Item #39688 A group of documents from the Congress of the Dialectics of Liberation, held at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, north London between July 15-30, 1967. DIALECTICS OF LIBERATION.
A group of documents from the Congress of the Dialectics of Liberation, held at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, north London between July 15-30, 1967.
A group of documents from the Congress of the Dialectics of Liberation, held at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, north London between July 15-30, 1967.
A group of documents from the Congress of the Dialectics of Liberation, held at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, north London between July 15-30, 1967.
A group of documents from the Congress of the Dialectics of Liberation, held at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, north London between July 15-30, 1967.
A group of documents from the Congress of the Dialectics of Liberation, held at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, north London between July 15-30, 1967.
A group of documents from the Congress of the Dialectics of Liberation, held at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, north London between July 15-30, 1967.
A group of documents from the Congress of the Dialectics of Liberation, held at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, north London between July 15-30, 1967.
A group of documents from the Congress of the Dialectics of Liberation, held at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, north London between July 15-30, 1967.
A group of documents from the Congress of the Dialectics of Liberation, held at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, north London between July 15-30, 1967.
A group of documents from the Congress of the Dialectics of Liberation, held at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, north London between July 15-30, 1967.
A group of documents from the Congress of the Dialectics of Liberation, held at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, north London between July 15-30, 1967.
A group of documents from the Congress of the Dialectics of Liberation, held at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, north London between July 15-30, 1967.
A group of documents from the Congress of the Dialectics of Liberation, held at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, north London between July 15-30, 1967.
A group of documents from the Congress of the Dialectics of Liberation, held at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, north London between July 15-30, 1967.

93.

A group of documents from the Congress of the Dialectics of Liberation, held at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, north London between July 15-30, 1967.

The event was organised by anti-psychiatrists Joseph Berke, RD Laing, David Cooper and Leon Redler (under the rubric of the somewhat intangible Institute of Phenomenological Studies) as an attempt to “demystify human violence in all its forms… and to explore new forms of action”. Gathering together a wide array of intellectuals, radical activists and leading figures from the international counterculture, including Herbert Marcuse, Allen Ginsberg, Emmett Grogan and Stokely Carmichael, it opened on July 15 with an address by RD Laing and closed on July 30 with a lecture by David Cooper. The lectures by the main speakers were given in the mornings, and afterwards discussions continued around the Primrose Hill area in pubs and cafes, with more informal meetings in the evenings. The Roundhouse itself was occupied 24 hours a day, with some people living there for the duration. Miles remembers the atmosphere as being “pretty funky”, and Angela Davis, who also attended the conference, wrote in her autobiography that “the floor was covered with sawdust”, that the air “reeked heavily of marijuana”, and that there were rumours one speaker “was high on acid.”

Throughout the proceedings tensions between hippies and political activists simmered and sometimes surfaced, particularly during the impassioned speech given by Stokely Carmichael of the Black Panther Party in which he dismissed the passive hippie world and contrasted it with “the structure… still oppressing me.” Women were conspicuously absent from the list of invited speakers, and this omission, combined with a misogynistic remark made by Carmichael, served to strengthen the growing desire for their own liberation movement. In highlighting such contradictions, and by exposing the discrepancies between those who sought personal or individual liberation rather than a collective liberation, the fortnight-long conference marked a pivotal point, presaging the political upheavals of 1968 and directly paving the way for the Anti-University of London and its simple, staccato manifesto of ‘Music Art Poetry Black Power Madness Revolution’.

i) A large flyer for The Dialectics of Liberation. London: Institute of Phenomenological Studies, c. January/February 1967. Printed in black on white paper. 22.5x29cm. Lists 14 of the participants, with the name of Romanian historian and philosopher Mircea Eliade crossed through in black ink and replaced with Stokely Carmichael’s. Prints a statement jointly written by Joseph Berke, David Cooper and Leon Redler: “All men are in chains. There is the bondage of poverty and starvation: the bondage of lust for power, status, possessions. A reign of terror is now perpetrated and perpetuated on a global scale. In the affluent societies, it is masked. There, children are conditioned by violence called love to assume their position as the would-be inheritors of the fruits of the earth. But, in the process, they are reduced to little more than hypothetical points on a dehumanized co-ordinate system… We shall meet in London on the basis of a wide range of expert knowledge. The dialectics of liberation begin with the clarification of our present condition.” Some lower edge creasing, o/w Very Good.

ii) The Institute of Phenomenological Studies. A mimeographed circular outlining the history of the Institute and listing its founder members. Announces that it “will continue a basic seminar group during the first half of 1967 leading to the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation in July of that year.” The Institute was set up in 1966 by several members of the Philadelphia Association, a charity established by RD Laing, David Cooper and Aaron Esterson in April 1965 to run a revolutionary, anti-authoritarian “anti-psychiatry unit” at Kingsley Hall dedicated to “the relief of mental illness of all descriptions, in particular schizophrenia” (Kingsley Hall was originally founded in 1915 by Muriel and Doris Lester for the benefit of the socially downtrodden). Single quarto sheet, printed recto only. Very Good. Together with: Philadelphia Association Report, 1965-1969 (London: Philadelphia Association, 1969). A fundraising brochure: “Kingsley Hall has been a melting pot, a crucible in which many, if not all, of our initial assumptions about normal-abnormal, conformist-deviant, sane-crazy experience and behaviour have been dissolved.” The Philadelphia Association (named after its Latin etymology and not the American city) occupied Kingsley Hall in Bow, east London from June 1965 to August 1970 (John Latham also had a studio in the building for a brief period). Staples rusted, o/w Very Good.

iii) A TLS to Bill Levy from Alexander Newman, colleague of RD Laing and David Cooper (“who says he knows you”), asking International Times for publicity for the conference: “We need a great deal of money, and we need a certain kind of publicity, and anything you could do for us would be appreciated.” Undated. Old central horizontal fold and some creasing.

iv) International Congress - Dialectics of Liberation. London: Institute of Phenomenological Studies, c. June 1967. Mimeographed booklet, stapled. Thirteen sheets + title page. Each page prints a capsule biography and brief bibliography of (some of) the principal participants: Gregory Bateson; Stokely Carmichael; David Cooper; John Gerassi; Allen Ginsberg; Erving Goffman; Paul Goodman; Lucien Goldmann; Jules Henry; RD Laing; Ernest Mandel; Herbert Marcuse; and Paul Sweezy. Staples rusted, with final sheet detached; old central horizontal fold; o/w Very Good. Accompanied by a printed covering letter and the original mailing envelope addressed by the Congress’s organising secretary, Joseph Berke, to the editor of International Times, Bill Levy. The envelope, date stamped June 20, 1967 and rubber stamped ‘Dialectics of Liberation’, bears Berke’s written instruction: “Do Not Lose!”.

v) An original ticket for the Dialectics of Liberation, admitting “one person only to all public lectures”, with the word “Press” written out in blue ink. Printed in black on blue card. 7x10.2cm. Very Good plus.

vi) A mimeographed offprint from Peace News #1597 (London: February 3, 1967). 2pp., stapled at top corner. Roger Barnard’s lengthy article, “Seeds of Growth”, about the upcoming Dialectics of Liberation conference. Rust stains affecting right edges, o/w Very Good.

vii) A mimeographed flyer announcing Carolee Schneemann’s ‘Round House’ Kinetic Theater presented by the International Congress Dialectics of Liberation, July 29, 1967. Low resolution mimeo printed recto only on bright orange paper. 25.2x20.3cm. Lists the participants, gives “thanks” to Joseph Berke, Michael Kustow, Bob Cobbing, John Latham and Victor Schonfield (among others), and prints a description of Schneemann’s ‘Happening’. Old central vertical and horizontal folds, o/w Near Fine. Together with: another copy, with much of the faint text overwritten in black biro by Neil Hornick, one of the event’s ‘Core’ participants. In “More Than Meat Joy”, Schneemann recalls that “Five hundred people settled themselves in a huge semi-circle; the atmosphere was testy, aggressive, or passive during Round House. Our final ‘rescue’ by the mass group - piling us into the cart - was a relief from heckling and catcalls. As we were trundled away in a heap Jean [Michaelson] muttered through the refuse: ‘Carolee, I’m glad you had the foresight to get us out of here’…. The band, The Social Deviants, plugged in their amplifiers and began to play; finally the audience got up and danced in the debris” (p.157). The party was attended by, among others, Mick Jagger, William Burroughs and Michael X. Mick Farren remembers the gig as being “lamentably under-rehearsed, saving our lives by coasting on fury rather than sound” (“Give the Anarchist a Cigarette”, p.103).

viii) A carbon copy typed transcript of Gregory Bateson’s lecture, “Consciousness versus Nature”, and the panel discussion that followed; delivered at the Congress on July 17, 1967, with a brief introduction by RD Laing. 24 legal-size sheets, stapled and gathered by paper clips at upper edge. A few holograph amendments in an unknown hand. The text was published by Penguin Books in 1968 in an edited and abbreviated form (omitting the discussion section) in “The Dialectics of Liberation” (item #96), and a recording of the lecture, as well as most of the discussion part, was released on Liberation Records DL1 and DL2 (see item #94). In “Kodak Mantra Diaries” (item #106), Allen Ginsberg is quoted referring to Bateson’s remarks on the build up of greenhouse gas emissions and (accurate) prediction of global warming: “Bateson was saying the violence in other forms is mild compared to the violence we’ve done to the actual planet - because of the layer of carbon dioxide over the surface of the atmosphere which within ten to thirty years will raise the temperature of the earth by 5 per cent, melt the polar icecaps & inundate all the continents with 40 feet of water” (a theme Ginsberg elaborated on in his speech at the Roundhouse [item #94 xii]). Bateson was the originator of the double bind theory of schizophrenia and the first to apply cybernetic theory to the social sciences (he was also a major influence on Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand, whose book on him, “Two Cybernetic Frontiers”, contained the first use of the term ‘personal computer’ in print).

An interesting collection of rarely found primary source material from the Dialectics of Liberation.

(12 items).

Sold