Richard Wolin: The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s (2010)

“Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Julia Kristeva, Phillipe Sollers, and Jean-Luc Godard. During the 1960s, a who’s who of French thinkers, writers, and artists, spurred by China’s Cultural Revolution, were seized with a fascination for Maoism. Combining a merciless exposé of left-wing political folly and cross-cultural misunderstanding with a spirited defense of the 1960s, The Wind from the East tells the colorful story of this legendary period in France. Richard Wolin shows how French students and intellectuals, inspired by their perceptions of the Cultural Revolution, and motivated by utopian hopes, incited grassroots social movements and reinvigorated French civic and cultural life.

Wolin’s riveting narrative reveals that Maoism’s allure among France’s best and brightest actually had little to do with a real understanding of Chinese politics. Instead, it paradoxically served as a vehicle for an emancipatory transformation of French society. French student leftists took up the trope of “cultural revolution,” applying it to their criticisms of everyday life. Wolin examines how Maoism captured the imaginations of France’s leading cultural figures, influencing Sartre’s “perfect Maoist moment”; Foucault’s conception of power; Sollers’s chic, leftist intellectual journal Tel Quel; as well as Kristeva’s book on Chinese women–which included a vigorous defense of foot-binding.

Recounting the cultural and political odyssey of French students and intellectuals in the 1960s, The Wind from the East illustrates how the Maoist phenomenon unexpectedly sparked a democratic political sea change in France.”

Publisher Princeton University Press, 2010
ISBN 0691129983, 9780691129983
400 pages

Video interview with the author: Platypus.

Reviews: Scott McLemee (The National), Julian Jackson (The Guardian), David Gress (The Wall Street Journal).

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2023-4-25)

Semiotext(e), 3(2): Schizo-Culture (1978)

“Semiotext(e) began in 1974 as a journal started by French philosopher Sylvère Lotringer in an effort to bridge radical French theory and the intellectual and art worlds of New York City. The original editorial board included ten people, mostly graduate students at Columbia University where Lotringer teaches, who chipped in fifty dollars apiece to get the journal started. They held their first conference in 1975: the Schizo-Culture conference on prisons and madness. Speakers included Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Michel Foucault, and Jean-François Lyotard, now all staples of the Semiotext(e) backlist.” (from Wikipedia)

With contributions by Kathy Acker, Lee Breuer, William Burroughs, John Cage, David Cooper, Gilles Deleuze, Douglas Dunn, Richard Foreman, Michel Foucault, John Giorno, Phil Glass, Christopher Knowles, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Ulrike Meinhof, Jack Smith, Robert Wilson, and others.

Edited by Sylvère Lotringer
Publisher Semiotext(e), New York, 1978
ISSN 00939579
221 pages

PDF (8 MB, updated on 2013-12-8)

See also Semiotext(e), 3(1): Nietzsche’s Return (1978).

querelles-net, Rezensionszeitschrift für Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung (2000-2011-) [German]

querelles-net erschließt die Vielzahl fachspezifischer, inter- und transdisziplinärer Veröffentlichungen im Bereich der Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung/Gender Studies. Wissenschaftliche Rezensionen geben einen Überblick über wichtige Publikationen und aktuelle Forschungsschwerpunkte. Die fortlaufend aktualisierte Bibliographie informiert über die Neuerscheinungen des Feldes.

querelles-net erscheint seit 2000 in Ergänzung zu Querelles. Jahrbuch für Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung (1996 ff.).

querelles-net ist Teil des Publikationsförderprogramms zur Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung an der Freien Universität Berlin.

Redaktionsleitung: Marco Tullney
Redaktion: Valeria Raupach, Anita Runge, Marco Tullney
Published by Freien Universität Berlin
ISSN 1862-054X
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Germany License (from Issue 2009 / 1)

PDF (Vol 12 Issue 2; 2011; EPUB)
View online (all issues; HTML articles)