524
PETER
CAWS
injunction
«Defense d'afficher -loi de
29
juillet
1881" which has been
part of the Parisian superego as long as anyone can remember. But al–
though there were brilliant, witty, moving and above all serious slogans
everywhere, most of them simply didn't deserve preservation.
It
seems,
however, that everything that could be conceivably used as an excuse
for publication has been used: citations, photographs, posters, reportage,
commentary - there must already be twenty-five titles and new ones
appear almost daily, printed, sewn, bound, with glossy covers, selling at
6 francs, 10 francs, 18 francs, 28 francs, a fantastic feat of production
for the printers and a veritable bonanza for the publishers. What is
disturbing about all this is that it is just another symptom of Marcuse's
one-dimensional society, part of the process of digesting and neutralizing
one of the only serious attempts to make a fundamental change in the
order of things that has come along in fifty years. An indignant tract
was briefly in circulation against the commercial exploitation of the
revolution, and its indignation was fully justified.
The contrast between a single tract and the flood of paper which
is coming off the presses may be all too accurate a symbol of the May
revolution in the face of the sheer weight of Western industrial-bourgeois
habits. Whatever university reforms may be won - and there will be
some - the vision of a purified society which quite genuinely animated
some of the leaders of the movement will certainly not be realized.
That of course is the fate of all revolutions, even the successful ones,
especially in their later phases, which explains why Russia is completely
passe
but China and Cuba still command enthusiasm. But in this case
it seemed, for a while at least, that the vision was not merely Utopian,
that it had a chance of coming into being, that indeed it had come into
being for a week or two. The conviction that there must be something
better than the values and social organization of the prosperous middle
classes is gaining ground among students all over the world, and in
Paris the revolutionaries thought they had a taste of it. It is difficult
to convey the tone of conviction, commitment, discipline and hope that
pervaded the atmosphere in the new Faculty of Medicine, one of the
only faculties still liberated when I arrived at the end of June (although
by then most of the hope had evaporated ) . In many places it was
hard no doubt to keep faith in these things, what with Katangese rebels,
teeny-boppers and other dubious types attracted by the prospect of
promiscuity or a good fight, but in the Faculty of Medicine at least,
until the last few days when the students thrown out of the Censier
center took refuge there, affairs were conducted with great responsibility
and
serjousn c~s.
(The police foulld
110
vandalism at all after a period
of six w('('ks.) Studf'nts and faculty, working together, drew up a white
