When Poetry Ruled the Streets: The French May Events of 1968

by Andrew Feenberg, Jim Freedman

Offers a complete survey of the French May Events of 1968 through narrative, analysis, and documents.

More than a history, this book is a passionate reliving of the French May Events of 1968. The authors, ardent participants in the movement in Paris, documented the unfolding events as they pelted the police and ran from the tear gas grenades. Their account is imbued with the impassioned efforts of the students to ignite political awareness throughout society. Feenberg and Freedman select documents, graffiti, brochures, and posters from the movement and use them as testaments to a very different and exciting time. Their commentary, informed by the subsequent development of French culture and politics, offers useful background information and historical context for what may be the last great revolutionary challenge to the capitalist system.

"This book is fascinating to read. The May events in France are very important. They are open to numerous interpretations but certainly they provide the only example of a government of an advanced industrial society brought to its feet, if only for a couple of weeks. They resonate backwards with the history of revolutions and forward to 'the new social movements' and the upheavals and reorganizations in Europe that continue to this day." -- Mark Poster, author of Existential Marxism in Postwar From Sartre to Althusser

"I know of no other book quite like it. It authoritatively captures an important moment in twentieth-century history, and does so with real verve and flair. I could not imagine teaching the sixties without recourse to it." -- Paul Thomas, University of California, Berkeley

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Poetry

220 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Andrew Feenberg is Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, where he directs the Applied Communication and Technology Lab. He has also taught for many years in the Philosophy Department at San Diego State University, and at Duke University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, the Universities of California, San Diego and Irvine, the Sorbonne, the University of Paris-Dauphine, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and the University of Tokyo and the University of Brasilia.

He is the author of Lukacs, Marx and the Sources of Critical Theory (Rowman and Littlefield, 1981; Oxford University Press, 1986), Critical Theory of Technology (Oxford University Press, 1991), Alternative Modernity (University of California Press, 1995), and Questioning Technology (Routledge, 1999). A second edition of Critical Theory of Technology appeared with Oxford in 2002 under the title Transforming Technology. Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History appeared in 2005 with Routledge. Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity appeared with MIT Press in 2010. Translations of several of these books are available. Dr. Feenberg is also co-editor of Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia (Bergin and Garvey Press, 1987), Technology and the Politics of Knowledge (Indiana University Press, 1995), Modernity and Technology (MIT Press, 2003), and Community in the Digital Age (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004). His co-authored book on the French May Events of 1968 appeared in 2001 with SUNY Press under the title When Poetry Ruled the Streets. With William Leiss, Feenberg has edited a collection entitled The Essential Marcuse published by Beacon Press. A book on Feenberg's philosophy of technology entitled Democratizing Technology, appeared in 2006.

In addition to his work on Critical Theory and philosophy of technology, Dr. Feenberg has published on the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro. He is also recognized as an early innovator in the field of online education, a field he helped to create in 1982. He led the TextWeaver Project on improving software for online discussion forums under a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education of the US Department of Education. For the latest web based version of this software, see http://webmarginalia.net/. Dr. Feenberg is currently studying online education on a grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Reviews

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Until I read this book I'd never even heard about the French May events in 1968, (though that's not saying much; my knowledge of French history isn't very in-depth). This book is an interesting account of the events and the underlying issues that caused them.

[Elise Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun, anecdotal, full of on-scene details and political explanations.