Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning

H e n r i L e F e b v r e
Lefebvre’s window on the events of 1968 was particularly fascinating,
given he’d had a foot in each camp: the ex-communist,
expelled from the party for “ideological deviations,” nonetheless
remained a socialist true believer and a maverick fellow traveler;
meanwhile, a lot of active participants in the demos and occupations,
like Nanterre sociology major and Rouge et Noir militant
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, had read and listened to Lefebvre and were
somehow putting his lectures into practice. “Oh, he was a wonderful
lecturer,” Cohn-Bendit told me, recently. “He would seduce
everybody, just talk, telling anecdotes; he loved to talk and everybody
loved his classes.” A twenty-one-year-old Cohn-Bendit, a
prominent student agitator and spokesperson, was among the twothousand-odd
students who followed Lefebvre’s class on modernity
and everyday life in Amphithéâtre B at Nanterre, 1966–67. “I
didn’t really know him personally,” admitted Cohn-Bendit. “I was
only one of many students in the audience. But his ideas on cultural-revolution
in everyday life, and on offering a different version
of Marxism, influenced the ‘Movement of March 22nd.’ ” 1
On that notorious March day, assorted Situationists, young communists,
Trotskyists, anarchists, and Maoists invaded Nanterre’s
administration building and began occupying it. Posters went up
and slogans were scribbled on the walls of Nanterre in peripheral
west Paris and soon at the Sorbonne in the Latin Quarter:
“TAKE YOUR DESIRES FOR REALITY,” “NEVER WORK,”
“BOREDOM IS COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY,” “TRADE
UNIONS ARE BROTHELS,” “PROFESSORS, YOU MAKE US
GROW OLD,” “IF YOU RUN INTO A COP, SMASH HIS FACE
IN.” In early May, “the March 22 Movement” met with UNEF
(the French National Student Union) at the Sorbonne. The authorities
tried to break up the meeting but instead only unleashed its
latent power. On May 6 and 7, a huge student demonstration took
over the Boulevard Saint Michel and thoroughfares near rue Gay-
Lussac; protesters overturned cars and set them alight, dispatched
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