Editing Situationist International (section)

===May events (1968)===
{{Main|May 1968 events in France}}

The Situationists played a preponderant role in the May 1968 uprisings,<ref name="ClarkAndNSWinter97"/> and to some extent their political perspective and ideas fueled such crisis,<ref name="ClarkAndNSWinter97"/><ref name="Lasn2000">[[Kalle Lasn|Lasn, Kalle]] (2000) ''Culture Jam''. New York: Quill. Quotation: <blockquote>In May 1968, the Situationist-inspired Paris riots set off "a chain reaction of refusal" against consumer capitalism.</blockquote></ref><ref name="BandiniImpactAndBoycott">{{Harvnb|Bandini|1988|loc=Preface to second edition}}<blockquote>L'I.S. diventa il detonatore, il reiferimento spesso taciuto per ragioni settarie, la fabbrica di metafore entrate nel linguaggio comune che ne ignora molto spesso l'esatto senso: e su tutte valga la metafora debordiana della nostra societa' come "societa' dello spettacolo.</blockquote></ref> providing a central theoretic foundation.<ref name="Rivarol1984">''[[Rivarol (magazine)|Rivarol]]'', 16 March 1984, quotation:<blockquote>the Situationist International, the political and revolutionary movement that was at the origin of the events of May 1968</blockquote></ref><ref name="Présent1984">''[[Présent]]'', 10 March 1984, quotation:<blockquote>...the enragé [[Guy Debord]], the leader of the situationists, the most nihilistic, the most destructive of the anarcho-surrealist movements, probably the principal promoter of subversion of 1968.</blockquote></ref><ref name="BabronskiEtAl1984">Babronski, Lamy, Brigouleix, ''[[France-Soir]]'', 9 and 10 March 1984, quotation:<blockquote>the situationists, a movement of libertarian tendency that was one of the detonators of the May '68 events.</blockquote></ref><ref name="WordsAndBullets1984">{{cite web | title=Words and Bullets – The Condemned of the Lebovici Affair | author=Guy Debord | url=http://www.notbored.org/les-mots.html | publisher=NOT BORED! | date=August 2003 | access-date=23 June 2008 | archive-date=25 July 2008 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080725073302/http://www.notbored.org/les-mots.html | url-status=live }}. On May '68, it quotes Babronski et al. (1984)</ref><ref name="20AnsJune68">The monthly magazine ''[[20 Ans]]'', June 1968 issue, quotation:<blockquote>The Situationist International is the vanguard of the student movement.</blockquote></ref><ref name="Rivarol3May1968">''[[Rivarol (magazine)|Rivarol]]'', 3 May 1968, quotation:<blockquote>it has largely been forgotten that, as early as February, the riots at Nantes showed the real face of these 'situationists,' fifteen hundred students under red and black flags, the Hall of Justice occupied...</blockquote></ref> While SI's member count had been steadily falling for the preceding several years, the ones that remained were able to fill revolutionary roles for which they had patiently anticipated and prepared. The active ideologists ("enragés" and Situationists) behind the revolutionary events in Strasbourg, Nanterre and Paris, numbered only about one or two dozen persons.<ref name="Atkins1977">{{Harvnb|Atkins|1977}}</ref>

This has now been widely acknowledged as a fact by studies of the period,<ref name="Jappe99May68">[[Anselm Jappe]], 1999, p. 81.</ref><ref name="Gombin71May68">[[Richard Gombin]](1971).</ref><ref name="Syring98">[[Marie Luise Syring]] (1998) (editor) ''Um 1968: konkrete Utopien in Kunst und Gesellschaft'', quotation: <blockquote>By far the greatest influence that the theory of art and aesthetics exercised upon the protest movement of students and left-wing intellectuals was in all likelihood that of the Situationists, something which practically nobody recalls today.</blockquote></ref><ref name="DemonetEtAl75">[[Michel Demonet|Demonet, Michel]] et al. (1975) ''[[Des Tracts en mai 68]]''. Paris: Champ Libre, 1978.</ref><ref name="Dumontier1990">[[Pascal Dumontier]] (1990) ''[[Les Situationnistes et mai 68]]: Théorie et la practique de la révolution (1966–1972)''. Paris: Gérard Lebovici.</ref><ref name="Fauré98">[[Christine Fauré]] (1998) ''[[Mai 68: Jour et Nuit]]''</ref> what is still wide open to interpretation is the "how and why" that happened.<ref name="ClarkAndNSWinter97"/> [[Charles de Gaulle]], in the aftermath televised speech of 7 June, acknowledged that "This explosion was provoked by groups in revolt against modern consumer and technical society, whether it be the communism of the East or the capitalism of the West."<ref>De Gaulle, Televised speech of 7 June 1968. Quoted in [[René Viénet]] (1968) ''Enragés et situationnistes dans le mouvement des occupations'' (Paris: Gallimard)</ref>

They also made up the majority in the [[Sorbonne Occupation Committee|Occupation Committee of the Sorbonne]].<ref name="ClarkAndNSWinter97"/> An important event leading up to May 1968 was the scandal in Strasbourg in December 1966.<ref name="Viénet68sec1">[[René Viénet]] (1968) ''[http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/enrages.html Enragés and Situationists in the Occupations Movement] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080327205321/http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/enrages.html |date=27 March 2008 }}'' (Translated by Loren Goldner and Paul Sieveking, New York: Autonomedia, 1992), sec.1</ref> The [[Union Nationale des Étudiants de France]] declared itself in favor of the SI's theses, and managed to use public funds to publish [[Mustapha Khayati]]'s pamphlet ''[[On the Poverty of Student Life]]''.<ref>Mustapha Khayati (November 1966)</ref> Thousands of copies of the pamphlet were printed and circulated and helped to make the Situationists well known throughout the nonstalinist left.

Quotations from two key situationist books, Debord's ''[[The Society of the Spectacle]]'' (1967) and Khayati's ''On the Poverty of Student Life'' (1966), were written on the walls of Paris and several provincial cities.<ref name="Viénet68sec1" /> This was documented in the collection of photographs published in 1968 by [[Walter Lewino]], ''L'imagination au pouvoir''.<ref name="SI12BeginningOfAnEra">''The Beginning of an Era'' ([http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/12.era1.htm part1] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090923121011/http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/12.era1.htm |date=23 September 2009 }}, [http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/12.era2.htm part 2] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090323124837/http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/12.era2.htm |date=23 March 2009 }}) Situationist International No. 12, 1969</ref>

Though the SI were a very small group, they were expert self-propagandists, and their slogans appeared daubed on walls throughout Paris at the time of the revolt. SI member [[René Viénet]]'s 1968 book ''Enragés and Situationists in the Occupations Movement, France, May '68'' gives an account of the involvement of the SI with the student group of Enragés and the occupation of the [[Sorbonne (building)|Sorbonne]].

The occupations of 1968 started at the [[University of Nanterre]] and spread to the Sorbonne. The police tried to take back the Sorbonne and a riot ensued. Following this a general strike was declared with up to 10 million workers participating. The SI originally participated in the Sorbonne occupations and defended barricades in the riots. The SI distributed calls for the [[occupation of factories]] and the formation of [[workers' councils]],<ref name="SI12BeginningOfAnEra"/> but, disillusioned with the students, left the university to set up the [[Council for Maintaining the Occupations]] (CMDO) which distributed the SI's demands on a much wider scale. After the end of the movement, the CMDO disbanded.