Thursday, 3 May 2018

Why French students are protesting again

A GIANT banner at the entrance to the University of Nanterre advertises official events to commemorate the May ’68 student uprising. There are seminars on “counterculture” and “revolutions”, and a conference on the intersection between art and politics. Around the corner, past partially obscured graffiti reading “Macron we’re going to hang you”, today’s generation is staging its own historical tribute to the soixante-huitards. Inside an amphitheatre blockaded by a pile of chairs and upturned tables, over a thousand students are voting to continue a sit-in. Fifty years on, as the country looks back at one of its most iconic post-war moments, the lines between history, drama, politics and art feel strangely blurred.

The 1968 events first broke out on the Nanterre campus, in an unfashionable suburb west of Paris, before spreading to the Sorbonne in the Latin Quarter. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, or Dany the Red, led a student occupation, partly in protest...Continue reading

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