Chris Reynolds

Understanding 1968: the case of Brest

This article examines the dominance of Paris in how May ’68 has been portrayed over the years. It will be argued, through a case-study of the revolt in the Breton city of Brest, that the Paris-centred approach is one that belies the true nationwide aspect of May/June 1968. As one of a range of characteristics, the concentration on the Latin Quarter has helped mould what Kristin Ross has described as the ‘official history’ of 1968. An examination of how the events were played out within different regional contexts would go a long way towards helping overcome the shortcomings of the increasingly narrow portrayal that has come to dominate the stereotypical image of 1968.

Presidential elections and Europe: the 2012 game-changer

Abstract As well as marking 60 years since the signature of the Treaty of Rome, 2017 will see the 10th presidential election of France’s Fifth Republic. The overlap between the question of Europe and the election to France’s highest office provides the framework for this article to explore the development of the European debate in France. Prior to 2012, and despite the increasing and undeniable salience of it for French domestic concerns, the question of Europe is widely considered to have been a secondary issue in presidential elections. Focusing in particular on the period since the pivotal debate and referendum on the Maastricht Treaty and the intervening transition from ‘permissive consensus’ to ‘constraining dissensus’, this article will explain how and why Europe has seemingly defied logic to remain on the margins of successive election campaigns, before presenting the 2012 presidential elections as a game-changer on how the question of Europe featured. The conclusion offers a discussion on the ramifications for future presidential elections, starting with that of 2017.

From mai–juin ’68 to Nuit Debout: shifting perspectives on France’s anti-police

Abstract In the great drama that was mai–juin 1968, the police were unquestionably a central actor. In particular, they played a pivotal role in transforming what started out as a relatively minor, student-based rebellion into a nationwide movement that brought the Gaullist regime to the brink of collapse. The 2016 Nuit Debout protest movement drew strong comparisons to the 1968 events, with many wondering whether France stood to experience a repeat of those heady days. This article will argue that the inability of Nuit Debout to capture the imagination of the general public in a similar fashion to what happened in 1968 is not solely the result of the exceptional and divergent contexts. Instead, it will contend that this failure is also to be understood through an appreciation of shifting perspectives on France’s anti-police. Such positive developments, it will be argued, have ironically been shaped as a result of the 1968 events and the manner in which they are most commonly remembered.

Sixty years on: France and Europe from the Treaty of Rome to the 2017 elections

The publication of this special issue is timed to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome in March 1957 by France and its five fellow founder members of the European Economic Community (EEC) (... continues).

Northern Ireland’s 1968 in a Post-troubles Context

1968 has always been regarded as a moment of great change across the globe. In recent years, new studies of nations having experienced a 68-style upheaval have proliferated, leading to this period being held up as one of transnational revolt. A notable absence from this ever-growing list has been Northern Ireland. Despite having experienced a period of revolt that at the very least should have seen what happened in the streets of Belfast and Derry between October 1968 and February 1969 mentioned in the same breath as Paris, Berlin and Rome, Northern Ireland’s 1968 has, at best, been forced to the very periphery of any transnational collective memory of this period. This essay will argue the occultation of Northern Ireland’s 1968 from the European collective memory of 1968 is to be understood through an appreciation of the impact of the bloody post-’68 trajectory that was the “Troubles”. This very divergent aftermath buried the memory of this period and only since the dawning of peace in Northern Ireland has it been possible to frame what happened in a non-insular context. This is one potent example that demonstrates how shifting contexts in Northern Ireland have forced important reappraisals of the past, with all sorts of ramifications for the future.

France after 2012

its subordinate position in relation to the dominant British colonising power. This relation has allowed free rein to the imagination, in a nostalgic idealism that fantasises about what an Inde française might have been but never was (6). This is a scholarly, well-referenced work, though not devoid of errors, such as the claim that Bahadur Shah ii was executed (16) or escaped (43), when, in fact, he was exiled to Burma. However, it is not intended as a contribution to the history of these events as such, nor to the historical debates they continue to provoke. Rather it analyses the significance of French representations of the uprisings for an understanding of subsequent developments in French colonial expansion and, especially, in the discourses through which they are articulated. Many of these accounts seize on the events and the British response to them as a sign of weakness on the part of the imperial rival. The book thus throws light on the different ways in which the French and the British colonial discourses encounter and respond to anti-colonial resistance. while the French may represent figures like Nana Sahib and the Rani of Jhansi in a more positive revolutionary light, this is usually set against the backdrop of a critique of the British failure to carry out its colonial civilising mission successfully. The terminology used stresses the ‘revolutionary’ nature of the revolts and their main players, unlike the British, who sought to downplay any suggestion that they represented a popular, ‘national’ revolt, rather than a military ‘mutiny’. one might argue that the reality lies elsewhere, given that the 1857–1858 events did not represent a modernist, european-style revolution, but focused mainly on turning back the clock and re-establishing feudal-type rulers in their domains. This is not, however, the aim of this book, which, while it succeeds in illuminating the ‘discursive rivalry’ between both imperial powers, does not fail to distinguish between the often delusional ideological, imaginary discourse and the realities on the ground, where the similarities between them outweigh the differences. Margaret A. Majumdar University of Portsmouth

Immigrants & Intellectuals: May '68 & the Rise of Anti-Racism in France

recourse to archives in Brittany, offering a glimpse of provincial, generally more conservative attitudes. Clearly none of these sources are exhaustive, although a great deal can be gleaned about the application of the judicial process over the century, the apparent motives of suicides (if they left any written traces) and the attitudes expressed by Hardy and others about their act. As Merrick says in relation to Hardy’s journals: ‘Even if he did not always record the real facts, his journal does document contemporary assumptions about, and the representations of suicide. It sheds some light both on the lives of the ordinary Parisians who killed themselves and the minds of the magistrates who rarely punished them for doing so in the last decades of the ancien régime’ (7). Godineau, like Merrick, dismisses philosophical suicide as a major tendency. The most arresting aspect of her study lies in the stories, such as they remain, of the individuals wishing to end their lives. There is inevitably perhaps a macabre feel to a book which, while giving all due respect to the victims of suicidal despair, nevertheless exposes them (though not quite as graphically as on the judicial hurdles dragged through the streets) to the cold gaze of the academic bystander. Godineau demonstrates that the gradual severity of judicial punishment decreased over the century (partly for reasons of hygiene—the dead body to be symbolically humiliated, by the time the judicial process ended, posed a threat to public health). The magistrates tended to undermine the law on suicides by systematic non-enforcement. Thus while the revolution of 1789 did formally decriminalise suicide, its effective decriminalisation preceded the abolition of penalties by some two decades. Godineau’s study, if not always convincing in drawing conclusions from necessarily limited and partial sources, does dramatise the suicides’ tragic ends and the gradual erosion of a punitive legal system. Though focussed on a small number of atypical individuals—suicide being the exception not the norm— S’abréger les jours offers valuable evidence of the diffusion of Enlightenment ideas among the ordinary population which seem to have wished, not so much to validate philosophical suicide, as to cast blame away from its perpetrators.

May 68. Rethinking France's Last Revolution

most right-wing writers and journalists is likewise well presented. Another innovative aspect of this study lies in the consideration of how French cultural representations of Nationalist and Republican Spain were subsequently ‘remobilised’ during the Occupation of France in order to promote their respective utopian agendas. Although this is overall a fine publication, clear and well structured, there is evidence of rather uneven proof-reading—sometimes there are as many as three typos on a page, including the all-too-common confusion of the collaborationist Alphonse (not Adolphe!) de Chateaubriant with the nineteenth-century Romantic author, Chateaubriand. Notwithstanding these minor reservations, this is generally a very well-researched, intellectually honest study that should appeal to students and researchers in literature as well as to those interested in literary and socio-political history in the context of twentieth-century relations between France and Spain.

Breaking the walls of privacy: how rebellion came to the street

ABSTRACT This article approaches the events of 1968 not—as traditionally done—by focusing on the agents of activism but rather on the spaces of their activism. Drawing from examples in Poland, Ireland and the Soviet Union, it argues that the street and square as sites of protest assumed more and more significance in the run-up to and during the events of 1968, changing both the nature of protests and the symbolic and physical nature of the spaces concerned. In Poland 1968 was a rare moment when resistance to the socialist regime spilled out of the confines of safe spaces such as Warsaw University into public places, thus involving not only a select group of non-conformists, but the Polish people at large. For Ireland, too, 1968 was a year when Irish protesters crossed physical boundaries, taking their protest not only to the street but into hostile territory. The Soviet Union had seen a gradual transition from conspiratorial resistance hidden from the public view to more and more open protests that used its very publicity as a weapon. Events culminated in the tragic self-immolation of a Kaunas youngster on the site of the local hippie hang-out and opposite the local Communist Party headquarters. The articles analysis of the spaces of protest highlights not only the complex inter- and re-actions between the different participants involved in 1968, but also illustrates how space itself was transformed from being a site of protest to being a symbol of and reason for protest.