'May ’68' tag archive

Maria Kakogianni It seems to me that we are in an intermediary situation today. The period of the great renunciation of the revolutionary past, and of the ‘end of History’, seems to be giving way to a new sequence of popular struggles (the Arab Spring, Los Indignados, Occupy Wall Street, etc.). But, within this new […]

Red years Althusser’s lesson, Rancière’s error and the real movement of history Nathan brown The dissolution of the organizational forms which are created by the movement, and which disappear when the movement ends, does not reflect the weak‑ness of the movement, but rather its strength. The time of false battles is over. The only conflict […]

Reviewing Rancière Or, the persistence of discrepancies Bruno bosteels In the nearly four decades since its original publication, Althusser’s Lesson has acquired a certain mythical aura as the dark precursor of things to come. Even with the wealth of translations of Jacques Rancière’s work that have been published at an increasingly feverish pace over the […]

The Situationist International: A Case of Spectacular Neglect Sadie Plant The recent exhibitions of Situationist art and paraphernalia in London, Paris, and Boston, have given the Situationist International (SI) an unprecedented academic and cultural profile. Even during the movement’s most active period, when many of its ideas and practices were realised in the events in […]

The Eupsychian Impulse Psychoanalysis and Left politics since ’68 Barry Richards My purpose here is to offer some reflections on the part flayed by psychoanalysis in Left politics in Britain since 1968. I will attempt a broad and critical characterisation of the major uses to which psychoanalytic theory has been put in political discourse during […]

The Personal and Political 20 Years On fan Craib Thinking about 1968, the most interesting thing for me is 1967. 1967 comes back more easily; it is the signpost from which, sometimes with difficulty, I can move forward to what I remember of 1968. The reason is quite simple: in 1967, I was in love, […]

THI ‘NIW PHILOSOPHIRS’ AND THI IND or LlrTISM Peter Dews Introduction Fashion moves fast in Parisian salons, and the taste for intellectual scandal demands the constant breaking of fresh taboos. Three years ago, in the spring of 1977, a group of young authors styling themselves the ‘New Philosophers’ moved rapidly to the centre of attention, […]

THE PHILOSOPHER IN THE CLASSROOM: A ..epo… f .. om r .. aDce Colin Gordon & Jonathan Ree Aboul GREPB The supplement ‘Philosophy from Below’ in RP15 raised once again the question of whether Radical Philosophy can be content with trying to change the content of philosophy in this country or whether it must also […]

On Ihelheo.-y of ideology Ithe politics of A.lthussel’) Jacques Ranciere ‘Certainly it is an interesting event we are dealing with: the Dutrescence of the absolute spirit (Marx: German Ideology Part 1) ‘All the mysteries which lead theory into mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the understanding of that practice’. For a […]

Commentary A grin without a cat The French Right returns to office Jim wolfreys One of the many peculiarities of May 1968 was the sudden return to normality apparently indicated by the electoral victory for the Right which followed in June. The recent spate of elections in France seems at first glance to have followed […]

Infinite conversation Maurice Blanchot, 1907–2003 Maurice Blanchot considered writing unimportant. It is not important to write, he said. He was – but ʻWhatʼs the word?ʼ Beckett would ask. ʻWhatʼs the wrong word?ʼ He was an unimportant writer. Now he has made his exit. His books always did and still do leave us alone, with nothing […]

‘This is what you should think’, ‘This is what you shouldn’t think’, ‘This is what’s possible or impossible, old or new, relevant or irrelevant.’It is within this murky inverted present and swamp of bad memory that the various social movements that make up the slow reassertion of the radical Left in France have had to […]

It is hardly news that history has its blind spots, hidden even from those attentive to its most neglected byways. These are often within emancipatory struggles that are swiftly disregarded once their fervour fades. When disputed legacies originate in confrontational, often anarchic challenges to the prevailing order of just about everything, systematic accounting tends to […]

Forty years or so after it initially rose as a rather new name for a rather new thing, theory is still an obtruse signifier, troubling and floating, requiring we go back to basics. Theory as we most often understand it today is the name given by the English-speaking intellectual community to a certain type of […]

Reports from the protests by those campaigning against the cuts to educations, including Nina Power on the centrality of women.