French May Research Articles

Vive La Révolution and the Example of Lotta Continua: The Circulation of Ideas and Practices Between the Left Militant Worlds of France and Italy Following May '68

This paper highlights a significant connection of radical ideas between France and Italy arising from the political and social upheavals, respectively of May '68 and the ‘hot autumn’ of 1969. Italian students' success in forging links with militant workers around the giant Fiat factories in Turin spurred a number of their French counterparts to visit and witness the strikes and workers' assemblies. The Mao-libertarian group Vive la Révolution was particularly inspired by the example of the student–worker collective Lotta Continua, lifting Italian slogans and imagery to adorn their publications. Italians had themselves rationalised the French May as an event of revolutionary potential, and assimilated much of the symbolism of the Paris uprising into their propaganda. Drawing on interviews conducted with both French and Italian ex-militants, as well as texts and images from their late 60s/early 70s publications, the article underlines the significance of international, indeed transnational, references in informing political ideas and practices, certainly for an important part of the European far left in this period. Cet article souligne une convergence significative des idées radicales entre la France et l'Italie, à travers les soulèvements sociaux et politiques de Mai 68 et de ‘l'automne chaud’ en 1969. On vit des étudiants italiens jouir d'une forte liaison avec des ouvriers militants autour des énormes usines Fiat à Turin, ce qui amena nombre de leurs homologues français à rendre visite et à témoigner des grèves et des assemblées ouvrières. Le groupe mao-libertaire Vive la Révolution s'inspira beaucoup de l'exemple du collectif ouvrier-étudiant Lotta Continua, puisant dans les mots d'ordre et images italiens pour embellir ses publications. Les Italiens avaient déjà interprété le mai français comme un événement potentiellement révolutionnaire et intégré dans leur propagande la symbolique du mouvement. À partir d'interviews faites à la fois avec des ex-militants français et italiens, et de passages tirés de leurs journaux, ce travail souligne l'importance de références internationales, voire transnationales, dans la formation d'idées et de pratiques politiques, au moins pour une bonne partie de l'extrême gauche européenne de cette époque.

Il "film della rivoluzione": il '68 francese in prima pagina

- Due to its time setting, iconography, interconnections with the world revolution of 1968, the French May "event" is charged with visual representations, both during its unfolding and in the years and decades to come. This essay ventures a reflection on the connections between images and memory, analyzing the most significant snapshots of the French May and filtering them through the militants' recollections, such as the images conveyed through movies or the photographs which with the years turned into icons, one for all, the ‘68 "Marianna". It follows that the image, even when not authentic, provides a key for entering the "event" and is often found in the store of mental self-representations which it has brought about and in the whole series of memories and feelings of belonging that it has aroused.Parole chiave: Maggio francese, '68, immagini, film della rivoluzione, mito, memoria French may, '68, images, revolution's movie, myth, memory

La "rivoluzione in diretta". Il Maggio francese tra cronaca e mito

- The French May appears in the Italian daily press as a representation of events removed from the mythological array that on the May was brought about during the month of May 1968. All that hindered, and still does, a correct historical definition of the problems and course of events. However, it should be noticed that the great breadth, the attempt to a concrete widening of the social participation, the deep feeling of shared enthusiasm on the part of rising classes such as the students or outcast such as the workers, triggered off a mental projection which, although still bearing traces of mythicizing, newly defined for the '68 veterans the French May as a place of the memory of the 1968 movement.

When Poetry Ruled The Streets : The French May Events of 1968 d’Andrew Feenberg et Jim Freedman, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2001, 192 p.

When Poetry Ruled The Streets : The French May Events of 1968 d’Andrew Feenberg et Jim Freedman, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2001, 192 p.. Un article de la revue Politique et Sociétés (Politique de la mémoire) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

Establishing Consensus: May ’68 in France as Seen from the 1980s

If new memories of 1968 have begun to surface in France in recent years, then it is certainly due in part to the immensely popular labor strikes of the winter of 1995. The strikes awakened new forms of political expression in France, and at the same time they altered what could be perceived andwhat could be said about the recent past. My concern in this essay has less to do withMay ’68 itself than with the vicissitudes of its memory: specifically, the way in which a consensus, neutralizing view of a violent rupture that touched the lives of millions in France came to hold sway in the late 1980s. During 1968 in France, unlike in America, the student movement and the workers’ movement achieved an admittedly brief but significant union. In fact, May ’68 in France was the largest mass movement in French history, the biggest strike in the history of the French labormovement, and the only general insurrection the overdeveloped world has known sinceWorldWar II. Twenty years later, however, a very different united front, one made up mostly of sociologists and other “experts,” on the one hand, and repentant gauchistes seeking to realign themselves with the new American hegemony on the other, helped put into place a version of ’68 stripped of any violence, asperity, or overt political dimensions. During the era of Reagan, Thatcher, andMitterand, when consensus came to be taken for granted as theoptimal political gesture or goal, May ’68 became a good-natured “cultural” event, a merry month of youthful free expression and libertarian good will, a benign transformation of customs and lifestyles, a sexual revolution. When the central idea of French May—the union of intellectual contestation and

A Spanish Novelist's Perspective on Chicano/a Literature

We f hen I was a student at New York University, at the beginning of the 1960s, few people were interested in the literature of ethnic and/or racial minorities. There was some slight interest in black literature, thanks to Ralph Ellison, one of my professors, but not much was known about Chicano/Latino literature. The Puerto Ricans living along the eastern seaboard of the United States and the Cubans living in Florida and on the East Coast were marginalized groups, as were the Chicanos in the Southwest and other parts of the nation. At the end of the decade, coinciding with the massive French May demonstrations, Europeans began to hear about an upstart minority called Chicanos, and, in particular, they heard of Luis Valdez' Teatro Campesino. I remember how different the situation was vis-a-vis Hispanics in the 1960s. During my first trip to San Diego at that time, I recall a conversation in Spanish with a Chicana waitress who, before answering my questions, looked nervously at her Anglo boss standing by the cash regis? ter, obviously afraid to speak Spanish at the workplace. I had seen Chicanos degraded by their Anglo employers in the movies but had no idea of the racial problems existing in real life. I also remember that during the long bus trip to San Diego, the history of California which was offered by the tour guide emphasized Bartolome de las Casas' perspective of Spanish colonization in the sixteenth century (notably the massacres committed by the missionaries and conquistadores). If at that moment someone had asked me where I was from, I would have been so embarrassed to say that I was from Spain that I would not have known where to hide. Much later, in the mid 1980s, I made the same trip to San Diego. This time a Chicano waiter did not know how to address me. Finally, the waiter asked me where I was from, and when I answered From Spain, the waiter replied: Andele! And why do you speak to me in English? My tour around the San Diego area was also different from that first tour. This time the guide explained proudly the European origins of the city; he informed the passengers that it was the second oldest city in the United States after

Women in Argentina During the 1960s

The 1960s represented a particular moment of social, cultural, and political unrest in the midst of which the contours of a modern Argentina-consumerism, secularization, the realignment of political forces, changes in daily life, the transformation of gender relationships-began to emerge. It is striking, however, that despite the recent historical recovery of this period and the revolution in women's history, women's voices are absent or at best relegated to a few footnotes. A gender perspective-one that incorporates the relationships between men and women, the impact of social changes in the family, gender roles, the private dimensions of life, etc., and their effects on social and psychological formations-is also lacking (Kelly-Gadol, 1984). For the women, now between 40 and 50, who began to participate in the public sphere during this period, these reconstructions not only call into question their own memories but also puzzle them when contrasted with the experiences of participants in the student movement, politics, and street battles, among others. As many writers have pointed out, the 1960s were a period of various cleavages worldwide. In the core countries, the emergence of student movements symbolized by the French May 1968 implied a broad questioning of the consumer society. In Latin America, Africa, and Asia, anticolonial, national-liberation, and socialist movements were consolidated, and in the East movements in opposition to the system gathered strength. In Argentina the 1960s were years of modernization and secularization in the sociological

À propos des célébrations décennales du mai français

On the decennial célébrations of the French May, Jean-Pierre Kioux May 1968 remains, after more than 20 years, an event difficult to commemorate even though collective memory has already taken possession of it and mythified it. A study of the two decennial waves of celebration, in 1978 and 1988, reveals a well- orchestrated captation of discourse by a few witnesses of the 1968 " generation " and a proliferation of commentary. The author proposes that the 30-year marker be skipped. The history of May is long overdue and should now be undertaken.

Derecho International PúblicoByAlberto Ulloa Lima:Sanmartí y Cía,,1926TomoI,pp.231

Since the first edition of this book, 27 years have passed, more than a quarter of this convulsed and dynamic 20th century. In 1972, the international political map presented a world under the bipolar system that 70% adhered to socialist ideas. But the impact of decolonization and the emergence of new nations in Asia and Africa was also fully experienced. In Europe the political and intellectual aftermath of the French May (1968) was still felt, and in distant China the Cultural Revolution persecuted officials with bourgeois inclinations, extreme vigilance for the fulfillment of the principles of the Maoist revolution.