>Mike Frank <[log in to unmask]> writes:
 
>the french student revolution [of May, 1968]
>has come to be seen, if not as the actual source of many new directions in
>contemporary thought, at least as a convenient marker of the intellectual
>revolution in which the althusserian, derridian, lacanian, foucaludian,
>barthesian, de manian post struturalist, deconstrnctionist, semiotic armies
>stormed the barricades of conventional thought
 
This is a very romantic way to describe what the catch phrase "post-'68"
means in the academic community. If anything it was precisely the failure
of the student revolts and the inability to maintain a coalition of
workers, students, and intellectuals in the face of state power that
brought about the inward turn of post-'68 critical theory. Frank's image of
"semiotic armies" storming academic barricades would be amusing if it
weren't so absurd.
 
In any case, much of the discussion of '68 in 1997 has degenerated into
nostalgia. For example, check out <www.documenta.de>, the web site for
documenta X, the massive art exhibition in Kassel, Germany organized by the
French curator Catherine David. There on the web , and in her immensely
thick catalogues, you will see the most retrograde worship in years of "les
quadras" (this being the term by which France's sixties veterans are
known).
 
For a generation now, we've been talking about art and theory in relation
to the pivotal year of 1968, the assumption being that somehow the failed
revolutions of that heady summer so demoralized the politicized avant-garde
that all cultural production since then has been irrevocably altered. This
kind of periodization is what cultural historians do, of course, and it has
the same relationship to the actual developments as the map does to the
road - it's a useful guide, but only an approximation of the real. Yet, new
markers have sprung up since then, and in terms of cultural production
(especially techno-cultural production), it strikes me that 1989 - with its
Velvet Revolutions, falling walls, and fissioning unions - has become the
new dividing line.
 
----------------------------------------------
Dr. Peter Lunenfeld  |  Graduate Faculty
Program in Communication & New Media Design
Art Center College of Design | 1700 Lida Street | Pasadena, CA 91103
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