Lecture 3
Resistance, Third Worldism and the echoes of Empire
The third lecture explores the questions of Resistance and Empire from the perspective of 1968 activists. Born just before, during or after the Second World War, these were shaped both by their relationship with their parents, whether as resisters or Vichyists, and by the struggle against the French war in Algeria. Support of Algerian freedom fighters led in the 1960s to a Third Worldist ideology of solidarity with other national liberation fighters from Cuba and Latin America to China and Vietnam. 1968 saw a coming together of students with workers and peasants who had been marked by the Algerian War, and the political crisis was in part resolved by the government making concessions to the former pro-French Algerian lobby. Political radicalism that continued after 1968 defined itself as a reworking of the French Resistance and made common cause with North African workers who were inspired by the Palestinian battle for national liberation. Ongoing conflicts over the Algerian War are traced to popular movements of workers at the Lip factory and peasants on the Larzac plateau on the one hand, and on the other to the emergence of Le Pen’s National Front.
A podcast of this lecture is available on Vimeo at: https://vimeo.com/67824788