Writer Abdellatif Laâbi founded the review Souffles in Rabat in 1966. It aimed to go beyond stereotypes of Moroccan culture or of anti-colonial resistance and make more widely known new, modern writing in French by Moroccan authors. The extract below is reproduced by kind permission of Abdellatif Laâbi. Extracts from Souffles were translated and published alongside extracts from its Arabic sister journal, Anfas, in Souffles-Anfas: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics edited by Olivia C. Harrison and Teresa Villa-Ignacio and published by Stanford University Press in 2016. Translation © 2016 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. All rights reserved. Used by permission of the publisher, Stanford University Press, www.sup.org.
Not only were the events of May ’68 in Paris among the best known of the protests at this period, but the review was an important form in twentieth-century France. French reviews often focused on literary or artistic content rather than cultural commentary, but in 1968 many contributors wrote explicitly about the protests. Caroline Hoctan has published texts from reviews in her French-language anthology Mai 68 en revues (IMEC, 2008). The extracts reprinted here from Les lettres nouvelles, Tel Quel and Esprit are taken from that anthology, though L’Éphémère was not included. Editorials frequently acted as statements of intent and editorial teams considered themselves to be communities with common interests (Charles Forsdick and Andy Stafford discuss the features of French reviews in their volume La revue: The twentieth-century periodical in French (Peter Lang, 2013)). May ’68 brought politics, literature and culture together in the French review, and editors felt obliged to adopt a position on the protests, which led in some instances to rifts among colleagues or subsequent changes in the direction taken by the reviews. The pages of reviews were the site of debate and took forward, in new ways, French reflection on what littérature engagée, or ‘committed literature’ might mean in the late twentieth century.
All other translations by Emma Wagstaff
from Mobilisation-tract
par Abdellatif Laâbi
A GENOUX LES DAMNES DE LA TERRE
bonne année camarades
la lutte continue
cette grande humanité a dit assez
mosché dayan inspecte
à l’ombre des mirages
shalom napalm
les cosmonautes ont vu à l’œil nu la face cachée de la lune
le dollar connaît des hauts et des bas
la livre sterling éternellement menacée
de gaulle multiplie ses frasques
et se retire grand seigneur
from Mobilization-tract
By Abdellatif Laâbi, translated by Olivia C. Harrison
ON YOUR KNEES WRETCHED OF THE EARTH
happy new year comrades
the struggle goes on
the great humanity has said enough
moshe dayan inspects
in the shadow of mirages
shalom napalm
the cosmonauts have seen the hidden face of the moon with their bare eyes
the dollar is seesawing
the sterling pound eternally threatened
de gaulle keeps making mischief
and then nobly retires
Esprit
from ‘Mai 68 : l’insurrection de la jeunesse’ (‘May 68: Youth’s Insurrection)
no 372 (June-July 1968)
Certes le movement avait touché déjà les États-Unis, l’Allemagne, l’Italie… Mais Paris lui a donné une vigueur et un écho particuliers. Au lieu de se retourner contre les étudiants, la population a soutenu et compris leur mouvement. De jeunes ouvriers l’ont répercuté dans les usines. Un accord profond s’est esquissé qui laissera des traces. […] Derrière la police, ce que visaient les pavés n’avait pas de nom : c’était le conservatisme autoritaire des caciques, la bureaucratie stupide, la publicité béate, la cruauté abstraite qui condamne le tiers de l’humanité à la famine, l’échec de nos révolutions, la capitulation de nos espérances.
It’s true that the USA, Germany, and Italy had already been marked by protest. But Paris energised and spread the movement in a distinctive way. Instead of turning against the students, the general public understood and supported their cause. Young factory workers protested too. They worked in harmony, something that will leave a lasting trace. […] Beyond the police, the paving stones [thrown by protesters] had a target without a name: the authoritarian conservatism of the leaders, stupid bureaucracy, smug advertising, the abstract cruelty that condemns a third of humanity to suffer famine, the failure of our revolutions, the surrendering of our hopes.
Esprit was founded in 1932, and aims to appeal to a general and academic readership. The review is international in focus, and offers reflections on contemporary events and cultural currents through a broad lens of ‘ideas’.
Les lettres nouvelles
from ‘Vivre en Mai…’ (‘Living in May’), by Jean Chesneaux
no 65 (September-October 1968)
En Mai 1968, dans les conditions historiques dont nous ne nous dissimulons pas la précarité et le caractère exceptionnel, nous avons néanmoins entrevu un nouvel art de vivre. Nous avons enfin pu voir de l’extérieur la critique de notre vie quotidienne, trier le factice et l’authentique, distinguer les faux besoins et les besoins réels. Nous avons découvert que le roi était nu !… Les repas comme rite social ne comptaient plus, et nous nous alimentions au hasard des journées. L’argent ne comptait plus guère non plus, et nos journées étaient trop bien remplies pour nous exposer aux sollicitations multiples de la société de la « consommation ».
In May 1968, in historical circumstances whose temporary and exceptional nature I am not attempting to hide, we nevertheless glimpsed a new way of living. At last we could adopt an external critical perspective on our everyday life, separate what is fake from what is authentic, distinguish between illusory and real needs. We discovered that the Emperor has no clothes! We were no longer interested in meals as social rituals, and just ate at random during the day. Money had hardly any importance either, and our days were too full to expose us to the multiple temptations of the ‘consumer’ society.
Les lettres nouvelles was founded in 1953 by Maurice Nadeau (1911-2013) as a monthly review of new writing, and featured French and foreign authors. Nadeau was a major figure in the French literary scene, from his articles after the Second World War for Resistance magazine Combat to his editorship of La Quinzaine littéraire (1966-). He was the first to publish writers who went on to gain an international reputation, including Georges Perec and Michel Houllebecq.
Tel Quel
from ‘La révolution est ici maintenant’ (The revolution is here now)
no 34 (summer 1968)
5. la construction […] d’une théorie tirée de la pratique textuelle que nous avons à développer nous semble susceptible d’éviter les impasses répétitives du discours « engagé » […]
6. cette construction devra faire partie, selon son mode de production complexe, de la théorie marxiste-léniniste, seule théorie révolutionnaire de notre temps, et porter sur l’intégration critique des pratiques les plus élaborées ( philosophie, linguistique, sémiologie, psychanalyse, « littérature », histoire des sciences ) ;
7. toute entreprise idéologique qui ne se présente pas aujourd’hui sous une forme théorique avancée et se contente de se regrouper sous des dénominations éclectiques ou sentimentales des activités intellectuelles et faiblement politiques, nous paraît contre-révolutionnaire […].
5. the theory of textual practice that we are planning to develop seems us well placed to avoid the repetitive dead end of ‘committed’ discourse […]
6. the theory we construct must, according to its complex production method, form part of Marxist-Leninist theory, the only revolutionary theory of our times, and it must critically combine the most sophisticated practices (philosophy, linguistics, semiology, psychoanalysis, ‘literature’, and the history of science)
7. any ideological endeavour that does not present itself today in advanced theoretical form, instead forming a loose grouping of unrelated or emotional activities that are intellectual, but barely political, seems to us to be counter-revolutionary […].
The text, from the editorial to issue 34, was signed in Paris by a number of writers and intellectuals including Julia Kristeva, Jacqueline Risset, Marcelin Pleynet, Denis Roche, and Pierre Boulez. The editorial consisted of seven numbered points and ended by stating that a theoretical study group was to be constituted, its first meeting taking place in October of the same year. The word ‘littérature’ is placed in inverted commas because the group rejected not only the respect accorded to literature but even the notion of literature as a category of writing. Tel Quel became well known for this theoretical stance, which sought to make the textual political, and it is often set in contrast with the poetic emphasis in the journal L’Éphémère.
L’Éphémère
From ‘« Sous les pavés, la plage ». [Notes du mai 1968]’ (Under the paving stones, the beach [Notes from May 1968], by André du Bouchet, L’Éphémère, 6 (summer 1968)
… Maintenir la place
découverte vide ( ouverte )
Où un seul peut faire sienne cette brèche aujourd’hui généralisée dans
le savoir ( « ce qu’on sait n’est pas à soi » )…
[…] Cesser d’écrire, un temps, et
réserver l’emplacement de ce vide – de l’écart ( pour que
le vent continue de souffler ) dans la mise en cause générale.
Que la place d’un « écrivain », par exemple, ici soit marquee par ce
vide ( le temps qu’il aura cessé d’écrire ) … Que demeure vacante,
dans le nouveau déplacement commun, la place de qui à
nouveau peut-être, écrira…
L’Éphémère was a literary journal that appeared between 1967 and 1972. It published predominantly poetry and poetic prose alongside translations from other European languages, and artwork. Contributors rarely commented on political events, but May 1968 was an exception, and one of the founding editors, André du Bouchet, wrote a piece that took as its title a May ’68 slogan, ‘Sous les pavés, la plage’ , which referred to the way in which demonstrators ripped up traditional French paving stones during the protest. His writing is poetic and not always clear to understand. In this text he was inspired by calls to redefine the status of the writer, rather than only allowing an elite with a certain level of education and literary knowledge to be called writers. Along with many others, he wanted knowledge and expression to be available to all, rather than held onto and hoarded.
… Keep the empty
uncovered place (open)
Where a person can make her own today’s widespread breach
in knowledge (‘one never owns what one knows’)…
[…] Stop writing, for a moment, and
keep the place of this emptiness – of this gap ( so that
the wind can carry on blowing) in the general questioning.
Let the place of a ‘writer’, for example, be marked by this
emptiness (while he’s stopped writing) … Let the place of the one
who will, perhaps, write afresh, in the new displacement common to all,
remain unoccupied…