ABSTRACT

Why does 1968 matter today? The authors of this volume believe that it is a crucial point of reference for current developments, especially the ‘illiberal turn’ both in Europe and America. If we want to understand it, we need to look back into 1968 – the year that founded the cultural and political order of today’s world.

The book consists of the following four sections: '1968 and transnationality', '1968 and the transformation of meanings', 'Artistic representations of 1968', and '1968 and the European contemporaity'. This is followed by an afterword from the significant keynote speaker at the conference Unsettled 1968: Origins – Myth – Impact in June 2018 in Tübingen, Germany: Irena Grudzinska-Gross, herself a Polish ‘68er’, reflects upon the conference and leaves remarks on her 50 years of engagement with what happened in 1968.

chapter 1|4 pages

1968

Myth and impact

part I|2 pages

1968 and transnationality

chapter 2|17 pages

Worlds of Praxis

61968, intellectuals, and an island in the Yugoslav Adriatic

chapter 4|16 pages

The anti-political vision

Post-1968 theories of dissent in Central Europe and beyond

part II|2 pages

1968 and the transformation of meanings

part III|2 pages

Artistic representations of 1968

chapter 8|16 pages

Behind the scenes of broadcasting March 1968

113Radio Free Europe and its internal disputes over the defector Henryk Grynberg

chapter 9|17 pages

Toxic community

Incorporated scripts, bodily resistance: immunitarian processes in the comedy Rejs

chapter 10|15 pages

Carnival and utopia

Juraj Jakubisko’s films and the experience of 1968

part IV|2 pages

1968 and the European contemporaneity

chapter 11|25 pages

The myths of March ’68

162Conflicts of memory in contemporary Poland

chapter 12|20 pages

The ‘Prague Spring’

From Cultural Memory to Personal Trauma?

chapter 13|15 pages

Freedom from, or in socialism?

The Prague Spring and the trauma of the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion in Slovak political discourse

chapter 14|3 pages

Final remarks

1968 again