Exploitation, alienation and the social division of labour in the May-June movement in France

Until recently, one of the received ideas about May 68 in France was that the students' actions and the workers' strikes never went beyond a kind of 'abortive encounter.' It seemed self-evident that a genuine convergence between workers and students was ultimately impossible: their struggles were viewed as in essence distinct since the former were allegedly seeking to 'have more' and the latter to 'live differently.' According to this interpretation, the critique of 'exploitation' only came from workers and the critique of 'alienation' from students and intellectual professions. It is this reductive interpretation which I seek to challenge in this text by following a new line of enquiry into the ideological complexity of the May-June movement. I show how students' and workers' movements were in fact entangled. The two above-mentioned critiques were so much overlapping that the challenge to authority, which is one component of the critique of alienation, also borrowed from the language of equality, which might be thought to belong more properly to the critique of exploitation. These linguistic transfers led both movements to converge in a common challenge to the social division of labour. This text also argues that one way in which the legacy of 68 has been politically neutralized is precisely by dissociating and simplifying those two critiques of capitalism : the struggle against alienation became viewed as no more than a playful revolt against authority around the theme of moral liberation, while the struggle against exploitation became viewed merely as a consumerist aspiration for greater purchasing power.Le texte propose un retour critique sur l'un des lieux communs des interprétations canoniques de Mai-juin 1968 en France, qui consiste à évoquer les luttes étudiantes et les grèves ouvrières en termes de " rendez-vous manqué ". Cette thèse de l'impossible rencontre a été déclinée à travers une série d'oppositions entre " réalisme " ouvrier et " illusion lyrique " gauchiste, classes populaires et rejetons de la bourgeoisie, désir étudiant d'" être (mieux) " et volonté ouvrière d'" avoir (plus) ". Selon cette interprétation, la critique de l'exploitation fut l'apanage exclusif des fractions intellectuelles du mouvement de Mai et la critique de l'aliénation celui des travailleurs manuels. En revenant sur la complexité idéologique du mouvement de Mai-juin 1968, le texte montre en premier lieu l'hybridation des deux critiques, et l'intrication de la contestation de l'autorité et des revendications d'égalité, des exigences d'émancipation individuelle et des demandes d'émancipation collective. Bien souvent, la remise en cause de la division verticale et horizontale du travail constitue le point d'articulation de ces enjeux, dont de nombreux exemples attestent par ailleurs la circulation à travers les frontières sociales et professionnelles. Le texte retrace en second lieu comment la neutralisation de 68 est notamment passée, dans les interprétations ultérieures et à travers un certain nombre de dispositifs, par la dissociation des critiques de l'aliénation et de l'exploitation, et par la réduction de la première à une simple révolte ludique contre l'autorité et pour la libération des mœurs, et de la seconde à de strictes revendications salariales et à une aspiration consumériste

The concept of instability: a French perspective on the concept of ADHD.

Historical references to the emergence of the current concept of ADHD typically cite descriptions from medical textbooks by Weikard (1775) and Crichton (An inquiry into the nature and origin of mental derangement: Comprehending a concise system of the physiology and pathology of the human mind and a history of the passion and their affects. Cardell Jr and Davies, Londres, 1798) on attention disorders, poems of Hoffman on hyperactive and impulsive behaviors (Der Struwwelpeter. Frankfurt am Main, Literarische Anstalt, 1843), as well as the work of Still (Lancet 1:1008-1012, 1077-1082, 1163-1168, 1902a, Lancet 159(4102):1008-1013, 1902b, Lancet 159(4103):1077-1082, 1902c, Lancet 159(4104):1163-1168, 1902d) on impulsive behaviors and defective moral regulation of behavior. The notion of "instability" developed by French physicians between 1887 and 1910 is rarely mentioned and often ignored. Writings from this period show that in France, the emergence of the concept of ADHD according to modern terminology comes from the notion of "mental instability" introduced in the 1890s under the leadership of Désiré-Magloire Bourneville at the Hospital Bicêtre in Paris, based on his observations of children and adolescents who had been labeled "abnormal" and placed in medical and educational institutions. In the early twentieth century, elaborating on the observations of Bourneville, Jean Phillipe and Georges Paul-Boncour showed the presence of a subgroup of "unstable" children who suffered from a disease entity in its own right within the population of "abnormal" schoolchildren (the terminology of the time). This new pathological entity included symptoms of hyperactivity, impulsivity and inattention, corresponding to today's classic triad of ADHD symptoms. While noting the lack of behavioral inhibition, clinical descriptions of Bourneville, Philip and Paul-Boncour also considered the notion of "moral disorder" which at that time played an important role in psychopathology. This resulted in some degree of confusion between impulsive symptoms and major behavioral disturbances often associated with ADHD