E&SitOM - Transcriber's Introduction

The following pages are a transcript of a key Situationist text, Enrag�s and Situationists in the Occupation Movement, France, May '68, written by Enrage and participant Ren� Vi�net in 1968 immediately following the riots and occupations that shook France and the world that tumultuous year. In 1992 I participated in a lively Situationist email discussion list and had many occasions to consult the various online archives of Situationist documents. Then, as now, there existed four main archives of Situationist material:

The S.I. Archives - maintained by Spud from nothingness.org, the S.I. Archives are perhaps the most comprehensive collection of Situationist texts and images online, and is well laid-out, searchable and easy to navigate. It features the full text of the Society of the Spectacle, key excerpts from the Revolution of Everyday Life, and selections from the Situationist International journal in both French and English among other gems.

situationist international online - a project of Reuben Keehan, the site also endeavors to be a complete online anthology of original Situationist source material, and relies on links to the other repositories. The material is arranged chronologically, but is not indexed or searchable. Notable for its comprehensive links page.

Bureau of Public Secrets - maintained by Ken Knabb, this site features a complete online transcript of his classic Situationist International Anthology, and even does its familiar print cousin one better by including a fully searchable index. I'm not the first to point out that Mr Knabb exerted editorial bias in his selection of texts to translate, favoring the more political Debordist facets of the SI at the expense of its more artistic component. Still, it is an invaluable resource, and the site features many Lettrist and other pre-SI documents, filmstrip transcripts, and other material that are unavailable elsewhere. Also recommended is Knabb's Joy of Revolution for an examination of just how a antihierarchical, councilist revolution might take place, and what it would look like once it came to pass.

Not Bored! - the work of Billy Not-Bored and his New York Psychogeographical Society/Surveillance Camera Players pals, this site is useful for its inclusion of pro-Situationist materials from American sympathizers and its general critical tone. Billy has made a minor career out of criticizing Ken Knabb, and truthfully his lack of reverence for the Situationist "gods" is refreshing. The site's Anthology section complements Knabb's site by including writings by Asger Jorn & John Hammond, and other more artistic-tending situs. Also features a healthy section of Lettrist writings, good original essays, and a couple of essential introductions to the ouevre as a whole.

So, all in all the situation is pretty good: the four main collections overlap and complement each other, and most of the core primary source material is available online for the persistent researcher. I say "most" because, to me, one vital original Situationist text seemed to me to be glaringly absent for the online repositiories: Enrag�s and Situationists in the Occupation Movement, France, May '68 (hereafter "E & S").[1] It'san odd omission: the book is one of a very few first-person accounts of those heady days in Spring, and the only written by a bona fide Situationist. Not much is known about Ren� Vi�net, and some researchers have even suggested that he is merely a nom de plume for a group of Situationists comprised of Debord, Vaneigm, Riesel, and Khayati[2], though no evidence to substantiate this claim is presented. Still, it is curious that no photographs of Vi�net exist (at least that I've seen). Besides E&S, Vi�net is credited with a reportedly hilarious film, Peut-�tre La Dialectique Cassez des Briques? ("Can Dialectics Break Bricks?")[3], and a French translation of Harold Isaac's The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution. And that's it: if there actually existed a man by the name of Ren� Vi�net we can safely say that he was very secretive (even for a Situationist), and not particularly prolific.

In any case, the absence of a complete version of E&S online seemed a glaring omission to me: besides Daniel Cohn-Bendit's rather fanciful and narcissist account C'est Pour Toi Que Tu Fait La R�volution[4] and a short article by a journalist from Le Monde, no first-hand memoir of the events of Paris '68 exist. As a Situationist text it is notable for its accessibility: it would make an ideal introduction to Situationist thought for the uninitiated, and familiar readers should find it interesting as a rare (the only?) account of Situationist praxis, how their ideas met the road so to speak. And finally it is a ripping good yarn about a short time in a small place where all of the assumptions that gird modern life were questioned, possibility stretched infinite in all directions, and the end of history seemed just over the horizon.

As chapters of the book are added they will be hyperlinked from the Table of Contents, and when complete the entire HTML file will be forwarded to nothingness.org for inclusion in their archive. Typos, suggestions, rants, offers of assistance, points of clarification and threatening legal correspondence should be addressed to Neighborly Jones care of signal_event.

[1] A selection from E&S, Chapter 2 "The Origins of the Agitation in France" appears on the Situationist International Online archive, and will be copied in entirety from there.

[2] "Il est possible de trouver, sous la signature de Ren� Vi�net (il s'agit en
fait d'un texte collectif de Debord, Vaneigem, Riesel et Khayati) "Enrag�s
et situationnistes dans le mouvement des occupations [...]" ("It is possible to find, under the signature of Ren� Vi�net (it is in fact a collective text by Debord, Vaneigem, Riesel and Khayati) 'Enrag�s and Situationists in the Occupation Movement' [...]"), from Re: I.S. et son influence sur Mai 68.., the Spectacle (discussion list), "harelde," 8 Aug 1998.

[3] A videotape of the film is available from Not Bored!, and Ken Knabb has written a short critique of it.

[4] "C'est Pour Toi Que Tu Fait La R�volution," while hardly a Situationist text, is useful for putting the events of May '68 in a wider context, and as it is both out-of-print and unavailable online will constitute signal_event's next transcription project.