ABSTRACT
This chapter contributes to the historical conceptualization of 1968 as a period with unique characteristics. If people could understand "what really happened" around 1968, in the sense not of reconstructing events but of giving a historical meaning to those processes, they would at the same time be able to measure the distance between '68 and its future. While attempts have been made to conceptualize 1968 in terms of the history of subjectivity and the subject, the chapter integrate this interpretation introducing two other concepts, and to claim that the resulting conceptual triangle subjectivity, desire, utopia is essential for understanding 1968. Although the connection between desire and knowledge was present in many movements there was a step forward from the subjectivity of the student and worker movements to that of the women's movement, no equality, could be established without taking into due account difference and the question of the cultural construction of the gendered body.
