"The Misery of Love" & Other Essays from Social Disease

Translator: Mar Stratford

Publisher: Spiral Editions (2024)

From 1972 to 1974, the anonymous writers of Social Disease offered groundbreaking, incisive, and sweeping critiques of social relationships through the lens of Situationism. Arguing that true revolution -- the kind of complete and irreversible revolution longed for in the wake of such revolutionary moments as the May 1968 student uprisings and the 1969 Stonewall riots-- would change every aspect of society, it was clear that affective relationships -- how we love, how we feel pleasure-- would necessarily be changed as well, and thus deserved examination as much as the traditional questions of labor or politics. The voices in the essays speak with urgency, and do not compromise in their expression. Beyond the theoretical insights of the text, the emotional truth of history comes through in the spaces of contradiction, and allusions to intercommunity conflicts. These essays were written without constraints for an immediate audience of comrades and peers; with this translation of the collection, that audience now includes us.