The Old Ones in 1968

Abstract

Fernand Braudel once said to the medievalist Le Goff: “I, Jacques, when I am in a meeting, I am the one who presides over it”. Upon returning from the United States in the midst of the storm of May 1968, he found the Collège de France in full assembly and that day there was no question of letting him preside over anything. He sat in the audience and stood next to Raymon Aron, probably both of them in a very bad mood. In those radical days, Braudel stopped in front of a poster depicting a Christ with a giant penis. A student asked him: “Shocked, teacher?”. And he replied, “No. This is just a little girl's dream." Certainly, he did not look favorably on the “excesses” of 1968. The most audacious thing that revolutionary May brought was one more step towards gender equality. Braudel liked to see the structures shaken up, but he doubted they would change quickly. Later, in a television interview, he said that he was not against the fact that young women courageously wanted freedom, but that despite this they remained unhappy. It's just that to be happy (in cultural terms) you have to wear masks.