from Guy Debord

To Mustapha Khayati
1 December 1964
Dear Mustapha

Here is the portrait of our founder.[1] I'll send you under separate cover the cinematographic volume.[2]

Re-thinking the ideas that you evoked at the end of our most recent meeting, I add:

1) A mimeographed distribution of the "Correspondence with a Cybernetician" -- exact text[3] (because I don't see how one can abridge it), which can be simply signed with the mention "Extracted from #9 of the journal Internationale Situationniste, address P.O.B. 75-06 Paris" -- would quite please me. But I subordinate this judgment to the agreement of [Tlili] Bechir: if he doesn't think that there is a risk of it appearing like "student horseplay," etc.

2) For an eventual Arabic translation of one of our texts (here you must envision deletions or slight revisions, because none of our editorial notes are readable en bloc, especially because of the many references to diverse current events), the principal question appears to me to be: what is the next possible usage, in which country? Not in Tunisia, I suppose, where knowledge of French is still widespread?

3) It seems to me that more precious than any other work would be a critique, either personally or collectively made, of several of the theses of the S[ituationist] I[nternational]. This critique wouldn't be made politely; many Leftist journals make affected appeals of this type to their readers. Of course, this critique would have nothing to gain from focusing on our manifest mistakes in the beginning (except if one finds one that explicates what follows . . .), but must consider our provisional results, in their [dialectical] movement.

But, at the moment, we are both very busy with the urgent critique of "Perspectives"!


Quite amiably to you all,
Guy

[1] Photo of Karl Marx, published by the SI on 28 September 1964, in the form of a post card, to celebrate the centenary [of the foundation] of the International Association of Workers.

[2] Against Cinema, by Guy Debord.

[3] Which would be launched 17 March 1965, accompanying the tract The Turtle in the Shop Window (The Dialectic of Robot and Signal), signed by Edith Frey, Theo Frey, Jean Garnault and Mustapha Khayati, on the occasion of a conference held by Abraham Moles and the cybernetic sculptor Nicolas Schoeffer in Strasbourg [France].


(Published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 2, 1960-1964. Footnotes by Alice Debord. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! May 2005.)



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