from Guy Debord

To Jean-Francois Martos
14 June 1988
Dear Jeff:

I read your manuscript[1] in two days and with much interest (although I already knew the story).

I have picked out 16 details: either definite errors (9) or light possible improvements to the exposition (7).

Page 65. In citation #87, quotation marks are missing or, on the contrary, there are too many? In any case, correct to balance them out.

Page 67. Your citation #94 is in fact from Michele Bernstein, In Praise of Pinot-Gallizio, Torino, 1968 (reprinted in I.S. #2).

Page 70. In note #103, add: "This article instantly destroyed the pseudo-Cobra [group], because was alive. But, twenty years later, the excessive [abusif] painter Alechinsky went back on the attack, for his own benefit, and his title as the "founder" of Cobra was repeated in all the newspapers, whereas he had only appeared, the last to do so, on the day of its dissolution!"

Page 73. It is more exact to speak of the "preeminence" of the soundtrack (rather than its "autonomy") (or of its "relative autonomy"?).

Page 84. It would be better to say (concerning the [SI exhibition at the] Stedelijk Museum) "would risk coming to an end," because, precisely nothing had begun.

Page 92. It would be better to say "the signatories," and not "the 121." Actually, there were, at the end, more than 200 signatories. I did not figure among the first 121, who only transmitted the text to me after the beginning of the repression that greeted it. (Then I signed it in solidarity with these people, whom I would nevertheless consider almost all of them to be scoundrels).

Page 95. "The revolution is to be reinvented, that is all." Thus re-establish the true citation.

Page 127. Note #231. Perhaps it would be good to make it precise that the pseudonym "Cardan" (previously "Chaulieu") at this time dissimulated the identity of the future sociologist and psychoanalyst Cornelius Castoriadis, who had to become the transparently ridiculous person that everyone has seen since then.

Page 140 It was the General Assembly of the National Union of the S[tudents] of F[rance] that was held in Paris on 14 January 1967 (not a "Parisian" general assembly).

Page 144. Say instead: "immediately delegated his powers to Martin."

Page 162, last paragraph. Perhaps one must add to "print-runs reaching 200,000 copies" -- "thanks to the revolutionary activity of the strikers at occupied print houses"?

Page 163. Serious error concerning the date! The dissolution of the CMDO did not take place on "30 June" 1968. Vienet (Enrages and Situs . . .) gives the date as 15 June (cf. page 178 of that book).

Page 166. Say instead: "Debord had affirmed." (This is a flashback[2] in your narrative).

Page 167. No: there was never any "collective meeting" between the SI and I.C.O.,[3] nor even any contact.

Page 176, last paragraph. Say more exactly: "had to draft an always more diluted part of the last two issues of the I.S."

Page 185. For the last phrase, instead of "The game continues" (which might sound a little too gay and casual), perhaps it would be better to say "The hostilities continue."

Apart from this, I believe that everything is just. There is nothing to add. To say this in your Latin formula: Nihil obstat. Ergo: imprimatur.[4]

See you soon,
Guy

[1] Note by J.-F. Martos: History of the Situationist International, Editions Gerard Lebovici, Paris, 1989.

[2] English in original.

[3] Informations et Correspondance Ouvriere ("Workers News and Correspondence"), a "workerist" revolutionary organization

[4] Latin for: "Nothing stands in the way. Thus: let it be printed."


(Published in Jean-Francois Martos, Correspondance avec Guy Debord, Le fin mot de l'Histoire, August 1998. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! July 2007. Footnotes by the translator, except where noted.)




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