How Maoism captured the
imagination of French intellectuals during the 1960s
Michel
Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Julia Kristeva, Phillipe Sollers, and
Jean-Luc Godard. During the 1960s, a who's who of French thinkers,
writers, and artists, spurred by China's Cultural Revolution, were
seized with a fascination for Maoism. Combining a merciless exposé
of left-wing political folly and cross-cultural misunderstanding with
a spirited defense of the 1960s, The Wind from the East
tells the colorful story of this legendary period in France. Richard
Wolin shows how French students and intellectuals, inspired by their
perceptions of the Cultural Revolution, and motivated by utopian
hopes, incited grassroots social movements and reinvigorated French
civic and cultural life.
Wolin's
riveting narrative reveals that Maoism's allure among France's best
and brightest actually had little to do with a real understanding of
Chinese politics. Instead, it paradoxically served as a vehicle for
an emancipatory transformation of French society. Recounting the
cultural and political odyssey of French students and intellectuals
in the 1960s, The Wind from the East
illustrates how the Maoist phenomenon unexpectedly sparked a
democratic political sea change in France.