Remembering '68: The invention of a feminist tradition and the construction of a collectiv identity. Women's movement in France and West-Germany in the seventies

 

Kristina Schulz, Universität Bielefeld, Germany

 

"1968" figures as a turning-point in the history of the western world. Further more, "1968" is considered to be the founding event of the Women's movements, like "The second sexe" is considered to be its founding text, "the bible of women's liberation". Within the women's movements of the seventies both references were controversal and the subject of a never ending negociation. My suggestion is that they were not the factors that triggered the mobilising processes but elements in the process of constructing collective identity by invoking - or refusing - a specific protest tradition.

Studying "1968" in West-Germany and France, my contibution aims to

1. show that the 'invention of tradition' is a process of negociation between groupes and individuals persuing special interests. This is the theoretical point I want to make. Analysing the competing and sometimes divergent interpretations as well as the groupes which articulate them and the means and methodes by which they are communicated, I want to focus on the dynamics of this process of constructing a collective identity.

2. reexamine the significance given to 1968 from the perspective of gender history. Historically, I shall argue that for women a periodisation of "the long seventies" (1968 - 1980/81) is more suitable than that of "the sixties" (1962 - 1973/74) suggested by Arthur Marwick (The sixties: Cultural revolution in Britain, France, Italy and the United States  c. 1958 - c. 1974, Oxfort 1998).

 

The comparison serves as regulating element. From an historical point of view, the heritage of "1968" in West-Germany consists of fonctionning networks and groupes which will support the mobilizing process of the women's movement three years later. In opposition, the events of May 68 have not - at least much less -  produced networks, that had the same impact. However, from a stuctural point of view "1968" plays the same role in the process of establishing a collective identity by defining a collective memory.