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Orgasm without Limits: May 68 and the History of Sex Education in Modern France

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May 68

Abstract

According to popular memory,1 the French events of May 1968 that culminated in the only ‘“general” insurrection the overdeveloped world has known since World War II’ were triggered ‘because boys wanted “into” the girls dorms’.2 Whether what Kristin Ross has since dubbed ‘the panty-raid theory of history’ is accurate, when the student protestors left the Nanterre campus, took to the streets of Paris and plastered the city with posters and graffiti calling for such freedoms as ‘Orgasm without limits’, they saturated politics with sex and politicized sexuality. Joining forces with workers who also sought to overthrow the old moral order, the student revolutionaries of 1968 rejected bureaucratic consumer society, technocracy and authoritarian rationalism while calling for direct democracy, autogestion, educational reform and sexual emancipation.

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Notes

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Authors
  1. Tamara Chaplin
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Queen Mary, University of London, UK

    Julian Jackson (Professor of Modern French History) (Professor of Modern French History)

  2. University of London Institute, Paris, France

    Anna-Louise Milne (Director of Studies) (Director of Studies)

  3. Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

    James S. Williams (Professor of Modern French Literature and Film) (Professor of Modern French Literature and Film)

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© 2011 Tamara Chaplin

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Chaplin, T. (2011). Orgasm without Limits: May 68 and the History of Sex Education in Modern France. In: Jackson, J., Milne, AL., Williams, J.S. (eds) May 68. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230319561_26

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230319561_26

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-32220-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-230-31956-1

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

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