5/1/1968 - Political and social upheaval in france

Résumé du document

In May 1968, France experienced a political and social upheaval that shook the regime to its foundation.
May 1968, also called May 68, is the name given to a series of events that started with a student strike in France, which broke out at a number of universities and high schools in Paris.
In Homo Academicus, Pierre Bourdieu defined May 68 as a “critical event”, “the chronological roof of a general crisis born of the sudden conjunction of independent causal series”.

Alain Touraine defined these events as “a new social conflict”. It was like “the revolt of a new generation” according to Egdar Morin, and “an institution's crisis” according to Michel Crozier.
The sociological constructions are different, and a whole conception of these events is missing, because it was defined as a “revolt” , a “quasi-revolution” , “an imaginary revolution” and “a cultural crisis” . Though each of these qualifications put the accent on some elements of the protestations, none succeed in giving an account of the dynamic of the mobilization, and of its consequences.

In 1967 the student movement started in France, creating an amelioration of the conditions of their daily life. This movement met few echoes. In 1968, the “movement of 22 March” took over the relay of the contestation, led by some small groups such as the anarchists, the enraged people from René Riesel, who became famous due to the occupation of Nanterre University. The main character of this movement was Daniel Cohn Bendit who became the symbol of the reappraisal of the authoritarianism. The causes of this movement were diverse according to the analysts, but all of them revolve around the idea that a great rigidity erected barriers in human relationships and mores in the whole society.

Extraits

[...] Actions of these students were “exemplary actions”, which, to each step involving a larger sector of the French population. One of these steps was the occupation of Censier, the occupants aimed at the destruction of capitalist social relations. Their task was to communicate the example to the workers, so they created a new social form: the worker- student action committees. A movement with the slogan “anything is possible” shows us that they acted on the basis of what is possible, not of what “normal”. [...]

[...] This movement articulates and mediates contestations, it translate the structural aspects from the crisis in current. But we have to remember us that a structural crisis do not allow automatically a social movement and structural tensions do not become all the time protestations or political crisis. 1-According to Bourdieu, the effect of the synchronization from two different movements can be produced only if there is a relation between the agents in crisis from the field reached to the critic state and also other agents having similar dispositions because, product by similar social conditions of existence, “identity of conditions”. [...]

[...] But, the 3 of March appeared from the government the effort to deinstitutionalize the conflict with the fixation of the legislative elections expiry for the 23 of June. So at this moment starts the demobilization. The dynamic from the movement is stopped. The revolutionary situation evaporated almost as quickly as it arose. The principle of direct democracy experimented in the companies is challenged in the name of principle of representative democracy. The strike is restored to a classic conflict of salary negotiated field by field. [...]

[...] This was a reformist strategy without any real elements that went beyond reformism. It was a support for a wildcat strike, when the strike stopped by the union, the committee supported a bureaucratic union strike. Also we can observe that in their relationships with the workers, students were only spectators who expect something to rise out of the “working- class”. In effect, when students went to the factories, they were unable to define the steps which were necessary to break the dependence and helplessness of the workers. [...]

[...] May 68 In May 1968, France experienced a political and social upheaval that shook the regime to its foundation May 1968, called also May 68 is the name given to a series of events that started with a student strike in France that broke out at a number of universities and high schools in Paris. In Homo Academicus, Pierre Bourdieu defined May 68 as a “critical event”, “chronological roof of a general crisis born of the sudden conjunction of independent causal series”[1]. [...]