SITUATIONISTS AND THE 1£CH MAY 1968

More documents

Recommendations

Info

1 aside, the factthatVayr-Piova proclaims - "open ,iy," or even perhaps "secretly" in a "proclamation'' reserved for the most discreet accompli,ces in his lies, for example? - that he has not belonged to the SI since whenever was the date of our transformation into an "official power" - this is a boldfaced lie. Everyone who knows him 1knows that Vayr-Piova has never had the oppor !tunity to claim to be anything but a "nonsitua- 1tionist" (see what we wrote above concerning he AFGES communique of 29 November). The most favourable results of this whole affair naturally go beyond this new and oppor 1 unely much-publicised example of our refusal :to enlist anything that a neomilitantism in search of glorious subordination might throw bur way. No less negligible is that aspect of the result that forced the official recognition of the Irreparable decomposition of the UNEF, a ecomposition that was even more advanced fhan its pitiful appearance suggested: the coup e grace was still echoing in July at its 56th Congress in Lyon, in the course of which the sad p resident Vandenburie had to confess: "The f,Jnity of the UNEF has long since ended. Each i:lSSociation lives (51 note: this term is pretentiously inaccurate) autonomously, without pay Ing any attention to the directives of the ational Committee. The growing gap between fhe base and the governing bodies has reached a state of serious degradation. The history of the proceedings of the UN EF has been nothing but a eries of crises ... Reorganisation and a revival of ction have not been possible." Equally comical were some side-effects stirred up among the cademics who felt that this was another current issue to petition about. As can be well imagined, e considered the position published by the forty professors and assistants of the Faculty of Arts at Strasbourg, which denounced the false students behind this "tempest in a teacup" bout fals,e problems "without the shadow of a olution," to be more. logical and socially rational (as was, for that matter, Judge Llabador's sumlning up) than that wheedling attempt at pproval circulated in, February by a few decrepit lnodernist-institutionalists gnawing their meagre bones at the professorial chairs of 'Social Sciences' at Nanterre (impudent Touraine, loyal Lefeb,tre, pro-Chinese Baudrillart, cunning I ! I Lourau). In fact, we want ideas to become dangerous again. We cannot be accepted with the spinelessness of a false eclectic interest, as if we were Sartres, Althussers, Aragons or Godards. Let us note the wise words of a certain Professor Lhuillier, reported in the 21 December Nouvel Observateur: "I am for freedom of thought. But if there are any Situationists in the room, I want them to get ouf right now." While not entirely denying the effect that the dissemination of a few basic truths may have had in slightly accelerating the movement that is impelling the lag· ging French youth toward an awakening aware· ness of an impending more general crisis in the society, we think that the distribution of On the Poverty of Student Life has been a much more significant factor of clarification in some other countries where such a process is already much more clearly under way. In the afterward of their edition of Khayati's text, the English situation· ists wrote: "The most highly developed critique of modern life has been made in one of the least highly developed modern countries • in a country which has not yet reached the point where the complete disintegration of all values becomes patently obvious and engenders the corresponding forces of radical rejection. In the French context, situationist theory has antid'pat· ed the social forces by which it will be realised." The theses of On the Poverty of Student · Life have been much more truly understood in the United States and England (the strike at the London School of Economics in March caused a certain stir, the Times commentator unhappily seeing in it a return of the class struggle he had thought was over with). To a lesser degree this is also the case in Holland · where the SI's critique, reinforcing a much harsher critique by events themselves, was not without effect on the recent dissolution of the 'Provo' movement · and in the Scandinavian countries. The struggles of the West Berlin students this year have picked up something of the critique, though in a still very confused way. But revolutionary youth naturally has no other course than to join with the mass of work· ers who, starting from the experience ofthe new conditions of exploitation, are going to take up once again the struggle for the domination of
their world, for the suppression of work. When young people begin to know the current theoretical form of this real movement that is everywhere spontaneously bursting forth from the soil of modern society, this is only a moment of the progression by which this unified theoreti· cat critique, which identifies itself with an a de· quate practical unification, strives to break the silence and the general organisation of separa· tion. lt is only in this sense that we find the result satisfactory. We obviously exclude from these young people that alienated semiprivi· leged fraction molded by the university: this sector is the natural base for an admiring con· sumption of a fantasised situationist theory considered as the latest spectacular fashion. We will continue to disappoint and refute this kind of approbation. Sooner or later it will be understood that the SI must be judged not on the superficially scandalous aspects of certain manifestations through which it appears, but on its essentially scandalous central truth. Situationist lntemationai 11,0ctober 1967
Page 1: SITUATIONISTS AND THE 1£CH, MAY 19
Page 4: en tant qu'intelligence de la prati
Page 7 and 8: Foreword This anthology brings toge
Page 10 and 11: On the poverty of student life Cons
Page 12 and 13: produced the grandiose compensation
Page 14: and makes them the only measuring-r
Page 17 and 18: sterile options, But their refusal
Page 19 and 20: Oam.arades, des Cl ':A! vous aures
Page 21: world of lies, working diligently f
Page 24 and 25: social form. With autogestion ends
Page 26 and 27: Strasbourg affair in terms of a "cr
Page 28: capitalist system is unabated,. wil
Page 31 and 32: ly through Mustapha Khayati. The di
Page 33 and 34: perspective was to destroy their ow
Page 35: assured themselves that their histo
Page 40 and 41: Bureaucratic capitalism has found i
Page 42 and 43: to work (in its form of sacrifice i
Page 44 and 45: EST DAN5 Lt\ RUE
Page 46 and 47: j · sentation and thus it provokes
Page 48 and 49: equally mythical sacrifice of a new
Page 50 and 51: '.. :.{'·
Page 52 and 53: sion of immobile instants (this not
Page 54 and 55: holds it by isolating it; yet such
Page 56 and 57: which it served both as a regulatin
Page 59 and 60: deprived of spectacle; the fact tha
Page 61 and 62: wear the same mask and only the tor
Page 65 and 66: Paris: May 1968 Introduction (Writt
Page 67 and 68: like us ...) wistfully dreams anoth
Page 69: students. The regime will not toler
Page 72 and 73: demonstrators. One can't even move
Page 74: ards really means. All day, the ste
Page 77 and 78: packed out, the seat of continuous,
Page 79 and 80: Unknown Soldier was the outrage tha
Page 82 and 83: - - Sorbonne, they ' also took over
Page 84 and 85: "The blokes liked the leaflet. They
Page 86 and 87:
some streets many Algerians line th
Page 89 and 90:
the role of the PCF to be best of o
Page 91 and 92:
page, a statement issued the day be
Page 93 and 94:
France, 1968 This has undoubtedly b
Page 95 and 96:
and multiplying its numbers a hundr
Page 97:
Workers Beware! Text of a CGT poste
Page 100 and 101:
ified by these actions so unintelli
Page 102 and 103:
and drug orgies were uncovered amon
Page 104:
!owed unless the system is overthro
Page 107 and 108:
activity. The organisation radicall
Page 109 and 110:
The varlous working parties can, wh
Page 112 and 113:
goal. The next day's general assemb
Page 114 and 115:
Address to all workers Comrades, Wh
Page 116:
The struggle against alienation has
Page 120 and 121:
.· ® Afterword There is a traditi
Page 122:
This anthology brings together the
show all

SITUATIONISTS AND THE 1£CH MAY 1968

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?