Logics of Revolt

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Logics of Revolt: Theory After May 68

In his fable of the origins of postmodernism Terry Eagleton describes it as the

result of the emphatic defeat of the radical movements of the 1960s (1996: 1). Ofcourse the metonymic image of those movements, especially in relation to

postmodernism, are the events of May 68 in France. Today, the direct legacy of this

failed revolution (Jay, 1984) is a culture and a style of thinking that is obsessed with

ambiguity, indeterminacy and fragmentation; a thinking of difference, moreover, and a

celebration of cultural diversity tempered by the overriding imperative not to infringe

the rights of others (Badiou, 2001: 26-7). It is a thinking that sees its role as that of

liberating thought from the mastery of abstract theory and theoreticism, from

theoretical detours, and of disrobing it of its intellectual impostures (cf. Sokal and

Brichmont, 1997). In actual fact, what the theory closely associated with the Parisian

moment has given way to is a loose collection of pre- or post-theoretical concerns

(Bordwell and Carroll, 1996), a rehumanisation of reading against theoreticaldistortion and after theory (Cunnigham, 2001) or else a theory whose future

hinges on revisionism (Rabate, 2002) in addition to the much more established brand

of pragmatism, which retreats into the relative comfort and safety ofprivate

philosophical reflection (Rorty, 1989; Rorty et al.1996 ).

Of course, there are plenty of exceptions to the trend which set out variously to

combat the liberalisation of theory. This combat has been exemplified most

consistently in recent years by Laclau and Mouffe, whose counter-hegemonic alliance

of left wing politics and the theoretical developments around the critique of

essentialism attempts to win back the civic space of theory, currently permeated by the

instrumentalism of third way reform, in the name of radical and plural democracy

(Laclau and Mouffe, 1989). However, there remains a strong suspicion that this attempt

to reinvigorate theory through the transformation of dominant political discourse a

kind of social struggle over meaning and texts ultimately falls back on a dialectic

of theory and practice; a dialectic, moreover, that May 68 rendered so profoundly

deficient in its ability to think genuine difference, novelty and change. For the New

Left, May 68 along with la pense 68as it became known some twenty years after

the events (Ferry and Renaut, 1985) is a historical landmark for theory only in terms

of having left a theoretical legacy to be tested against contemporary liberal-democratic

criteria (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985: 176), to be revealed through its forgotten histories

(Ross, 2002), gauging its Anglophone reception (Cusset, 2003) or else simply negatingthe consistency of its putative intellectual project altogether (Dews, 1987).

Our hypothesis challenges this consensus, arguing that the key to grasping May

68 and its events is to look neither to the politics of counterculture nor to the

deconstruction of Theory with capital T. Instead, May 68 and its events mark a

decisive rupture in thinking the genuinely radical, the immanently rebellious, the

revolutionary and the new, and are marked by what we term here logics of revolt.

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These logics can be detected most clearly in the work of a disparate number of French

thinkers past and present: Alain Badiou (cf. 1982; 1988), Michel Foucault (cf. 1972;

1977), Christian Jambet and Guy Lardreau (cf. 1976), Franois Laruelle (cf. 1981),

Sylvain Lazarus (cf. 1996), Jacques Rancire (cf. 1991), Phillipe Sollers (cf. 1968) and

others. Their influence can also be found in the work of non-French thinkers like Slavoj

Zizek (cf. 1999) and Antonio Negri (cf. 2003; 2004). However, they do not constitute a

separate tradition, anotherschoolof thought, or even a minority position within

theory. Instead, what is affirmed through logics of revolt would instead be the spirit of

May 68 itself and the possibilities it opens up for theory and for thinking in itself; a

thinking without limits an infinite thought (Badiou, 2003) which aims for

universality; in short, a thinking at last set free from the constraints of the social system:

the university and its State philosophy (Deleuze, 1994: 129-167; Deleuze and

Guattari, 1988: 351-473), the party, the school and the workplace, the media and their

paranoid promotion of cultural identity, along with the rest of the ideological state

apparatuses.

This special journal issue proposes to present essays that analyse the logics of

May 68, rather than the mere spectacle of its events and their historical representation,

and aims to contextualise them in relation to the current after theory debate. Firstly,

Jason Barker and Benjamin Noys offer a brief introduction to the historical and

theoretical background to these issues. There will then follow a series of essays and

critical interventions by contributors working in philosophy, social and cultural theory,

political theory, media and communications theory, and cultural studies. The

contributions will address the challenges these logics pose to the current post-theory

consensus and how the logics of revolt generate or revitalise concepts that have been

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either discarded or overlooked by contemporary theory. Their inherent logics not only

challenge dominant paradigms, but strike at the very heart of the possibilities for

thinking our present reality.

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Dews, P. (1987)Logics of Disintegration. London and New York: Verso.

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Negri, A. (2003) Time for Revolution. Trans. M. Mandarini. London and New York:

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____, (2004)Negri on Negri, trans. M. B. Debevoise. London and New York:

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