Editions La Lenteur catalogue 2026
Introducing Editions la lenteur:
“Éditions de la Lenteur publishes texts sharing the conviction that the massive expansion of technology is a fundamental cause of widespread political fatalism. The decades-long development of ever more powerful machines and computers increases labour exploitation and alienation in everyday life. Far from liberating humanity, modern technology binds individuals to the social body in an unprecedented and regressive way.
La Lenteur emerged from our practice of writing texts in support of anti-industrial struggles and ideas. We mainly circulated the texts outside the bookshop network. In 2004, we participated in writing the brochure Les États Généraux de la servitude (The Estates General of Servitude), which documented the opposition of radical groups to the research campaign Sauvons la recherche (Let’s Save Research). This opposition gave rise to Oblomoff, a group that also produced brochures on the subject.
Involved in the movement against advertising and opposed to the installation of biometric systems in schools and elsewhere, we also took part in the student movement against the Contrat Première Embauche (CPE), a proposed “First Employment Contract”, in spring 2006. We were a small group of friends committed to a radical critique of industrial society, and wherever we went, we encountered the difficulties involved in sharing this critique. We came up against the inability, and even refusal, of the left (Attac, Le Monde diplomatique, trade unions, political parties, associations) to consider consumerism, technoscience and environmental degradation as major political issues. Our criticism of the digitalisation of public space came up against the demands of militant effectiveness and an undisguised enthusiasm for new technologies and forms of communication. Coming from the left ourselves, at least through our families, friendships and places we used to frequent, we could not help but be struck by the strength of this resistance, and we were aware that the few spectacular actions, such as those we participated in, would not be sufficient to trigger the necessary debate on the divorce between technological progress and human progress: in an era without any immediate prospect of an emancipatory uprising, it appeared essential to get down to substantive work and contribute to changing the atmosphere.
Since we founded our publishing house, we have never used social media or electronic payment methods, nor have we created a website or worked with Amazon. This is for reasons of consistency rather than purity, and perhaps simply because we are not interested in them. We don’t know how to use these tools and have no desire to learn. Moreover, we are convinced that the production and circulation of ideas that offer a critique of the industrial system will sooner or later be doomed if they remain dependent on the means that this very system “generously” provides.
In that sense, we are on the defensive, like all those who share our sensibilities, and we have to accept a certain number of contradictions, since books cannot be produced without industrial means. It may be difficult to imagine having a place in the “book chain” without using the Internet at all, but we are determined not to use PayPal, HelloAsso, Instagram or YouTube, in order to avoid contributing, even on a very small scale, to services that, by reinforcing individual isolation, have created a widespread sense of powerlessness, which, among other things, contributes to the rise of the right. Thus, we may lose some readers and sales in the short term, but we know that we have survived until now thanks to book tables set up across France, numerous letters from readers, and dozens of presentations in bookshops.”
