The Coming Insurrection can now be pre-ordered!?

We found it interesting that The Coming Insurrection can now be pre-ordered...when obviously everyone can just download it for FREE here.

For those interested in blowing $12.95 to receive your pre-ordered copy come August 2009 here is the nice write up from Semiotext(e):

Thirty years of "crisis," mass unemployment, and flagging growth, and they still want us to believe in the economy. . . . We have to see that the economy is itself the crisis. It's not that there's not enough work, it's that there is too much of it.
—from The Coming Insurrection

The Coming Insurrection is an eloquent call to arms arising from the recent waves of social contestation in France and Europe. Written by the anonymous Invisible Committee in the vein of Guy Debord—and with comparable elegance—it has been proclaimed a manual for terrorism by the French government (who recently arrested its alleged authors). One of its members more adequately described the group as "the name given to a collective voice bent on denouncing contemporary cynicism and reality." The Coming Insurrection is a strategic prescription for an emergent war-machine capable of "spreading anarchy and live communism."

Written in the wake of the riots that erupted throughout the Paris suburbs in the fall of 2005 and presaging more recent riots and general strikes in France and Greece, The Coming Insurrection articulates a rejection of the official Left and its reformist agenda, aligning itself instead with the younger, wilder forms of resistance that have emerged in Europe around recent struggles against immigration control and the "war on terror."

Hot-wired to the movement of '77 in Italy, its preferred historical reference point, The Coming Insurrection formulates an ethics that takes as its starting point theft, sabotage, the refusal to work, and the elaboration of collective, self-organized life forms. It is a philosophical statement that addresses the growing number of those—in France, in the United States, and elsewhere—who refuse the idea that theory, politics, and life are separate realms.

Intervention series
Distributed for Semiotext(e)

About the Author

The Invisible Committee is the collective pen-name for a small group of French post-Situationist intellectuals and academics.

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catal

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11879

It's important to add that

It's important to add that this translation is way better than the former which was really bad. It seems that a pdf of this new version should be available for free too.

Also, it must be made clear that all the people involved in the making of this book feel mere contempt for post-situationists, intellectuals and academics; and always carefully made what was necessary to never fit in those concepts.

Contempt for intellectuals

Contempt for intellectuals and academics? Let's see if its more coherent than 'the call'.

Semiotext(e)?! the people

Semiotext(e)?! the people who did an Orwell on Debord's letters?! no surprise.

http://www.notbored.org/semiotexte.html

"such ex-Maoist

"such ex-Maoist "post-structuralists" and "post-modernists" as Jean Baudrillard and Michel Foucault"

B & F were Maoists?

yes, in the wake of May 68

yes, in the wake of May 68 through the early 1970s.

didn't they teach you facts such as these in that fancy grad school you went to?

We need to keep a counter of

We need to keep a counter of anti-intellectual remarks. It would be quite interesting...in an academic way, of course :D

I don't think Baudrillard

I don't think Baudrillard was part of a Maoist organization like Foucault was though. Foucault also had flirtations with Islamo-fascism.

The Maoist group Baudrillard

The Maoist group Baudrillard was attached to was called Utopie.

Oh yeah, I forgot about

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Weird how the Maoists attracted passive nihilist pataphysicians post-68.

Is this not the complete

Is this not the complete text? (Despite the non-professional translation)

http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/texts/the-coming-insurrection/

The text that will be

The text that will be published by Semiotex[e] is, indeed, a much better translation (I, along with a host of others, worked on it). My hope is that it will be available for free as well. If not, just go ahead and get it.

"(I, along with a host of

"(I, along with a host of others, worked on it)."

A host of others? This doesn't sound good. What consistency can the reader hope for, if a single capable translator did not do the work? We are talking about a pamphlet, not a long volume, right?

"My hope is that it will be available for free as well."

$12.95 pre-ordered if hardly free.

"If not, just go ahead and get it."

You mean just go ahead and pay the $12.95? You mean just go ahead and pay the $12.95 to the distributor, MIT Press? Fuck that.

The new translation is

The new translation is good.
Go get it means go get it.

do you work for MIT Press?

do you work for MIT Press? have a vested interest in generating sales for Semiotexte?

you certainly have no desire to answer forthright questions, ie, "why was a 'host' of translators needed, unless they doubted their own competence?"

here's another one: "the title was first announced for March 2009, now it is August 2009. Why the delay?"

You claim you worked on it; you should be able to answer these questions.

Look, calm down. The book

Look, calm down. The book was written collectively, and it was translated collectively. There are ways to do this.
I worked with and for my friends.
And maybe you can steal it or maybe someone will scan it and post it. It's ok. You don't have to buy it.

i'm translating the coming

i'm translating the coming insurrection and right now i'm working with that terrible english translation and french original. i'm not at all fluent with french and i'd like to get my hands into that better translation. do i really have to wait for august before i can get it, or is there some way to get it now for free?

"There are ways to do

"There are ways to do this."

Yes, good ways and bad ways. Saying that a collectively written book (a claim you can't verify) is best translated collectively is an assertion that flies in the face of common sense: a single COMPETENT translator can certainly translate a collectively written text, and can do so better that a group of anonymous "translators" of various abilities.

"And maybe you can steal it or maybe someone will scan it and post it."

Here's an idea: why don't YOU scan it and post it on-line? You've obviously got access to it. If it is such an important text, why not publish it now, not four months from now?

Unless you are indeed attempting to generate sales/prestige for "your friends" at Semiotexte/MIT Press.

I'm a different Anon than

I'm a different Anon than the above you are responding to.

I don't understand your problem with a collectively translated texts. A single translator could always benefit from others who are closer to a text, or its content. Furthermore a single translator can always benefit from other translators. What matter is the multiplicity of translators?

No text is that important on its own. Engagement with text and contributions to discourse are important; the coming insurrection, is already being engaged with, both intellectually and practically. Whether or not we each consume all of its fibrous pages is sort of superfluous. If you only want a free version of the text, perhaps you can speak to people who want to speak about insurrection, or perhaps sooner or later the text will appear in your hands by grace of chance, either as a blue book or a small zine.

"I don't understand your

"I don't understand your problem with a collectively translated texts."

Perhaps because you are not a translator.

"Whether or not we each consume all of its fibrous pages is sort of superfluous."

To people like you, yes. But stop generalizing: what is superfluous to you isn't superfluous to everyone else.

"If you only want a free version of the text, perhaps you can speak to people who want to speak about insurrection,"

The stupidity of this is so great I can't be bothered to respond to it.

"or perhaps sooner or later the text will appear in your hands by grace of chance, either as a blue book or a small zine."

Your passivity is striking. What qualifies you to speak about a text that concerns IMMEDIATE INSURRECTION? It seems to me: nothing.

bill brown get the fuck off

bill brown get the fuck off this site.

excuse me?

excuse me?

That translation blows, the

That translation blows, the new one is the only one worth reading.

"The Coming Insurrection

"The Coming Insurrection articulates a rejection of the official Left"

Shouldn't that "official" be dropped out?

I found this back cover text to be truly terrible..

The book will be available

The book will be available in May, around the 15th. First on our website.

The back cover text is this quote from the book:

It's useless to wait—for a breakthrough, for the revolution, the nuclear apocalypse or a social movement. To go on waiting is madness. The catastrophe is not coming, it is here. We are already situated within the collapse of a civilization. It is within this reality the me must choose sides.

As for all the other accusations about our greed and stupidity … I am not sure. None of us at Semiotexte ever made any money. It's a bit tiresome.

Hedi

"It's useless to wait—for

"It's useless to wait—for a breakthrough, for the revolution, the nuclear apocalypse or a social movement. To go on waiting is madness. The catastrophe is not coming, it is here. We are already situated within the collapse of a civilization. It is within this reality the me must choose sides."

This sounds waaay better than this article that sounded bit like a back cover.

"The book will be available

"The book will be available in May, around the 15th. First on our website.

The back cover text is this quote from the book:

It's useless to wait—for a breakthrough, for the revolution, the nuclear apocalypse or a social movement. To go on waiting is madness. The catastrophe is not coming, it is here. We are already situated within the collapse of a civilization. It is within this reality the me must choose sides.

As for all the other accusations about our greed and stupidity … I am not sure. None of us at Semiotexte ever made any money. It's a bit tiresome."

Hedi

not interested in posting about a book but i am interested in the sentiment, i basically agree. what is the sense of urgency and where does one begin to do anything about it (or maybe feel it is best that they step back cause they only make it worse by trying to)? in a way i ask this rhetorically, though to me it is among the most important questions one can ask themselves, i think this is something people have to look within to decide upon, within themselves and whatever relationships they may have or lack: what is your own urgency, what if anything do you feel you can do (and again this is mainly rehtorical, there being no answer that will satisfy everyone)? it obviously is not the same thing as saying "go it alone" or "all you can do is practice escapism", it is different than posing any sort of simple, easy answer "solution", at least i hope that is obvious, it is to say you can only attack, just like you can only heal, from where you are coming from, where you are oriented.

the world we live in, as far as i am concerned, of course, is a very urgent place. for the moment i am tired of throwing my own, two cents at what other people do: i don't have any answers other than for myself, i may have something for someone that means something to consider and will do something for them but nothing more, let them do with it what they will...and sometimes i am confused as fuck about just what the hell these are...and i definitly don't believe in a great answer that will solve all our problems alike at any rate. all i can say is people do what they feel moved to do, and i suppose on a level it is all admirable, even some of the thoughts and actions i feel fall into the category of stupid.

what will become of us? who knows. fight where you feel you can and the ways you feel are best, that is all i can say other than to hate where you feel it is due and embrace whatever love you have in a world that feels sick (at least it does to me). needless to say you are right, far as i am concerned, there is no crisis to wait for like some millinieal moment. crisis has been ongoing for thousands and thousands of years, perhaps longer, it has certainly been going on longer, much longer, than even that horrible shit storm called capitalism. and such millieinal ideals, i guess they are okay for those who feel them truly and are not just grasping for something, anything, to cling desperately to just to try and shut up the barking hell hounds of hopeless despair (or alternately turning these into new social cages in hubris ridden conciet)...but i think they distract us from looking at the "reality" (cause we don't all share this reality, not when you cut into it though some of us may have something we consider a shared reality, i know both the most warm and most painful things for me play out that way at any rate) around us.

all i can say to that is that i feel it is best to recongnize this, find your own urgency, rather than blindly flail about, and from this find the will to fight. anyone doing or not doing something just to do or not do it though (sorry, words fail here like they do in so many other ways) probably won't make a damn bit of difference but do so one will if one feels one must and if you feel it then do it.

"As for all the other

"As for all the other accusations about our greed and stupidity … I am not sure. None of us at Semiotexte ever made any money. It's a bit tiresome."

then why are u not making the copy available free online?

Surely one of u involved has the digital documents sitting on a computer somewhere. Make them public.

The various people who are

The various people who are involved in this translation will not make the text available because they know MIT Press (the official distributor of Semiotexte's titles) would object, no doubt strongly.

Hedi is right to point out that "None of us at Semiotexte ever made any money." MIT Press makes all the money -- or rather they take 50% of the list price for themselves, leaving Semiotexte just enough money to pay the printer and keep their office open. This is why there is something discordant about their "political" project, which consists in bringing certain European "schools of thought" to America: Negri, but not Agamben; Baudrillard and Foucault, but not the situationists; etc.

Does it really need to be

Does it really need to be pointed out as well that the MIT Press is a not-for-profit press? It does not "make money." It pays its bills. The whining and posturing that goes on on this site is unbelievable, and the level of critique seems to boil down all too often to deciding on who the "Man" is. If that bogeyman is in fact a struggling indie publisher and a not-for-profit university press, both of whose goals are to break even by the end of the year and not go in the red so that they can continue publishing books worth publishing, then I can only conclude that this site's discourse is among adolescents whose "radical politics" boils down to shoplifting after high school. Its like vegans attacking vegetarians instead of the cattle industry.

It may be a not-for-profit

It may be a not-for-profit PRESS, but as a DISTRIBUTOR it is certainly a money-making enterprise. And in this instance (a book distributed on behalf of Semiotexte) the distinction is indeed relevant.

No, it is a not-for-profit

No, it is a not-for-profit press and a not-for-profit distributor: it distributes its own books and it distributes certain other presses, but it is one single body with one single not-for-profit financial structure that has to come out even in the end. If it was engaged in a money-making enterprise, it would not longer be a not-for-profit organization. I apologize if my use of the word "Press" instead of "Organization" made for confusion.

you seem to be describing AK

you seem to be describing AK Press, not MIT Press.

Next, I suppose that, if someone were to point out that MIT Press made more than $1 million last year, you'd trivialize that amount: "well, you know, we had office space to pay for, and that's very expensive" etc etc.

Another resemblance to AK Press: editorial decisions are not made merely on the basis of financial factors, but political factors as well: not only what will sell, but what should sell (Negri, not Agamben, in the case of Semio/MIT; Chomsky not Green Anarchy, in the case of AK).

One last point, though MIT Press may be "one single body with one single not-for-profit financial structure that has to come out even in the end," that doesn't mean that its financial structure is what it claims to be. Lord fucking knows announced/publicized financial structures are easy to dissimulate, especially when it comes to hiding assets.

I'd like to know how you

I'd like to know how you know MIT Press is a not-for-profit enterprise. And even if they are, I agree that their editorial/distribution choices are geared toward a particular kind of politics. That said, it needs to be pointed out that has MIT published at least two books on the Sits.

which two books do you mean?

which two books do you mean? thanks

My mistake; it's only one:

My mistake; it's only one: Guy Debord and the Situationist International. I confused MIT with the University of Minnesota, which did Revolution in the Service of Poetry.

It is interesting that you

It is interesting that you bring up this volume in this context. I suppose that it reflects well on MIT Press that they wanted to co-publish or distribute this book on behalf of October magazine, but the book itself has an obvious agenda, which was to keep attention on the SI's artistic period from 1957 to 1962, and de-emphasize the group's political period from 1963 through 1968 to 1972.

See http://www.notbored.org/october-again.html for an essay that speaks to this point.

There's no surprise here. Academics dominate the ranks of October and MIT Press; academics can thrive on avant-garde art, but they take their chances if they try to focus on avant-garde politics. But for anarchists, council communists, and post-situationist revolutionaries, it is precisely the SI's later period -- and the political work Debord engaged in, during the 1970s, in Portugal, Italy, Poland and Spain -- that is of interest. That's the difference between them; that's why anarcho-situs can be so impatient with, even hostile to the art historians; the art historians comfort themselves in the idea that, "well if we are pissing off the anarcho-situs, we must be doing something right, they don't even have university affiliations, not to mention tenure."

Apparently Semiotexte is advertising its new and improved translation of "The Coming Insurrection" by saying its authors are "hot-wired into Italian Autonomia of the 1970s." If so, this is a clear sign of their political agenda: they would rather have readers focusing on Negri and the rest of the Italians, than on Guy Debord and the situationists, with whom almost everyone else have associated the "Tarnac 9." Semiotexte isn't just cross-promoting its products -- buy "The Coming Insurrection" because you might have already bought Semiotexte's recent the reprint of its 1979 Italian "Autonomia" issue or at the very least remembered it coming out -- it is also promoting one political stream (left communist) and deflecting attention away from another (anarcho-situationist). Of course, that's their business. And one of the costs of doing business in this way is receiving criticism for it.

Side notes. Ah. . . . Don't care whether Semiotexte publishes their translation now or later, for free on-line or for $12.99 through MIT Press. Seems the posters here who have said they are translating it for themselves are on the right track. It is always better to consult the original, even if your French isn't good, than it is to put complete trust in someone's rendering simply because s/he calls him/herself a "translator" or "has friends in France."

To the person who couldn't understand why one translator is better than a group of them: its an editorial thing having to do with unity of voice. You want the entire pamphlet, not just its individual essays, to have a unity of voice. Not the unity of voice you want it to have, of course, but the unity of voice it already has in French, even though it was written by several people. Surely the original writer(s) went over it for unity of voice before they published it. Anyway, it is far more likely that the entire pamphlet will have a united tone of voice if it is translated by a single person, who would be acting as both translator and copyeditor.

Both issues of Tiqqun can be

Both issues of Tiqqun can be consulted, in French and in their entirety, on this site:
http://bloom0101.org/

The post above deliberately distorts the text hyping the book. This is what it says: "Hot-wired to the movement of '77 in Italy," not "hot-wired into Italian Autonomia of the 1970s." Only a fool, or an academic, would confuse the two, deliberately or not.

Tiqqun develops a fairly violent critique of what they call "Negriism"--they are referring as much to the journal Multitudes as they are the work of Negri himself--in both issues of the journal. In a text like "Ceci n'est pas un programme"--"This is no program"--they settle their accounts Italy '77. Read it. Translate it? Post it somewhere.

I would suggest that the tenured cretin above do a bit of reading and less posting. Go to the Bloom site. Read. Take a breath. Silence. Read some more.

Some of these texts will begin appearing in solid English translations in the near future.

The post above deliberately

The post above deliberately distorts the text hyping the book. This is what it says: "Hot-wired to the movement of '77 in Italy," not "hot-wired into Italian Autonomia of the 1970s." Only a fool, or an academic, would confuse the two, deliberately or not.

Easily checkable fact: Semiotexte's 1979 (and now reprinted) book about what you rather awkwardly call "the movement of '77 in Italy" is called "Autonomia: Post-Political Politics." And so it would appear that it is Semiotexte, not your foil in this rather lopsided debate, that is foolish or academic, because it is in fact Semiotexte -- "hyping the book" -- that has "confused" Italy in 1977 and Autonomia, not him.

Tiqqun develops a fairly violent critique of what they call "Negriism"

Yes. We know, this is precisely why publication by presses like Semiotexte/MIT/Autonomedia, which are uncritically pro-"Negriism," is so grating.

I would suggest that the tenured cretin above do a bit of reading and less posting.

Such a weak insult! But alas the person to whom it is addressed if neither tenured, nor an academic. Care to try again?

Bill, pretending to be

Bill, pretending to be different voices is really at odds with your complaint about several hands being involved in one translation, and actually points to how several people coming together to find one voice is actually a more productive endeavor than one (annoying) voice pretend to be many in order to whine and try and draw attention to his own notbored articles. And if you are not an academic, you certainly present yourself as one when you see something personal to gain out of it. But the idea that one person and one only is behind most published translations is confused: translations get reviewed, revised based on those reviews, and then edited by a copyeditor. That's what acknowledgments are for: to thank all the people who helped make the translation (or book!) better than it would have been without the outside input from others. For a translator to act as his or her own copyeditor would be to do a serious disservice to a book.

To claim that Semiotext[e] is "uncritically" pro or anti anything is to simply ignore their list and their history: they started out publishing Deleuze, Foucault, and Guattari, and then proceeded to introduce Baudrillard into English, who was hated by all three. They are currently publishing (and Autonomedia has done the same in the past) both Italian authors and Situationist writings (I remember Autonomedia putting both Negri and Vienet out around the same time). There has been an overload of Situationist literature in English translation over the last decade: to claim that independent presses like Semiotext[e] and Autonomedia give undue attention to Negri and co. and ignore Situationist lit betrays a Situationist bias on your own part: authors like Marazzi and Virno had simply not been available in English before Semio changed that, whereas Debord's voice has been dominant for a while now. Making the Coming insurrection available, or any book that strongly critiques Negri, would actually be very in keeping with what I take to be Semiotexte’s ongoing refusal to get themselves mired in ideology (i.e., "uncritically" pro or anti anything).

Specialization rules

Specialization rules here:

"But the idea that one person and one only is behind most published translations is confused: translations get reviewed, revised based on those reviews, and then edited by a copyeditor. That's what acknowledgments are for: to thank all the people who helped make the translation (or book!) better than it would have been without the outside input from others. For a translator to act as his or her own copyeditor would be to do a serious disservice to a book."

But we is autonomous life forms not Borg cubes and we DYI. Fuck specializations!

MIT Press distributed an

MIT Press distributed an early, significant title on the SI back in 1991, the catalogue for the show that was at the ICA back then. McDonough, who edited the book you mentioned, has another one with them from a year or two ago that is related. They distributed The Activist Drawing, which is the first, maybe still only, book in English focused on Constant. They distribute Zone, who has published both Debord and Vaneigem; the published Simon Sadler's Situationist City, an important book on SI and architecture; and of course, they distribute Semiotext(e), who just put out Bernstein and Debord. A quick keyword search on their web site will pull up titles past and present.

Agamben is published by

Agamben is published by Stanford University Press, primarily. Perhaps they don't need to choose whom to publish on the basis of this or that vulgar financial consideration. Then again, I imagine a lot of more copies of The State of Exception were sold than, say, The Porcelain Workshop.
The fact is that Semiotexte wanted to publish this text, felt it was important. No one else has. All the translation was done for free, clearly, because the translators--who worked closely with friends in France--felt it was important. When the text is available, the quality of the translation can be evaluated. In the meantime, lets stop boring one another with this insipid moralism. Bad air!

"When the text is

"When the text is available,"

still playing the same game:

if everything is as you say it is, why the delay? why not use the internet as a place to host the text AS WELL AS a place on which to advertise its forthcoming publication as a printed volume?

Please be sure to close your

Please be sure to close your html if you are going to use it.

Legal not-for-profit status

Legal not-for-profit status is irrelevant.

If wages are payed, then those who are payed the wages have an interest which conflicts with that of disseminating information; viz., to continue their source of wages.

That is the important issue. Information, which is (supposedly) reproduced for its own sake, must be artificially limited, (or, perhaps the opposite: worthless information, reproduced without good reason) in order to sustain the wages of the employees.

Of course, these employees themselves are non-profits, who are only trying to pay their bills, feed themselves, keep the calories coming into the body. Nobody's gaining weight (or having kids), right?

The conflict of interest remains.

this doesnt answer teh

this doesnt answer teh question.

you act like they are forced to work with mit press. so ill ask again: why dont they make the translation available online for free, and sell paper book copies thru some vanity pulibsher like lulu or something?

Because they're not a vanity

Because they're not a vanity press?

wow, no shit? but hey, thanx

wow, no shit?

but hey, thanx for ignoring everything that was asked.

ill ask a fourth time:: why dont t those invovled int he translation make it avaialable 4 free online? theyve got the files sitting ont heir harddrives, why dont they post them someplace? because itll make their overlords at mit angry? then why do do they work with them anyway>?

I downloaded and started

I downloaded and started reading this jumbled, incoherant mess called "The Coming Insurrection." If you actually think it's going to insight anyone to anything I can only say you've got to be the dumbest sons-of-bitches I've ever seen.
Why don't you quit pussy-footing around and grow some balls instead of screaming like little girls?

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