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‘The personal is political’: sexuality, gender and the Left in Europe during the 1970s

2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 22; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13507486.2014.983425

1469-8293

Nikolaos Papadogiannis, Sebastian Gehrig,

Historical Gender and Feminism Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank Aribert Reimann who played a crucial role in developing ideas for this special issue. Ilse Josepha Maria Lazaroms, Rachel Ritchie and Jozefien de Bock all greatly supported us throughout the publication process. The initial idea for this special issue resulted from a conference entitled 'The Personal is Political: The Interfaces between Politics and Culture Across Europe in the 1970s' held in 2009 at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. We would like to thank the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge, as well as the Society for Modern Greek Studies for the generous financial support that helped fund this conference.Notes 1. ASKI, Archive of EKON Rigas Feraios, Speech of Tassos Ioannidis, Pre-Congress Athens Gathering, 1978. 2. Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey coined this term to describe political developments in France and elsewhere in the "West" after 1968. See: CitationGilcher-Holtey, "May 1968 in France," 253–76. 3. E.g. CitationDurrer, "Born to be Wild." Callum Brown, however, estimates a much less significant impact of the contraceptive pill on sexual permissiveness in England during the 1960s. See: CitationBrown, "Sex, Religion, and the Single Woman," 189–215. 4.CitationMarwick, The Sixties. 5.CitationStearns, Sexuality in World History. 6. For the case of Greece, see: CitationHerzfeld, "Semantic Slippage and Moral Fall," 161–72. Pat Thane and Tanya Evans, in their study on unmarried mothers in contemporary England, have argued that sexual conformity in the decades preceding the 1960s has been overestimated. See: CitationThane, "Unmarried Motherhood in Twentieth-Century England," 11–29; CitationEvans and Thane, Sinners? Scroungers? Saints? 7.CitationHerzog, "Between Coitus and Commodification," 261–86. 8. E.g. CitationGunther, The Elastic Closet; CitationHerzog, Sexuality in Europe. 9.CitationKarakatsanis, "'Turkish-Greek Friendship' Reiterated."10. Recent scholarship has demonstrated the strength of political groups beyond the Left, such as Conservative and Neofascist organisations. For right-wing political actors, see: CitationLivni, Schmidt, and Sturm, Die 1970er Jahre als schwarzes Jahrzehnt; Citationvon der Goltz, "A Polarised Generation?," 195–215. To ensure coherence, the articles of this special issue focus on the political Left.11.CitationBaumann, Büchse, and Gehrig, "Einleitung: Protest und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in den 1970er Jahren," 11–32.12. For gender relations in postwar Italy, see: CitationFilippucci and Willson, "Gender and the Private Sphere in Italy since 1945."13. For the Irish context, see: CitationFerriter, Occasions of Sin.14.CitationBracke, Which Socialism?, 194.15. Herzog, Sexuality in Europe, 2.16.CitationMurphy and Spear, "Introduction," 1–11; CitationRubin, "Thinking Sex," 267–319.17.CitationWallach Scott, "Women in History," 141–57.18. Based on this approach and very influential among women's historians is CitationSmith-Rosenberg, "The Female World," 1–18.19.CitationWallach Scott, "Gender: a Useful Category," 1053–75. Similar analyses had already been developed in the 1970s in a number of scholarly pieces. See, for instance, CitationKaplan, Anarchists of Andalusia.20.CitationMaleck-Lewy and Maleck, "The Women's Movement in East and West Germany," 373–96; CitationHorn, The Spirit of '68, 217–19; CitationEvans, "Sons, Daughters, and Patriarchy," 331–47. In an even more nuanced approach, historian Luisa Passerini stressed that "1968" in Turin bred sexual liberation for women, who often dispensed with monogamous relationships. However, this transitional period was marked by the absence of "love and respect" among women; the oral historian stressed the emotion of envy that many women felt for one another during the student movement. CitationPasserini, Autobiography of a Generation, 95–100. Concerning the relationship between homosexual activists and "1968", see, among others: CitationJackson, Living in Arcadia, especially 172–94; CitationChassaigne, "The French Gay Militant Movement;" CitationSibalis, "The Spirit of May '68 and the Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement in France," 235–53.21. E.g.: CitationSchulz, "Echoes of Provocation," 137–54.22.CitationBracke, "Building a 'Counter-Community of Emotions,'" 223–36.23. For such an approach to gender, see: CitationConnell and Messerschmidt, "Hegemonic Masculinity," 829–59. See also: CitationTosh, "Hegemonic Masculinity and the History of Gender," 41–58.24.CitationSchulman, The Seventies; CitationFrum, How We Got Here; CitationBerkowitz, Something Happened; CitationDoering-Manteuffel and Raphael, Nach dem Boom; CitationJarausch, Das Ende der Zuversicht?25. E.g.: CitationEley, Forging Democracy, 405–8.26.CitationJarausch, After Hitler, 180.27.CitationEyerman and Jamison, Music and Social Movements, 130–9.28. For the "red decade" in West Germany, see: CitationKoenen, Das rote Jahrzehnt. The Dutch journalist Antoine Verbij, echoing Koenen, labelled the period from 1970 to 1980 in the Netherlands the "ten red years" of Dutch left-wing radicalism. See: CitationVerbij, Tien rode jaren. A recent edited volume on the 1970s in Switzerland endorses the concept of the "bewegtes Jahrzehnt" (a decade of protest movements), which lasted from 1968 to 1978. See: CitationSchaufelbuehl, 1968–1978. Finally, in the case of West Germany, the historian Bernd Faulenbach maintained that left-wing radicalism was merely one side of the story. Rather, he described the 1970s in West Germany as the "Social Democratic Decade." His argument is based on the electoral successes of the SPD in West Germany during the 1970s as well as on the fact that the Social Democrats set the agenda in domestic politics and foreign affairs in this period. See: CitationFaulenbach: "Die Siebzigerjahre – ein sozialdemokratisches Jahrzehnt?," 1–37.29.CitationWolfe, "The 'Me' Decade," 26–40.30. E.g.: CitationGundle, Between Hollywood and Moscow; CitationHajek, "Fragmented Identities," 107–30.31. For Feminism and Eurocommunism in Italy, see: Gundle, Between Hollywood and Moscow, 150.32.CitationKlimke, The Other Alliance, 2.33.CitationGal and Klingman, The Politics of Gender, 8.34.CitationMcLellan, "Glad to be Gay behind the Wall," 105–30.35.CitationPells, "Double Crossings," 189–201.36. Marwick, The Sixties; De Groot, The Seventies Unplugged.37.CitationSchildt, "'Die Kräfte der Gegenreform,'" 449–78; CitationSchulman and Zelizer, Rightward Bound.38.CitationFerguson, "Introduction," 1–21.39. See: Conference entitled "Writing Post-1970 History: Conceptualizing the Late Twentieth Century in German and American Historiography," Munich, Center for Advanced Studies (CAS), June 2011.40.CitationWirsching, "The 1970s and 1980s," 8–26.41. Several researchers use this term to demonstrate that the so-called "1968" protests began before and, in some cases, continue for years to come. See, for example, the network entitled "Around 1968. Activists, Networks and Trajectories:" http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/research/project/around-1968-activism-networks-trajectories.html (Accessed 12 November 2013).42. Herzog, Sexuality in Europe, 176.43.CitationJameson, "Periodizing," 178.44. E.g.: CitationDavis, "Violence and Memory of the Nazi past in 1960s–70s West German Protest," 210–37.45. Rüdiger Graf, Review of Niall Ferguson, Charles S. Maier, Erez Manela and Daniel J. Sargent, The Shock of the Global. The 1970s in Perspective (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id = 33759 (Accessed 2 April 2014).