Postcolonial Studies Meets the Global 1960s: Rendez-Vous in the Francophone World

My research takes as its starting point the idea that the global protests of 1968 must be understood as a postcolonial moment. I draw upon the rich field of postcolonial studies to “provincialize” the histories of contemporary France and of 1968, for which Western referents predominate historical narratives. By placing France’s May ‘68 in a global context with other related “1968s” from France’s former empire in Tunisia and Senegal, this study challenges France’s culturally and historiographically dominant position. A postcolonial reading of 1968 reorients our thinking about both space (the former French empire) and time (the colonial past and postcolonial presents and futures), reconceptualizing the study of 1968 as a series of local responses to global forces and postcolonial situations. Spatially, the study expands national contexts to include the former colonies but limits global analysis to these imperial boundaries. Chronologically, it links 1968 activism with the colonial era, drawing attention to the French colonial influences on independent African universities, and the transnational networks of migrant intellectuals that were established prior to national independence. The triangular and postcolonial relationships between movements in Tunis, Paris, and Dakar place into relief the tensions between the provincial and global dimensions of 1968.