ABSTRACT
In “Periodizing the 60s,” Frederick Jameson writes: “The simplest yet most universal formulation surely remains the widely shared feeling that in the 60s for a time, everything was possible: that this period, in other words, was a moment of universal liberation, a global unbinding of energies” (207).1 My nostalgic desire for that moment of feeling drew me to this project in the first place. As a political person and teacher, I am against despair. I am against apathy, resignation, capitulation. I teach a class called Remembering the Sixties, and when some of my students lament that “they missed it” or abdicate responsibility by saying, “It’s too late,” I remind them that students were at the forefront in the sixties and that students are mobilizing in all kinds of ways now: against sweatshops, for environmental protections, against prison privatization, for political candidates they believe in. Yet while I do not accept that it is too late, I cannot misrecognize my own moment for the sixties. I wanted to write about a moment when the belief that universal liberation was possible was “widely shared.” I wanted to write about books that represented, and perhaps invigorated, utopian yearnings.
