FRINK Linked Data Fragments server

Matches in SemOpenAlex for { <https://semopenalex.org/work/W1968049694> ?p ?o ?g. }

• W1968049694 endingPage "759" @default.
• W1968049694 startingPage "756" @default.
• W1968049694 abstract "Reviewed by: The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s Knox Peden The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s. By Richard Wolin. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010. 408 pp. $35.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper and e-book). In the prologue to his account of the vicissitudes of French Maoism in the 1960s and 1970s, Richard Wolin writes that he considers “The Wind from the East foremost a political book” (p. xi). Credit is due for Wolin’s frank admission that his book is not a work of dispassionate historical scholarship. Known for his excoriations of the “seduction of unreason” that has misled so many champions of postmodernism, Wolin has turned his sights on a subject that presents special challenges to his adjudicative approach to intellectual history. Wolin presents himself as a product of “the sixties,” and in particular the turn toward a more participatory model of democratic politics accomplished by the various movements that are habitually grouped under this heading. [End Page 756] In this regard, the protagonists of the events of May 1968 in France are treated as cousins, comrades in a common cause. And yet they are wayward cousins, given that their progressive endeavors, during and in the wake of May, were often couched in the language of their Maoist sympathies. This presents Wolin with a conundrum that gives his book its personal tone and driving question: how could historical actors that accomplished so much have been taken in by ideas that were so evidently misguided? Part of Wolin’s answer is that French adherents to “Maoism” did not have a genuine understanding of what Maoism was in practice. This part of Wolin’s explanation squares awkwardly, however, with another of his central claims: that the distinguishing features of “Mao Tse-tung Thought” within the Marxist canon—for example, the emphasis on culture and politics over base materialist determinism, the insistence on conducting enquêtes or “investigations” of particularly intense sites of social antagonism, the valorization of youth—were ultimately instrumental in the success with which the protagonists of May brokered new forms of associational democracy. Despite their manifest historical relation, however, there is a fundamental mismatch between “May” and “Mao” in Wolin’s account, which is divided into a first section on the events of the former and a second devoted to intellectuals’ infatuation with the latter. Indeed, as he remarks, “as the May events unfolded, the Maoists were nowhere to be found” (p. 15). Nevertheless, the discourse of Maoism helped shape much of the milieu, and the result was a “constructive political learning process” (p. 4) wherein the doctrinaire ideas of Maoism fused with the emancipatory spirit of May. In the last instance, the argument is homeopathic; French intellectuals were “cured” of their “infantile revolutionary longings” (p. xii) by their exposure to a diluted dose that wafted in on the “wind from the east.” The main strength of Wolin’s book lies in its recognition that the historical relationship between French Maoism and the events that took place in China in the 1960s and 1970s was one of fantastical projection rather than informed inspiration. The capacity of ideas to take on a life of their own and produce novel historical effects thus forms a central thread to the narrative. Wolin convincingly shows how the expansion of left-wing politics beyond nominal class confrontations galvanized a segment of French youth sensitive to the general flattening of class relations in Gaullist France. The ultimate disillusionment with China that eventually complemented this capacious view of politics is not so much demonstrated as assumed, but Wolin’s fundamental point holds. The language of Maoism found a new and different kind of purchase in French soil. Just how extensively Maoist ambition became [End Page 757] domesticated is revealed in Wolin’s own casual description of the “transformation of everyday life and the regeneration of civil society” as “more circumscribed tasks” than revolution (p. xii). Romanticism clearly knows a plurality of forms. With their romantic cast, the cultural history sections of The Wind from the East make for more compelling reading than..." @default.
• W1968049694 created "2016-06-24" @default.
• W1968049694 creator A5061750223 @default.
• W1968049694 date "2012-01-01" @default.
• W1968049694 modified "2023-10-17" @default.
• W1968049694 title "<i>The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s</i> (review)" @default.
• W1968049694 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/jwh.2012.0085" @default.
• W1968049694 hasPublicationYear "2012" @default.
• W1968049694 type Work @default.
• W1968049694 sameAs 1968049694 @default.
• W1968049694 citedByCount "0" @default.
• W1968049694 crossrefType "journal-article" @default.
• W1968049694 hasAuthorship W1968049694A5061750223 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConcept C124952713 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConcept C142362112 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConcept C161191863 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConcept C17744445 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConcept C199539241 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConcept C2777855551 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConcept C2778061430 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConcept C2780627709 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConcept C41008148 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConcept C509535802 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConcept C52119013 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConcept C555826173 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConcept C94625758 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConcept C95457728 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConceptScore W1968049694C124952713 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConceptScore W1968049694C142362112 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConceptScore W1968049694C161191863 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConceptScore W1968049694C17744445 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConceptScore W1968049694C199539241 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConceptScore W1968049694C2777855551 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConceptScore W1968049694C2778061430 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConceptScore W1968049694C2780627709 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConceptScore W1968049694C41008148 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConceptScore W1968049694C509535802 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConceptScore W1968049694C52119013 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConceptScore W1968049694C555826173 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConceptScore W1968049694C94625758 @default.
• W1968049694 hasConceptScore W1968049694C95457728 @default.
• W1968049694 hasIssue "3" @default.
• W1968049694 hasLocation W19680496941 @default.
• W1968049694 hasOpenAccess W1968049694 @default.
• W1968049694 hasPrimaryLocation W19680496941 @default.
• W1968049694 hasRelatedWork W2024747067 @default.
• W1968049694 hasRelatedWork W2053347163 @default.
• W1968049694 hasRelatedWork W2107781650 @default.
• W1968049694 hasRelatedWork W2148911644 @default.
• W1968049694 hasRelatedWork W2748952813 @default.
• W1968049694 hasRelatedWork W4249059455 @default.
• W1968049694 hasRelatedWork W643048251 @default.
• W1968049694 hasRelatedWork W655929521 @default.
• W1968049694 hasRelatedWork W1905091697 @default.
• W1968049694 hasRelatedWork W2085941841 @default.
• W1968049694 hasVolume "23" @default.
• W1968049694 isParatext "false" @default.
• W1968049694 isRetracted "false" @default.
• W1968049694 magId "1968049694" @default.
• W1968049694 workType "article" @default.