French May Research Articles

The Cross-Channel Diffusion of the French May

The well-known events of May 1968 in France struck a chord with British radical left activists. This paper examines the impact of the French May on British protest thanks to the analysis of diffusion processes between France and the United Kingdom. Because they perceived similarities between the two contexts, British protesters could identify with their French counterparts, thus providing the necessary condition for diffusion processes to occur. Information was then transferred through the mass media and the alternative press, as well as through personal contacts between both groups. British activists adopted the collective action frames and some of the tactics of the French May. Frustrated by their lack of participation in the running of their universities and workplaces, British students and workers chose to occupy their institutions, to create alternative organisational structures where they would be involved in the decision-making process. Finally, in spite of its particular historical context, Northern Ireland was also influenced by the French May, eclipsing for a brief moment, the local revolutionary Republican tradition.

May 1968 and Other Dates in the Memories of Imagination

‘The 1968 years’ draw into memory the thoughts and images of other dates, protests, and political formations worldwide. The Naxalite movement of India was as different from the French May as was the Prague Spring from the Hungarian Uprising. Yet each gathered currents of ideas, energies, tactics – in brief, memories – from others and then released them into the world again. These are ‘dates without places’ which became possible after the Second World War, giving us to think not the excess of ‘68 but that which was in excess of ‘68: intertwined insurrectionary components, only some of which were ‘local’ while others were more mobile and remote. They reveal memory as a contagion of the imagination which must cease to be defined only in relation to the past, or to a place, and must instead be recognized as the faculty relating to the future. Memories of imagination do not commemorate particular events, places, or even forms like ‘protest’ and ‘resistance.’ They gather through the homologies and analogies perceived by the imagination. Homology obtains the memories of the powers of constructability in an object by transporting it materially into a new reality, while analogy maintains the memories of the partial powers of the abstractability of an object in imagination. May ‘68 and other dates without places harbour the memory of this imagination which opens new spans for things, their range of actualizable trajectories. Some of these memories have carried forward to the great recent protests – Occupy, Syntagma Square, the Arab Spring – but we live less and less in a time when the semblance of Elias Canetti’s ‘open crowds’ can harbour imagination in politics. Our time would have to discover for itself the hidden spans of these twenty-first-century components, such that our memories of our own imagination remain actualizable.

1968: la contestación estudiantil en Italia y el PCI

En Italia, el movimiento estudiantil comenzó a adquirir dimensiones de masa ya a finales de 1967. Paulatinamente, despertó el interés político y mediático nacional siendo los sucesos acaecidos en Valle Giulia, Roma, en marzo 1968, el momento de máxima repercusión. Este artículo se propone investigar una serie de cuestiones interdependientes, con el objetivo principal de poner de manifiesto la importancia que tuvo 1968 en el devenir del Partido Comunista italiano (PCI). El punto de partida es la constatación de la existencia de un ‘mayo italiano’ anterior al francés, que sin duda fue menos popular, pero que contó con sus propias características y peculiaridades. El análisis crítico hace hincapié en la influencia y la repercusión que tuvo el mayo francés en la movilización italiana y, sobre todo, en el debate interno y la reacción del PCI ante estos dos fenómenos.

Distant Immediacy: Badiou and Rancière on May ’68 and its Consequences

This article on the French May ’68 addresses the gap between the immediacy of the event and the series of consequences that are supposed to have followed from it. In the eyes of the critics of May ’68 from all sides of the political spectrum, the events in France have been considered as having no consequence at all, as having no political but merely cultural consequences, or as producing political consequences that were opposite to the intentions of their actors. To these interpretations, which all account for the distance between the event and its consequences by means of completely disjointing the latter from the former, the article opposes two reflections on May ’68 – those by Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière – that attempt to examine the consequences of the very immediacy of the politics practised by the actors of the events, a politics that operates at a distance from mediation, representation and postponement. Badiou and Rancière propose some similar conclusions, but also two very different ways of reading the immediacy of the event.

Wrong Place, Right Time

This essay critically approaches the use of “1968” as a periodizing category by contrasting historiographic and political debates on the event and aftermath of the French May with the spatial and temporal unevenness that attaches to Italy’s “long” 1968. We explore two interlocking dimensions of the latter: the reprise of the “Southern question” in the midst of this sociopolitical upheaval, on the one hand, and the potent if enigmatic image of an Italian “creeping May,” on the other. A political and historiographic reflection on the Italian case suggests the need to dislocate a linear, if punctuated, periodization of 1968, and to move toward an understanding of the crises and movements that cluster around this date through a framework anchored around the notion of rhythm conceived as the site of political and spatial unevenness.

Modos de empleo del Détournement. Estrategias e intervenciones para una crítica dialéctica de situaciones

En la bisagra del Mayo Francés, tal como aparece en los textos letristas de Guy Debord y Gil Wolman, en los oce números de la revista Internationale Situationniste, y a la luz del tratamiento más sistemático que le dio Debord en La sociedad del Espectáculo (1967), este trabajo propone una revisión de la noción de détournement – strategia fundamental de la resistencia comunicacional situacionista, camino posible para una crítica dialéctica de situaciones y para una reescritura crítica de las ideas.

Jeunesses de Mai du quai Malaquais. Pour une histoire polychrome des mobilisations à « l’ex-École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts » au printemps 1968

La mémoire des mobilisations juvéniles du printemps 1968 au sein de l’École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts (ENSBA) tend à se limiter aux retentissantes affiches de l’atelier populaire et aux grands noms qui lui sont associés. Cette monochromie mémorielle masque une mobilisation d’ampleur aux dimensions plurielles – réflexion et mise en question de la formation et du rôle des artistes plasticiens et architectes, affrontements politiques à horizon plus global… – et concourt à la présenter sous un jour foncièrement singulier. À partir des documents saisis par la police lors de sa prise de l’ENSBA et de plusieurs entretiens menés avec des témoins, cet article, en tâchant de restituer une polychromie à ces mobilisations, entend aussi en montrer la relative banalité en ce printemps improbable.

La revolución cultural mundial de 1968, cincuenta años después

This article intends to examine carefully the scope and consequences raised by the cultural revolution of 1968, also known as the French May. The analysis argues that this movement can be considered as an “event-rupture” that imposes a capital reflection on the universality and depth that distinguish this complex world revolution. The analysis will revolve around three specific analytical axes: first, the main social actor, the student movement; second, the social fabric in which the main events are developed, that is, the sphere of culture, the place where French May is constituted as a true revolution; and third, the temporary moment in which these student movements break out to unleash this deep and cataclysmic rupture.

La revolución ausente. Fantasmas y ecos de Mayo del 68 en el cine documental de Jean-Luc Godard y el grupo Dziga Vertov

How long lasted May 68? A whole month or just a week? Historians do not quite agree on the duration of French May, but neither on its effects, nor even on the real reach of the protest movements and revolutionaries that shook Europe and the US. in the late 60's and early 70's. Franco-Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard, like many of his contemporaries could not, nor wanted, to remain outside the process and together with the group Dziga Vertov would be launched to the realization of a series of unorthodox documentary films that suppose an extraordinary counter-narration of the events that occurred in those important months of the late 60's. The director and his collaborators shied away from a direct and explanatory documentary image, and with prophetic lucidity, preferred to investigate the absent image, always elusive, hidden, through explorations that would have as spearhead complex technical explorations of sound and image montage. The 68 leaves a trail in the documentaries of Godard but also in several of his later productions. It seems that the Franco-Swiss director could no longer escape the image of the revolution, or its ontological and communicative value

Conclusion

Research Article| July 01 2018 Conclusion Martin Klimke Martin Klimke New York University Abu Dhabi Martin Klimke is an associate professor of history at New York University, Abu Dhabi. He has published and coedited numerous volumes, including The Other Alliance: Student Protest in West Germany and the United States in the Global Sixties (2009), Between Prague Spring and French May: Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960–1980 (2011), and The Routledge Handbook of the Global Sixties: Between Protest and Nation Building (2018). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Civil and Human Rights (2018) 4 (1): 98–100. https://doi.org/10.5406/jcivihumarigh.4.1.0098 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Martin Klimke; Conclusion. Journal of Civil and Human Rights 1 January 2018; 4 (1): 98–100. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jcivihumarigh.4.1.0098 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of Civil and Human Rights Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2018 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2018 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: RESEARCH-BASED ARTICLES You do not currently have access to this content.

The historical year of 1968. Ten events that changed the world

The author reviews the main facts of that year: from the death of Che Guevara, the student revolt known as "the French May" and the Chinese cultural revolution; the offensive of Tet in Vietnam and the protests against the war in the Asian country; the students massacre in Tlatelolco square in Mexico, the teacher's strike in El Salvador and the Episcopal Conference in Medellín, Colombia; the beginning of computer nets -an antecedent to Internet- and the conquest of the moon in the context of the spacial race. These were key events to understand the present and the future. A synthesis year in the century, a reflex of 20th century, 1968 is a very suggestive year.Realidad: Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades No. 104, 2005: 241-268

As afinidades selvagens: maio de 68, junho de 2013

Savage affinities is an essay which draws proximity lines concerning the protests of May 68 in France and of June 2013 in Brazil. A first draft of this essay was orally presented at the “Commemorative Cicle of May 68 - 50 years of uprisings”, in Ponta Grossa, Parana, Brazil, in 2018’s first semester. We propose a metalinguistic and political dialogue which arises from an ensemble of May 68 signs and the emergence of an unprecedented intellectual scenario that is currently acknowledged as French Theory. The key argument travels through a series of elective affinities among the French May and the Brazilian June, and discusses the various ways in which those uprisings transformed the role of intellectuals, their connection to the social and the political fields, the young characteristic of rebellions and its openness to the common ground of political struggles, reconfiguring notions as democracy, everyday life and the horizons of a collective future.

El superávit utópico

En este texto, Eleni Varikas define las vías de aproximación teórica por las cuales se pueden discutir los movimientos sociales de 1968, específicamente el Mayo Francés. Para esto, recurre a la formulación conceptual del tiempo histórico como subjetividad (Jetzeit) que forjó Walter Benjamin y a la manera en que estos tiempos de resistencia pueden ser vistos como “utópicos”, de acuerdo con la formulación que Miguel Abensour hace del término.

Utopia and Its Otherwise: Revolutionary Youthfulness, Lyricism, and Alternative Quests for the “East” in Kundera’s Life Is Elsewhere

Contrary to widespread celebrations of the Western sixties as the antiauthoritarian heyday of “shining youthfulness” and “revolutionary lyricism” in contemporary cultures, Milan Kundera’s novel Život je jinde ( Life Is Elsewhere ), written shortly after the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968, exposes the narcissistic underside of this subversive epoch through a highly subjective juxtaposition of the two major historical events that happened in the same year in Eastern and Western Europe — Prague Spring and French May ’68. While Kudera’s idiosyncratic historical perspective, which perceived the Prague 1968 as more important than the May uprisings in Paris, may infuriate many Western readers, I argue that the book Život je jinde does not entertain a totally dismissive, unsympathetic attitude towards the revolutionary traditions of modern Europe at large. Relatively ignored by the critical world ever since its publication, Life Is Elsewhere not only outlines some radically alternative visions of the European sixties but also provides innovative ways to problematize the epistemological and ideological confines implicitly attached to the currently reigning liberal-democratic capitalism.

The University crisis fifty years ago: The urbanization of the Bellaterra Campus of the Autonomous University of Barcelona

The economic growth experienced by western countries after World War II led to the increase in birth rates and as a result, the number of young people with the possibility of university studies also increased. The higher number of university students trained in both sciences and humanities, added to the disappointment arising from the foreign affairs politics of some of these countries (mainly the United States), favored a change in social values that rocked the established regimes. The confrontation between the new social conceptions defended by the university community and governments in Europe and the United States were made clearly visible in the riots against the Vietnam War, in the United States, and the so-called “French May” in Europe. Result of all this was the beginning of the change of thinking universities as engines of social change and, consequently, a change in the universities. In Spain, then dominated by the regime of General Franco, the change came a little later and culminated in a plan of new universities that gave rise to the creation, among others, of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. [Contrib Sci 11:1-6 (2015)]

Between Prague Spring and French May: Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960–1980

Between Prague Spring and French May: Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960–1980

‘The Republic is lived with an uncovered face’ (and a skirt): (un)dressing French citizens

The title of this article refers to the campaign carried out by the French government, in April and May 2011, to publicize and promote the law banning the full veil from public spaces, ‘la République se vit à visage découvert.’ The article examines ways in which political discourses, during the 2009–2012 period over which this law was first discussed, and then applied, used specific norms of female dress in order to establish a certain understanding of citizenship. Drawing on Rancière's notion of the ‘police’ and Dikeç's theorization of ‘aesthetic regimes,’ the article discusses the entanglements of female dress with French republicanism. These are illustrated through controversial representations of ‘Marianne,’ the female embodiment of the Republic, which raise the issue of color, in a country where race remains taboo. Turning more specifically to the report produced by a Parliamentary committee prior to the discussion of the burqa ban, the article discusses the paradoxical promotion of skirts as the epitome of French femininity, and shows how the discussion of women's right to wear skirts challenged ideas about the location of sexism, and the subject of politics, in French society.

Book review: Between Prague Spring and French May: Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960-1980

Book review: Between Prague Spring and French May: Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960-1980

Between Prague Spring and French May: Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960–1980 (review)

Between Prague Spring and French May: Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960–1980 (review)

Between Prague Spring and French May: Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960–1980

Between Prague Spring and French May: Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960–1980