‘Be realistic, ask for the impossible’

There are many versions of how May '68's most famous slogan came about. We are choosing one of them. During a discussion with a Renault worker in Billancourt, a trade unionist apparently shouted out in reply to a student who had called for solidarity between students and workers that: "You must remain realistic and not demand the impossible." The photographer and publisher Jean Mascolo claims that it was in a reaction to this that he painted the slogan on a wall in Paris.

In this debate we look back at the events of May '68 while also exploring the roots of the revolt and its legacy.
We do this with Tariq Ali who was active as a student leader at Oxford at the time. He went to Bolivia, where Che Guevara was in prison, to attend the trial of Régis Debray and today is a major figure among British intellectuals of the Left.
With De jaren zestig [The Sixties], the Flemish writer and academic Geert Buelens wrote a reference work in which he makes a cultural and historical analysis of this troubled and crucial decade.
Discussion moderated by Karl van den Broeck (BOZAR).