This discussion traces certain common problematics for the political mobilisations of 1968 and the movements that have coalesced around and against contemporary processes of globalisation. The extended 'events' of 1968 conceived of political action and political subjects in ways that have been profoundly influential on the forms of activism which characterise the politics of anti- or alter-globalisation, but the connections to be made between the two go beyond a repertoire of slogan, gesture and styles of protest. The point rather is to think about the import of the mobilisations of 1968 and afterwards for a 'positive politics'--one based on possibility rather than simply on proscription or opposition. Moreover--then and now--such politics operate in contexts where agency is dispersed and interests disparate, where the political odds seem long, and where both the object of protest and the ends of politics can be difficult to identify in very stable or specific forms. Thinking about political alternatives in a positive mode is harder than it might seem, and especially so when the object of contest takes the abstracted form of 'globalisation'. In the face of an apparently total system, the temptations of what Walter Benjamin called 'left-wing melancholy' can be difficult to avoid. That species of radicalism, as he put it, 'is precisely the attitude to which there is no longer, in general, any corresponding political action. It is not to the left of this or that tendency, but simply to the left of what is in general possible'. (1) The pleasures of this kind of 'negativistic quiet' are those of high-minded disillusion or cynicism rewarded. At its weakest, it is a sort of bad faith in politics. At best, as older lines of opposition are abandoned, the 'socialism of solutions' gives way to a 'socialism of critique' that retains a certain contrarian bite but makes few substantive claims. (2) Either way, as for Benjamin, politics is transformed 'from a means of production into an article of consumption'. The argument here is in three parts. It begins by taking an emblematic moment from each period--Paris 1968 and Seattle 1999--as a way into the broader scale and range of these politics. In both cases, the most visible political instance, the politics of the event, opens onto a longer pattern of protest across space and over time: lines indeed that run forward from the anti-authoritarian, counter-cultural and solidarity politics of the 1960s to the anti- or alter-global politics of the last two decades. Just as '1968', as the marker for a series of protests in different national contexts and on different political grounds, does not begin or end with Paris in May, so the politics of anti-globalisation does not begin with Seattle in December. The discussion goes on to focus on the contemporary case, outlining critical takes on the logic of opposition that results from the politics of alter-globalisation--broadsides, that is, from the pessimism of the intellect. Finally, it reflects on the uses of negativity as a ground for politics. Up against processes of globalisation that appear intractable and ungovernable, forms of opposition or resistance are always going to be politics on the back foot. But what are the positive claims to be made for a politics of the 'anti'. How do these patterns of protest help to extend the field of 'what is in general possible'? POLITICAL SITUATIONS: PARIS AND SEATTLE The fortieth anniversary of 1968, like others, has provided the occasion for thinking about political style and substance then and now. It is as much a media as a political event, a chance for ex-combatants and assorted intellos to re-visit the days of May and ask questions about what it all now means. The soixante-huitards are now around pension age but there is no sign that they are retiring any time soon, at least figuratively; these aging youths continue to play a vanguardist role in the radical political imagination. …