From revolution to ethics : May 1968 and contemporary French thought / Julian Bourg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bourg, Julian, 1969-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social change--France--History--20th century.

Social change.

Social ethics--France--History--20th century.

Social ethics.

Philosophy, French--20th century.

Philosophy, French.

Postmodernism--France.

Postmodernism.

Feminism--France--History--20th century.

Feminism.

General Strike, France, 1968.

Riots--France--Paris.

Riots.

France--Moral conditions--History--20th century.

France.

France--Intellectual life--20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (489 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Montreal ; Ithaca : McGill-Queen's University Press, c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The French revolts of May 1968, the largest general strike in twentieth-century Europe, were among the most famous and colourful episodes of the twentieth century. Julian Bourg argues that during the subsequent decade the revolts led to a remarkable paradigm shift in French thought - the concern for revolution in the 1960s was transformed into a fascination with ethics. Challenging the prevalent view that the 1960s did not have any lasting effect, From Revolution to Ethics demonstrates that intellectuals and activists turned to ethics as the touchstone for understanding interpersonal, institutional, and political dilemmas. In absorbing and scrupulously researched detail Bourg explores the developing ethical fascination as it emerged among student Maoists courting terrorism, anti-psychiatric celebrations of madness, feminists mobilizing against rape, and pundits and philosophers championing human rights. Based on newly accessible archival sources and over fifty interviews with men and women who participated in the events of the era, From Revolution to Ethics provides a compelling picture of how May 1968 helped make ethics a compass for navigating contemporary global experience.

Contents:

Cobblestone beaches: normative contradictions of the May revolt

Pt. 1. The sabre and the keyhole: French Maoism, violence, and prisoner dignity

A press conference

Violence and the Gauche proleþtarienne

The president's man and the state's thumb

Popular justice and incarcerated leftists

The Groupe d'information sur les prisons

These modern Bastilles

Pt. 2. Spinoza on Prozac: from institutional psychotherapy to the philosophy of desire

Anti-psychiatry and the philosophy of desire

Anti-Oedipus: redux and reception, ethics and origins

Institutional psychotherapy and the La Borde Psychiatric Clinic

Feþlix Guattari's devolution

Gilles Deleuze's Spinozist ethics

Schizophrenia and fascism

Craziness is a dead end

Pt. 3. "Your sexual revolution is not ours": French feminist "moralism" and the limits of desire

Gender and '68: tensions from the start

Guy Hocquenghem's dark encounter with feminism

Feminism, law, rape, and leftist male reaction

Boy trouble: French pedophiliac discourse of the 1970's

Desire has its limits

Pt. 4. When all bets are off: ethical Jansenism and the new philosophers

The main event

Between the union of the left and Jansenism

Maurice Clavel

The angel in the world

The dialectic by the side of the road

John Locke was not French, or the varieties of ethical experience.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612866661

9780773581005

0773581006

9781282866669

1282866664

9780773576216

0773576215

OCLC:

716068656