Ludivine Bantigny draws up a historic and learned portrait of youth of the 1950s, and sheds light on some of the major challenges of the young contemporary generations
Difficult fate than that of these cohorts which narrowly preceded the “ baby boomers “: Born in the 1930s, their childhood was marked by the Second World War, and their youth ended in the Algerian war. This generation, which was visible in public space only by the media and political concern it aroused, was quickly eclipsed by its youngest.
Ludivine Bantigny’s book is just as much a historical work on this youth of the 1950s as a sociological reflection on the vectors of emergence and constitution of a generation. Beyond the arbitrary but coherent borders of the cohorts selected-born between 1932 and 1942-, it endeavors to detect the historical, social or political conditions which can lead an age class to think like an “ generation “, Conscious of a common destiny. Ludivine Bantigny shows all the complexity and reversibility of such a process in the case of “ hollow classes »Previous of a few years at Baby-Boom.
Over the course of multiple sides of their history, declined in as many chapters – learning, commitments, war -, this generation takes shape in a parcel, in a feeling of fluctuating and precarious belonging. These cohorts will certainly have known the entry into the Thirty Glorious Years and the rapid changes in teaching which accompanied it, but the equalization of the conditions which it promoted remained partial: subsisted according to the author some figures “ forgotten “, Like young employees or farmers. This generation, that a commentator characterized of “ nihilist and desperate “, Rather will be built around a few pivotal moments, in particular the Algerian war.
At that time, youth did not fascinate yet, she worried. The entry into adulthood of the cohorts studied coincides with the emergence of the juvenile figure in public and media space. THE “ young “Become” youth »: Established as an object of discourse, erected as a social issue, she turns into a problem of professional and scientific expertise. This period is marked by the development of politicians “ youth », Initiated by the Vichy regime, which will know, under the aegis of popular education movements, an unequaled magnitude and professionalization. The media build the representation of news “ dangerous classes “, Delinquents and in crisis, and crystallize on the minority” Black jackets ». This media image does not resist according to the historian to the analysis of the facts: juvenile delinquency remains in reality measured and centered on the objects of an emerging consumer society. Just as wrong will be, according to her, the representation of a passive, silent and little committed youth, that the media and politicians will help maintain at the very moment when young people find themselves at the forefront of the debates on the Algerian war.
This is one of the central – and contemporary – interests of Ludivine Bantigny’s work to light the paradoxes and contradictions of public representations of “ younger generations »: Defined by the media and politicians through the prism of the rupture and potential conflict of generations, these cohorts will distinguish themselves ultimately Much more of their younger people than their elders, and will be more in continuity with previous generations. In the fields of customs and lifestyles for example, they appear far from the deep questioning that will characterize the “ baby boomers »: Ludivine Bantigny, on the contrary, underlines the maintenance of traditionalist values, and sees in this normative conformism an attitude of withdrawal, linked to the difficulties of the war which crossed their childhood. These cohorts could be associated in a way with a “ generation tail Which will allow but precedes the generational rupture of the 1960s.
It is in the end a muffled war, even denied, which will give meaning and momentarily seal “ negative Belonging to a generation, mainly among young men, called in a conflict that they alone will bring the weight: in remarkable pages, Ludivine Bantigny describes their difficult return, in the indifference of a society caught up in Progress, imposing silence on disturbing war memories. These “ called ” Or “ recalled »At the Algerian War, from indignation to resignation, will find themselves united in their resistance to the putsch, but this momentary cement will not be relayed. The author evokes all the bitterness and the distance that some felt in the face of the spared and carefree generations which followed them by only a few years.
Historical work on “ young “Or the” youth Are rare and perilous. Ludivine Bantigny’s work avoids pitfalls – reification ex ante of a cohort -, and analyzes with finesse and eclecticism the process of social and historical construction of a generation. Its analysis highlights the challenge of social temporalities and their scarification effects on generational destinies: it draws the contours of a penalized generation, not at the socio-economic level, but by a war which will mark its emergence as a historical subject, while pushing it in the shadow of the following generation. A sociologist’s look would invite to bring this destiny closer to that of other cohorts, like the first fighters of the Vietnam War, supervised by two generations identified in public space, one as the winners of the Second World War and the other as the Indociles “ baby boomers ». From this period, the construction of a generation also becomes a matter of political and media representations, likely to make or undo a feeling of belonging: these years mark the premises of a youth erected in the figure of public debate, with the distortion of representations which are at stake.