CATALOG
(Books written or translated by Ken Knabb)
Public
Secrets: Collected Skirmishes of Ken Knabb
Bureau of Public Secrets, 1997. [Now distributed by PM Press.]
ISBN 978-0-93968-203-4
408 pages. $15.00
Ken Knabb is well known for his translations of works by Guy Debord and the
Situationist International. Public Secrets is the first comprehensive
collection of his own writings.
One of the texts in the book, “The Joy of
Revolution,” has recently been reissued separately in an updated and expanded edition
(see next entry), but Public Secrets contains more than 300 pages of other
interesting material — 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 book also includes a short autobiography,
“Confessions of a Mild-Mannered Enemy of the State,” in which Ken recounts his
adventures and misadventures in Berkeley and San Francisco during the 1960s and
his projects and encounters in the international situationist scene during the
following decades.
“Ken Knabb’s two distinctive qualities, clarity and simplicity, distinguish him from the situationists yet at the same time mark him as one of their authentic successors. Does this mean that his work is a sort of ‘Situationist International for Dummies’? No, but it could certainly serve as such — anyone who is unfamiliar with the SI should put this book at the very top of their reading list.”
—Jean-Pierre Depétris (reviewing the French edition of Public Secrets)
Table of Contents and online texts
Ken Knabb:
The Joy of Revolution and Related Texts
PM Press, 2026
ISBN 979-8-88744-184-9
ISBN (ebook): 979-8-88744-185-6
288 pages. $21.95
“It may seem absurd to talk about revolution. But all the alternatives assume the continuation of the present system, which is even more absurd.”
The Joy
of Revolution has been translated into seven other languages and is widely
considered Ken Knabb’s most significant work. While there have been countless histories
of past revolutions and countless examinations of the many flaws of the present
society and of the many methods proposed for reforming them, 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.
Following a brief overview of the absurdities of
the present social system and the failures of past efforts to change it, The
Joy of Revolution 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
masses of people start to call everything into question and real change becomes
possible. It then concludes with some speculations on how a postrevolutionary
global network of diverse liberated communities might work, and where we might
go from there.
For this new edition, Ken has added some notes and updates to his original work and appended a number of
his more recent texts
— detourned comics; book
reviews; a refutation of anarcho-primitivism; reports on two radical
movements in France; a series of texts and talks on the Occupy movement (in
which Ken was an enthusiastic participant); observations on the coronavirus
shutdown; and analyses of the increasingly vicious and delirious Trump regime
and the new forms of popular resistance it has inspired.
Table of Contents and online texts
Situationist
International Anthology
Revised and Expanded Edition
Edited and translated by Ken Knabb
PM Press, 2024
ISBN: 979-8-887440-57-6
ISBN (ebook): 979-8-887440-66-8
544 pages. $29.95
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 subversive 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 all the translations have
been fine-tuned and the bibliography has been updated to include comments on
dozens of newer books by and about the situationists.
Table of Contents and online texts
Guy Debord:
The Society of the Spectacle
Translated and annotated by Ken Knabb
PM Press, 2024
ISBN: 979-8-88744-056-9
ISBN (ebook): 979-8-88744-065-1
160 pages. $19.95
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.”
Table of Contents and online text
Guy Debord:
Complete Cinematic Works
Revised and Expanded Edition
Translated and edited by Ken Knabb
PM Press, 2026
ISBN: 979-8-887441-55-9
ISBN (ebook): 979-8-887441-56-6
276 pages, 62 illustrations. $25.95
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 the films were withdrawn from circulation for nearly twenty years.
In 2001 Debord’s widow Alice began rereleasing
the films and asked Ken Knabb to translate the scripts into English. His
translations were published in 2003. For this new edition Ken has added a
previously untranslated video that Debord made shortly before his death.
Technically and aesthetically, Debord’s 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. 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.
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
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-84935-049-5
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.
Table of Contents and online text