1968/2008

Announcing
1968/2008: The Inheritance of Politics and the Politics of Inheritance

A Project In Residence at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
Organized by AREA Chicago

“History does not usually suit the convenience of people who like to divide it into neat periods, but there are times when it seems to have pity on them. The year 1968 almost looks as though it had been designed to serve as some sort of signpost. There is hardly any region in the world in which it is not marked by the spectacular and dramatic events which were to have profound repercussions on the history of the country in which they occurred and, as often as not, globally. This is true of the developed and industrialized capitalist countries, of the socialist world, and of the so-called ‘third world’; of both the eastern and western, the northers and southern hemispheres.”  - Eric Hobsbawm, ‘1968 - A Retrospect,” in Marxism Today (May 1978), p.130

The 1968/2008 initiative will consist of multiple endeavors occurring on their own timelines in 2008, each investigating the legacy of 1968 in contemporary social movements, arts, and education.

Projects include:

-AREA Chicago #7 -
a new edition of the biannual print/web publication on the theme “1968/2008: The inheritance of politics and the politics of inheritance” that will deal with intergenerational issues in local left organizing and culture.

-Website -
a blog featuring report-backs, reflections and interviews about a range of international events happening relating to the legacy of 68 and critical reflections on that time. The site will have correspondents from many places keeping tabs on the relevant activities in their locale. See the blog now at http://1968.areachicago.org Open submissions are also accepted at areachicago@gmail.com

-Events -
Events/Performances/Lectures/Actions that interrogate these themes will be sponsored by AREA Chicago and other organizations in other cities.

The organizing bodies will include:
-A 68/08 Project Group formed by individuals based in Chicago to develop programs and research. Join the list for periodic updates and to help out with events and develop new collaborations http://groups.google.com/group/area-1968-project-group

-The Jane Addams Hull House Museum, where AREA is working as a project-in-residence to develop issue #7 and the affiliated event series

-AREA Chicago’s Advisory Group, who advise and guide AREA’s general direction and work

From our general call:
“1968/2008 will be a hybrid cultural project gradually unfolding for one year on the occasion of 40 years passing since the “signpost” year of international political turmoil, social upheaval and the dramatic transformation of what we know as the left. Sponsored by the local research and culture publication, AREA Chicago, in order to explore the legacy of the late 1960s/early 1970s on contemporary cultural and political organizations in their city, the project will also have nodes outside of Chicago. It will include events, publications, reading groups and a website. This will be a time for “critical commemoration,” examining the meaning of the late 1960s for present-day social movements in the US: its aftereffects and ongoing legacies; its failures, discontinuities, and Pyrrhic victories; and our current attitudes — of nostalgia, forgetting, appropriation, denunciation, and revivalism.

    This project will attempt to engage with social movement historians, liberals who went to college in the 1960s, old leftists that are still alive, those who organize and those who are organized, frothing and non-frothing leftists, self-identified revolutionaries, oral historians, the educators/parents/mentors of radical activists, new leftists who rejected the old left, new leftists who embraced the old left, baby boomers who are disappointed in today’s youth, youth who blame the baby boomers for everything, people who thought there was going to be a revolution, youngsters who want to learn from people with experiences, politicians who used to hate politicians, the children of liberal baby boomers, the children of militants, the artists who want to revisit counterculture, the people who made the 1960s counterculture cooler than the political ideas of the times, CEOs who were in the SDS, new Black Panthers and new SDSers, people who like what they know about the 1960s but didn’t live in them, people who were born in 1968, people who lost loved ones in political violence in the 1960s/70s, people who want to know where they are going after they know where they are from.”

The Main Project Threads:
-Hidden History of 1968: We all know the stories of the DNC protests and west side riots, but what else happened that year in Chicago?
-Looking Back: What is the influence or impact of the institutions, organizations, ideas from that time period on contemporary social movements?
-Political Legacy: More generally, how to social movements of different time periods negotiate their relationship to history?
-Intergenerationality: How do baby boomers and millenials interrelate, or not, with each other?

The Main Project Vantage Points:
-Arts and Education - Whats the role of culture and pedagogy in shaping our critical view of this recent history?
-Chicago Activist Practices - What are the groups and organizations invested in this history?
-Diverse Perspectives - Who knows what history and are their positions consistent or surprising?

Get Involved
There are several different ways to get involved.
The AREA 68 blog (http://1968.areachicago.org) will serve as a clearinghouse to circulate announcements, reflections, links, debates, and documentation. If you would like to have en event listed please send it to areachicago@gmail.com with “68/08 blog” in the subject line.
Join the project planning list http://groups.google.com/group/area-1968-project-group
A separate call for articles for the fall issue will be sent out. Preliminary deadline for proposals will be June 15. Please feel free, also, to send ideas before then to areachicago@gmail.com.

–
AREA Chicago Art/Research/Education/Activism is a publication and event series dedicated to researching, supporting and networking local social, political and cultural movements. For more information visit http://www.areachicago.org/
Please circulate to interested parties

Tags: No Comments