available as an ebook. You can buy it from AK Distribution or from your favorite ebook provider.
[]Table of Contents and online texts]
Guy Debord:
The Society of the Spectacle
Translated and annotated by Ken Knabb
Bureau of Public Secrets, 2014
ISBN 978-0-939682-06-5
150 pages. $15.00
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 book of
the twentieth century. This is the first edition in
any language
to include extensive annotations, clarifying the historical allusions and
revealing the sources
of Debord’s “détournements.”
Contrary to popular misconceptions,
Debord’s book is neither an ivory tower
“philosophical” discourse nor a mere expression of “protest.” It is a carefully considered effort to clarify the most fundamental
tendencies and contradictions of the society in which we find ourselves — in
order to facilitate its overthrow. 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 more pertinent than ever, because the spectacle
has become more all-pervading than ever — to the
point that it is almost universally taken for granted. Most people today have scarcely any awareness of pre-spectacle
history, let alone of anti-spectacle possibilities. 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 molded to
its laws.”
Order this book directly from AK Distribution. This title is also available as an ebook. You can buy it from AK Distribution or from your favorite ebook provider.
[Table of Contents and online text]
Guy Debord:
Complete Cinematic Works
Translated and edited by Ken Knabb
AK Press, 2003
ISBN 978-1-90259-383-8
268 pages, 62 illustrations. $19.00
Guy Debord, founder of the Situationist International and
fomenter of the May 1968 revolt in France, was also the creator of six tantalizingly inaccessible films.
Following the still-unsolved assassination of the films’ producer in 1984, all
of them were withdrawn from circulation for nearly twenty years. This new
translation of Debord’s filmscripts (which Knabb was asked to make by Debord's
widow) was prepared to accompany the long-awaited
rerelease of these astonishing works.
Technically and aesthetically, Debord's
films are among the most brilliantly innovative works in the history of the
cinema. But they are no so much "works of art" as carefully calculated
subversive provocations. One of the films is an
adaptation of Debord’s own 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.
Note: This book is temporarily out of
print. It will probably be republished in 2024.
[Table of Contents, online excerpts, and general information about Debord’s films]
Ngo Van:
In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary
Edited by Ken Knabb and Hélène Fleury
Translated by Hélène
Fleury, Hilary Horrocks, Ken Knabb, and Naomi Sager
AK Press, 2010
ISBN 978-1-84935-013-6
296 pages, 70 illustrations.
$19.95
Although the Vietnam War is still well known, few people are
aware of the decades of struggles against the French colonial regime that
preceded it, many of which had no connection with the Stalinists (Ho Chi Minh’s
Communist Party). The Stalinists were ultimately victorious, but only after they
systematically destroyed all the other oppositional currents. This book is the
story of these other movements and revolts, caught in the crossfire between the
French and the Stalinists, told by one of the few survivors.
Ngo Van’s In the Crossfire is one of those rare
books like Voline’s The Unknown Revolution or Orwell’s Homage
to Catalonia that almost single-handedly unveil moments of hidden
history — sublime moments when people break through the bounds of the
“possible” and strive to create a life worthy of their deepest dreams
and aspirations.
Order this book directly from AK Press. This title is also available as an ebook. You can buy it from AK Distribution or from your favorite ebook provider.
[Table of Contents and online text]
Ken Knabb:
The Relevance of Rexroth
Bureau of Public Secrets, 1990
ISBN 978-0-93968-202-7
88 pages. $5.00
A critical appreciation of the great poet, essayist, and social critic Kenneth Rexroth, who wryly described his main themes as “sex, mysticism, and revolution,” and who was the leading inspiration behind the San Francisco Renaissance of the fifties and sixties.
Note: The complete text of this small book is also included in Public Secrets.
[Table of Contents and online text]
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