ABSTRACT
Karl Mannheim’s definition of generational units as being formed by their members’ shared exposure to the same events (Mannheim, 1972 [1928]) raises more questions than it answers. Is it really possible to say that the various participants in the events of May-June 1968 participated in the same event? What could a lower-class factory worker on strike have to exchange with a young student from a bourgeois background, motivated by breaking away from her family? Would they even have come into physical contact during the events? Archival films and photos show thousands of activists marching hand in hand down the streets of the Latin Quarter, sitting on benches in the universities or demonstrating in support of factory sit-ins. But was their convergence perhaps based on a misunderstanding? Did they really experience the deconstruction of social barriers, as some claim? Can the forms of destabilisation that resulted from their participation be limited to what occurred during the events themselves? More generally, does an analysis based on generation run the risk of obscuring the numerous ways in which the event was shaped by participants, and how they were shaped by it in turn?
