one man's preface

from CAPTIVE WORDS by MUSTAPHA KHAYATI
Preface to a Situationist Dictionary

«Our dictionary will be a sort of code book enabling one to decipher
the news and rend the ideological veils that cover reality. We will
give possible translations that will enable people to grasp the
different aspects of the society of the spectacle, and show how the
slightest signs and indications contribute to maintaining it. In a
sense it will be a bilingual dictionary, since each word has an
"ideological" meaning for power and a real meaning that we think
corresponds to real life in the present historical phase. Thus we will
be able at each step to determine the various positions of words in
the social war. If the problem of ideology is how to descend from the
heaven of ideas to the real world, our dictionary will be a
contribution to the elaboration of the new revolutionary theory where
the problem is how to effect the transition from language to life. The
real appropriation of the words that work cannot be realized outside
the appropriation of work itself. The inauguration of free creative
activity will at the same time be the inauguration of true
communication, freed at last. The transparency of human relations will
replace the poverty of words under the old regime of opacity. Words
will not cease to work until people do.»