Gianfranco Sanguinetti, Italian, author of a Truthful Report on
the Last Chances to Save Capitalism in Italy, the [French]
translation of which Editions Champ Libre published on 8 January [1976],
having presented himself at the French border on 11 February, was turned
back due to the application of a “refusal of stay” decision taken on 21
July 1971 by Marcellin, the Minister of the Interior. We know that this
kind of administrative manifestation of national security requires no
judicial approval, cannot be appealed and thus is permanent. Even though
the political regimes in Europe want to make small changes in their
continuity, this naturally does not have any bearing on those who
contest all of those regimes equally.
We are modestly aware of the fact that it is only fair to have
recourse to advertizing[1] to put before the eyes of the reader – at
every instant occupied with so much other pertinent and important news
that is constantly of universal relevance and that concerns him
personally – a simple, particular phenomenon that can only interest a
few private individuals.
In fact, we do not have the presumptuousness to insinuate that the
critique of capitalism could at all concern our contemporaries, their
work, their ways of making a living, their ideas or their pleasures. We
do not ignore the facts that, even as a subject for scholarly discussion
limited to a small number of experts, the very justness of the concept
of that critique has been controversial and that capitalism, as a
hypothesis, is no longer of contemporary interest, because the Thought
of Vincennes[2] – at which the best-recycled professors have decided
upon the dissolution of history and the prohibition of the criteria of
truthfulness in discourse, which is something that is very rich in
consequences for them – recently leapt beyond it.
Furthermore, we are not assured that, somewhere, there really exists
a geographical (and an economically quite weak) entity called Italy.
And, where Italy’s economy is concerned, the eminent leaders of the
Common Market – even if the principle of the free circulation of
commodities is as much their affair as the free circulation of people –
have other reasons to doubt its existence.
The actual existence of Gianfranco Sanguinetti himself – either as
the author of a Western samizdat[3] or as the target of some
liberal-advanced Gulag – is highly questionable. If we, on the unique
basis of the magnitude of a public rumor (which also remains outside of
our borders), allow ourselves to positively affirm the reality of his
existence, his writings and the diverse and harmless police persecutions
that have followed from them, one could retort that no one here in
France has ever heard of him, and we [as his publisher] feel all the
weight of such an objection.
We will also frankly state that we know a number of estimable people
who, working for the newspapers or the distributors of books, do not
hide the fact that they have been led to conclude that Editions Champ
Libre also does not exist, and, for our part, we do not pretend to have
the boldness to settle such an obscure question and thus go against the
honest convictions of so many competent people by basing ourselves only
upon our contingent desires and limited personal interests.
Given all this, we nevertheless will not allow ourselves to leave
open the question of knowing if the world in which we live – the world
of which you read all the most up-to-date news every day – truly exists.
We are in a position to be assured that, for the moment, it still
does.
[1] This declaration was published under the rubric of an
advertisement in the 24 February 1976 issue of Le Monde, which
never carried a news item (properly speaking) about the events described
therein.
the Université de Vincennes was then the home of such well-known
“post-structuralist” philosophers as Michel Serris, Michel Foucault, and
Gilles Deleuze. Debord’s dislike of Vincennes’ “critical theorists” was
in part a response to their theories, but also to their means of
supporting themselves. In the words of Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth
Lebas (translators’ introduction to Henri Lefebvre, Writings on Cities
[Blackwell, 1996]), Michel Foucault “undertook a number of research
projects for the Ministere de l'Equipment in the 1970s [...] Many well
known sociologists and philosophers participated in research financed by
this Ministry, such as Deleuze and Guattari who also undertook contract
research [...] Lefebvre points out that recuperation has taken a
specific form in the years after 1968 in that technocrats got the
critics themselves to work out what would be applicable out of the
radical critique. Many Marxists sociologists at this time accepted
contracts from State ministries.”
[3] The aforementioned Truthful Report.
(Written by Guy Debord and published anonymously. Reprinted in Editions Champ Libre
Correspondance, Volume I October 1978. Translated from the French
and footnoted by NOT BORED! September 2012.)
Comments