Participants described 1968 occupations with language normally reserved for romantic or spiritual ecstasy.

Evidence

When describing these days, French youths resorted to poetic language often reserved for romantic love or ecstatic spiritual or psychedelic experiences. Observers perceived echoes of older practices in the Western tradition, pointing to the late medieval Carnival, in which hierarchies were (temporarily) overturned in moments of euphoric liberation. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 93

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the description of prefigurative politics and euphoric collective action — analogous to carnivalesque inversion theory (Bakhtin) and to readings of the Arab Spring and other protest euphoria.