Abstract
In 2008, French president Nicolas Sarkozy blamed the generation of soixante-huitards, the French “68ers,” for the “moral relativism” he claimed was plaguing current French society. Thirteen years of age in 1968, Sarkozy was of course part of this “generation” himself, at least in a strictly biological sense, but perhaps also in terms of his political socialization, as he was allegedly held back by his mother when trying to join a conservative counter-march. Moreover, as one of his opponents pointed out, the fact that Sarkozy could assume the highest political office in France as a divorcée was most likely part of the very legacy of “1968” that he lamented in the first place (Erlanger, 2008). Yet, for Sarkozy, the generational marker “68er” stood in for a specific group, much smaller than the full age cohort, that denoted a political opponent associated with anti-authoritarian convictions. It is this complexity of the concept of generation with regard to “1968” and its usage in the political battles of the past and the present that the volume “Talkin’ ‘bout my generation,” edited by historian Anna von der Goltz, examines.
In a recent editorial of this journal, Wulf Kansteiner (2012) described the concept of generation—especially when used in historical–causal explanations—as an “intellectual compromise” that creates overly neat narratives of sequentiality and tends to “naturalize” certain identities and outcomes, concealing more intricate political constellations. While its employment in memory studies knows its own problems (Kansteiner, 2012), memory scholars can help demystify notions of generation by focusing on the often strategic deployment of the term in narratives about the past. “Talkin’ ‘bout my generation” is of interest to memory scholars, in particular because much of its analysis treats generation as a subjective and imagined category. At the same time, the possibility to apply the concept of generation as a marker for genuinely shared behavioral patterns due to similar experiences is never fully dismissed by the volume, even if it is criticized by some of the individual contributors. The collection encompasses a range of methodologies from interview-based studies to analyses of the broader structural conditions for generation building. It reveals several fascinating fault lines running through the narratives about the political, social, and cultural upheavals of the late 1960s that highlight the importance of national contexts and help to (re-)pluralize what some have come to view as a transnational, European lieu de mémoire (see François et al., 1997).
The book is divided into different thematic sections, arranged mainly around two separate tasks: to shed light on the idiosyncrasies of the generational framework in different cases across Europe and to “break up the generational monolith” into different “generation-units” (p. 24, a term borrowed from Karl Mannheim) in order to illuminate the multifaceted relationships within and between generations even within one particular national setting. The first task is taken on by the first six chapters of the book, covering the French, Italian, German, Hungarian, Czech, and Polish contexts; the second task is given particular attention in the last four chapters of the book that interrogate different generational frameworks at play in the case of (West) Germany. However, a few central questions run through the collection as a whole: To what extent can we speak of shared experiences of “68ers” and to what extent did actors understand themselves as part of a particular age cohort while they reflected on their positions in the political and cultural conflicts that defined the late 1960s? Who had and still has something to gain from a discourse of “generational struggle”? What is at stake in depictions of the “68ers” as a transnational or global generation? Which conflicts does the employment of a generational narrative foster, and which ones does it gloss over?
The volume begins with a closer look at the Western European context. Gildea’s chapter uses life-history interviews with French activists to reveal the tension between political and cultural views of the 1968 revolts. He also shows that many activists considered their acts as a “completion” of what the French wartime Resistance had started, complicating the notion of a purely generational struggle. Tolomelli provides the most structural analysis in the book by looking at the conditions that allowed for generation building in the Italian context, such as the extension of educational access and increasing cultural homogeneity, which contributed to an “affinity of social location” (p. 55). Nehring’s comparative chapter allows for a better understanding of the varying political emphases given to the notion of generation in different national contexts. For example, in the German case, the discourse “tapped a self-proclaimed revolutionary task of generational duties” (p. 93) known from German debates in the 1920s and also served as a demarcation line that helped some to “disentangle themselves from the residual guilt” (p. 78) of the Nazi past.
The subsequent chapters on Eastern Europe reveal that ideological fault lines profoundly shape the debates on “1968” and the employment of generational frameworks. In the Hungarian case, “1968” can be evoked as a symbol of European belonging, but also be employed by conservatives and liberals to stigmatize “communist collaboration” (Apor and Mark). A similar pattern of stigmatization is revealed in Matějka’s analysis of the Czech debate, especially since many of the protagonists among the Czech “68ers” considered themselves reformists and rehabilitators of the socialist idea. Here again, the notion of “1968” as a radical political or generational break is challenged. Oseka’s chapter on the Polish case based on oral history interviews uncovers similar narratives about continuing the missions of former generations.
The last four chapters of the book help to complicate the generational discourse even further. Geppert’s close reading of German writer Hans-Werner Richter’s commentary shows that issues of pragmatism and revolutionary fervor were often at the heart of generational imaginaries (though also cutting through them), while Bavaj’s look at German liberal scholars exposes their discourse of a “youth revolt” as a more or less deliberate effort to infantilize and delegitimize the new political movements. Von der Goltz addresses the sometimes neglected aspect of conservative student mobilization in the late 1960s and Andresen’s chapter analyzes organizations representing German apprentices in the same time period to examine the role of workers and their troubled relationship with the generational lens.
The volume successfully shatters several myths about “Europe’s 1968.” With regard to the question of a European generational unity, we learn that self-identified 68ers in Eastern Europe did not always feel the solidarity of their Western counterparts, nor did they necessarily consider themselves to be engaged in the same political struggle. In terms of the generational unity within specific national contexts, we are made aware of the often deep divisions based on social class and political ideology cutting through age cohorts. Even more importantly, many contributions of the volume help us understand the political implications of some of the prevailing myths or shortcuts. Using an age-based or generation-based narrative to make sense of 1968 could create broader political coalitions, or symbolically free an age group of the burden of a specific past (as in the German case), or simply help to fulfill the desire to “transcend the individual space of experiences” (Nehring, p. 72). At the same time, this lens could be used to dismiss the political upheavals as youthful naiveté, misguided radicalism, or ideological stubbornness by critics and political opponents.
The volume thus makes significant contributions to our understanding of past and current views of 1968. However, one potential strength of the book—its openness with regard to the concept of generation—may ultimately also be a limitation. In the end, the question whether generation can ever be a meaningful descriptive or analytical category for shared collective experiences pertaining to the age cohort referred to as 68ers and not just a category of post-facto constructions revealing the desire for collective identity, remains somewhat unsettled (Nehring’s contribution provides the most explicit treatment of this conflict). An afterword with a conceptual focus teasing out and possibly synthesizing the tensions between the two views would have been helpful. Nevertheless, this rich collection is vital to anyone concerned with 1968 as a lieu de mémoire in particular and with the concept of generation more generally.