Email Exchange

From Wikipedia: Ken Knabb is an American writer, translator, and radical theorist[1], best known for his translations of Guy Debord and the Situationist International.
Although Knabb has remained in substantial agreement with most of the situationist perspectives, some of his writings can be seen as attempts to meld, or at least to juxtapose, those perspectives with the rather different tone and scope of Kenneth Rexroth and with the experiential insights of Zen Buddhism (he is a long-time Zen practitioner). In a 1977 pamphlet, for example, he critiqued what he saw as the situationists’ blindspot regarding religion.[5] Conversely, he has also criticized the political naiveté of “socially engaged” Buddhists. Another of his recurring themes is the importance of paying attention to the psychological or “subjective” aspect of radical activities.

I’ve been rereading the Society of the Spectacle in an attempt to understand how Debord conceives consciousness and communication. This isn’t an academic excercise, or not entirely. Living in Portland, Oregon I feel the influence of Primitivism and Post-Leftism quite keenly. Those who are aware of the Society of the Spectacle in Oregon seem prone to mystifying “the situation” as something that resides outside of symbolic thought. Zerzan’s longing for a pre-verbal society is, I think, a symptom of his designation of the real as something beyond linguistic description or understanding.

What is your understanding of the Debord’s relationship to symbolic thought, reason, and communication?

Solidarity,

Doug

Forgive me if I am tersely brief: I think that the views of Zerzan etc. are so silly that I’m not in the mood to argue about them.

As for Debord, without going into detail about the nuances of his relationship to symbolic thought, reason, and communication, he was definitely for more of them, not less. He obviously opposed various kinds of alienated communication and reason, but he envisioned a liberated life as consisting of a richness of human potentialities (somewhat along the lines of Vaneigem’s “unitary triad” of communication, participation and realization).

I might add that, as a long-time Zen practitioner, I am well aware of the notion of getting beyond obsessive/compulsive thinking. But that does not mean retreating to some fantasized prehistoric vegetative state. Zen and other similar mystical traditions always include the notion of coming back into the world of activities and relationships and complexities; the “nonthinking” state is just one aspect of the journey, which must be in dynamic interrelation with action in the world and with others, including every sort of communication.

Cheers,

Ken