Excess—The Factory
<p>In 1968, the American-born French poet Leslie Kaplan went to work in a factory. She did so out of choice rather than necessity, part of a generation of Maoist <em>établis</em>, university-educated radicals who entered the factory in order to organize the working class. <em>Excess—The Factory</em> evokes the tumult of those years through an encounter with the serial violence of the assembly line, descending by way of infernal workshops to reach the dark center of capitalist accumulation. Hailed by French luminaries such as Maurice Blanchot and Marguerite Duras as a unique event in writing, the book was at once legendary and all but lost to English-language readers. This long overdue translation by Julie Carr and Jennifer Pap, true to the original’s spare, declarative tone, returns the book and its complex moment to new readers. Ferocious, despairing, beautiful line by line, this book captures the era we cannot stop leaving.</p>
Authors: Leslie Kaplan
Translators: Jennifer Pap, Julie Carr
Designer: Front Group Design, Amze Emmons
Part of: Commune Editions
ISBN: 9781934639245