May 1968 and Contemporary French Thought

Julian Bourg

From Revolution to Ethics: May 1968 and Contemporary French Thought

A bold history of French intellectual life and the legacies of 1960's radicalism.

McGill-Queen's University Press,

488pp

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The French revolts of May 1968, the largest general strike in twentieth-century Europe, were among the most famous and colourful episodes of the twentieth century. Julian Bourg argues that during the subsequent decade the revolts led to a remarkable paradigm shift in French thought - the concern for revolution in the 1960s was transformed into a fascination with ethics.

Challenging the prevalent view that the 1960s did not have any lasting effect, From Revolution to Ethics demonstrates that intellectuals and activists turned to ethics as the touchstone for understanding interpersonal, institutional, and political dilemmas. In absorbing and scrupulously researched detail Bourg explores the developing ethical fascination as it emerged among student Maoists courting terrorism, anti-psychiatric celebrations of madness, feminists mobilizing against rape, and pundits and philosophers championing human rights.

Based on newly accessible archival sources and over fifty interviews with men and women who participated in the events of the era, From Revolution to Ethics provides a compelling picture of how May 1968 helped make ethics a compass for navigating contemporary global experience

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 3
1 Cobblestone Beaches: Normative Contradictions of the May Revolt 19
PART ONE: THE SABRE AND THE KEYHOLE: FRENCH MAOISM, VIOLENCE, AND PRISONER DIGNITY
2 A Press Conference 45
3 Violence and the Gauche prolétarienne 51
4 The President’s Man and the State’s Thumb 61
5 Popular Justice and Incarcerated Leftists 68
6 The Groupe d’information sur les prisons 79
7 These Modern Bastilles 96
PART TWO: SPINOZA ON PROZAC: FROM INSTITUTIONAL PSYCHOTHERAPY TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF DESIRE
8 Anti-Psychiatry and the Philosophy of Desire 105
9 Anti-Oedipus: Redux and Reception, Ethics and Origins 112
10 Institutional Psychotherapy and the La Borde Psychiatric Clinic 125
11 Félix Guattari’s Devolution 138
12 Gilles Deleuze’s Spinozist Ethics 144
13 Schizophrenia and Fascism 159
14 Craziness Is a Dead End 174
PART THREE: “YOUR SEXUAL REVOLUTION IS NOT OURS”: FRENCH FEMINIST “MORALISM” AND THE LIMITS OF DESIRE
15 Gender and ’68: Tensions from the Start 179
16 Guy Hocquenghem’s Dark Encounter with Feminism 187
17 Feminism, Law, Rape, and Leftist Male Reaction 193
18 Boy Trouble: French Pedophiliac Discourse of the 1970s 204
19 Desire Has Its Limits 219
PART FOUR: WHEN ALL BETS ARE OFF: ETHICAL JANSENISM AND THE NEW PHILOSOPHERS
20 The Main Event 227
21 Between the Union of the Left and Jansenism 247
22 Maurice Clavel 261
23 The Angel in the World 276
24 The Dialectic by the Side of the Road 289
25 John Locke Was Not French, or The Varieties of Ethical Experience 302
Conclusion 334
Notes 349
Bibliography 409
Index 449


Julian Bourg
History Department
Bucknell University
jeb061@bucknell.edu