ABSTRACT

The starting point of our struggle at Nanterre was a refusal of the Fouchet reforms (November 1967)1 and the practical affirmation of the right to political expression in the faculty (March 22, 1968, onward). Henceforth, social reality and the university’s function in relation to it will be subjected to permanent criticism and contestation. Our task will have to be that of displacing [détourner]2 the entire institution of the university as fully as possible from the functions to which it is restricted by both the ruling class and its own deeply internalized repressions, in order to turn it into a place for working out the means of the critical understanding and expression of reality. The resumption of classes at Nanterre in 1968 will not be a return to normal; normality was cultural oppression. Our task is not simply to “make the faculty work” (for whom, to what ends?) but to criticize, to deconstruct the institution, to determine the orientation we want to give to our work, to develop a program for this work, and to realize it.