Remembering and Forgetting the Sixties

Abstract

In this section, which will be a recurring feature in the journal, we will focus upon debates surrounding the meaning of the 1960s, particularly but not exclusively in relation to the counterculture. Many of us on both the editorial board and in the wider advisory board have participated in these debates for decades now and the fact that they are still going on, even receiving some prominence in the mainstream press, testifies to the significance of the Sixties as a social, political and cultural force. Indeed, the Sixties are still with us today as culture wars surrounding campaigns for progressive policies, as music that plays on even as it celebrates its role as soundtrack for a generation, as cold war politics in new and even peculiar guise, as symbols of past struggles that provide inspiration for the present. Thus it is that Graham Nash, in working with artist and filmmaker Jeff Scher, has produced a video clip of the song “Teach Your Children” that links 1968 and also events like the Kent State massacre with movement politics today from high school students opposed to gun violence to Black Lives Matter.