David Ames Curtis has added a “pre-script” to his Amazon.com critique of Helen Arnold’s translation of A Society Adrift by Cornelius Castoriadis (for an introduction to the matter, see my earlier post, “Castoriadis In Translation“). The particulars of the ongoing conflict are a little hard to follow (in addition to Arnold, it involves the Castoriadis family, Helen Tartar, Fordam University Press, Vincent Descombes, and the Association Cornelius Castoriadis) but one positive outcome of the imbroglio is that an alternative translation of the book has been anonymously released. I discovered this fact on the “News” section of Cornelius Castoriadis Agora Intenational Website:

WE HAVE RECEIVED THE FOLLOWING ANNOUNCEMENT:

Please note that a new digital edition, a volume of Cornelius Castoriadis/Paul Cardan writings, A Society Adrift: More Interviews and Discussions on The Rising Tide of Insignificancy, Including Revolutionary Perspectives Today, can now be downloaded in pdf format at this link. This is done as a public service in order to make these Castoriadis/Cardan writings available to all.

— NOT BORED!
16 October 2010

This is the third such translation now available on Not Bored! A cursory examination of the tables of contents of the Fordham University Press edition with the anonymous one reveals some discrepancies in the content. I’m not sure what is behind the difference, but I suspect that the answer is somewhere in the book’s long foreword.