Global 1968

Description

Global 1968 is a unique study of the similarities and differences in the 1968 cultural revolutions in Europe and Latin America.

The late 1960s was a time of revolutionary ferment throughout the world. Yet so much was in flux during these years that it is often difficult to make sense of the period. In this volume, distinguished historians, filmmakers, musicologists, literary scholars, and novelists address this challenge by exploring a specific issue—the extent to which the period that we associate with the year 1968 constituted a cultural revolution. They approach this topic by comparing the different manifestations of this transformational era in Europe and Latin America.

The contributors show in vivid detail how new social mores, innovative forms of artistic expression, and cultural, religious, and political resistance were debated and tested on both sides of the Atlantic. In some cases, the desire to confront traditional beliefs and conventions had been percolating under the surface for years. Yet they also find that the impulse to overturn the status quo was fueled by the interplay of a host of factors that converged at the end of the 1960s and accelerated the transition from one generation to the next. These factors included new thinking about education and work, dramatic changes in the self-presentation of the Roman Catholic Church, government repression in both the Soviet Bloc and Latin America, and universal disillusionment with the United States. The contributors demonstrate that the short- and long-term effects of the cultural revolution of 1968 varied from country to country, but the period’s defining legacy was a lasting shift in values, beliefs, lifestyles, and artistic sensibilities.

Contributors: A. James McAdams, Volker Schlöndorff, Massimo De Giuseppe, Eric Drott, Eric Zolov, William Collins Donahue, Valeria Manzano, Timothy W. Ryback, Vania Markarian, Belinda Davis, J. Patrice McSherry, Michael Seidman, Willem Melching, Jaime M. Pensado, Patrick Barr-Melej, Carmen-Helena Téllez, Alonso Cueto, and Ignacio Walker.

Why should we study the revolutions of 1968 today? At first glance, the answer to this question seems self-evident. Looking back on the tumultuous events that transpired more than a half century ago, one can hardly avoid raising the topic of revolution. Over the extended period that we associate with this year—roughly the mid-1960s to the early 1970s—this was a time of intense confrontation between the new and the old. During these years, societies were engulfed by conflicts over every seemingly in- contestable convention and practice. Students and workers protested against what they viewed as the unjust and corrupt institutions that held sway over their lives. Intellectuals and activists demanded that the ruling classes address systematic discrimination against marginalized social and political groups. Writers and filmmakers experimented with controversial themes and innovative forms of artistic expression. Remarkably, this explosive assault on the perspectives and practices that preceding generations had taken for granted was not limited to specific political systems,countries, or continents. It was a global phenomenon. In the words of Paul Berman, a student radical at Columbia University in 1968, “the weird quality of 1968 was the way that, for the first time since 1848, things took place nearly simultaneously all over the world.”

Because of this striking conjunction of events, scholars across a wide range of disciplines, from the social sciences to literature and the arts, have sought to capture the manifold dimensions of this period by speaking of the “Long ’60s.” In fact, some observers contend that these years marked the transition to a new age. Historian Arthur Marwick concluded his landmark study The Sixties with the following pronouncement. These years, he remarked, were “no transient time of ecstasy and excess, fit only for nostalgia or contempt.” In Marwick’s judgment, “there has been nothing like it.” And, he added, “Nothing [will] ever be quite the same again.” Other scholars have come to similar conclusions. For a group of German and American historians writing in the late 1990s, these events were evidence of “a world transformed.” Even onlookers who view these developments negatively have not disputed their influence. For the political theorist Harvey C. Mansfield Jr., “the late sixties were a comprehensive disaster,” an epoch, it seems, that is best expunged from liberal democratic society “like a powerful toxic waste.” In a campaign speech on April 29, 2007, the center-right French politician Nicolas Sarkozy declared that the memory of 1968 should be “liquidated” for having imposed “intellectual and moral relativism” on his country. Two weeks later, Sarkozy was elected France’s president.

Nevertheless, however contemporary scholars assess the events of the 1960s, positively or negatively, they must all confront an unavoidable question. Given the vast body of scholarship that already exists on the topic, are there issues on which there remains significant room for disagreement? The most fruitful way of responding to this challenge is to treat it as three separate questions: Can a given event or activity legitimately be called “revolutionary”? Has the event had the transformative effect that we typically associate with revolutions? Was this event a manifestation of a unitary set of developments, that is, evidence of a universal 1968?

The first question is the easiest of the three. It is also the least controversial. In the tradition of social theorists from Max Weber to Émile Durkheim, a revolutionary act is necessarily destructive. Unlike most challenges to authority, its instigators seek to overturn entrenched institutions, roles, and ideas and replace them with new ways of thinking and acting. In line with this approach, revolutionary events have been, if not frequent, at least recurrent features of the modern era. All of the best-known cases between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, including the North American, French, and Bolshevik revolutions, took the form of full-scale assaults on the status quo. Their proponents reveled in the opportunity to overthrow long-standing aristocratic regimes, upend seemingly impregnable class and social structures, and introduce new conceptions of justice and human worth.

List of Illustrations and Tables

Preface

1. Revolutionary 1968: Contending Approaches to an Elusive Concept, A. James McAdams

PART 1. Foundations

2. The Slow but Long Coming of a Cultural Revolution, Volker Schlöndorff

3. Italian Catholics and Latin America during the “Long ’68,” Massimo De Giuseppe

4. Revolutionary Time and the Belatedness of Music in May ’68, Eric Drott

5. Non-Alignment and Student Protest in 1968 Mexico, Eric Zolov

PART 2. Images of Change

6. Pressure-Release Valve or Cultural Catalyst? The Revolutionary Potential of The Legend of Paul and Paula in the German Democratic Republic, William Collins Donahue

7. Out of Place: Students, Workers, and the Politics of Encounter in Argentina, Valeria Manzano

8. Protest Rock in the Soviet Bloc: Prague, Spring 1968, Timothy W. Ryback

9. University Reform in Tumultuous Times: The Uruguayan Student Movement before and after 1968, Vania Markarian

10. What’s in a Revolution? ’68 and Its Aftermath in West Germany, Belinda Davis

PART 3. Reactions To Change

11. Chile 1960s: Intertwined Revolutions in Music and Politics, J. Patrice McSherry

12. The French Sixties and the Refusal of Work, Michael Seidman

13. Clash of the Icons: The Iconoclasm of the Image of the United States, Willem Melching

14. The Anonymous Dead of 1968 Mexico: A Comparative Study of Counterrevolutionary Violence and Protest with Uruguay and Brazil, Jaime M. Pensado

PART 4. Then And Now

15. A ’68 chileno? Politics, Culture, and the Zeitgeist of ’68, Patrick Barr-Melej

16. Arvo Pärt:The Unexpected Profile of a Musical Revolutionary, Carmen-Helena Téllez

17. Words as Acts: A Literary Rebellion, Alonso Cueto

18. Reform or Revolution: Latin America’s Dilemma in the “Long ’68,” Ignacio Walker

Sujets

• Comparative Politics
• 20th Century
• Modern
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• América del Sur
• Revolutionary
• Modern history
• Catholic Church
• General officer
• Eastern Bloc
• Military
• South America
• Latin America
• General
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf
• Western
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268200558
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

GLOBAL 1968

Copyright © 2021 by the University of Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021931603
ISBN: 978-0-268-20057-2 (Hardback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-20056-5 (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-20058-9 (WebPDF)
ISBN: 978-0-268-20055-8 (Epub)
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
To our friends
Robert and Elizabeth Nanovic and Sharon Konopka
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations and Tables
Preface
ONE. Revolutionary 1968: Contending Approaches to an Elusive Concept
A. James McAdams
PART 1. FOUNDATIONS
TWO. The Slow but Long Coming of a Cultural Revolution
Volker Schlöndorff
THREE. Italian Catholics and Latin America during the “Long ’68”
Massimo De Giuseppe
FOUR. Revolutionary Time and the Belatedness of Music in May ’68
Eric Drott
FIVE. Non-Alignment and Student Protest in 1968 Mexico
Eric Zolov

PART 2. IMAGES OF CHANGE
SIX. Pressure-Release Valve or Cultural Catalyst? The Revolutionary Potential of The Legend of Paul and Paula in the German Democratic Republic
William Collins Donahue
SEVEN. Out of Place: Students, Workers, and the Politics of Encounter in Argentina
Valeria Manzano
EIGHT. Protest Rock in the Soviet Bloc: Prague Spring 1968
Timothy W. Ryback
NINE. University Reform in Tumultuous Times: The Uruguayan Student Movement before and after 1968
Vania Markarian
TEN. What’s in a Revolution? ’68 and Its Aftermath in West Germany
Belinda Davis
PART 3. REACTIONS TO CHANGE
ELEVEN. Chile 1960s: Intertwined Revolutions in Music and Politics
J. Patrice McSherry
TWELVE. The French Sixties and the Refusal of Work
Michael Seidman
THIRTEEN. Clash of the Icons: The Iconoclasm of the Image of the United States
Willem Melching
FOURTEEN. The Anonymous Dead of 1968 Mexico: A Comparative Study of Counterrevolutionary Violence and Protest with Uruguay and Brazil
Jaime M. Pensado

PART 4. THEN AND NOW
FIFTEEN. A ’68 Chileno? Politics, Culture, and the Zeitgeist of ’68
Patrick Barr-Melej
SIXTEEN. Arvo Pärt: The Unexpected Profile of a Musical Revolutionary
Carmen-Helena Téllez
SEVENTEEN. Words as Acts: A Literary Rebellion
Alonso Cueto
EIGHTEEN. Reform or Revolution: Latin America’s Dilemma in the “Long ’68”
Ignacio Walker
List of Contributors
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES
FIGURES
FIGURE 2.1. Young Törless (1966)
FIGURE 2.2. Die Stille nach dem Schuss (D 1999/2000)
FIGURE 2.3. Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (BRD 1975)
FIGURE 3.1. Father Arturo Paoli
FIGURE 3.2. Special issue of L’Italiano democratico
FIGURE 6.1. Ines dances expressively and sensually
FIGURE 6.2. Ines in bed with lover
FIGURE 6.3. Paula on her wedding day
FIGURE 6.4. Paul and Paula awake from wedding night
FIGURE 6.5. The optimism of East Germany in the early 1970s
FIGURE 6.6. The Elektra-Lichtspiele
FIGURE 6.7. Scene from Hochzeitsnacht im Regen
FIGURE 12.1. “Never Work” (1953)
FIGURE 13.1. My Lai massacre
FIGURE 13.2. Šíede, near Liepâja, Latvia
FIGURE 13.3. Death of a demonstrator

FIGURE 13.4. Che Guevara
FIGURE 13.5. Domenico Fetti, The Veil of Veronica
FIGURE 14.1. Adolfo Mexiac, Libertad de Expresión (1954/1968)
FIGURE 16.1. Arvo Pärt
TABLES
TABLE 14.1. Estimate of people killed and/or disappeared in Mexico City
TABLE 14.2. People killed on October 2, 1968
PREFACE
This book is the result of a unique international collaboration that began in early 2017. At that time, we decided to take advantage of the impending fiftieth anniversary of the revolutionary events of the year 1968 by bringing experts from around the world to the University of Notre Dame to explore a period that continues to stir the imagination of those who study the topic. Rather than wait to meet for the first time at a conference, we spent more than a year engaging in extended conversations with potential participants from Europe, Latin America, and the United States about how to make a distinctive contribution to the scholarship on this tumultuous time in world history. We discussed many questions: What did we mean by “1968”? When did “1968” begin and end? What topics, cases, and periods should we include? Could one meaningfully speak of a shared “1968 experience” from one country to the next? Or were there multiple 1968s?
These conversations paid off immensely, inspiring us to narrow our project’s scope in two ways. First, rather than concentrate on well-traveled approaches to 1968, such as those emphasizing politics and social movements, we decided to concentrate on the issue of cultural revolution. Because we defined the word “culture” in a generous way, this approach had the advantage of encouraging us to include often neglected fields in our planning, such as musicology, film, and photography. Second, we deliberately chose to decenter our approach from the conventional scholarly focus on events in the United States. Instead, we emphasized the experience of 1968 in two other world regions, Latin America and Europe.
Thanks to these early conversations, the participants in our project were already thinking about these themes when they began to write their papers. We circulated drafts of their papers well before the conference began. As a result, when we finally met as a group at Notre Dame on April 26–28, 2018, for our conference titled “1968 in Europe and Latin America,” we had no need for paper presentations or other formalities. We were already prepared to discuss our different approaches to a common subject. By the end of our meeting, our collaboration had paid off. Each of us was prepared to write the chapters in this book in response to a question that came up in all of our conversations: Was 1968 a cultural revolution?
This volume would not have come to fruition without the generous support of many people in the Notre Dame community. The conference was organized by a committee of faculty fellows from the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the two institutional sponsors of the conference. Aside from the editors, the committee members were William C. Donahue, Jaime M. Pensado, and Carmen-Helena Téllez. The conference also benefited from the cooperation of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, the Snite Museum of Art, and the Hesburgh Libraries. Angela Fritz at Notre Dame Archives and our faculty colleague Susan Ohmer worked generously with a team of undergraduate students to create a permanent online exhibition about Notre Dame in 1968. Notre Dame faculty members served as panel chairs and commentators, including Michel Hockx, Peter Casarella, and María Rosa Olivera-Williams. Victoria Langland, Stephen Wrinn, and Ohmer made important contributions to the conference’s concluding panel. Above all, the staffs of the Nanovic Institute and the Kellogg Institute did the organizational work required to make this ambitious international event a success. Melanie Webb played a heroic role in arranging all aspects of our participants’visit to Notre Dame and the conference proceedings. She was assisted by many other staff members from the Nanovic and Kellogg Institutes, including Sharon Konopka, Jenn Lechtanski, Monica Caro, and Therese Hanlon. To all of these individuals, we express our deepest gratitude.
We also express our sincere thanks to everyone involved in producing this volume. Cathy Bruckbauer played an instrumental role in organizing all of the chapter submissions. Elaine Yanlin Chen collated the images and illustrations. We are especially grateful to Stephen Wrinn and Rachel Kindler at the University of Notre Dame Press for their enthusiastic support and expert guidance. Rachel worked far beyond the call of duty to help us address all of the technical and organizational issues involved in producing this volume.
We are honored to dedicate this volume to three individuals whose devotion to Notre Dame’s students and faculty members has made the Nanovic Institute for European Studies a special place for posing enduring questions about the European past, present, and future: Robert Nanovic, Elizabeth Nanovic, and Sharon Konopka.
A. J. M.
A. P. M.
ONE
Revolutionary 1968
Contending Approaches to an Elusive Concept
A. JAMES M C ADAMS
Why should we study the revolutions of 1968 today? At first glance, the answer to this question seems self-evident. Looking back on the tumultuous events that transpired more than a half century ago, one can hardly avoid raising the topic of revolution. Over the extended period that we associate with this year—roughly the mid-1960s to the early 1970s—this was a time of intense confrontation between the new and the old. During these years, societies were engulfed by conflicts over every seemingly incontestable convention and practice. Students and workers protested against what they viewed as the unjust and corrupt institutions that held sway over their lives. Intellectuals and activists demanded that the ruling classes address systematic discrimination against marginalized social and political groups. Writers and filmmakers experimented with controversial themes and innovative forms of artistic expres