A Revolution of Perception? Consequences and Echoes of 1968, edited by Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey

Abstract

A Revolution of Perception? Consequences and Echoes of 1968, edited by Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey. New York, Berghahn Books, 2014. vi, 206 pp. $95.00 US (cloth). A Revolution of Perception? contributes to scholarship on 1968, a year that marked a historical and political but also cultural, linguistic, and sociological shift. volume is based on a conference held in 2009 at Oxford University and edited by Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey, a professor of history at Bielefeld University, who has published a number of studies of 1968, including 1968: Eine Zeitreise (Frankfurt, 2008), 68er Bewegung: Deutschland--Westeuropa--USA (Munich, 2001), and Die Phantasie an die Macht: Mai 68 in Frankreich (Frankfurt, 1995). In her introduction, Gilcher-Holtey states that volume's eight studies are [n]ot linked by a common analytical referential frame but by a leading research question: has 1968 movement had an impact on schemes of perception and classification, on criteria of vision and division of social world? (7). volume opens with Hennig Marmulla's analysis of a book planned but never written by Hans Magnus Enzensberger about his time in Cuba in 1968 and 1969. Marmulla also considers role of Enzensberger's time in Cuba and of Third World for his publication Kursbuch, which launched in 1965. Steffen Bruendel examines two publications in Britain, Black Dwarf and Red Mole, and their circulation between 1968 and 1973. He shows how Britain was involved in international solidarity movements, an insight that revises previously held notions. Bruendel cites four major factors that underscore internationalism of publications and thus, by extension, of Britain at time: role of individuals on editorial board, such as Tariq Ali, who themselves had a migratory background; movements of peoples from United Kingdom's previous colonies or commonwealth to Britain; content of two publications; and finally, travel of people active in various movement organizations or actions to and from England. In his article, Aribert Reimann examines Dieter Kunzelmann's letters from Amman, Jordan, and takes up issue of anti-Zionism among New Left. Reimann argues that the chronology of emergence of pro-Palestinian solidarity movement among [West] German students suggest no long-term agenda of left-wing anti-Semitism among New Left (71). The appropriation of anti-Zionism into 1960s' politics of protest had, Reimann states, little to do with any long-standing tradition of left-wing anti-Semitism, but understood Middle-East--however mistakenly--as yet another example of violent resistance against Western imperialism (77). …