- L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire.
- Boredom is counterrevolutionary.
- Je t'aime ! Oh ! dites-le avec des pavés !
- I love you! Oh, say it with paving stones!
- Je suis marxiste tendance Groucho.
- I am a Marxist of the Groucho tendency.
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Friday, December 15, 2006
May '68
I've been taking some time as of late to read about history and politics, i.e. - "useful" knowledge of interest to people besides myself. The French seem to like a good riot. I particularly enjoyed these slogans from the May '68 protests:
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2 comments:
these are awesome
nice. ones i like:
humanity will not be [happy, i think] until the last capitalist is hanged with the entrails of the last bureaucrat." pretty harsh!
métro, boulot, dodo.
"commute, work, sleep"
[one of my favorites, because in french all 3 words are slang-ish and all rhyme, which does indeed make the routine sound uninspired and monotonous -- but unfortunately in the translation it's not as artful.]
once i read a collection of a bunch of these -- a lot of them were just gathered graffiti anyway, not organized sloganeering or anything -- and what really struck me was the sheer number of people that must have been running around paris willing to indulge what most of us, here and now, eventually "get over" or disavow as mere adolescent angst or a failure to "properly adjust", etc. but it seems to me that anomie is a healthy response to most of the world; and most people's mistake is not in feeling disillusioned or disconnected or disappointed but in thinking that the solution is to go "back to how it was [back when it presumably was better]". revolutionaries may be rash and violent, but they get it: going backwards is no solution-- you have to change *forward*, push people into the unknown, imagine what nobody can imagine yet. and after all, as they also said in '68 -- skepticism is the enemy of movement. doubting ourselves (while i do think it's healthy and necessary up to a point) always carries with it the danger of stopping you in your tracks. and you're standing in cement.
oof what a long weird comment i am about to leave you!
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