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INTRODUCTION Legacies of ’68: Histories, Geographies, Epistemologies

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INTRODUCTION Legacies of ’68: Histories, Geographies, Epistemologies INTRODUCTION Legacies of ’68: Histories, Geographies, Epistemologies Sarah Hamblin and Morgan Adamson here’s little that academia loves more than an anniversary. TPull the annals for the common fractions of any centen­ nial, and you’ll find a plethora of essays, conferences, journal articles, and roundtables dedicated to reflections on the signifi­ cance of that historic moment. The year 1968 is no exception, and the fiftieth anniversary of this momentous date did not pass by without numerous commemorations, reminiscences, and reflections.1 This kind of historical remembrance is more than thematic opportunism or melancholic nostalgia, however. The fiftieth anniversary of 1968 presented a timely opportunity to revive discussions of this rich and complex period of global transformation and to seriously reconsider how we understand its scope and significance, as well as its legacies and rele­ vance for the Left today. Rather than allowing this reflection to lapse until the next major anniversary, this issue offers a more sustained interrogation of the questions raised by the semi­ centennial through wrestling with the overlooked, divergent, and sometimes contradictory legacies of what has been called the long 1968 or, more broadly, the long 1960s. As evidence of the contested meaning of 1968, Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut (1990: 34 – 38) identify eight categories of his­ torical interpretation of the period that range from conspiracy to adolescent rebellion to a crisis of civilization. By the twenti­ eth anniversary, interpretations highlighting hedonistic excess had come to dominate, working, as Peter Foot (1988) argues, to reduce the period to one of youthful antiauthoritarian 263 Cultural Politics, Volume 15, Issue 3, © 2019 Duke University Press DOI: 10.1215/17432197-7725409 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/cultural-politics/article-pdf/15/3/263/699563/0150263.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 Sarah Hamblin and Morgan Adamson intemperance. Thus, as the cultural et al. 1984: 2, 7). For the editors, this excesses of the youth movements — hippie reassertion responded to the New Right’s fashions, avant­garde art, drugs, free love, increasingly powerful grip on culture and esoteric spiritualism — came to dominate their erasure of political and economic the popular imagination, any understanding radicalisms from historical consciousness, of the radicalism of these cultural forms thus effectively burying that which had was obscured. Thus, the political and eco­ once threatened such control. Fifty years nomic foundations of the long 1968 — its later, we find ourselves in an eerily similar sophisticated critiques of capitalism, epoch of conservative rebirth in which Soviet­style communism, colonialism, the same right­wing touchstones that imperialism, patriarchy, and racism — were the Social Text editors saw themselves all but erased. These caricatures of 1968, responding to have come to once again rehearsed with each anniversary, have dominate the political and cultural land­ come to overtake what the long 1960s scape,2 while the neoliberal agenda set in actually signify: nearly two decades of play during Ronald Reagan’s administration struggle that transformed the postwar has come home to roost with the current global order. Commencing in the 1950s corporate presidency, the ascendency of with events like the Cuban revolution, the finance capitalism, and the revival of white Battle of Algiers, and the Montgomery ethnonationalism. Thus current right­wing bus boycotts, the long 1960s included campaigns rest on once again burying not only students, but also Black Power, the 1960s to assert their hegemonic gay liberation, and workers, women’s, and authority. Witness the media response peasant movements that endured through to the physical attack on Silvio Berlusconi the 1970s across the globe (Denning 2004: in 2009 when Il giornale attempted to 8). The mainstream focus on the counter­ link the mentally ill suspect to the cattivi culture also obscures what was a genuine maestri to curry favor with the beleaguered cultural revolution in which antiauthori­ prime minister (Samuel 2007), or Nicolas tarian, anti­imperialist, and anticapitalist Sarkozy’s comments during his 2007 politics were used to critique everyday life presidential campaign when he stated that while simultaneously creating profoundly les soixante-huitards were the root cause new epistemologies. of all of France’s current ills, and the only Given that the narrative of failure cast way forward was to “liquidat[e] once and its shadow over 1968 almost as soon as for all” the legacy of 1968 (Hooper 2009). the decade ended, critics and scholars Once again, it seems, any challenge to the 15:3 November 2019 have found themselves in the position of current conservative hegemony rests, at • fighting to reclaim the revolutionary aims least in part, on reviving the long 1968 as a and transformative energies of the long period of radical anticapitalist, anti­imperial, 1960s. Perhaps the first major attempt to and antiauthoritarian revolt. POLITICS reassert the radicalism of the period, how­ Running across all the contributions to ever, is the Social Text special issue, “The this issue, then, is a shared commitment Sixties without Apology,” which presented to contesting historical revisionism that the decade as a “great historical upsurge” would reduce the 1960s to a self­indulgent CULTURAL in which “the global domination of capital adolescent rebellion whose only legacy was challenged from within on a more has been to produce the “snowflake 264 serious scale than ever before” (Sayres generation.” Nor is the issue invested in Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/cultural-politics/article-pdf/15/3/263/699563/0150263.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 INTRODUCTION affirming the narrative of failure that has interrelated sets of questions concerning come to dominate leftist accounts of 1968, the memory and legacy of 1968: mummifying it as a lost moment that can Histories and Geographies: What does only be consumed nostalgically as the 1968 typically refer to as a periodizing root of Wendy Brown’s left melancholia. term? What is at stake in our historio­ Rather, it takes up the projects of 1968 graphic approaches to its periodization? radicalism as genuine and profound chal­ What movements, histories, and philos­ lenges to the economic, political, social, ophies have been left out of this history? and cultural structures of the time that What are the links between the various have had significant and lasting impacts global movements of the long 1968 that on contemporary thought and experience. have been occluded by dominant histori­ Particularly, it focuses on genealogies that cal accounts? What does it mean to think examine the coconstitution of thought and 1968 transnationally or globally? How struggle, teasing out the untapped possibil­ does this alter our understanding of 1968 ities of 1968’s legacy. As such, this special and its historical, cultural, and political issue revisits not only how the histories significance? and geographies of 1968 are framed and Epistemologies and Legacies: How did remembered by scholars but also how the politics and philosophies of 1968 shape legacies of critical thought that survive the methodologies of critical inquiry? How from this era impact our orientation to the do the epistemological frameworks of the world today. period continue to impact contemporary This is not, however, to uncritically cultural analysis? What’s at stake in the celebrate the long 1968 or to ignore its continued comparison to 1968 for contem­ limitations or aporias. Indeed, as several porary oppositional movements? What essays in this issue make clear, both the lines can we draw between 1968 and our philosophy and praxis of 1968 suffered for neoliberal present, and what existent lines their inadequacies, while their progressive might be erased? What, if any, relevance ends have fallen to the inevitable forces does 1968 carry for revolutionary strategy of co­optation and deradicalization that today? accompany their institutionalization. As such, following Kristen Ross (2002), we Histories and Geographies are not necessarily concerned with the Over the past fifty years, the long 1968 “lessons” of 1968, to revive its politics has undergone a series of contractions. wholesale or elucidate its failures to map What was once a decade­long wave of out a contemporary radical agenda. Rather, uprisings and insurgencies the world over this issue reopens the discussion around has since been reduced to a month of 1968 to present new arguments concern­ student protests in Paris and New York. ing its historical significance and cultural In popular culture, the fiftieth anniversary and epistemological legacies from the seemed to further consolidate this version POLITICS vantage point of contemporary politics. As of 1968 with remembrances that atom­ such, it examines the manifold and contra­ ized moments of upheaval and contained dictory ways that 1968 continues to shape them within discrete historical narratives political, cultural, and social discourse. To about events long past.3 Not only are the CULTURAL this end, “Legacies of ’68: Histories, Geog­ Third World and the Eastern Bloc most raphies, Epistemologies” takes up two often erased from these histories, but 265 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/cultural-politics/article-pdf/15/3/263/699563/0150263.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 Sarah Hamblin and Morgan Adamson the interconnections between the nation­ nature
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