May 68 Rethinking France's Last Revolution

by Jackson, Julian; Williams, James S.; Milne, Anna-Louise

• ISBN13: 9780230252585
• ISBN10: 0230252583
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-09-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

An accessible collection of essays about one of the most dramatic moment in France's modern history: the "event" of 1968. Often seen purely as a student revolution, the events of 1968 in fact impacted on almost every aspect of French society theatre, film, gender relations, sexuality, race and immigration, farmers, workers. This volume of essays, written by young researchers and established scholars from France, Britain and the United States is the only book in English to explore the full diversity of this extraordinary upheaval. It takes us out of Paris to the regions of France, out of the student Latin Quarter into the factories, and shows how the events of 1968 continued to reverberate throughout the next decade, and how their legacy is still highly contested in France today.

Author Biography

Julian Jackson is Professor of Modern French History at Queen Mary, University of London. He has written extensively on aspects of twentieth century history. His most recent books are France: The Dark Years (2001) The Fall of France (2003), Living in Arcadia: Homosexuality, Morality and Politics in France from the liberation to AIDS(2010). La Grande Illusion (2010). He is a fellow of the British Academy and Commandeur dansles Palmes Acadmiques. Anna-Louise Milne is Senior Lecturer at the University of London Institute in Paris, and author of a monograph on Iean Pauthan, the Extreme In-Between (2006) and a critical edition of Paulhan letters (2005). She edited a collection on the Nouvelle Revue Francaise (2008) and is currently completing Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Paris and a book entitled Centrality and the City. James S. Williams is Professor of Modern French Literature and film at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of monographs on Marguerite Duras, Albert Camus and Jean Cocteau, and has co-edited Gay signatures: Gay and Lesbian Theory. Fiction and Film in France, 1945-1995 (1998) and Gender and French Cinema (2001), as well as volumes on Jean Luc Godard including The Cinema Alone (2000), For Ever Godard(2004), and Jean-Luc Godard: Documents (2006). He is currently completing a book entitled Space and Being in Contemporary French Cinema.

Table of Contents

Illustrations
Preface
Contributors
Acronyms
PART I: RETHINKING THE EVENTS
Rethinking May 68; J.Jackson
The Moral History of 1968; J.Bourg
Exploitation, Alienation and the Social Division of Labour in the May-June Movement in France; B.Gobille
Beyond Tradition: the Strikes of May-June 1968; X.Vigna
Inventing a Memory on the Extreme Left: the Example of the Maoists after 1968; P.Buton
Algerian Reveries on the Far Right: Thinking About Algeria to Change France in 1968; T.Shepard
Reaching out to Immigrants in May 68: specific or universal appeals?; D.Gordon
The Arab Workers' Movement (1970-1976): Sociology of a New Political Generation; A.Hajjat
'And what then about 'our' problem?' – Gay Liberation in the Occupied Sorbonne in May 1968; M.Sibalis
The 1970s Moment in Sexual Politics; M.Prearo
May 68 and the Changes in Private Life: a 'sexual liberation'?; A-C.Rebreyend
PART II: DECENTRING THE EVENTS
Decentring the Events; A-L.Milne
The Local, Regional and National in May-June 1968; M.Zancarini-Fournel
Factory Disputes in the French Provinces in the '1968 Years': Brittany as a Case-Study; V.Porhel
Peasant Insurgency in the '1968 Years' (1961-1981); J-P.Martin
'In Marseilles we remained calm': The Myths and Realities of Marseilles's May 68; A-L.Ollivier
The Grand Tour of Daniel Cohn-Bendit and the Europeanism of 1968; R. I.Jobs
From Dream to Reality: the Birth of 'Vincennes'; C.Dormoy-Rajramanan
Artists and Architects in May 1968: An Aesthetics of Disappearance; J-L.Violeau
PART III: PERFORMING THE EVENTS
Performing the Revolution; J.S.Williams
L'Entrée libre à l'ex-théâtre de France: the Occupation of the Odéon and the Revolutionary Culture of the French Stage; K.Bredeson
The Politics of Theatre and the Theatre of Politics: from Paris to Avignon via Villeurbanne, May-July 1968; E.Loyer
Malle e/on mai: Louis Malle's Takes on May 68; R.Panchasi
Falling on Deaf Ears, Again: Hervé Le Roux's Reprise (1997); N.Rachlin
Sex Power: Bernadette Lafont and the Sexual Revolution in French Cinema circa 1968; R-F.Lack
Orgasm Without Limits: May 68 and the History of Sex Education in Modern France; T.Chaplin
Epilogue
The Day My Father Fell Silent [Le Jour où mon père s'est tu] [Extracts]; V.Linhart
General Bibliography
Select Filmography