1968 Mexico: Constellations of Freedom and Democracy

Recognizing the fiftieth anniversary of the protests, strikes, and violent struggles that formed the political and cultural backdrop of 1968 across Europe, the United States, and Latin America, Susana Draper offers a nuanced perspective of the 1968 movement in Mexico. She challenges the dominant cultural narrative of the movement that has emphasized the importance of the October 2nd Tlatelolco Massacre and the responses of male student leaders. From marginal cinema collectives to women’s cooperative experiments, Draper reveals new archives of revolutionary participation that provide insight into how 1968 and its many afterlives are understood in Mexico and beyond. By giving voice to Mexican Marxist philosophers, political prisoners, and women who participated in the movement, Draper counters the canonical memorialization of 1968 by illustrating how many diverse voices inspired alternative forms of political participation. Given the current rise of social movements around the globe, in 1968 Mexico Draper provides a new framework to understand the events of 1968 in order to rethink the everyday existential, political, and philosophical problems of the present.

Reviews of 1968 Mexico: Constellations of Freedom and Democracy

"At once creative and philosophical, poetic and scholarly, Susana Draper's powerful new book on the long-term and often hidden effects of the watershed year of 1968 in Mexico will no doubt be the most original and forceful reinterpretation of any of the global '68s."–Bruno Bosteels, author of "Philosophies of Defeat: The Jargon of Finitude "