ABSTRACT
This chapter argues here is that the current discourse of a global youth revolt draws on a long and often contradictory conceptual history that has repeatedly constructed youth as a rebellious or revolutionary subject, but that the particular forms and ways in which youth today are being constructed as revolutionary and rebellious differ in systematic ways from previous eras. The current construction of youth as a revolutionary subject is not new, but rather is the latest stage in a long history of portraying youth as rebellious, revolutionary, utopian and idealistic. Revolutionary political rhetoric, too, has long embraced an ideal of youth, to signify a sense of regeneration and transformation, even when few young individuals may have been directly engaged in formulating such politics. Older forms of youth revolutionary activity and organization do not tend to disappear, but rather continue alongside the newer forms that emerge and develop in subsequent social and political eras.
