Radical media, politics and culture.

Annotations to Debord's "Comments on the Society of the Spectacle"

NOT BORED writes "Comrades:

We disagree with Malcom Imrie, the translator of Debord's "Comments on the Society of the Spectacle" (1988): footnotes would definitely help many readers to better understand this book, in part because some of the historical events to which Debord refers or alludes aren't well known (have been suppressed, obscured or completely forgotten) in English-speaking countries; and in part because Debord himself "take[s] care not to give too much information to just anybody." In the absence of such explanations, Debord seems paranoid (which he wasn't) and his references seem figural (when they are in fact historical).

And so we have added 38 "new" footnotes. To keep matters simple, we have ended them with [NB] and Imrie's original 17 footnotes with [Trans.]. On some occasions, when we've found Imrie's notes to be incomplete, we've followed the added information with [NB].

Click here to read it:
http://www.notbored.org/commentaires.html

--NOT BORED!, 15 June 2004"