Bliss it Was in that Dawn to be Alive: Reflections on the Event of May '68

For all its romantic idealism and revolutionary fanaticism, there's still something about May '68 that I can neither fully renounce nor denounce.

Indeed, fifty years on, and it seems to me that there's still something glowing red and magnificent, like a burning ember, at the heart of this irreducible and indeterminable event - albeit an event which, as Deleuze and Guattari say, failed to unfold on a collective level; something which deserves not merely nostalgic recollection, but active rekindling.

For as a punk-provocateur, reared in the politics of the Situationist International, I still think that offering creative (sometimes criminal) resistance to the status quo and challenging all forms of orthodoxy is the only ethical thing to do with one's life. In other words: It is right to rebel (a slogan originating in Marx, Mao or Marcuse, but which I learned from Malcolm McLaren).

But Johnny, what are you rebelling against?

Well, against all forms of reactionary stupidity for a start. And against that long list of words which begin with the letter C and induce boredom, including: capitalism, consumerism, cliché, conformity, convention, comfort and convenience. 

I was told recently that I would never make a very good philosopher, as I'm too impatient to read slowly and too shallow to care about fundamental ideas: "You're part blogger, part comedian - always looking for a catchy turn of phrase or an amusing punchline."

That's probably true: I certainly love those fabulous slogans that were sprayed on the walls of Paris: Il est interdit d'interdire! Soyez réalistes - demandez l'impossible! And, most famously, Sous les pavés, la plage! If this makes me a Marxist of the Groucho tendency, then so be it; as someone born in May '68 it's hardly surprising after all ...


Notes 

Deleuze and Guattari, 'May '68 Did Not take Place, Two Regimes of Madness, ed. David Lapoujade, trans. Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina (Semiotext(e), 2007, pp. 233-36. 

As I say above, for Deleuze and Guattari May '68 was (is) a pure event; i.e., an unstable condition without cause that opens up a new field of possibility or becoming. It might be quickly co-opted, but there's something in it that can never be outmoded; thus May '68 is, in a sense, still unfolding now/here. One is tempted to say something similar of punk - which is why the slogan punk's not dead is, technically correct (if not for the reasons that many adherents of the movement believe). And it's why even Joe Corré, despite his uniquely privileged (or accursed) position, cannot declare its passing; no matter how much shit he burns nor how many piles of ash he assembles in a Mayfair art gallery.  

On the Ecstasy of Forms: A Note on Punk Fashion and the Sex Pistols as Pure Event

Vivienne wearing a Seditionaries Destroy shirt  

as designed by herself and Malcolm (1977)

For me, the reason that the punk fashions created by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood still astonish and disconcert is because they perfectly illustrate what Baudrillard terms the ecstasy of forms. That is to say, a phenomenon in which objects are seduced by their own self-enchantment and run wild according to an anarchic (and often ironic) kind of logic beyond aesthetics, politics, or morality.

The above shirt, for example, modelled here by Westwood, is one that invites but paradoxically resists any formulation or judgement, becoming a fascinatingly ambiguous garment worn at the wearers' own risk. For who who can predict how it will be perceived by those who are confronted by it and how they'll react: with laughter ... confusion ... violence?

It's obviously offensive. But no one can quite say how, why or to whom it's offensive. It's inexplicably provocative, just as other designs - such as the bare tits t-shirt - are inexplicably obscene. Ultimately, zips, straps, swastikas, safety pins, sex organs, postage stamps, inverted crosses and slogans from May '68, don't convey anything; those who foolishly look for the meaning of punk are wasting their time.

They have failed, as Baudrillard would say, to grasp the fact that punk fashion "expresses a situation in which people no longer even believe in signs as a real difference but are playing at difference", just as they are playing with identity and gender.

The queerness - and the energy - of these (empty) forms seems to come from our culture, our history, our reality, but at the same time provide an escape from such. Which is why the Sex Pistols were an event, rather than just another boring rock band; they came like a fatality, without explanation or cause, and remain an event that no one has been able to rationalise or fully exploit and from which it's impossible to conclude anything.

As it said on the front of the tour bus, the Sex Pistols were going nowhere - but they were going nowhere fast. For punk was an accelerated moment, a pure speed, not a progressive movement leading us by the hand into a rosy future: there was No Future and so, ultimately, they could only succeed by imploding (Baudrillard speaks of events absorbing their own continuity), leaving no trace apart from the secondary effect of parody which occupied the space they left behind.

See: Jean Baudrillard, 'Dropping Out of History' and 'Catastrophic, but Not Serious', interviews in The Disappearance of Culture, ed. Richard G. Smith and David B. Clarke, (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), pp. 36-45 and 46-65. The line quoted is from the latter interview, with Robert M. Maniquis (55), but I have utilised Baudrillard's thinking throughout the post.