Abstract
Nineteen sixty-eight was a pivotal year on a global scale. In cities throughout the globe, young people took over streets. They blockaded buildings, verbally and symbolically attacked state political apparatuses and projects, and challenged conventional imperialist world orderings. Patriarchal states made investments in youthful masculinities, and representations of youthful male martyrs took on symbolic importance that crossed national borders. Some movements embraced an incommensurable politics of desire, and organic relationships sprung up between movements usually thought of as disparate. Above all, the possibilities and limitations for political agency were intrinsically gendered. Yet despite the role of gender and sexuality in political agency in 68, the growing scholarship on the period still underestimates their importance.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Here we use 1968 to refer to the specific calendar year, ‘68 to refer to the phenomenon or historical conjuncture, and the sixties to refer to an era. Sara Evans marks the lacuna in attention to gender in her tour de force article “Son’s, daughters, and patriarchy: gender and the 1968 generation” American Historical Review April 2009: 331–347. Recently published volumes on the sixties include a number of excellent broad overviews; however, most deal predominantly with the United States such as David R. Farber, ed., The 60s: From Memory to History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994)
Chandra Mohanty, Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).
Robert McRuer, “Gay Gatherings: Reimagining the Counterculture” Imagine Nation, Peter Braunstein and Michael William Doyle, eds., (New York: Routledge, 2002), 215–240.
For a more comprehensive account see Tariq Ali and Susan Watkins, 1968 Marching in the Streets (London: Free Press, 1998)
Rhonda Williams, Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles against Urban Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)
Beth Bailey, Sex in the Heartland (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).
Valerie Korinek, Roughing it in the Suburbs: Reading Chatelaine Magazine in the Fifties and Sixties (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000).
Dagmar Herzog, Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
See Elaine Carey, Plaza of Sacrifices: Gender, Power, ana Terror in 1968 Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005).
Peter J. Ling and Sharon Monteith eds., Gender and the Civil Rights Movements (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004).
Laurie B. Green, Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2009 Lessie Jo Frazier and Deborah Cohen
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cohen, D., Frazier, L.J. (2009). Introduction Love-In, Love-Out: Gender, Sex, and Sexuality in ’68. In: Frazier, L.J., Cohen, D. (eds) Gender and Sexuality in 1968. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101203_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101203_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-38134-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-10120-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)