The Global Imagination of 1968

Overview

With discussions of more than 50 countries, Katsiaficas articulates an understanding of the 1960s' social struggles not bound by national or continental divides nor focused on famous individuals. From the Prague revolt against Soviet communism to the French May uprising, the Vietnam Tet offensive, African anticolonial insurgencies, the civil rights movement, and campus eruptions in Latin America, Yugoslavia, and the United States, this book portrays the movements of the '60s as intuitively tied together. Student movements challenged authorities in almost every country, giving the insurgency a global character. As uprisings occur with increasing frequency in the 21st century, the lessons of 1968 provide useful insights for future struggles.

Reviews

"A well informed survey of the global 'New Left' of 1968." —Eric Hobsbawm, author of The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991 

"This is the best book on the New Left, the only truly global history that historicizes the social movements of the Sixties. It is both a cautionary tale and a guide for dark times that require imaginative resistance. This new edition could not have come at a better time." —Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960–1975 

"By including feminism prominently in the global insurgency of 1968, this book gives us comprehensive understanding of the broad mobilization that was at the heart of the movement. Everywhere in the world, people simultaneously challenged wars, racism, and archaic politics and also patterns of domination in everyday life." —Mariarosa Dalla Costa, professor emerita, University of Padua, and theorist of Wages for Housework

"Of all the many studies of the wave of radicalism marking the so-called long sixties, The Global Imagination of 1968 ranks among the very best. Nothing else rivals the lucidity and succinctness with which Katsiaficas captures not only the liberatory vision but the sheer vibrancy with which the period's global movement was imbued. The book should be considered essential reading by all who seek transformative change." —Ward Churchill, author and activist

"Katsiaficas declares that its passionate challenge to the establishment left an amazing legacy of global progress and the advancement of values and ideals that can fire the imagination and nurture the dreams of a new generation of activists." —Kristine Morris, Foreword Reviews

"George Katsiaficas, the author of The Global Imagination of 1968, is, to modify a term from the German poet and essayist Hans Magnus Enzensberger, a tourist of many revolutions; his book comes endorsed by a parade of sometime-notorious activists including former Black Panther Bobby Seale; Ward Churchill, who once called the victims of September 11 'little Eichmanns'; and Shaka Zulu of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party and Jersey State Prison." —Alan Wolfe, The New Republic

"The book, which concludes with a review of global uprisings after "1968," is mandatory for its examination of the effects of liberatory struggle on the human psyche and character development and for its interactive impacts of racial, anti-colonial and gender liberation movements on the conceptions and possibilities of class structure and of the prospects and conceptions of a better world." —Turning the Tide

"Author George Katsiaficas is quoted. The book is also mentioned: His next, The Global Imagination of 1968, is out next month. 'Even for people who were not against the war, those events revealed the character of the world,' says Katsiaficas. 'Something about the world and the way it was perceived changed... The United States I thought I knew was not the United States that existed. I was totally shocked, surprised, and horrified at what was on the evening news every night.'"

Author Biography

A student of Herbert Marcuse, George Katsiaficas is the author of The Subversion of Politics and Asia's Unknown Uprisings. Together with Kathleen Cleaver, he coedited Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party. Kathleen Cleaver is former communications secretary and first woman on the central committee of the Black Panther Party. A longtime activist for human rights, she is currently a professor of law at Emory University. Carlos Muñoz played a prominent role in the Chicano Civil Rights Movement. He is a Vietnam War–era veteran, a member of Veterans for Peace, and an active part of the immigrant rights movement.