ABSTRACT
THE fifties began with McCarthy and ended with the counterculture—an incredible turnaround. What happened to turn the decade upside down? There are many versions, as contradictory and confusing as was the period itself. Clearly, however, it was an incubating time for the anarchic and highly personalized forms of revolt that flourished in the sixties, and as such is difficult to sort out. But the problem of writing the history of the era, in fact the problem of writing contemporary history, is that there are no central lines or traditions, or, at least, they are difficult to find. The main characteristic of our time is its kaleidoscopic quality, its shattering into literally dozens of currents, its rapid changes, its endless contradictions, its amnesia, its cultisms—on the whole, its appearance of dispersion, like a galaxy of stars moving in all directions. Many factors, in my opinion, have produced this state of controlled chaos. For one thing, we are in an era of failed revolutions, which normally produces social tightening and regression, but now the failed revolutions have produced repressive regimes in the East and societies without a sense of purpose and direction in the West.
