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The Remaindered Revolution
Some vaches are still sacred. The anniversary of the May 1968 riots provoked a great deal of nostalgic reflection among France's chattering classes. Some daring thinkers challenged the official view of the événements, claiming that the "revolution" was mostly a middle-class protest against stifling social conservatism, rather than the the entire sixties condensed into one month's turmoil, as its participants like to claim.
These 1968 Deniers have already been shouted down by the guardians of the revolution. The Beeb reports that a booked entitled La pensée anti-68 (Anti-68 Thought) rebuts their theories, and accuses the dissenters of reactionary agitation and "wanting to turn the clock back."
Today's young revolutionaries promised great things for the 40th anniversary of May 68. Sarkozy would be gone by the summer, one professor told another, having discussed the matter with his students. Anti-globalisation protestors planned another 68, presumably to finish the job of the first; the trade unions threatened trouble too. One sad group of dog-on-a-string protestors have set up camp outside the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, claiming that they will leave only when Sarkozy is assassinated and/or capitalism collapses.
Their guardian uncles and aunts in the media groomed viewers in the run-up to the anniversary with features dedicated to May 68, while booksellers' windows heaved with literature exploring its impact...
... and one month after May 2008 ended, what? No riots, no collapse of capitalism, Sarkozy very much in power. The books are still gathering dust on the shelves, though the more extravagant 1968 window displays have been discretely moved to distant corners of the bookshops. One bookseller told your correspondent that she had barely sold a single copy of some of the 1968 literature she had displayed - and this in revolutionary eastern Paris too. Her window display in June was dedicated to a retrospective of Françoise Sagan, to tie in with a new film based on the author's life; a series of books on summer cuisine; and a celebration of the EURO 2008 football tournament.
Look out for the May 1968 nostalgia in the sales...
