A Tale of Two '68s: The "Politics of Boredom" in France and Italy

Q1 Social Sciences

Cultural Politics Pub Date : 2019-11-01 DOI:10.1215/17432197-7725437

Michael E. Gardiner

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Abstract

Abstract:In The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968, Katsiaficas suggests the first genuine revolution against "boredom"—a rejection of social conformity, stultifying work, and facile consumerism—occurred in Paris during May '68. Yet, this event was only the most spectacular manifestation of a global conflagration. One salient example is the "May '68 in slow motion" occurring in Italy over the period 1968–78. Both the French and Italian events spawned their own politico-theoretical legacies that reverberate to this day, especially with regard to the "politics of boredom"—the former represented here by Debord's situationism, and the latter by Negri's autonomism. Situationism is rooted in Hegelian Marxism and the concept of alienation, and sees boredom as a mode of subjective disaffection stemming from the capitalistic repression of "authentic" human qualities. By contrast, Negri eschews such tropes of alienation and dialectics, focuses more on "post-Fordist" conditions of production/consumption, and, taking his cue from the "ontological materialism" of nineteenth-century Italian poet and essayist Leopardi, views boredom in more complex and multifaceted terms. Accordingly, the present article concentrates on the different conditions that spawned the respective legacies of '68 in France versus Italy as it relates to the politics of boredom.

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两个68年代的故事:法国和意大利的“无聊政治”

摘要:在《新左派的想象:1968年的全球分析》一书中，Katsiaficas提出了第一次反对“无聊”的真正革命，即对社会顺从、乏味工作和肤浅消费的拒绝，发生在1968年5月的巴黎。然而，这一事件只是全球大火最壮观的表现。一个突出的例子是1968年至1978年期间发生在意大利的“慢动作的1968年5月”。法国和意大利的事件都产生了自己的政治理论遗产，这些遗产至今仍在回响，特别是关于“无聊的政治”——前者在这里由德博的情境主义代表，后者由内格里的自治主义代表。情境主义植根于黑格尔的马克思主义和异化的概念，认为无聊是一种主观不满的模式，源于资本主义对“真实的”人类品质的压抑。相比之下，内格里避开了这种异化和辩证法的比喻，更多地关注“后福特主义”的生产/消费条件，并从19世纪意大利诗人和散文家利奥帕尔迪的“本体论唯物主义”中得到启示，以更复杂和多方面的方式看待无聊。因此，本文将集中讨论产生1968年法国和意大利各自政治遗产的不同条件，因为这与无聊政治有关。

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来源期刊

Cultural Politics Social Sciences-Cultural Studies

CiteScore

1.20

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Cultural Politics is an international, refereed journal that explores the global character and effects of contemporary culture and politics. Cultural Politics explores precisely what is cultural about politics and what is political about culture. Publishing across the arts, humanities, and social sciences, the journal welcomes articles from different political positions, cultural approaches, and geographical locations. Cultural Politics publishes work that analyzes how cultural identities, agencies and actors, political issues and conflicts, and global media are linked, characterized, examined, and resolved. In so doing, the journal supports the innovative study of established, embryonic, marginalized, or unexplored regions of cultural politics. Cultural Politics, while embodying the interdisciplinary coverage and discursive critical spirit of contemporary cultural studies, emphasizes how cultural theories and practices intersect with and elucidate analyses of political power. The journal invites articles on representation and visual culture; modernism and postmodernism; media, film, and communications; popular and elite art forms; the politics of production and consumption; language; ethics and religion; desire and psychoanalysis; art and aesthetics; the culture industry; technologies; academics and the academy; cities, architecture, and the spatial; global capitalism; Marxism; value and ideology; the military, weaponry, and war; power, authority, and institutions; global governance and democracy; political parties and social movements; human rights; community and cosmopolitanism; transnational activism and change; the global public sphere; the body; identity and performance; heterosexual, transsexual, lesbian, and gay sexualities; race, blackness, whiteness, and ethnicity; the social inequalities of the global and the local; patriarchy, feminism, and gender studies; postcolonialism; and political activism.