A Fair Question
Why translate a 600-page book about ancient Christian rebels?

Why did I translate Raoul Vaneigem’s La Résistance au christianisme: Les Héresies des origines au xviiie siècle, originally published in 1993 by Editions Fayard, into English?

This is a fair question because, after all, the book is more than 600 pages long, not counting the bibliography and the index, and it’s about a fairly esoteric subject: the so-called heresies that were identified (sometimes even fabricated), publicly denounced and ruthlessly persecuted by the Christian Church over the course of nearly 2,000 years.

My answer starts with the fact that Vaneigem, born on March 21, 1934, in Lessines, Belgium, and still very much alive today, was an important member of the Situationist International (the SI). Founded in Italy in 1957 by several small groups of European painters, architects, poets and filmmakers, the SI was unique in that its members believed in the possibility of global social revolution at a time when virtually no one else did.

In the early 1960s, the organization evolved from a Surrealist-inspired avant-garde arts movement into a hardcore political grouping that was primarily concerned with updating Marxist and anarchist theories and practices for the modern era. By 1967, the SI had developed a new critique of modern capitalism (“the society of the spectacle”) and reinvented the theory of proletarian revolution (“the revolution of everyday life”).

The situs propagated their ideas and methods through a journal called Internationale situationniste, several books, and a number of scandalous provocations. The group was deeply involved in the protests, riots, and occupations that nearly toppled the French government in May—June 1968.

In the 1970s, after the organization had dissolved itself, the SI continued to have a profound influence on revolutionary politics and culture in the U.S., France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.

In England, the undiminished power and attractiveness of situationist critique was revealed in a new context when it was adopted, simplified and sharpened by the clothes, lyrics and packaging designs of the Sex Pistols. Other classic punk bands influenced by the SI include Gang of Four, the Clash, and the Mekons. More recent adherents to situationist critique include the punk bands Pussy Riot and the Stone Temple Pilots, the editors of Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, Adbusters and the organizers of Occupy Wall Street.

Raoul Vaneigem was one of the most important members of the SI, which he joined in 1961 and stayed with until 1970, when he resigned. During that time, he wrote several key situationist texts, including Traité de savoir-vivre à l’usage des jeunes générations, first published in 1967 and most often translated into English as The Revolution of Everyday Life.

After his resignation, Vaneigem was overshadowed by the SI’s co-founder and last remaining member, Guy Debord, who was an outspoken critic of his ex-comrade’s lack of involvement in the organization post-1967, his eventual resignation and the works he published thereafter. As a result, comparatively few of Vaneigem’s nearly 50 books and more than 20 prefaces, afterwords and articles have been translated into English.

To date, there has been only one major study in English of his life and work: Alastair Hemmings’ The Radical Subject: An Intellectual Biography of Raoul Vaneigem (1934-Present).

Vaneigem’s post-SI work has covered a wide variety of subjects, including the Zapatistas, the Yellow Vests, and the Oaxaca Commune. But there is one subject to which he has returned several times and with great intensity: religion, particularly the Christian religion and the heresies against which it fought. Perhaps this should be phrased the other way around: he has focused on heresies and their resistance to the imposition of Christianity upon the masses and at the point of a sword. Vaneigem has written nearly half a dozen books on this one subject, the longest and most important of which is La Résistance au christianisme. When I began the translation in 2006, none were available in English.

Vaneigem does not have a particularly good understanding of contemporary American society. In his epilogue to my translation, which was specifically written for it, he refers to Calvinism and the Protestant work ethic rather than to white Christian nationalism and the drive toward a theocracy in this country. But his book is very relevant to the religious cult that has arisen around ex-President Trump and his millenarian rhetoric about retribution.

Without help from such a source as Vaneigem, it is difficult to understand the extent and intensity of the zealous support (even adoration) for Trump by people who are in fact victimized by his vicious, fascist policies and actions.

There are other translators who have brought Vaneigem into English, but they are few in number. There’s the ex-situationist Donald Nicholson-Smith, who has translated The Revolution of Everyday Life and several other works into English, and the team of Randall Cherry and Ian Patterson, who collaborated on the translation of Le Mouvement du libre-esprit (The Movement of the Free Spirit), to which La Résistance au christianisme is a kind of sequel and supplement. But when I first got interested in La Résistance, it seemed clear that no one else was going to take it on, and so I decided to translate it myself. I had my work cut out for me.

It should be noted that, for 15 years before I signed a publishing contract with Eris Books, my translation of Resistance to Christianity was available for free on my website (notbored.org). The manuscript was also copied and pasted to several anarchist websites, including the Anarchist Library, by administrators who believed that their readers would also be interested in its contents and relevance to contemporary society.

As a result, I received dozens of emails from attentive and enthusiastic people who had questions, comments, and/or corrections, and so I was able to improve the manuscript as well as be reassured that there was an audience for it. Though I have done so before, I would like to take this opportunity to thank them all for the help I have received along the way.

Bill Brown has been involved in the situationist milieu for nearly 40 years. He has translated numerous situationist texts and reprinted others that were no longer available. He lives and works in New York City.

Related

See Raoul Vaneigem in the FE Archive.