For one who studies France, the events of 1968 certainly hold a place of prominence. However, and I may be exposing a bit of historical ignorance in admitting this, it has been very interesting to learn the extent to which the 68 protests spread beyond France, beyond Europe, and the similarities and differences that exist in the way in which the spirit of 68 manifested itself. As a moment of global protest, it is understandable why this year holds such an appeal in transnational studies. Appadurai’s Modernity at Large excitedly discusses the beginning of a transnational change becoming possible due to advances in mass media technologies, but this report comes nearly thirty years following the events of 68. These protests, and the cultural, economic and political shifts that they provoked, occurred in a greatly different landscape for technology and media. The spirit of 68 also did not necessarily involve the movement of any people in particular, nor was it an ideology spread through a specific intellectual work. The spread of protests in 68 was of a very immaterial nature, and thus represents an intangible transnational process. To study the events of 68 is to analyze a much less visible transnational phenomenon than people crossing borders or using the Internet to speak to one another. 1968 was a very visible moment, not dependent on any particular location, people, or means of communication, but I believe its true value is symbolic. 1968 is the representation of a diffuse and broadly applicable moment of transnationalism.
That the year 1968 is so evocative of rebellion and protest for so many people, regardless of national or cultural boundaries, is in itself reason to consider what it adds to the idea of transnationalism. As Martin Klimke notes in Revisiting the Revolution, the general memory of 68 is something that goes beyond borders. He notes “…there is, in addition to our national recollections, also a transnational pool of memories. In fact, icons, images, references, and experiences associated with ‘1968’ have been circulating across national borders ever since this turbulent decade. They have created a loose, but nonetheless potent generational identity as well as a firm imprint in popular culture that transcends national boundaries (27).” I believe it is fair to say that 1968 is a broadly shared memory held by people regardless of location, and even by those who were not there. However, despite the broad spread of events in 1968, not all manifestations of 1968 were reacting to the same thing, or working towards the same goal. In Reading Mexico 1968, the author cites a fictionalized German participant from Luis González de Alba’s Los días y los años who states that the demands of a Mexican student participating in a protest in the year has demands that are, to the German, incomprehensible (303). The effects of 68 were broad, and are held by a great variety of people, but care must be taken when analyzing it so as not to take the great deal of similarities as indication that 1968 represented a unified vision.
Another potential hurdle in choosing one year to be representative of a transnational process is coming to terms with the fact that a broad phenomenon cannot sit so neatly in a well-defined spatial and temporal context. Though 68 is the emblem of national and transnational protest in the 1960s, it cannot be removed from the context of what occurs before and after. In 1968 in Europe, Klimke and Scharloth note the metaphorical significance of 1968: “The roots of many of these movements reach back to the beginning of the 1960s and the previous decade, making a strong case for extending the general periodization to the ‘long 1960s,’ dating roughly from 1956 to 1977. In this book, ‘1968’ thus stands as a metaphor used to capture the broad history of European protests and activism… (3).” Sarah Waters similarly notes the strength of 68 being applied more metaphorically: “Thus, recent comparative studies use a wide historical lens, taking 1968 as a symbol for a far larger moment in time (Introduction: 1968 in Memory and Place 2).” The use of a specific year like 68 in analyzing a transnational phenomenon should thus be done carefully, with more regard to a defining moment in a larger process rather than a specific moment that exists in a vacuum.
The interest in 68 is important for the study of transnational processes. It shows that something as abstract as the idea of protest can spread through national boundaries, and can do so without Twitter or Skype to facilitate communication. It shows that transnational movement is not dependent on the current mass media landscape. It has existed, continues to exist and presumably will continue to evolve and manifest itself. However, there are pitfalls in limiting the study of transnationalism to such a specific time. As noted, care must be taken to avoid generalizations. Though 1968 was defined by global student protests, what these students were protesting for is not at all uniform. Nor is 1968 a specific moment that exists out of time. It is situated in a much longer history of rebellion and protest, and it is important to consider it in context of what lead to it and what changes it caused. Still, for the study of something as broad, diffuse and potentially transparent as transnationalism, I believe that there is value in using specific emblematic moments of change.
Daniel, I agree wholeheartedly with your opening comment–in my experiences, we (as French scholars) throw around the term “Mai ’68” constantly without really applying it to a broader global context. This week’s reading really opened my eyes to just how transnational the movement really was and how present it remains today. What really interested me in the articles was Hannah Arendt’s comment cited in Klimke and Scharloth’s introduction to 1968 in Europe: A history of protest and activism, 1956-1977. She states, “It sees to me that the children of the next century will once learn about 1968 the way we learned about 1848” (7). Interestingly, I taught about the revolution of 1848 (la revolution de février) today in my FREN 250 class and compared it to the 1968 protests. The large majority of my students had not heard of either event! As significant as 1968 is to the twentieth century and beyond, I wonder if it will be forgotten or replaced in our collective memory by a future revolution.
I appreciate how you write that we must take care not to make generalizations about the ’68 events, but that there is still value to be gained from making connections between the emblematic global movements.
I also approached the subject of 1968 with May 1968 in France as my main reference point; I was even surprised to read about the significance attached to 1968 in the United States, where I am more familiar with Joan Didion’s conception of 1969 in the U.S. as the moment when the dream of the sixties imploded. In addition to your insight that 1968 may not sufficiently represent the phenomenon as a whole given the ongoing national contexts that led up to the transnational movement of 1968, I also think you are right to note that what is particularly significant about 1968 is how it spread. While the mediascape as Appadurai envisions it did exist at the time, albeit in a less advanced form, the fact that the spirit of resistance spread without today’s direct networks of communication (such as the social media you mentioned, or any form of electronic and instantaneous means of communicating across national borders), suggests that communication and the mediascape itself are perhaps not the essential factors to creating transnational feeling and alliances. Rather, people in various nations connected to a shared imagination of 1968 that inspired them and allowed them to relate to each other. Perhaps, then, imagination is in fact a more powerful means of constructing reality and alliances around abstract ideas than are direct acts of communication.