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Last Coat of Paint: Graffiti As an Outline of the May 1968 Students’ and Workers’ Movement In

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Last Coat of Paint: Graffiti As an Outline of the May 1968 Students’ and Workers’ Movement In Last Coat of Paint: Graffiti as an Outline of the May 1968 Students’ and Workers’ Movement in France Augustus Guikema Senior Division Historical Paper Paper Length: 2388 Words Process Paper Length: 426 Words Guikema 2 Process Paper I first became interested in the events of May 1968 in France when researching the history of sociology, and quickly came to realize that these events are among one of the most prominent moments in the social transformation between the post-war world and today, even though they are often overlooked. Underneath this social upheaval lies an economic and ideological one, and the graffiti seen throughout Paris during May 1968 is an interesting illustration of how the ideas of the movement were broadcasted as it carried on. When conducting my research, I first began by contacting Ken Knabb. Knabb is one of the leading translators and archivists of the Situationist International, one of the groups that played a major role in the radicalization of many of the students and the subsequent events of May 1968. He directed me towards a number of books and articles which could be used to help understand the background of the movement better, as this was essential to understanding much of the content of the graffiti. Most importantly, he helped me to understand the clarification that rather than being any sort of driving force, the graffiti served as a kind of mass communication derived from everybody and directed at everybody. After reading many books on the subject, I began to take a look at some of the pieces of graffiti and could instantly understand where much of it fell into the social movement as a whole, whether serving as a reference point for ideological struggle, or as a map of navigating the different periods of the political lifespan. I began to understand how the graffiti really served as a landmark for understanding the progression of the movement. Upon submitting the original paper at my regional National History Day competition and being awarded first place within my category, I made use of the feedback I received and implemented it to the best extent that I could. Within my original submission, I fell short on Guikema 3 examining the relation between the graffiti and the movement, as well as a solid conclusion that wasn’t just rephrasing the thesis. By reworking these subjects, as well as adding appendices which include some essential photos relevant to the subject, I was able to greatly improve the quality of the project overall. Within the paper, I demonstrate that the graffiti serves as a unique and independent voice for the movement, which is entirely integrated into the movement itself. The graffiti is able to announce its own current events, opinions, and emotions as the decentralized body of a collective. Introduction While the public memory of the social movements of the 1960s is often a time embodied by peaceful protests and free love, the era sometimes had principally sharper teeth. In France, for example, the radical social movements of the 1960s are epitomized by the turbulent events that took place during May of 1968. During this time, riots and a massive general strike led by students and young workers broke out across France. For an entire month, one of the largest economies in the world came to a halt as its streets burned, and the general public brandished the threat of civil war.1 Despite this, everything was over almost as quickly as it had begun, with comparatively little political change to show for all of it.2 What remained after the tear gas had dissipated and normality reappeared, however, was the provocative graffiti that lined the streets of Paris. This was not the typical superficial kind of graffiti that we typically see within protests, but rather it was entirely integrated into the 1 Beardsley, Eleanor. “In France, The Protests Of May 1968 Reverberate Today - And Still Divide The French.” 2 Feenberg, Andrew, and Jim Freedman. When Poetry Ruled the Streets: The French May Events of 1968. 3. Guikema 4 movement itself. As Maurice Brinton lays out in his journal written while the revolutionary fervor was still in the air: [Graffiti] is an integral part of the revolutionary Paris of May 1968. It has become a mass activity, part and parcel of the Revolution’s method of self-expression. The walls of the Latin Quarter are the depository of a new rationality, no longer confined to books, but democratically displayed at street level and made available to all.3 Beyond the aesthetic endowments of the graffiti, it plays an unmistakable role in outlining the course of history and ideology of May 1968. From its origin within activist student circles to the decline within bureaucratic union headquarters, the graffiti always serves as a bulletin board for May 1968. This unique form of communication was used to set the mood around ongoing events on a large scale. When this fact is placed into a historical context, we can see how this graffiti was tied to the movement itself. Rather than serving as some sort of guiding force, the graffiti emerged as the spirit of participation as politics. As American writer Susan Sontag once wrote in reference to the usage of posters during the Cuban Revolution, which was still fresh in the minds of many westerners, “Posters and public notices address the person not as an individual, but as an unidentified member of the body politic.”4 This idea also explains the mass use of the graffiti during the events of May 1968. By serving as a collective identification and voice for the movement, the graffiti shows the intricacies, contradictions, and prophecies of the movement. Background Though there is no specific cause for the events of May 1968 or even a date on which they began, it can all be traced to a general social malaise in French society. This uneasiness came from mix of discontent with the aging conservative, sexist, and homophobic government of 3 Brinton, Maurice. Paris: May 1968. 17. 4 Quoted in Rengifo, Alci. “The Walls Speak: Art And The Revolution In May ’68.” Guikema 5 Charles de Gaulle, which had originally stood as a symbol of the resistance during World War 2.5 The continual reform of the French education model in the vein of the American system, deemed by students as favoring productivity over learning, was also another major factor. These reforms were especially antithetical to the centuries old French tradition of students learning at their own pace according to their interests.6 These types of reforms were dispensed into all major universities in France throughout the later weeks of 1967, though most prominently at the Sorbonne. With these reforms, mass discontent quickly spread across the student body. However, at this point the students’ discontent was entirely aimed at the structure of the university rather than the general structure of society. This would change only a few weeks later at the hands of the Situationist International. The Situationists originally started purely as a surrealist art collective which then began to sublimate this with Marxist and Anarchist politics.7 Embracing both humanism and nihilism, they resonated with the disillusioned French youth of the time. To quote Society of the Spectacle, one of the seminal pieces of literature of the Situationists: The loss of the language of communication is positively expressed by the modern movement of decomposition of all art, its formal annihilation. This movement expresses negatively the fact that a common language must be rediscovered no longer in the unilateral conclusion which, in the art of the historical society, always arrived too late, speaking to others about what was lived without real dialogue, and admitting this deficiency of life but it must be rediscovered in praxis, which unifies direct activity and its language.8 This viewpoint is one of the purest expressions of what the Situationist movement was: the concept of individually creating real, lived situations as a synthesis with art. The graffiti 5 Beardsley, Eleanor. “In France, The Protests Of May 1968 Reverberate Today - And Still Divide The French.” 6 Feenberg, Andrew, and Jim Freedman. When Poetry Ruled the Streets: The French May Events of 1968. 5. 7 Matthews, Janette. “An Introduction to the Situationists.” 8 Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. 186. Guikema 6 which would appear was an example of art being moved back into the realm of the real as a representative of human thought, movement, and communication. Founding members of the Situationists, Guy Debord and Mustapha Khayati, also co-wrote the pamphlet On the Poverty of Student Life which was a radical critique of the general state of the educational system after the reforms, and a takedown of the existing radical student organizations.9 Together with Debord’s previously mentioned Society of the Spectacle, the Situationists created a large campus movement of Situationist sympathizers known as the enragés (the enraged) who instigated even more political discontent across the student body and were responsible for much of the graffiti.10 Eventually, after a mass police crackdown upon a protest against the Vietnam War, the government demanded the universities to be closed down.11 Upon this, on the night of May 6, 1968, barricades were quickly erected within the Sorbonne and students occupied the campus as riots began moving into the streets (See Appendix I). The movement known as May 1968 had begun.12 Part 1 – Radical Students’ Movement Shame is counterrevolutionary. – Inside the Nanterre13 Be realistic, demand the impossible. – Outside the Censier14 9 Knabb, Ken. “On the Poverty of Student Life.” From: Situationist International: Anthology. 319-337. 10 Matthews, Janette.
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