ABSTRACT
Modern France has experienced many crises, but few as sudden and as unexpected as the "events" that erupted in May 1968. The argument that France needed large, profitable companies to survive the rigors of competition in the enlarged common market continued to justify government policies in their favor. In foreign affairs, Giscard continued the effort, begun under Pompidou, to integrate French policies more closely with those of its European partners. Willing to go beyond the bounds of Gaullism in Europe, Giscard d'Estaing continued the Gaullist tradition of having France pose as champion of closer relations between Europe and the developing countries of the Third World. The new intellectual climate of the 1970s also saw a radical shift in the way in which the Second World War was remembered in France. The discrediting of the Marxist tradition went hand in hand with the rise of what has come to be known as "postmodernism" in philosophy and literary theory.
