May 1968 actually began the implosion of the social

Evidence

One must stop oneself from taking implosion for a negative process -inert, regressive - like the one language imposes on us by exalting the opposite terms of evolution, of revolution. Implosion is a process specific to incalculable consequences. May 1968 was without a doubt the first implosive episode, that is to say contrary to its rewriting in terms of revolutionary prosopopeia, a first violent reaction to the saturation of the social, a retraction, a challenge to the hegemony of the social, in contradiction, moreover, to the ideology of the participants themselves, who thought they were going further into the social - such is the imaginary that still dominates us - and moreover a good part of the events of 1968 were still able to come from that revolutionary dynamic and explosive violence, but something else began at the same time there: the violent involution of the social, determined on that score, and the consecutive and sudden implosion of power, in a brief moment of time, but that never stopped afterward - fundamentally it is that which continues, the implosion, of the social, of institutions, of power - and not at all an unlocatable revolutionary dynamic. On the contrary, revolution itself, the idea of revolution also implodes, and this implosion carries weightier consequences than the revolution itself. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 251

Categorization

• XREF: A rival periodization to Jameson’s: where Jameson ties the postmodern break to 1973’s economic crisis, Baudrillard reads 1968 as the first implosive episode. — connects to: May 1968 paradoxically advanced the narcissistic individualism its actors opposed — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 534; The 1968 generation’s disillusionment followed the events’ modernizing logic — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 610; The events of 1968 actually launched anti-communism and a new consumer capitalism — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 96 (+3 more)
• DEFINE: Insists implosion is not a regressive/negative term but a process with its own irreducibly different consequences.

Broader Connections

• The events of 1968 actually launched anti-communism and a new consumer capitalism #expands (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 96
• Poststructuralism’s piecemeal politics arose from dashed 1968 revolutionary hopes. #expands (0.75) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 347
• Postmodernism emerged as a response to the revolutionary failure of 1968-76. #complicates (0.70) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 627
• Economic collapse destroyed social fabric and private life before Nazism’s rise #contradicts (0.70) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 253