it is my understanding that the reason texts are not being translated (yet!) is because not enough people took responsibility over this task. as someone who had the privilige to watch one of crimethinc. shorter texts being translated, and as someone who translated some other texts myself, i can say that the work is really really exhausting and requires determination, time and a lot of working hands. i am sure everyone in crimethinc. will rejoice if more people will take responsibility over this.

besides what peter p said about agenda, i think that one thing that people ignore is that when someone attempts to write to a broad audiance, they usually write to the “dominant” group in society. also, i personally think it’s a bad idea to write to a group that you are not a part of or has never been a part of. i would be offended if a person who is queer for example will try and write presenting themselves as a part of that culture.

i personally think there is space in crimethinc. for more voices that i miss. i would want a book i could give my mama, for example. but i think that thinking about this might take time. there’s no problem with crimethinc. text the way they are now, just exciting possibilities and paths we haven’t taken yet. if people have concrete thoughts i would love to hear them. :)

That aside, I lament the fact that The Secret World of Duvbo appears to be out of print, and my personal copy is gone. Although the book never mentions anarchism or revolution by those names, it explains them with such visceral beauty that, regardless of how many times I reread the book, I would always cry at certain points.

Duvbo is very similar in many points to the small Northern town where I spent my childhood. If the book is ever available again, I’d like to anonymously send a crate of copies to the elementary school there. Beyond that, I’ve found that it is a work that make a strong and immediate impression on people who would never read a “book about anarchism.”

For better or worse, the struggle for anarchy often feels like a Children’s Crusade. As an aside on this concept: here are two videos I recently stumbled across that remind me of that theme:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doc1eqstMQQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EyI4p0yjDQ

An interesting thing about speech in the particular phase of globalization we’re in now–while the standardization of the television era is still at work in terms of accent and so on, the internet era means that rather than every voice being made identical, subcultural reference points are diverging more and more. Anarchists are already a small minority; we have to watch out that the ease with which the internet enables people to produce their own cultural niches doesn’t help us to create a tiny one that doesn’t intersect with any others.

On your second point, regarding the literary style, I’d just like to add my experience to the discussion. I come from a working-class single parent family, and dropped out of high-school when i was 16. The CrimethInc. texts that were in circulation at the time were easily within my reading level. Admittedly, I often came across words unfamiliar to me, historical references beyond my cultural context – however, I think this discussion is a matter of motivation. When texts elaborate critiques i’ve already harbored, I’m motivated to further understand what I’m reading. In those days, I read anarchists texts with the help of a dictionary and wikipedia. I’ve spoken with others who have similar experiences., and I’m wary of “speaking to the masses in language they can understand.” Since we all speak differently – culturally, regionally, individually, etc – we must re-learn what it means to contemplate the thoughts of others while translating them in real time to our own language and experience. This is simply the way people talked, wrote before the ear of globalization where everyone on the television speaks exactly alike.

With respect to coherence , I’d commend CrimethInc. if this discussion were limited to anarchist publications. Have you read some of the latest insurrectionary zines? They’re great, but I’ll be damned if anyone can read them aloud. Not trying to defend CrimethInc., more that I’m trying to suggest that writing for outreach projects is not the same as writing internal theses. All this to say: let’s use writing as a means to communicate and locate each other.

Thanks for the thoughtful comment – all of this is well-worth discussing!
Peter

P.S. I’m the most matter-of-fact person I know.

I think one thing we really need to look at is the possibility of releasing some publications that would be easier to understand and interpret for people with limited vocabularies or that have difficulty reading. I believe there are many bright and intelligent but uneducated people out there that feel betrayed by capitalism and democracy and share similar beliefs and that we need to be connecting with them, as well. I enjoy all of CrimethInc.’s publications, but the dialogue can come off as elitist sometimes–not because it’s intentionally exclusionary but because some people want reading material that is simple and to the point. The often poetic flow of prose that is so common in CrimethInc. publications appeals to idealists, but I think to a lot of people that think on much more matter-of-factly terms it may come off as possibly pretentious.

i like this perspective. maybe crimethinc (or me) should think about writing a book to dialogue with other groups of youth:
-a book for rural white kids
-one for black lower class teenagers (first sentence: “we already know nobody’s going to hand us a future, so why not make our own?”)
-goth kids
-one specifically by and for teen girls
etc…….