What is the Significance of the Protest of May’s 68?

It is a series of street protests that began in many universities in Paris but rapidly spread to incorporate a broad cross-section of French society. Some historians estimate that as many as 10 million people participated in the mass strikes over several weeks. Known by a variety of different epithets such as ‘the events of May, and the ‘long summer’, May’ 68 was not a single event, but rather a series of events interlinked by a common theme or purpose, which is difficult to define but essentially boils down to a nationwide transformation of what Raymond Williams called, in a different context, the structure of feeling.

For the first time in French history, workers and students (effectively the future managerial class, and therefore the class enemies of the workers) united to stage their dissatisfaction with the state of French society, primarily how it was governed. Whole sections of the workforce went out on strike, perhaps most notably the garbage collectors, resulting in Paris being inundated by trash piled high on street corners. The police did not know how to respond, and many peaceful marches became violent, the cobblestones in the older parts of Paris being turned into handy missiles. The reason these events, rather than the numerous other protest events that occurred that year around the world (e.g., 1968 was also the year of the so-called Prague Spring), have such significance for critical theory is unclear. However, in all likelihood, it is simply a matter of it happening at a time when French theory was hegemonic. Consequently, the reflections of French critical and cultural theorists (e.g., Alain Badiou, Michel de Certeau, Gilles Deleuze, Raymond Aron) on their national situation were transformed by an international readership into thoughts of more universal significance. In particular, they raised whether resistance is possible and if change can be achieved by non-violent means. Interestingly, in French politics, May ’68 is often derided as ‘nothing’, but in such a way as to confirm that it was ‘something’, although no one is ever quite sure what.

In 2018, the 50th anniversary of May ’68 triggered a renewed wave of retrospection in France and globally. Public exhibitions, documentaries, and scholarly books re-evaluated its legacy. Some emphasized how the revolutionary fervor of the time was later co-opted by neoliberal capitalism, turning the ethos of “liberation” into a consumerist individualism. Others reclaimed the protests as a reminder of the possibilities of collective action and cultural transformation. Feminist and postcolonial scholars have also critiqued the historical narrative of May ’68 for marginalizing the contributions of women, immigrants, and racialized communities. Kristin Ross, in particular, has argued for re-centering these forgotten voices and locating the events in a broader anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist tradition. Françoise Vergès and others have explored the connections between the uprising and the decolonization struggles of the time.

The spirit of May ’68 did not end in 1968. It continues to resonate in later horizontal, leaderless movements such as Occupy Wall Street (2011), Nuit Debout (2016), and the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) protests (2018–2020), all of which, like May ’68, reject traditional party structures and call for direct participation in shaping social change.

Concrete outcomes of May ’68 include significant reforms in the French higher education system. The crisis led to greater autonomy in universities, the expansion of interdisciplinary curricula, and the institutionalization of cultural and critical theory. It also re-energized trade unionism and participatory models of labor organization, even if many revolutionary demands remained unfulfilled. Finally, scholars have suggested that the digital age has carried forward the radical imagination of May ’68 into new forms. Online activism, decentralized networks, and viral protest movements raise similar questions about the nature of power, resistance, and collective identity, though the battleground has shifted from streets to screens. May ’68 remains ambiguous—at once a failed revolution and a transformative cultural moment. Its legacy lives on not because of what it achieved immediately, but because it dared to ask whether the world could be otherwise.

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