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1968 in Retrospect: History, Theory, Alterity
This volume examines the protest movements of 1968 from innovative perspectives. With contributions from leading social theorists the book reflects on the untold narratives of race, gender and sexuality and critically addresses the standard theoretical assumptions of 1968 to discuss overlooked perspectives.
- GenresHistory
218 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
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January 25, 2018
I saw this book going cheap on a book sale and I bought it because 1968 was quite a significant year in my life, and the title 1968 in retrospect interested me. The sub-title, however puzzled me. I had to look up "alterity" in a dictionary, and I'm still not sure what it means.
It's a collection of essays by sociologists on the significance of 1968. What made the year significant for them was clearly the whole Student Power thing that erupted in that year, though they didn't actual;ly say so explicitly. One had to infer that from the contents of the essays, many of which were self-consciously not about the events of Paris in May 1968, as they said focusing on that meant that people missed a lot of other significant things, but in the end it became clear that it was the events in Paris that gave significance to the other things.
In the introduction the editors acknowledge that they weren't born in 1968, though they asked for advice from a couple of people who claimed to have been there, and therefore their memories must be suspect. And to me that makes their whole enterprise suspect. As a historian I know that people who "were there" when significant events took place can never see the whole picture, and in the history of those events there will be gaps that only become apparent much later.
I know this from personal experience. I "was there" in the 1960s. I saw what I saw, and heard what I heard, but I didn't see or here everything, not even all the bits of it that concerned me directly. Only 40 years later, when I read the reports that the security police sent to the Minister of Jsustice did I discover that I had been to places I had no recollection of being at. Such sources only become available to later historians, and enable historians to piece together a fuller picture of the past. So yes, "being there" is not enough. But does that make those who weren't there less suspect than those who were? I'm not so sure about that.
The authors of these essays are not historians but sociologists, and there is little evidence that they have done much historical research on the subject. So that was a disappointment, to me, at least. What the book perhaps does show is the significance of 1968 for the history of sociology as a discipline. I will say some more about the significance of sociology in 1968 from the "I was there" perspective, but not in the Good Reads review. I'll save it for an expanded blog post with more personal reminiscences, which will be extraneous to the book review.
I won't deal with everything in the book, but the main thing that struck me was that many of the authors wrote about the "long decade". 1968, they said, encapsulated the Sixties, and the Sixties really lasted from 1956 to 1976. Now if one is looking for the characteristics of that long decade, there are all sorts of cultural currents that they do not mention at all -- the Beat Generation of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and their successors, the hippies and the Summer of Love in 1967, though that was before 1968. But it was students who experienced the "Summer of Love" who were also involved in the events of 1968, so what influence did one have on the other. None of the authors say. There were theological currents, such as the "God is dead" thing, and the Jesus freaks. The "Prague spring" of 1968 is mentioned in passing but not really analysed.
The editors said they were trying to get away from a Western perspective, and were more interested in non-Western perspectives, and feminism and gay liberation. So there is a chapter on politics and student resistance in Africa since 1968, whose author, Leo Zelig, writes:
But he goes on to deal with African students of the period as the privileged within their societies anyway.
And if the aim was to shift the focus away from the privileged, why was there no mention of student revolts that started in Soweto in 1976 and spread throughout South Africa? If the Sixties were a long decade, then that surely was a significant culmination of the student power movement of 1968, but it is hardly mentioned in the book. For that I recommend The Rocky Rioter Teargas Show, which gets the spirit of '76 better than this book gets the spirit of '68.
To justify the "history" part of the title the very least I would have expected would be a chronology of the events of 1968 that the authors and editors saw as most significant, and possibly some of the events in the preceding and following years that constituted the "long decade". As one chapter in the book reminded us, 1968 was the year that Enid Blyton died. But the conclusion that I came to after reading this book was that sociologists can't write history, and a real history of 1968 has yet to be written.
There is a longer version of this revire on my blog at 1968 in retrospect, which has more on sociology in the 1960s, and some personal reminiscences on 1968.
It's a collection of essays by sociologists on the significance of 1968. What made the year significant for them was clearly the whole Student Power thing that erupted in that year, though they didn't actual;ly say so explicitly. One had to infer that from the contents of the essays, many of which were self-consciously not about the events of Paris in May 1968, as they said focusing on that meant that people missed a lot of other significant things, but in the end it became clear that it was the events in Paris that gave significance to the other things.
In the introduction the editors acknowledge that they weren't born in 1968, though they asked for advice from a couple of people who claimed to have been there, and therefore their memories must be suspect. And to me that makes their whole enterprise suspect. As a historian I know that people who "were there" when significant events took place can never see the whole picture, and in the history of those events there will be gaps that only become apparent much later.
I know this from personal experience. I "was there" in the 1960s. I saw what I saw, and heard what I heard, but I didn't see or here everything, not even all the bits of it that concerned me directly. Only 40 years later, when I read the reports that the security police sent to the Minister of Jsustice did I discover that I had been to places I had no recollection of being at. Such sources only become available to later historians, and enable historians to piece together a fuller picture of the past. So yes, "being there" is not enough. But does that make those who weren't there less suspect than those who were? I'm not so sure about that.
The authors of these essays are not historians but sociologists, and there is little evidence that they have done much historical research on the subject. So that was a disappointment, to me, at least. What the book perhaps does show is the significance of 1968 for the history of sociology as a discipline. I will say some more about the significance of sociology in 1968 from the "I was there" perspective, but not in the Good Reads review. I'll save it for an expanded blog post with more personal reminiscences, which will be extraneous to the book review.
I won't deal with everything in the book, but the main thing that struck me was that many of the authors wrote about the "long decade". 1968, they said, encapsulated the Sixties, and the Sixties really lasted from 1956 to 1976. Now if one is looking for the characteristics of that long decade, there are all sorts of cultural currents that they do not mention at all -- the Beat Generation of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and their successors, the hippies and the Summer of Love in 1967, though that was before 1968. But it was students who experienced the "Summer of Love" who were also involved in the events of 1968, so what influence did one have on the other. None of the authors say. There were theological currents, such as the "God is dead" thing, and the Jesus freaks. The "Prague spring" of 1968 is mentioned in passing but not really analysed.
The editors said they were trying to get away from a Western perspective, and were more interested in non-Western perspectives, and feminism and gay liberation. So there is a chapter on politics and student resistance in Africa since 1968, whose author, Leo Zelig, writes:
This chapter looks explicitly at the nature of the student revolts in Africa in the late 1960s and 1970s. The chapter seeks to pull our attention away from Europe and North America, the privileged sites for discussing 1968, to focus on other voices that began to craft a new politics in that year.
But he goes on to deal with African students of the period as the privileged within their societies anyway.
And if the aim was to shift the focus away from the privileged, why was there no mention of student revolts that started in Soweto in 1976 and spread throughout South Africa? If the Sixties were a long decade, then that surely was a significant culmination of the student power movement of 1968, but it is hardly mentioned in the book. For that I recommend The Rocky Rioter Teargas Show, which gets the spirit of '76 better than this book gets the spirit of '68.
To justify the "history" part of the title the very least I would have expected would be a chronology of the events of 1968 that the authors and editors saw as most significant, and possibly some of the events in the preceding and following years that constituted the "long decade". As one chapter in the book reminded us, 1968 was the year that Enid Blyton died. But the conclusion that I came to after reading this book was that sociologists can't write history, and a real history of 1968 has yet to be written.
There is a longer version of this revire on my blog at 1968 in retrospect, which has more on sociology in the 1960s, and some personal reminiscences on 1968.
Displaying 1 of 1 review