Download or read book May 68 A Compendium written by Rene Vienet and published by Bread and Circuses Publishing. This book was released on 2018-05-07 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the 50th anniversary of the events of May 68’ passes, it leaves a familiar, image heavy trail in it’s wake - young street fighting Parisians, earnest but chic looking Sorbonne occupiers, the iconic graffiti /posters : imagery all long since passed into the mythology of pop culture, endlessly recycled and recuperated, stripped bare of real political legacy. Within that mythology, the role of the Situationists has long been contested: underplayed exaggerated, misunderstood. This compendium reprints crucial pieces written by the Situs themselves, helping show May 68’ as a reaction to a profound systemic stasis running deep through mid 20th C capitalism, and to the autocratic, hierarchical, and tradition-bound ruling class that still oversaw it in France. "On the Poverty of Student Life”(1966) was originally printed via appropriated funds when 5 pro Situs were elected to Strasbourg Uni Student Union. It’s searing critique of what the authors considered the miserable, passive consumerism of the modern hipster student was a powerful portent of what was to come: “The real poverty of his everyday life finds its immediate phantastic compensation in the opium of cultural commodities... he is obliged to discover modern culture as an admiring spectator... he thinks he is avant-garde if he's seen the latest Godard or 'participated' in the latest 'happening'. He discovers modernity as fast as the market can provide it:” Possibly the single most important document recording and analysing the events of May 68’ remains “Enragés and Situationists in the Occupations Movement”, written by Rene Vienet, a young pro Situ at the centre of the Sorbonne Occupation. A 60 page, chronological account, at times it unselfconsciously captures the poetry of the revolution they were helping make, but mostly the focus in on the objective, material forces that shaped events after the initial occupation of the Sorbonne. This vital piece is supplemented/supported by contemporaneous ‘Various Documents from May 68’, and retrospective ‘Further Reflections on May 68’ from the Situationist International journal. Slightly more tangentially, ‘Preliminaries on Councils and Councillist Organization’ looks deeper into the proto-revolutionary structures that the Situationists saw at the very core of global post-capitalism in the 20th century, and beyond.
Download or read book May 68 and Its Afterlives written by Kristin Ross and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-11-26 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During May 1968, students and workers in France united in the biggest strike and the largest mass movement in French history. Protesting capitalism, American imperialism, and Gaullism, 9 million people from all walks of life, from shipbuilders to department store clerks, stopped working. The nation was paralyzed—no sector of the workplace was untouched. Yet, just thirty years later, the mainstream image of May '68 in France has become that of a mellow youth revolt, a cultural transformation stripped of its violence and profound sociopolitical implications. Kristin Ross shows how the current official memory of May '68 came to serve a political agenda antithetical to the movement's aspirations. She examines the roles played by sociologists, repentant ex-student leaders, and the mainstream media in giving what was a political event a predominantly cultural and ethical meaning. Recovering the political language of May '68 through the tracts, pamphlets, and documentary film footage of the era, Ross reveals how the original movement, concerned above all with the question of equality, gained a new and counterfeit history, one that erased police violence and the deaths of participants, removed workers from the picture, and eliminated all traces of anti-Americanism, anti-imperialism, and the influences of Algeria and Vietnam. May '68 and Its Afterlives is especially timely given the rise of a new mass political movement opposing global capitalism, from labor strikes and anti-McDonald's protests in France to the demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in Seattle.
Download or read book The May 1968 Events in France written by Keith A. Reader and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-27 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The multiple impact of the May 1968 events in France is here reviewed and analysed, initially through a narrative account of the events themselves and then through a systematic survey of the various manners in which they have been interpreted and reproduced in France. This covers successively political, social/sociological, and cultural texts - first-hand accounts along with works by political activists and academic social scientists - before moving to a consideration of fictional works (novels and feature films) dealing with or set during the events.
Download or read book When Poetry Ruled the Streets written by Andrew Feenberg and published by Marcombo. This book was released on 2001-05-16 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a complete survey of the French May Events of 1968 through narrative, analysis, and documents.
Download or read book Memories of May 68 written by Chris Reynolds and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2011-09-15 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book charts and analyses the emergence of the conventional representation of the French events of 1968 and argues that the dominance of this narrative, despite its limitations, stems from the convenience that such a consensus provides for those that have been pivotal in shaping the collective memory of this critical moment in recent history.
Download or read book May Made Me written by Mitchell Abidor and published by AK Press. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Q: “You threw paving stones at [the cops]?” A: “Oh yeah. I had no problem doing that. And I threw marbles as well that we stole from stores. And towards the end we even managed to steal tractors from construction sites and we knocked over trees with them.” The mass protests that shook France in May 1968 were exciting, dangerous, creative, and influential, changing European politics to this day. Students demonstrated, workers went on general strike, and factories and universities were occupied. Before it was all over, children, homemakers, and the elderly were swept up in the life-changing events that targeted bureaucratic capitalism and the staid Communist Party. The French state was on the ropes and feared civil war or revolution. Decades later, here are the eye-opening oral testimonies of those young rebels who demanded the impossible. Published on the 50th anniversary of those momentous events, May Made Me presents the legacy of the uprising: how those explosive experiences changed both the individual and history. “These powerful and moving testimonies create an eye-opening account of the inspiring events of May ’68, which are more relevant for today’s activists than ever before.” —Paul Mason, author of Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future
Download or read book May 68 written by Julie Pagis and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much as in other locations around the world, civil uprising, particularly rooted in the activism of young people and students, plagued France during May of 1968. Massive strikes and occupations succeeded in paralysing France's economy and bringing the country to the verge of a leftist revolution. This book studies the life trajectories of many ordinary protestors during the period, using statistics andpersonal narratives to analyse how this activism arose, its impact on people's personal and professional lives, and its transmission through familial generations.
Download or read book Prelude to Revolution written by Daniel Singer and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The May Movement written by Alain Touraine and published by Random House (NY). This book was released on 1971 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Spirit of 68 written by Gerd-Rainer Horn and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-10-02 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In virtually all corners of the Western world, 1968 witnessed a highly unusual sequence of popular rebellions. In Italy, France, Spain, Vietnam, the United States, West Germany, Czechoslovakia, Mexico, and elsewhere, millions of individuals took matters into their own hands to counter imperialism, capitalism, autocracy, bureaucracy, and all forms of hierarchical thinking. Recent reinterpretations have sought to play down any real challenge to the socio-political status quo in these events, but Gerd-Rainer Horn's book offers a spirited counterblast. 1968, he argues, opened up the possibility that economic and political elites on both sides of the Iron Curtain could be toppled from their position of unnatural superiority to make way for a new society where everyday people could, for the first time, become masters of their own destiny. Furthermore, Horn contends, the moment of crisis and opportunity culminating in 1968 must be seen as part of a larger period of experimentation and revolt. The ten years between 1956 and 1966, characterised above all by the flourishing of iconoclastic cultural rebellions, can be regarded as a preparatory period which set the stage for the non-conformist cum political revolts of the subsequent 'red' decade (1966-1976). Horn's geographic centres of attention are Western Europe, including the first full examination of Mediterranean revolts, and North America. He placed particular emphasis on cultural nonconformity, the student movement, working class rebellions, the changing contours of the Left, and the meaning of participatory democracy. His book will make fascinating reading for anyone interested in this turbulent period and the fundamental changes that were wrought upon societies either side of the Atlantic.
Download or read book 5 1 1968 written by J. Jackson and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Paris to the Moon written by Adam Gopnik and published by Random House. This book was released on 2001-12-18 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paris. The name alone conjures images of chestnut-lined boulevards, sidewalk cafés, breathtaking façades around every corner--in short, an exquisite romanticism that has captured the American imagination for as long as there have been Americans. In 1995, Adam Gopnik, his wife, and their infant son left the familiar comforts and hassles of New York City for the urbane glamour of the City of Light. Gopnik is a longtime New Yorker writer, and the magazine has sent its writers to Paris for decades--but his was above all a personal pilgrimage to the place that had for so long been the undisputed capital of everything cultural and beautiful. It was also the opportunity to raise a child who would know what it was to romp in the Luxembourg Gardens, to enjoy a croque monsieur in a Left Bank café--a child (and perhaps a father, too) who would have a grasp of that Parisian sense of style we Americans find so elusive. So, in the grand tradition of the American abroad, Gopnik walked the paths of the Tuileries, enjoyed philosophical discussions at his local bistro, wrote as violet twilight fell on the arrondissements. Of course, as readers of Gopnik's beloved and award-winning "Paris Journals" in The New Yorker know, there was also the matter of raising a child and carrying on with day-to-day, not-so-fabled life. Evenings with French intellectuals preceded middle-of-the-night baby feedings; afternoons were filled with trips to the Musée d'Orsay and pinball games; weekday leftovers were eaten while three-star chefs debated a "culinary crisis." As Gopnik describes in this funny and tender book, the dual processes of navigating a foreign city and becoming a parent are not completely dissimilar journeys--both hold new routines, new languages, a new set of rules by which everyday life is lived. With singular wit and insight, Gopnik weaves the magical with the mundane in a wholly delightful, often hilarious look at what it was to be an American family man in Paris at the end of the twentieth century. "We went to Paris for a sentimental reeducation-I did anyway-even though the sentiments we were instructed in were not the ones we were expecting to learn, which I believe is why they call it an education."
Download or read book Enrages and Situationists in the Occupation Movement France May 68 written by René Viénet and published by Rebel Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A first-hand, insider's account of the role played by these two radical student groups in the revolutionary events that rocked Francis in the month of May 1968. The author provides an eyewitness account from the perspectives of political extremists who refused all contact with the "leftist" parties, the unions, and the media.
Download or read book May 68 Coming of Age written by David Hanley and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 1989-04-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The impact of student protest on French society and government in the 1960s is examined in this socio-historical study. It analyzes the far-reaching consequences of rebellion on trade unionism, the government and the arts.
Download or read book May 68 in French Fiction and Film written by Margaret Atack and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 1999 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first study of May 68 in fiction and in film. It looks at the ways the events themselves were represented in narrative, evaluates the impact these crucial times had on French cultural and intellectual history, and offers readings of texts which were shaped by it. The chosen textsconcentrate upon important features of May and its aftermath: the student rebellion, the workers strikes, the question of the intellectuals, sexuality, feminism, the political thriller, history, and textuality. Attention is paid to the context of the social and cultural history of the FifthRepublic, to Gaullism, and to the cultural politics of gauchisme. The book aims to show the importance of the interplay of real and imaginary in the text(s) of May, and the emphasis placed upon the problematic of writing and interpretation. It argues that re-reading the texts of May forces areconsideration of the existing accounts of postwar cultural history. The texts of May reflect on social order, on rationality, logic, and modes of representation, and are this highly relevant to contemporary debates on modernity.
Download or read book The Walls Have the Floor written by Julien Besancon and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2018-04-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The graffiti of the French student and worker uprising of May 1968, capturing participatory politics in action. Graffiti itself became a form of freedom. —Julien Besançon, The Walls Have the Floor Fifty years ago, in 1968, barricades were erected in the streets of Paris for the first time since the Paris Commune of nearly one hundred years before. The events of May 1968 began with student protests against the Vietnam War and American imperialism, expanded to rebellion over student living conditions and resistance to capitalist consumerism. An uprising at the Sorbonne was followed by wildcat strikes across France, uniting students and workers and bringing the country's economy to a halt. There have been many accounts of these events. This book tells the story in a different way, through the graffiti inscribed by protestors as they protested. The graffiti collected here is by turns poetic, punning, hopeful, sarcastic, and crude. It quotes poets as often as it does political thinkers. Many wrote “I have nothing to write,” signaling not their naiveté but their desire to participate. Other anonymous declarations included “Prohibiting prohibited”; “The dream is reality”; “The walls have ears. Your ears have walls”; “Exaggeration is the beginning of invention”; “Comrades, you're nitpicking”; “You don't beg for the right to live, you take it”; and “I came/I saw/I believed.” A meeting is called at the Grand Amphitheater of the Sorbonne: “Agenda: the worldwide revolution.” This was interactive, participatory politics before Twitter and Facebook. Although the revolution of May 1968 didn't topple the government (Charles de Gaulle fled the country, only to return; in June, his party won a resounding electoral mandate), it made history. In The Walls Have the Floor, Julien Besançon collected traces of this history before the walls were painted over, and published this collection in July 1968 even as the paint was drying. Read today, the graffiti of 1968 captures, in a way no conventional history can, the defining spontaneity of the events.
Download or read book Mai 68 the Second French Revolution written by Jean-Christophe Bieselaar and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cultural revolution of May 1968 impacted an entire generation of French society and its descendants. It affected not only students and protesters, but also ordinary citizens who participated in or lived through the 1960s. These people represent today a generation who broke radically with the traditions and values that once governed them. The goal of this book is to demonstrate how the "révolution culturelle" of 1968 can also be understood as both a catalyst and symbol of spiritual decline in a country once known as the Eldest Daughter of the Church. One fundamental question must be answered regarding these events: did they really constitute a revolution or are they more honestly described as a dissatisfied revolt? To this end, this book explores how May 1968 was characterized by an attitude of resistance against authority, examining how this was driven by a generation inspired with hope for a new and better future which has never, in fact, arrived. Finally, whether the spiritual needs of this generation have truly been met will be considered in an examination of May 1968 s much contested spiritual legacy.
