Michel Bounan – Original autograph manuscript for the preface to the new edition of Incitation à l’autodéfense [2004]

BOUNAN, Michel. Original autograph manuscript for the preface (“Mise en garde”) to the new edition of Incitation à l’autodéfense. n.p. [Paris]: n.p., n.d. [September 2004]. Three loose leaves of white paper; written in blue ink on the rectos only; 21 x 29.7 cm. Heavily corrected with numerous cross-outs, marginal substitutions. Unique; from the author’s working papers. This manuscript represents the complete, raw drafting process for the warning preface added to the 2005 Éditions Allia edition of Bounan’s critical handbook, Incitation à l’autodéfense. Michel Bounan—the radical physician and essayist whose orbit long intersected with Guy Debord and the post-Situationist milieu—uses these three dense pages to hone a sharp defense mechanism for those refusing the commodity system’s categories. The manuscript offers an illuminating look at the phonetic and lexical labor required to shape a piece of uncompromising modern theory. It is difficult not to view this manuscript as a thematic…