The May 1968 Events in France: Reproductions and Interpretations PDF
Preview The May 1968 Events in France: Reproductions and Interpretations
THE MAY 1968 EVENTS IN FRANCE Also by Keith A. Reader THE CINEMA: A HISTORY CULTURES ON CELLULOID *INTELLECTUALS AND THE LEFf IN FRANCE SINCE 1968 LA VIE EST A NOUS ( with G. Vincendeau) * From the same publishers The May 1968 Events in France Reproductions and Interpretations Keith A. Reader Reader in French Cultural Studies University of Kingston, Surrey with Khursheed Wadia Senior Lecwrer in French Woil'erhampton University First published in Great Britain 1993 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-349-22704-4 ISBN 978-1-349-22702-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-22702-0 First published in the United States of America 1993 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC .. Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Firth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-09014-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Reader. Keith TI1e May 1968 events in France: reproductions and interpretations I Keith A. Reader, with Khursheed Wadia. p. em. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-312-09014-2 I. Riots-France-Paris. 2. France-History-1958- 3. Student movements-France-Paris-History-20th century. 4. Radicalism -France-Paris-History-20th century. I. Wadin, Khurshccd. II. Title. DC420.R43 1993 944'.360836-<lc20 92-27879 CIP © Keith A. Reader 1993 Chapter 6 © Khursheed Wadi a 1993 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1993 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the tcnns of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tollenham Court Road, London WI P 9IIE. Any person who docs any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained rain forests Transferred to digital printing 1998 02/780 To G.D. (who first drew my attention to how import ant the events were), and to my mother (my first 'event'). Contents Acknowledgements viii List of Abbreviations ix What Happened in May 1968? 2 The Interpretations of the Crisis of May/June 1968 Philippe Beneton and Jean Touchard 20 3 Other Interpretations of the Events 48 4 Cultural Interpretations of the Events 87 5 Reproductions of the May Events 117 6 Women and the Events of May 1968 Khursheed Wadia 148 Epilogue 167 Notes 170 Bibliography 194 Index 203 vii Acknowledgements My thanks go in the first instance to the Nuffield Foundation, for the grant that enabled me to spend the summer of 1989 in Paris researching this book, and to my colleagues in the School of Languages at Kingston University, for enabling me to take study leave in the summer term of 1991 to write the book. Library staff at the Bibliotheque de Documentation lnternationale Contemporaine at Nantcrre, the Institut des Sciences Politiques, the Maison des Sciences de I'Homme, and the Videotheque de Paris (all in Paris) were extremely helpful, as were the long-suffering inter-library loans team at Kingston. Help, ideas and inspiration came from Richard Alwyn, Philippe Binet, David Caute, Claire Duchen, Jill Forbes, Eleonore Kofman, Colin MacCabe, Jean-Paul Morel (whose generosity with his own library saved me much time in Paris), Richard Nice, Pascal Ory, Jean-Fran~ois Sirinelli, Michael Worton and others. Diana Holmes put me in contact with Khursheed Wadia without whose contribution the book would have been much impov erished. My May 1968 special-subject groups at Kingston acted as guinea pigs (and sometimes punchbags) for many of the ideas and suggestions herein. The Kingston languages office staff - especially Sarah Bacon - were towers of strength. I would like to thank the editors of the Revue franraise des Sciences politiques for permission to include an article from that journal by Philippe Beneton and Jean Touchard, which I have translated and include here as Chapter 2. More personally, I should like to thank my mother, my cat, Bessie, and Eleonore for (very different kinds of) loving support, Tim Farmiloe at Macmillans for his forbearance as deadlines expired and idiotic questions were asked, Hugues Joscaud for the generous and convivial hospitality he offered on a number of visits to Paris, Madame Auffray of the Institut Francophone de Paris for providing me with accommodation during a last minute bibliographical visit, and all the friends who stayed with me in Paris during the summer of 1989 and secured my sanity at the cost of their own. viii List of Abbreviations AFP Agcnce France Pressc- France's leading news agency CFDT Confederation fran~aise democratique du travail - second largest French trade union grouping, more gauchiste than the CGT CGT Confederation generate du travail - largest French trade union grouping, closely allied with the PCF FER Federation des etudiants revolutionnaires-Trotskyist group JCR/LCR Jeunesse (later Ligue) communiste revolutionnaire - Trotskyist group MLF Mouvement de liberation des femmes OAS Organisation de l'armee secrete-colonialist paramilitaries in Algeria ORTF Office de radiodiffusion television fran~aise PCF Parti communiste fran~aise PCMLF Parti communiste (marxiste-leniniste) fran~aise- Maoist PS Parti socialiste PSU Parti socialiste unifie - loosely gauchiste grouping SNE-S(up) Syndical national de l'enseignement secondaire/superieur teaching unions affiliated to the CGT UEC Union des etudiants communistes UJCml Union des jeunesses communistes (marxiste-Ieniniste) UNEF Union nationale des etudiants de France ix 1 What Happened in May 1968? To describe the event implies that the event was written. How can an event be written? What can the 'writing of the event' mean?1 The diversity of expressions used to describe what happened in France in May 1968 clearly indicates how difficult it is to say precisely what the 'events', to use the commonest term, were. 'Crisis', 'strike', 'revolt', 're volution', '(student) commune', 'civil war', 'chien/it/dog's breakfast' (to use the somewhat euphemistic English translation of the time), or the simple chronological 'May' (followed or not by 'I 19)68') are the other terms most often found. 2 This heterogeneity in speaking of a historical moment is remarkable; however strong and contradictory the feelings they arouse, the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution, the Munich putsch are each generally known by one name. Why should 'May' be so different? The main reason is the disparity between the all-consuming intensity of the events while they lasted and the overwhelming reimposition of the political status quo immediately afterwards. It is noteworthy that Beneton and Touchard speak of 'the crisis of May and June 1968', for occupations, barricades, demonstrations continued through the first half of June, but in an increasingly isolated and despairing manner. Once de Gaulle had made his major radio speech on 30 May, followed that evening by a vast demon stration of support for him on the Champs-Elysees, the energy that had sustained the movement drained away with unexampled rapidity. The land slide Gaullist electoral victory a month to the day after the General's speech came as a surprise to very few. Yet it followed a month in which France had virtually come to a halt, precipitated by large-scale student protests and occupations that led to the greatest general strike in European history, involving nine million workers and losing 15 000 000 working days. It is this junction of student and worker protest that marks France's 1968 as distinctive, much further reaching than the other student movements that swept most of the world in that year.3 De Gaulle said of May, with a characteristically ambiguous combination of chauvinism and irony: 'As always, France led the way' .4 The p11radox that so vast a social and cultural movement led to so massive a reassertion of the political status quo underlies Edgar Morin's view that:
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