To kick off the fifty-year anniversary of “May ’68”, this opening working group meeting of the 2018 year turns its attention towards the often unlikely and frequently invisibilized coalitional bedfellows tucked in to the intersectional and transnational histories of Leftist movements of the 1960s, as well as the connections between such movements and “the new spirit of capitalism.” Unfolding such connections, our discussion January will start by taking up questions around the meanings of style, the polemics for and against violence, and the triangulations of race, class, and gender. How have we imagined and re-imagined the re-presentations of and the afterlives of ’68 over the past fifty years?
The meeting will be co-facilitated by UC Berkeley alumni from the Ethnic Studies program and current Culture Diversity Director and lecturer in the Department of Ethnic Studies at Glendale Community College Ziza Delgado, and by PhD candidate in the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology and Trustee of the UC Student-Workers Union Shannon Ikebe.
Delgado and Ikebe have both selected a range of short texts and excerpts, which key us into the numerous, intertwined histories that “Life/Style after ’68” endeavors to hold together. Those selected texts include:
Robert L. Allen. Black Awakening in Capitalist America: An Analytic History. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1990. pp. 1-20. Allen_introduction_Black Awakening In Capitalist America
THE COMBAHEE RIVER COLLECTIVE. “The Combahee River Collective Statement.” 1978. The Combahee River Collective Statement
Cynthia A. Young. “Introduction” (pp. 1-17) and “Angela Y. Davis and the U.S. Third World Left Theory and Praxis” (pp. 184-208) from Soul Power: Culture, Radicalism, and the Making of a U.S. Third World Left. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Young_introduction_Soul PowerYoung_ch05 – Angela Davis and US 3rd World Left Praxis and Theory_Soul Power
Kristin Ross. May ’68 and Its Afterlives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. pp. 65-79. Ross_excerpt from May68 and Its Afterlives
Esther Leslie. “Introduction to Adorno/Marcuse Correspondence on the German Student Movement.”New Left Review I/233, 1999. pp. 118-122. Leslie_Introduction to AdornoMarcuse Correspondence
Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse. “Correspondence on the German Student Movement.” New Left Review I/233, 1999. pp. 123-136. Adorno + Marcuse et al_Correspondence on the German Student Movement
Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello. The New Spirit of Capitalism. London: Verso, 2005. pp. 167-174, 189-202. Boltanski + Chiapello_excerpts from The New Spirit of Capitalism
Rossana Rossanda. “The Crisis and Dialectic of Parties and New Social Movements in Italy.” Viewpoint Magazine, 2017 [1981]. (around 13 pages)
Jiří Pelikán. “Socialist Opposition in Eastern Europe: the Czechoslovak Example.” London: Alison & Busby, 1976. pp. 89-100. Pelikán_Socialist Opposition in Eastern Europe
Additionally, here a few more suggested (only suggested!) texts:
Richard Johnson. “The Apparatchik and the Intellectual” (pp. 1-10), “The Issues of Organization and Consciousness” (pp. 110-133), and “The Issue of Violence” (pp. 134-155) from The French Communist Party versus the Students: Revolutionary Politics in May-June 1968. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972. Apparatchik + Intellectual_The French Communist Party v the StudentsOrganization + Consciousness_The French Communist Party v the StudentsThe Issue of Violence_The French Communist Party v the Students
Kobena Mercer. “‘1968’: Periodizing Politics and Identity” from Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies. Rutledge: New York, 1994. pp. 287-308. Mercer_ch10 – 68 Periodizing Politics + Identity_Welcome to the Jungle
Rossana Rossanda. Excerpt from The Comrade from Milan. London: Verso, 2010. pp. 302-333. Rossanda_excerpt from The Comrade from Milan
HOPE TO SEE YOU ON 24. JANUARY at 5:30pm!
Collaborations, Co-operatives, Coalition-Building 