From March 2 to April 14, 2018, a series of initiatives dedicated to "May 68 seen from the South" were held in France, initiated and supported by the Sortir du colonialisme network, Cedetim, the Institut Tribune socialiste (ITS), the IPAM Foundation, the Gabriel Péri Foundation, the Fondation de l’écologie politique, the Copernicus Foundation, Espace Marx and the Centre d’histoire sociale du XXe siècle. The French magazine “Contretemps” will be publishing articles on “the 1968 years” including some contributions on “May 68 seen from the Souths” throughout 2018. This article by Catherine Samary is a modified version of her contribution to the latter.
1968: a revolution too early to judge
16 June 2018, byThe events of 1968 have been stripped of their meaning and are now more a symbol of capitulation than revolution. Accepting this is the first step to making its legacy relevant again
Malaysia’s “Second Emergency” (1968–89)
13 June 2018, byThe impact of revolutionary developments in Vietnam and China on the May events of 1968 in France and other Western countries has long been acknowledged. Less notice has been paid outside Asia to their repercussions on other Southeast Asian countries, which also experienced a revolutionary high tide in 1968. The upsurge of armed struggle in Malaysia in 1968 is rarely mentioned in general studies on the period, and is not often talked about even in Malaysia.
Storm in the Philippines
9 June 2018, by“1968” came to the Philippines two years late. When it did arrive, it exploded with fury. In 1970, the Philippines was a democratic republic but president Ferdinand Marcos’ authoritarian tendencies and desire to remain in office beyond his term limit were already visible. There were many other grievances that added fuel to the fire, such as the corruption, poverty, and deep inequality in what was then one of the most prosperous countries of South-Asia, and, as in many other places across the world, the war in Vietnam was a cause of anger.
Just Short of the "Conscious Leap": Ernest Mandel in 1968
26 May 2018, byJan Willem Stutje’s Ernest Mandel: A Rebel’s Dream Deferred, published by Verso in a translation by Christopher Beck and Peter Drucker in 2009, is the first biography of the great Belgian intellectual and militant of the Fourth International.
1968: A Crushing Defeat for the Indonesian Left
25 May 2018, byIn 1968, Suharto’s authoritarian New Order regime obliterated the Indonesian Communist Party’s efforts to rebuild after the 1965 massacre.
1968: a “global moment”, the political commitment of a militant generation
23 May 2018, byHow can we make the decade 1965-1975 come alive again, how can we highlight what was at stake in the world and in France, its scope, our commitment, our activist universe? Through analysis certainly, but reinforced by lived experience, which is necessarily more personal. This is a delicate exercise, with a constant coming and going between general considerations, the transmission of a political history that is sometimes specific (that of my political current) and its individual, daily implications. To this end, I am mobilizing my own memories - and I am wary of memory and especially of mine, which I know is incomplete. I am therefore appealling for a confrontation of recollections (or archives) that could lead me to correct or qualify some of my remarks.
The Eternal Hunt for the Red Man
2 May 2018, byThe dramatic events in Russia and Ukraine over the past two years have begun a new phase in the struggle over the legacy of communism in the post-Soviet space. As the concrete features of “real socialism” become blurred and vanish, those necessary for the production of ideology become ever more sharply defined. It’s often argued that communism, buried a quarter of a century ago as living practice, has since acquired an afterlife in the form of a restless corpse, a remnant, a regurgitated survivor from the past, blighting the lives of new generations.
Global Migration
27 April 2018, byFrom the middle of the 20th century, migration has been a decisive political issue. International organizations estimate that the number of people moving within and across national borders has grown to greater extent than ever since World War II. These type of estimates are never neutral – how far, and under which circumstances, do you have to move to be counted as a migrant, for instance? It is the same with statistics; you always have to make some qualification.
The Russian Revolution, Black Bolshevichki and Social Reproduction
10 April 2018, byIn his 1981 book on the February Revolution, Tsuyhoshi Hasegawa includes the story of a young girl walking towards a line of Cossack troops who had come to confront women demonstrators on International Women’s Day.
