The Ambiguous Legacy of ‘68

Forty years ago, what was revolutionized -- the world or capitalism?

By Slavoj Žižek

In 1968 Paris, one of the best-known graffiti messages on the city's walls was "Structures do not walk on the streets!" In other words, the massive student and workers demonstrations of '68 could not be explained in the terms of structuralism, as determined by the structural [RETURN TO ARTICLE]

  • Reader Comments

     Page 1 of 1 pages

    Wow, Zizek is willing to make explicit the Communism (in the historic sense of a totalitarian system of social, political and cultural control) that is implicit in his argument. He seems to think that bandying about the sort of abstract buzzword-infested bloviation that passes for analysis in the groves of academe while ignoring the details of history is sufficient to develop some original thought. But, really, his analysis of the legacy of ‘68 reflects the same failed categories that informed the New Left of ‘68.

    And although he complains that the French suburban riots were devoid of vision, what vision is he offering? Really, he is just attempting the same guilt-tripping of the bourgeoisie that created ‘68. He ignores the amelioration of poverty that has taken place at an unprecedented rate since the ‘70s. He casts the adaptability of capitalism as somehow a fault or weakness. He wants to ignore the failures of exactly the sort of thinking he promulgates to solve any of the problems he identifies, and the tendencies of “commons” thinking to result in the centralization of power, the radical loss of freedom, and the destruction of the environment.

    I held out hope for this article, given the quality of the publication, but it devolved into self-indulgent nonsense.

    United States Posted by Eric L. on Jun 21, 2008 at 9:02 PM
     Page 1 of 1 pages

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