The Walls Have the Floor: Mural Journal, May '68 - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262038021 ISBN 13: 9780262038027

Publisher: The MIT Press, 2018

Synopsis

The graffiti of the French student and worker uprising of May 1968, capturing participatory politics in action.

Graffiti itself became a form of freedom.
―Julien Besançon, The Walls Have the Floor

Fifty years ago, in 1968, barricades were erected in the streets of Paris for the first time since the Paris Commune of nearly one hundred years before. The events of May 1968 began with student protests against the Vietnam War and American imperialism, expanded to rebellion over student living conditions and resistance to capitalist consumerism. An uprising at the Sorbonne was followed by wildcat strikes across France, uniting students and workers and bringing the country's economy to a halt. There have been many accounts of these events. This book tells the story in a different way, through the graffiti inscribed by protestors as they protested.

The graffiti collected here is by turns poetic, punning, hopeful, sarcastic, and crude. It quotes poets as often as it does political thinkers. Many wrote “I have nothing to write,” signaling not their naiveté but their desire to participate. Other anonymous declarations included “Prohibiting prohibited”; “The dream is reality”; “The walls have ears. Your ears have walls”; “Exaggeration is the beginning of invention”; “Comrades, you're nitpicking”; “You don't beg for the right to live, you take it”; and “I came/I saw/I believed.” A meeting is called at the Grand Amphitheater of the Sorbonne: “Agenda: the worldwide revolution.” This was interactive, participatory politics before Twitter and Facebook.

Although the revolution of May 1968 didn't topple the government (Charles de Gaulle fled the country, only to return; in June, his party won a resounding electoral mandate), it made history. In The Walls Have the Floor, Julien Besançon collected traces of this history before the walls were painted over, and published this collection in July 1968 even as the paint was drying. Read today, the graffiti of 1968 captures, in a way no conventional history can, the defining spontaneity of the events.

About this title

About the Author:

Julian Besançon was a radio, television, and newspaper journalist who covered the May 1968 uprising.

Review:

Realistically, the book contained in this apparently innocuous book is incredibly powerful, young. Vital. These messages, phrases have great adherence to our reality as well... Highly recommended.

―Al Femminile

About this edition

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0262038021
• ISBN 13: 9780262038027
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 232
• Editor: Besancon Julien