>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 [log in to unmask] ---------------------------------------------- ---- To sign off SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]