Anti-May '68 Thought is Running out of Steam

Timothy Carlson — 2008-06-24T14:56:35Z

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The 40th anniversary of May '68 is an occasion to note a certain number of changes that have come about in the intellectual landscape over the last few years, by examining the various ways that philosophers, writers and historians have been for some time reading this key moment in recent French history. In fact the particular historical moment shows the singular ability to hold onto the title of "event", as in "the events of May '68". More than for most historical facts, the commemoration of May 68 is integral to and prolongs the durable impact that those events have had on French society. The decennial rendez-vous with this memory serve as so many indicators of the ideological metamorphoses of our times. Several books among the publishing avalanche set off by the most recent decade marker take a look at this "history of the history of...", including Le Moment 68: Une histoire contestée by Michelle Zancarine-Fournel, which focuses on the student and worker revolt that serves — or rather the rereading of it serves — as a litmus test of our times.

In the 1970s and 1980s, on the occasion of what was called the "anti-totalitarian shift", a certain number of intellectuals took on as their own the critique of May 68 formulated in real time by Raymond Aron in Révolution Introuvable ("the revolution that cannot be found"). But as has recently been shown by the philosopher Serge Audier in Pensée Anti-68: Essai sur les origines d'une restauration intellectual ("Anti-68 thinking: An essay on the origins of an intellectual Restoration"), Aron was above all concerned about the university and attacked the blockages in Gaullist France, while his self-proclaimed successors a decade later gave the question a decidedly conservative turn.

The rediscovery of the virtues of democracy and civil society by intellectuals eager to put a little distance between themselves and their Marxist training nevertheless could still be read as a continuation of the 68 spirit; the values of May were after all little appreciated by the Communist Party for whom, at the time, the revolution was less important that grasping the reins of the State. But little by little the spontaneity of civil society as vaunted for example by Edgar Morin, Claude Lefort and Cornelius Castoriadis (Mai 68 : La Brèche — "The Breach") would give way to various conservative thinkers and an invasive rehabilitation of the State and of the nation.

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The NIB

Anti-May '68 Thought is Running out of Steam