Mike Frank remarks:
"the french student revolution
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
 
if i'm not mistaken it was at just about the same time that johns hopkins
sponsored a conference that marked the first significant appearance of many new
french intellectuals on the american [academic] scene . . . so from this side
of the atlantic that date serves as a useful watershed in intellectual and
cultural history  [but i speak here only from unreliable memory and welcome any
relevant information that i've left out or gotten wrong]"
 
 
May 1968--the joining together of students and workers in radical protest--and
the results of the "uprising" prompted a lot of French intellectuals and
artists to take stock of their efforts.  From it emerged the radicalized
efforts of directors like Godard and critics like the editors of CAHIERS DUE
CINEMA and CINETHEQUE.  (Some of the newer names in French criticism began
appearing in America, but in most circles we were just catching up to
structuralism, so post-structuralism took a little longer on the whole.)
A lot of other results occured over time as well--there are good accounts
in several film history texts and books like Roy Armes' history of French
cinema.  Some of the primary texts of the era can be found anthologized in
different collections as well.
 
But, of course, 1968 was a remarkable year around the world--mostly for the
worse.  Vietnam, the Cultural Revolution, the crushing of the Prague Spring,
the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, etc., ad nauseum.
 
It might be worth noting that some see a direct link between May 1968 in France
and the protests over attempts to fire Henri Langlois as curator of the
Cinematheque Francaise.
 
Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)
 
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