The ‘68 Disobedient Generation’ and the Rise of ChiVirLa

  • Mike Gane
Chapter
First Online:
Part of the St Antony's Series book series (STANTS)

Abstract

This chapter problematizes the notion of a single ‘disobedient generation’ as an explanatory concept applied to the 1960s student rebellions. Autobiographical accounts by activists reveal considerable heterogeneity of experience and reflection. There were social movements both to the left and to the right which this concept tends to mask. It is suggested that the idea of a ‘disobedient generation’ functions as a myth. The politics of the student rebellions in the USA and the UK are analysed, and as part of the narrative three different reactions are identified: neoconservative, liberal, and neoliberal (ChiVirLa). The long-term neoliberal ‘stealth revolution’ is identified as an on-going continuation of economic thought of the 1960s provoked by the bubble of student radicalization, and its consequences (marketization as a means of control) are to be seen in the universities today.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access

References

  1. Agamben, G. 1993. The Coming Community. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
  2. Ali, T. 1987. Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties. London: Collins.Google Scholar
  3. Althusser, L. 1993. The Future Lasts a Long Time. London: Chatto and Windus.Google Scholar
  4. Anderson, P. 1980. Arguments Within English Marxism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
  5. Anderson, B. 2013. Impunity and Re-Enactment: Reflections on the 1965 Massacre in Indonesia and its Legacy. The Asia-Pacific Journal 11 (15/4): 1–8.Google Scholar
  6. Aron, R. 1968. La Revolution Introuvable: Réflexions sur la Revolution de Mai. Paris: Fayard.Google Scholar
  7. Audier, S. 2009. La Pensée anti-68: Essai sur les Origines d’une Restauration Intellectual. Paris: La Découverte.Google Scholar
  8. ———. 2015. Penser le “Néoliberalisme”: le Moment Néoliberal. Foucault et la Crise du Socialisme. Lormont: Le Bord de l’Eau.Google Scholar
  9. Barnett, A. 1969. A Revolutionary Student Movement. New Left Review I (53): 43–53.Google Scholar
  10. Baudrillard, J. 2010. The Agony of Power. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).Google Scholar
  11. ———. 2015. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. New York: Zone Books.Google Scholar
  12. Bryant, C., and D. Jary, eds. 1997. Anthony Giddens: Critical Assessments. Vol. 1. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  13. Buchanan, J.M. 2007. Economics from the Outside in: ‘Better than Plowing’ and Beyond. Tamu,Texas: A&M University Press.Google Scholar
  14. Buchanan, J.M., and N. Devletoglou. 1971. Academia in Anarchy: An Economic Diagnosis. London: Stacey.Google Scholar
  15. Cohen, R., and R.E. Zelnick, eds. 2002. The Free Speech Movement. Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
  16. ———. 2011. The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
  17. ———. 2016. The Knowledge Corrupters: Hidden Consequences of the Financial Takeover of Public Life. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
  18. Darke, T. 2017. Whatever Happened to the Generation X? The Sunday Times, 12 February (Culture International, 8–9).Google Scholar
  19. Dean, M. 2007. Governing Societies: Political Perspectives on Domestic and International Rule. Buckingham: Open University Press.Google Scholar
  20. Docherty, T. 2015. Universities at War. London: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  21. Edmunds, J., and B.S. Turner. 2002. Generations, Culture and Society. Buckingham: Open University Press.Google Scholar
  22. Feuer, L.S., ed. 1969. Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy. New York: Fontana.Google Scholar
  23. Fischer, K. 2009. The Influence of Neoliberals in Chile Before, During, and After Pinochet. In The Road to Mont Pelérin, ed. P. Mirowski and D. Plehwe, 305–340. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
  24. Fisk, T. 1969. The Nature and Causes of Student Unrest. The Political Quarterly 40 (4): 419–425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  25. Foucault, M. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–79. London: Palgrave.Google Scholar
  26. Furedi, F. 1992. Mythical Past, Elusive Future: History and Society in an Anxious Age. London: Pluto.Google Scholar
  27. Gane, M. 1999. Paul Virilio’s Bunker Theorizing. Theory, Culture and Society 16 (5–6): 85–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. Giddens, A. 1994. Beyond Left and Right: The Future of Radical Politics. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
  29. Giroux, H.A. 2014. Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education. Chicago: Haymarket.Google Scholar
  30. Glucksmann, A. 1968. Strategy and Revolution in France 1968. New Left Review I (52): 67–121.Google Scholar
  31. Guérin, S., and P.-H. Tavoillot. 2017. La Guerre des Generations Aura-t-elle Lieu? Paris: Calman-Lévy.Google Scholar
  32. Habermas, J. 1971. Toward a Rational Society: Student Protest, Science and Politics. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
  33. Hoefferle, C.M. 2013. British Student Activism in the Long Sixties. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  34. Judt, T. 2010. The Memory Chalet. London: William Heinemann.Google Scholar
  35. Klatch, R.E. 1999. A Generation Divided: The New Left, the New Right, and the 1960s. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  36. Klein, N. 2008. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
  37. Lock, G., and H.G. Martins. 2009. The European Universities, Citizenship and Its Limits: What Won’t Solve the Problems of Our Time. European Educational Research Journal 8 (2): 159–184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  38. Martin, D. 2013. The Education of David Martin: The Making of an Unlikely Sociologist. London: SPCK.Google Scholar
  39. Martins, H.G. (2004) 2012. The Marketization of Universities and some Cultural Contradictions of Academic Capitalism, online.Google Scholar
  40. Mirowski, P. 2013. Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown. London: Verso.Google Scholar
  41. Passerini, L. (1988) 1996. Autobiography of a Generation: Italy, 1968. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
  42. Peck, J. 2010. Constructions of Neoliberal Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  43. Popper, K.R. 1994. The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  44. Rexroth, K. 1960. Students Take Over. New Left Review I (5): 38–41.Google Scholar
  45. Rose, N. 1999. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  46. Rosenfield, S. 2012. Subversives; the FBI’s War on Student Radicals and Reagan’s Rise to Power. New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux.Google Scholar
  47. Rowbotham, S. 2000. Promise of a Dream: Remembering the Sixties. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
  48. Sahlins, M. 2009. The Teach-ins: Anti-war Protest in the Old Stoned Age. Anthropology Today 25 (1): 3–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  49. Savage, J. 2015. 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded. London: Faber & Faber.Google Scholar
  50. Scranton, W.E. 1970. The President’s Commission on Campus Unrest. Washington: US Government Publications.Google Scholar
  51. Sica, A., and S. Turner, eds. 2005. The Disobedient Generation: Social Theorists in the Sixties. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
  52. Streeck, W. 2014. Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
  53. Thompson, E.P. 1977. Whigs and Hunters. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
  54. Wyatt, D. 1993. Out of the Sixties: Storytelling and the Vietnam Generation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  • Mike Gane
    • 1
  1. 1.Loughborough UniversityLoughboroughUK

Personalised recommendations