Worker-Student Action Committees: France May '68

"In the spring of 1968, Perlman was lecturing in Turin, Italy, when the general strike broke out in France. He managed to get to Paris before the railroads shut down and participated directly in organizing. He worked at Censier, the main teaching site for the Sorbonne Nouvelle, which had been taken over by students, and with Yugoslavian workers at the Citroën factory committee. Worker-Student Action Committees is a detailed, on-the-ground account of the events of May ’68. Perlman collaborated on the book with Roger Gregoire, who had come to Kalamazoo to visit for several months. It was distributed as B & R no. 7 to subscribers—though it is not labelled as such on the object itself. This publication rep-resents a transition from Black & Red as a magazine to a publisher of books and pamphlets. Perlman and Gregoire’s narrative provides perspective on the difficulties of mobilizing a mass action with thousands of participants. Perlman describes people coming simply to “witness” the events, rather than to take action and recognize that they themselves could be actors with agency. Or others coming in search of leaders, unwilling to be leaders themselves. Perlman also describes the way that the French Communist party was actively obstructionist. The party rejected attempts to shut down factories and sought to compromise with government officials and factory owners.The events of May ’68 have been widely documented, but this publication presents a critical firsthand account and is important because it was distributed to a U.S. audience. Perlman recounts his own experiences, and Gregoire is able to provide context for the various French activists.The book is ninety-six pages, saddle-stitched, printed in black and red. It is typeset in Courier, like his previous books from the early 1960s. It was most likely typeset in Kalamazoo, at the Perlmans’ home, and printed in Detroit at the Community Print Shoppe. The image on the cover first appeared on the front page of the French newspaper Action no. 3, which was printed in May 1968. Cartoons, drawings, and reproductions of posters are interspersed with the text. In “Part II, Evaluation and Critique,” large images are printed in red ink behind the main text on the right page of each spread. The images include what appears to be a photograph of a woman holding a flag, possibly at a march, and an enlarged reproduction of the back of a French franc. A poster reading nous sommes tous indesir-ables (we are all undesirable) appears twice. As a design object, this, along with issues 6 and 6½ of Black & Red, marks the beginning of Perlman experimenting with overprinting and juxtaposing images with text to affect the way that text is understood." The Detroit Printing Co-op by Danielle Aubert.