\NN1K KRIFXíKI. (icnerational Difference: The History of an Idea I lie fateful act of living in and with one's generation completes the drama of huni, in existence. Martin Heidegger I n jour, á Gottingue, dans une brasserie, un jeune Vieille-Allemagne me dit qu'il i ill.hi venger dans le sang des Francais le supplice de Conradin de Hohenstaufen 'I'u \ mis avez décapité á Naples (au XIlIemc siěcle). Vous avez certainment oublié II l.i depuis longtemps mais pas nous. Henri Heine 1 (iineris l mi hh;inning, it was only the simple recognition of a demographic fact: '!.n i |'i■ill-rations in a century—this was the average yield of the precarious flow ' iIm n i am of human life through the ages. One generation meant the time III i' inns needed to become fathers. And then, by Littre's definition in 1863, it urn t lie cohori^xhz sum of all men of flesh and blood who make up the 1 ihtcl ihickness of time thus carved out; or else, if time was narrowed to a dhi' point of departure, or of arrival), the generation became the promo-Htin "I all those who had, in the same year, passed the same test. Ii i • only at the turn of this century that the generational rift intrudes into ■ 11 | H ai i ice and is transformed from a primitive means of accounting into one dflhr tools for decoding reality. Simultaneously comes a tendency to shrink the l'i "I the natural space of a generation. More and more, this space becomes In ril with a decade—particularly in the American world, where the divi-.iini decades (the twenties, the thirties) seems to compensate for both the i urn \ ul lerritorial space and the thinness of recorded history. In n.iiliiional societies, whose movement is so slow that they seem in retro-tiii'i iliiiusi immobile, what purpose could a division into generations serve? ' i i• >■ 111■ nig themselves identically, with the same replacing the same, these seemed to follow a cyclical pattern—the yearly cycle of the seasons, 'I" timeless cycle of the gods. When such societies had to conceptualize ......uily, a possible rupture of the cycle, they had no way to imagine i Hi nliitioiis: thought turned at once to Apocalypse. And even when the I i liange increased somewhat, when mankind in its entirety truly entered these societies encountered innovation only from time to time; in- 24 ANNU KRIF.GE1. GENERA i IONAI. Dili i it i ni i 25 stances of realized potentialities for change were too few and far between. Oni generation was much too short a time. More substantial units had to be eml ployed; hence, the era (Christian), the epoch (modern, denned in contrast to thl ten centuries of the Middle Ages), the century (of Louis the XIV). By the eighteenth century, the times for which a century was an adequat yardstick came to an end—even Daudet's formula about the "stupid nineteentl i ( hi111■ \■" can only reflect his ill-temper. The century can no longer measure] ii .ilit \ overflowing the boundaries of such a constraining concept. ( )m c ......., we are led back to the decisive turning point of the Enlighter ......i ind in ih< revolutions which followed it, in order to examine the ne^ ......iii..... which gavi .'Mill effect t<> the generational theme. I'll i 11<■ i •.i>< 11.mi \ , although inoic widely varied by social class and shor '........In Ii v. had become a largely collective reality. Life was ' ■ i . .ii in. i.....\ if. u rii- '.<> totally individual that one could r nl i lib ■ |.i i i in. \ .iIhhit the same as one's general age grouf llu m ■ Ii i iIili miiiiiM in line's personal chances to survive fori • i tit | ■ I nl.......I... ' 111.1 11.11 ii * I reasons to settle down and form link' i|......|i \i tlx ..iiiii- time, confusion and disorde i nl.....I" Ii.....I v or local community, due to tl In III........nil Mi uippcaring. Agnes and her old fogd i1 ...........Inn tin tiii nt matrimony was so frequent! in.....iih nl ..... |iini ' \» In n n was fully expected that widm lil iMiitMii, mill win ii iiiii Ii ......i.....p,r entailed, for women as well li.i mi ii |..m|,im|| in ili< |.....I ..I i. nl il.l. single boys and girls for a new ma I 1 11 hi lyi i.n....... he I ween spouses (a difference that today] ill lull II ii.....I iiiii m i............I marriage follows a divorce, because iln li.l (if i'nlil.li |.n' |......i in.ilh ihlli rent age) t lius contributed to i ..l.|..ii>.............i ip |' i "i 11 , i Ii ails demarcated and separate, because thl .......Ill i in ill i.....I In p. tout tin i through the basic steps of childhood, a(f Ii .in.. iiiiimi|;i . parenthood Contemporaneity, once approximate, has' i nun '.li ii l II iln |......it.....al t.Ki has emerged as one of the more constraining sc. Ii.ii.iii11 11 i .. ii is alsn because other attributes that previously nurtured a sens Individual identity have, in modern society, lost some of their structuring! nificance. The decline of the automatic inheritance of condition, of estate, | of status, which meant that everyone had a perceptible and stable social idenj from birth, has led us to search for another principle to help us classify ' individual destinies intelligibly. Moreover, since the dynamic sector of the l society not only was supposed to, but, in fact, did rest on selection by a cerl type of merit—by ability as one used to say—what could be easier thaif evaluate one's personal trajectory, one's career, by comparing it to that of 1 friends who started at the same time? In France, for instance, we know weB role played in the formation of political, economic, or cultural elites by leM nuaires, in which successive classes of alumni of the Grandes Ecoles carefulll the level of grade achieved by their members on a hierarchical scale. I'd liapp\ , In ha\ c "succeeded," one must have climbed each step at a given agfl climb it six months earlier than the norm is cause for elation; six months '* i......... i, „i....... I Ins is also probably one <>l the Ways in which tin- modern state has pencil iii.l social lite, to regulate and to legislate it. Obsessed by the thought of .......lalizing process in order to maximize the effectiveness of its social invest- iiii nts, llu- state would not rest until it had fixed, uniformly and compulsorily, iIn age at which one must enter kindergarten, learn to read, graduate from high ■ I.....I, serve time in the army. This practice is rendered all the more meaning- lul liv the simultaneous and increasing uncertainty of the Catholic Church, Whose relationship to modernity is particularly problematic, about the "right ii'. for receiving successive sacraments, particularly baptism and first communion Lastly, it must be recognized that the advent of division by generations in . not just by the high probability that each of us may live a "whole" life, ......ven by the transformation of the most dynamic sector of society from a .....i'lil\ hierarchical fact of status to a network of hierarchical paths, though " mi trd by the differences of wealth or prestige. This change is also a result of ■i" I ii t that in the past two centuries the problem of the succession of age up hi Income a key question. This succession, while it remains in part the i l.....g nl same by same, is more and more the replacing of same by other, by 1 |il......cut or by innovative addition. The distance between age groups then .....longer simply a passage of time, filled by nothing except the passage of life 1 .ml Ms ability to produce in turn new life, but a sum of changes which i imi ingularity on a generation by its mores and behavior. A generation is I. lined as the generation of electricity, of television, or of blue jeans. \n.l ii the same time, the birth of generational difference is coupled with llu ' l.nth: that of the intelligentsia, insofar as the latter marks the inter-n .1 two distinct groups which, in fact, are both producers as well as ......I change—intellectuals and revolutionaries. We must recall here i ii. beginning of the nineteenth century, slogans and programs in which nl. icier to age enter the political vocabulary for the first time: "Young N uiiiij; Germany," "Young Europe." Only a little earlier, in Germany, i "'in il climate and its devotees—intellectual, artistic and literary—were i l'\ incarnated in, and imbued with the idea of generational succession ..........lal conflict: the generation of Sturm und Drang, the romantic gen- \iul meanwhile, from about 1825 onward with the Decembrists, and i in r\erv twenty years—1840, 1860, 1880—Russia registered its moods I M • li mges of course through the dialogue, often brutal and sometimes -i'l nl I .ti litis and Sons. II ( ntintitiitions >(ill known that Mannheim was the first thinker who attempted to il" i'i in-rational theme into a theory of social function in which other HMi'l ' "iiIIh t relationships notably class struggle -were seen as the driving I i ....." •••• Kobert Wohl, in a fascinating Study,1 has since examined in .li i nl tin- emergence, jusl before the lust World Wat, not only of the n ii in t itself, but ni the awareness ol its importance thai writers, men iM.i essayists In the different Kuropean cultures manifested al about i lllw Vet, whether it takes the form of a static situation—the existence uihI cocxU tence >>i distinct generations; or whether it takes the form ol conflict intra generational or intergenerational struggle; it seems to have been impossible extricate the very concept of generation from the web of connotations that oil scured it. first connotation: generation or young generation? In traditional societies, the only truly meaningful age discontinuity was thl which isolated the elders. Still they did not yet represent an age grouping (aftt all, the sad "retirement" of today is not comprised of the elders, but rather of tl old). The elders then were happy members of society. Far from embodying tl frightful threat of physical and mental decline (old age as "shipwreck"), th( finally had reached harmony, wisdom, and even triumphant fecundity. Phill mon and Baucis for harmony, Abraham and Sarah for fecundity; these coupll are smiling (the former) and laughing (the latter), proclaiming the privileges ( grand old age. We must wait until the nineteenth century to observe, in Europe, the reve sal of sensibilities through which a generation became not so much men wl shared the same age as men who shared youth. At this point, the mechanisms and social supports that, in the nineteen century, contributed to the elaboration of an ideology of youth are becomii better understood—how youth came to be seen as a period of time at on ephemeral, specific, and privileged. The fact is that such an ideology arose fust of all out of new conditions. Tl development of industrial society both demanded and allowed a space of til between childhood (freed of economic obligations) and adulthood (the time settle down into marriage ami work) a kind "I interlude de> Oted to apprentii ships, whose economic consequences could In deferred, ami which thereto had to be supported by famil) "i 101 it i\ In a rather paradoxical wa\ , tin mi rt Ming dlfft rentiation and complexity professions, trades, and technology within tht process ol industrializai swelled the ranks ol thus......HJdcrcd J......I' apprentices and students—e\ at a time when 111 <- age gi"iino between fifteen mil t«i mv five were in over decline, It is therefore not mu|.....>r tl..... »< t nulentN, including those going tin ( ■ i.11itI < • >li '. \ iii11i|r |ii inI, mi n '< I.....Muni tin Iiim model of "Bo| ini.i11 lih , .1 lili .1 \ li 11'|'i lilll I u' i.............i i . 1......11 The women thl si in In if. had as tl...........I.......1 I Mil.....turpi, niter I KM), in the Jin" Uii'.m.iii '.tinli ni i in 1« • iIhs "in 11** i 11• >iti tlx popular classes, tl "Mum I'lui..... ......... ......till ............iillinns. Yet they wen inn |" i.....mil group '•" tin 'oiik !*•*«*•• - mil Villi llMILM I.......I......Il'llll I I llllflt tin llll -i'll' "' I In \ list • "........ t.....I,, , ,!..... tl,,' lul,In ii VNitlilit thli llulii M Itu H "" I ll........, upt.on army were insi I I.., ..i I.......I >•' I"" duration of stuj [ in ol in iht.ii \ service, ui i ui n t i.i 11 inn-, broken down Intn < lam s, tt rmi, oi ynn i tied .i nil l ili -.'.id lis 111 i.i I examinations); these Institutions greath contrlh .....i in i division ol their population founded in time Moreover, the school and the army, i>\ initiating pupili and recruits in tin- .....i ui mi scientific discoveries, in the latest technical inventions, in the most i. in works ol art, reinforced the two virtues which have been considered as • ry essence of youth: its purity, which stemmed above all from protection it he contaminating influence of money since, even if poor, youth was not |ii i led to make money its concern, and its enthusiasm, which stemmed from loin from any routine or repetitive tasks since youth had no role other than li ipiire knowledge. Il\ the same token, the school and the army bestowed upon the sons knowl- l|.....which the fathers had not had access: the effects of this reversal have I In illy come to upset all relationships between familial strata. No longer is ......Iiu n v with the world and its ways the privileged prerogative of adulthood; ii i In i ontrary, adulthood has come to mean increasing banishment into a stat-lil 11anger to modernity. I lowever, neither the school nor the army were truly new institutions, ex-i il insofar as they now involved an important proportion, or even the totality, i iln age group they mobilized and enrolled. In order to manifest its con- i........- with youth itself, the ideology of youth had to produce an institutional ■ i , r ■ • i .....I .....Iilllh liiiM v.r.ilv mm leased. Whole societies bul i i i "i ........l'i iii'.n. us in American or Israeli society, hav ■tit.......i.....I In* i .in lues ami certainly not the least oper .....i ......i in i In country, either that of the individual or th | III i...........|imip Within global societies apparently tied to the soil foi I'"i ............■,,. i. m i k \ nl immigrants -from one continent to another, frc .........\ l'i' to city, from old town to new town, from one occupation to anol 'i I.........l< i in pni at ion in another—define and organize themselves accordi ii.iIh wanderings oi iheir members. I '.....I the .....st curious manifestations of the advantage of seniority ol ai'i is the compensation which seems to operate between the different types! mobility: while long-distance geographical mobility increases, the mobility! the labor force, once it is integrated into a given enterprise, regresses cons! erably. It is as though after a few necessary experiments early in profession life, the norm becomes to "dig one's heels in," to stay put. Membership,! longer in a craft or a trade, but in a corporation, is so laden with meaning tl even the labor union press, when addressing its workers, uses the corpora naim ul the employer to signify their unity as workers: they are called "les Li| "lei Mil In lin, "les Boussac." What would the proletarians of the belle Fpoc Ii.i\ i thought "i thai they who held thai the pride of the workei meant that •I.....Id hand m his resignation, il not c\ CI \ Othci day, II least as often as he saw III In show that "intin nt life in a Republic", ihev who would never have rplcd tlic loss til linn imliv idiial identities (much less the nickname given to ■ in m i iv t In u workmates) in favor <>f such a collective identity, and the boss's at iliiii1 I In ihifl from age to seniority as the cement of generational unity can final-ln captured in the move from the term jeune classe to the expression young '.limn. Today, jeune classe is an antiquated expression, evoking nostalgia, n was a cruel expression when it described the enrollment of the con- ■ i ipt 111, the drafted, those drafted into the war. Veterans of the First World War i ill defined by the class to which they belonged: it had been bad luck to be in i lass of 1914 or 1915. And when a republican grade-school teacher would ......ion Ins pupils by clapping his hands and calling out, "Come on, the Jeune • 11 r!" the "blue line of the Vosges" could be seen in his eyes, because his l* lit-, were also "the soldiers of Revenge." In the thirties of the Popular I ......, Hit call to the "young generation" rang more peaceful; the appeal was to union of the young generation, which could show the way and complete the i ul the working class and of the masses. i 111iii > connotation: generation-mass or collection of ..... i n typical individuals? In theory, a generation could only be the sum of all those who reach the i|i or the same seniority at the same time; thus the concept of generation ■ Il In biased toward the mass, individualized only by age or by seniority. In ' lungs are quite different. The concept of generation is fundamentally elit- i In mu ial practice, it does not refer to an interval of time, but to an energy i lil ill n provides a framework for one or several experiences held to be crucial ! >>"i ih remembering. A generation is only constituted when a system of • 1........• lias retrospectively been set up and accepted as a system of collective iiiifn il ion. from the plurality of undertakings which may have aroused the " i ami held the attention of members of the same potential generation, ........ i wo undertakings have a chance to be selected a posteriori, and their ■ 11 •' ■ 111 •.i s chosen to represent their contemporaries. To speak of the genera- .....i "I ílu Resistance in France or of that of the Independence in Algeria is— III ■ i li.it of the alioth in Israel—neither to speak only of the resistance fight-•v I n i were in limited numbers, nor to generalize excessively and imply that ■ m m F rance was a "resistant" and everyone in Algeria a "patriot." ' M In i , it is to consider that the label for general use has been imprinted by an Inch has imposed its model. The issue of whether thegauchistes of the ne entitled to embody a generation has been much disputed, because in il numbers (even for all tendencies taken together) they were so few—repre-ni: less than 5 percent, it seems, even within the most favorable of groups, Mo '.indents, but the legitimacy of paradigmatic representation has no quan- ■ basis. It stems purely from the ability to achieve recognition by provid-ihi maximum differentiating identity. I ndci these conditions, the generational rift appears to be an intermediate i u i mg mechanism bet ween the mat ro group, the total age group, and the JO a n n11 KltlK.1l subgroups, too numerous, dispersed and transient, like bands particulars hands of youths. Certainly, nothing can completely take away the arbitrary and even manipulative aspect built into the definition of each particular generation, The history of literature is full of such excesses, which consist in the very sut jective presentation of the whole creative output of a period as belonging to onl given school. For instance, the writers of the period immediately following thj First World War are collectively referred to as "the generation of the surreal! ists"; this is all very well, as long as one remembers that the two geniuses of thai time, Proust and Kafka, had nothing to do with surrealism. 111 Effectiveness If, deipite 111<- uncertainties suggested by these diverse connotations, .....i Ini v Itlblj t" the use of the generational theme, it is because it is undd in . Hi i live I........h IMM hi.hi il li\ the search for a way to eradicate inequalitie .........i in. i|n iln h'. Actually appear likely to threaten the progre ......i .....i .....11 j.»1111<■ ■. I lu-equalization of income, of status, ......\\\\ In brought neater by global yet differentiated po i ■ i In . .|.. .1.1 uf ..|i|...iiuiiiiii •. within a given generation may be ij i if 4-i>I iliiniiyli iiit.iiii iiii.i'.iiti ■. though it is as yet unclear whether sue I I...........\\ mil'Himi.it. Milr effects. The current deba) i In hgl..........I i \ 111 'i. 111111 n a t ion through quotas—thel ..I. miii-iIi ........H.....\ illii.ii.it.'. tht difficulty in resolving the ■ .1......i litv piitiitl i.n ill .mil thereby a principal condition I lilt 11......ii n i. i.....|. h in.', ill .1. i h.i I equality, which presuppo! iiibiny lulu i imiiili i.iiinn iiiiti.il 11ic<|\ the very long-range effects of the alternate weights nnl unweighting, lince the beginning of this century, of small classes—clas depleted by historical cataclysms such as wars or revolutions—and of I .hisses classes left intact by historical circumstance. In a medium-size country like France, the relatively sharp changes from] small classes of the early twentieth century, to those brutally deprived of tP male members by the First World War, to the even more depleted classes of interwar period, to the fuller classes since 1935, to the very full ones from 1 to the early 1960s, and finally again to smaller classes since 1964, and j smaller since 1973—these changes have produced successive generations wt destiny has been partially formed and unified by their weight in relation to I of the preceding and following generations. For those belonging to the classes of the immediate post-World War 11 iod, the massacre of the young officers who had graduated in the classes of 1 *j 1913, and 1914 meant that countless positions, jobs, and roles had becoml cant in all spheres of society; this led to an ephemeral but marked shift to a f youthful establishment; hence, the Roaring Twenties. For those belonging to a smaller class when, after World War II, the ed i uiii and care of the baby-boom children created vast personnel needsJ For then generation hoi n m the repaid them for the hardships ol their i' m n n 1 11| n <■■.<■ 111 <. I .i 11 .II.. live good luit ........1 tin- thirties and substantial!) i lul. I In n n I .im! adolescence. ( In the Ol her hand, t he full (lasses born in t he lifl ies, today reaching the age III n npnnsibility, find themselves, after an adolescence generally protected from llllllgl i .mil great hardships, caught between the preceding classes, smaller but Hum I.....ly entrenched and benefiting from a longer life expectancy, and the "' M iii.illei classes which follow them, and who require no more than the i ii......in nl present equipment and institutions. I In .r in- major demographic facts whose importance is coming to be cor-'i weighed and generally taken into account in the choice and direction of ill inn. Thus, in the sixties, the teaching profession attracted, all at the .......nu, persons of the same age, whose simultaneous aging is beginning to ■ i urns problems, particularly that of promotion into the few desirable II...... which of course gives rise to constant competition between the aging ■ i ili. nils ()l course, this fact could not by itself explain the overall allegiance In is in political options on the left and extreme left of the political spec-III however, it may be one factor which contributes to the persistence of this .11. i'i.iii. c i In . major demographic facts bear equally on the evolution of mentality ........ I ui instance, the appearance of a new type of woman—thegarqonne 1 I iii twenties, with her short hair and freed waist—is best understood as I In 11 ii massive entry of women into the industrial-labor force caused by 1......mug heads of household as wives of enlisted men or as war widows. II |'i h i , and the homecoming of soldiers, brought many of these women i........heir return did not turn back the clock. Women have learned that 1.....Id prepare their daughters to be able to raise a family single-handedly c i In- i \|i.insion of women's education), and that in any case the prosperity (In I.....ii hold is greatly increased when the woman, instead of restricting 1.....luiiicstic tasks, diverts some of her energy away from motherhood II i m 11 iinoinically rewarding occupation. Inhabitants of the working class nl i city like Paris remember that the first beauty salons for women •. i. I i n I <> I (> I9 I 7, at a time when women were working in the war industries in In in numbers. i In Influence of the reversal of the age differential between spouses on the 'i 11" r mihit ion of mores, and the role it played in the emergence of a new nl \uung couple within which the demarcation between masculine and mies began to blur, is perhaps less well understood. This reversal in , i• • • ■ u m i.i 1 came about because a significant number of women from the h pli lid class of the Second World War had to look for their spouses in i . lasses i hat followed them, and thus they married men younger than il......I.. m only do intergenerational inequalities make a case for the effectiveness .......pi ol generation, generational consistencies do also. Here, one i • Id i In data from public opinion polls and electoral analyses, but such u m. II known. The age variable is perhaps not the one which produces !• i differences, but it is never negligible in any area. ii, I would prefei to emphasize the effectiveness ol the concept of II. generation in a field which belongs t<> it exclusively; I have In mind the creatidl of a collective memory and the building of a tradition. It is no accident that the generational dimension seems best adapted to contemporary history. For one thing, history now unfolds itself globally, alJ though it springs from unevenly developed sectors, situated at unequal dis^ tanccs from the most active centers and foci, and operating with different vak systems, This creates encounters, violent or peaceful, interpenetrations, sub! mersions, persisting patterns of all kinds. All these phenomena trace lines of fracture and discontinuity manifested by expansions, regressions, start-upsJ i iti King iips, blockages, and a whole gamut of mixtures. From all these nev I vi mi ., 11 ii protagonists and their contemporaries have drawn part of their owtj Id.....1} i will an the collective experience which makes them a generation ni Ii i i In p in ration "I "awakenings" or that of "Independences." • in 11.....In i IiiihI, elements of change now prevail over the slow, hea\ ......' nl i lii i. il lir.iin \ Since the eighteenth century, history has bee ii i In i ii lili •.. mm i cssion of revolutions and restorations of all lih ii, I......I .....i,Mm. , cultural, religious, social, politica .I I.. ■ . |. i' iillv provided the major milestones betwee i ■■ i i..... i. iiin i.l win , depression, and revolution. FrOi Mmlil W ii I lii lii i ii i hr ultimate event: it broke worl in I nl .....i i Mill mil) European history. It should not i j i I I In 11 inn vim I. mi which a generation emerged, III .'ii pun I.......I in In tin "i.....i .11 ii m ilu Feu." I ill i .........i <>■■ in lii whether, since 1945 and thus ft ...........nl" i i In il ii in i nl .i universal event likely II .....11 In ulinli nl Inn.......\ 11 i.i i has given the search for gene! • ■•-.•.I lil.........1111 ■ • i . 11 |...... iIi.ii.hIii No writer of memoirs, no chro ■ I..........nliloj i 11 • I.....i.l li\ the Iiiiiiiiis desire to reduce reality tot tlilnflhi i i in ri 1 ' temptation to justify his undertaking by making 'I'l".....Hi' 11VI , mil in i r 111... 111 < i his Subject by stating that "to belong to t" |li in i ,ll Hill I ll.ll . ." \n im in in faci BS limited as May 1968 in Paris has, a decade later, bei lubjei ted to an exegesis which inevitably had to start off by situating itself relation to the "generation of 1968": a generation which, incidentally, had att time chosen its own models, its heroes and its titles from the "generation of t Resistance," even speaking of a "New Resistance," although never truly spel ing out what and whom this New Resistance was fighting, except in a metaphj rical way. This rather artificial insistence on dates which may rather quickly lose th< meaning and their resonance still has one advantage: it allows us to outline tf three segments which any event, limited as it may be, produces as soon as it li become a "knot," that is, a point of origin and of reference for a generation first segment, the narrowest, remains faithful to the event in its literal segreg tion. Struck by the event as by lightning, this group will rearrange the rest of life according to what it feels it has immutably learned at that time. A secol segment, a little larger, will retain the event's imprint, will turn it into a persd al object of nostalgia, of anniversary celebration, of thought or of knowledj • .i ii ii t ini.\ m im i i in NCI' H imi will ceaie to define Itiell In relation to It, We can find tins group, enriched mil matured by the experience, integrated into the best adapted strata of the ....... !°ciety, Finally a third segment, the biggest, has retained practically (WithIng from the event and has become woven into the uniform texture of the .....I fabric. IV Wear I his proliferation of the generational idea and its vulgarizing, are they not in I In i ml signs of some sort of premature wear? Do we not mistake for a new ii ration what is in fact only a new wave, easily recognized when it is emergen basically destined to be covered by the next wave and to disappear very • |iin Klv into the human ocean? I el us examine, for instance, what is really meant by the cliche of the im-i ability of intergenerational communication. On the one hand, it is true that I feci that each generation can only speak to and for itself. Those who were, 1 il i season, called the New Philosophers were not revealing anything pre- .....ily unknown about the germs of barbarism bred by the Soviet socialist Ii in, however, they were saying it in their time, in their turn, and for a III i at ion which, according to some, had at first accepted the idea that social- .....Ii nerved to be the end of history. Nothing is ever said once and for all. Nothing is ever learned beyond the .....I Im i (learning. Experience is not transmissible, and the worst consequence i ill uli is that it annihilates in one blow this form of primitive accumulation— [Hired culture. But what of it! This sort of catching up which each generation 1 li i hr. in do for itself, and which thus forces it to speak to itself, to teach M docs not do away with the general discourse which is that of a whole IrlV, in>i of one generation. In this discourse, the voices which are blended, II inswer each other or struggle against each other, do not represent genera-Ihii spirited "families." Yet, there is indeed a manner of speaking and of ■ "mi' winch comes recognizably from a generation which learned Latin and llirrl in which one rubbed shoulders with "good authors" and the noble ihms nl iheir prose, and another manner that tells of a generation that niril in read with "modern teaching methods" and phonetic spelling, and i.....nsy going styles of thought and of dress match their sloppy style of ..... iup writing. And so what! The way in which things are expressed is ill lomething, but it is not everything. In the end, anyone who likes to read III ii id authors from all generations—though some will be better liked than i because, while generations may differ about second-rate authors which pi i iiIi.ii I v iheir own, they unite and agree on which minds and works truly i ..... i heir time. For the thirties and forties who else but Celine—alas— mid It hailed as the common writer of genius? I I" point is that it takes time and distance to appreciate and discern what is i break Irom that which only appears, episodically, to be a break. We 1111111, we are observing I he spirit of a generation when we are only witnessing i I i.l in in a I ash ion so impel I men I I hat it denies having any purpose except I.....i giving a charming disguise to what in—and would be even more were it 34 m...........--- not for iis adornments ;i vale <>l tears. Is ii worth reminding the reader oi 111 grotes(|iic sociological musings on the relation between miniskirts and women' liberation? Generational specificity is itself a fiction: in truth, all successive generations resemble each other in their laments as in their triumphs. Is there even oni which, in times of depression, has not called itself a lost generation? From Ban res to Remarque, from Remarque to Hemingway, disenchantment has the sam< ring of bitterness or of anger. At one time, there were attempts to test out the validity of the generation' al theory by envisaging it, not at the level of one generation only, but as a seriei in.nic up of 1 hree successive generations. According to anthropologists and soci ■ I.iim i .. this represented the total time and the stages necessary for an immi uran! communit) to become assimilated and blended into its new society W l" ill..... ""i ii had enriched the latter with traditions from the old country I l" nic ni i ......i.il' v iiw was in tact spontaneously systematized as early a ■ !>• i' .....Ii .1.1 named Bin Levi wrote in the Archives Israelites, whic' • I i'mI.Ii-'Ih il in I'iii is II I . ■■■iiiiii. i i'. I.. , ih. lulu i .1.mliis mul the son denies. The grandfather i ni. i In ...........I ii,, pinvn in French, and the son does not pray II IIiiIhi .I. 1 i . ill i. m il-., i In-l.iihcr only observes Yom Kippur, 1 ■ 1 lii. i' i 111.11 1111, i i-, ■.nil ,i |cw, the father has become 1 III ........I'l ..I., i unless he is an atheist, a Fourrierist, ■ | i, .1.. i., i |.i..1.1......hat ilu t line .mil type of acculturatioj ,,. i ......i...........i...........Ii t ill ih bet ween different immigrant grou .,,i mi...... ........ \ .......|j I'rriu'h historian, J, P. Brunet, has studied J-.' 11 i. i hi ii.. i.....ih.......iiIh population of a fairly large city in the gread i ,.. nliiiili ' '.inn I)enli«1 which had only 22,051 inhabitants in 1861, beM in.ii.....|| .1..... i.i.l 1,75V tj) 1911. By 1891, barely 20 percent of the cilfc i.i11■.11....... 11 i ii ii n i IMh ii For most people from the provinces (from Nort! i i ii I i 1111 i | \I.ki and Lorraine, from the Massif Central, Burgundy and t \ n i i ilu,), .mil for most foreigners (Belgians, Germans, Swiss, or even En| 11■»11), integration is almost immediate since, from the first generation on, th< Intermarry without taking into account their place of origin: what counts is thj they live in Saint-Denis. There are two important exceptions to this rule: those from the provinces, migrants from Brittany; and for foreigners, Italiai and Jews, who for the most part maintain the practices of endogamous marria; and grouped residency. The second problem is that in communities which strongly resist absot) tion, the three generations have long since passed, and the expected assimilati has not been completed. In the case of France, where we know the vast assimi tive power of a society and a culture which demand a high degree of unity a: centralism in their rules and values, the Jewish community started on its wi toward integration or—as it was called in the nineteenth century, its assimil tion—190 years ago. This represents at least ten generations, including t three or lour living today. And yet, the feeling of belonging to a separate col • 1111111r \ i« much strong*.....w thai II was flft) vean ago |ewiNh identity is so laden with meaning thai h Ii claimed even as primary Identity by the children oi mixed marriages; indeed, even the percentage oi these intermarriages has de- 111ii il in.ii kedly from the level it had reached immediately after World War II. < learly, certain exceptional events may have disrupted what should normal-l\ hue happened. The Dreyfus Affair, the Holocaust, the massive stream of Immigrants first from Eastern Europe and then from North Africa have ensured in forgetting would be impossible. On the other hand, the decline of the ........i state, or its reorganization in relation to other institutional levels, which ■Mi becoming newly, or again relevant—the supranational European level, the Intranational level of once submerged regions and provinces—has contributed in the lading of the fascination for Jacobin-like Frenchness. I lowever, one curious fact must be pointed out. The oldest component of ilu |ewish community in France, the Jews of Alsace-Lorraine who, moreover, i ipearheaded the drive for assimilation since the early nineteenth century, in i group whose singular identity and coherence now seem to have reached ...... kind of "cruising speed." It is as if, as a first stage, contact with the domi- ...... -.oi iet y and culture intoxicated and clearly won over a more or less impor- ..... 11.iet ion of the minority group, depriving it of its most marginal or fragile ■ I.....uis. The central nucleus, if it has resisted and persisted in its own logic ■ii. 11 it the price of internal rearrangements) and has retained its vitality, is 'In n i ipable of maintaining itself as the focus of a lasting experience. I I uis was French Judaism drawn, for example, into a process of seculariza-u Inch, since the Enlightenment, has penetrated all levels of the civil (as I'l■■. .i .I to the state and the clerical); of the profane (as opposed to the sacred); | 'In laity (as opposed to the religious); of agnosticism, of free-thinking, of ' licl (as opposed to all forms and expressions of faith); as well as all shades of ill., i ili.in, of the private and individual (as opposed to the public and the collec-I nllowing in the wake of this process, French Judaism was, on the one i forced to transform itself into a religion capable of coexisting with other, 1 i.......i, persuasions, and, on the other, constrained to give up its religious i.....ni. Deep and dangerous as these mutations may be, they still did not in that the eventual crumbling of French Judaism could be predicted—as vents demonstrated. Other forces for persistence did, as it happened, ii i the old disrupted patterns, particularly through the interplay between 1 " ligious and the national spheres. In this way we reach an understanding of what enables a historical phenom- ....... ni endure. F"ar from being its ability to command the identification of a I.....ii ion, it is rather its capacity to get successive generations to accommodate ■ I III logical nucleus which, for this particular phenomenon, ensures vitality. I i" inn leus can tolerate the emergence, within itself, of variants, but cannot 'iili .i.mil that which is truly incompatible with it. In ' onclusion, if, on the one hand, the Socialist Party in Spain has a more ■ .1 .hi Inline than the Communist Party, and if the French Communist Party, ■■'ii. ni her hand, has a more secure present and future than the Socialist Party, It 1« because the Spanish Socialist Party and the French Communist Party have P ' ii .....ghly able to pattern then internal generational hcirarchy to the genera- If) A I» IX I I I I I I i . I i i hi i i' im INI i .1/ tional distribution c»f the overall population in their respective countries. I I French Socialist Party and the Spanish Communist Party show huge disparities between their own age pyramid and that of their nations. References 'Forthcoming. i thank the author, professor of history at UCLA, for having made the rnanu script available to me. 2Ben Levi, in Archives Israelites, 1 (February 1847). 3J. P. Brunet, "Une banlieue ouvriere: Saint-Denis, 1890-1939" (These, Doctorat d'Etat| Sorbonne, 1978), book edition forthcoming. Appendix—who are the leaders of the French communist party? Once again, the question is asked: what really prevents the Communist Pard from changing? How can we explain that a party—whose general secretary the time, Pierre Semard, already called it fifty years ago, not without bitterness a "flow-through party"—has managed to remain so constant and, one might say, as Stalinist as at the height of Stalinism even though its Stalinism is nov sporting the French flag? As is so often true, one element of the answer to this puzzle can be found if the data. We need only observe the radical difference between the pyramid the political generations within the mass of party members, and the pyramid these same political generations within the ruling group of the party. The date of membership is not available for all members; however, for o$ purposes we may use as an approximation the report prepared by Claude Pop eren, acting in the name of the commission des mandats, and given to the mos! recent Party Congress (the twenty-third, which took place in February 1976)j Among the 1,522 delegates to this (longress, who represented the body of par activists, we find 1 Niunhi' I'ii, ail Membership date 77 \ 1 1920-1944 IM M 1 1945-1957 III II r. 1958-1967 4M II ,' 1968-1972 tu 1 1972-1976 I hu« m it |m .....in ltd I ifiH N I Ii I Mllllil ■u, ill niHIIiliM. I | li I■ . iii■•. had been militants onffl llil mil 11 ilunl "iil\ during the past ten yearf iii 11 f in i ,itions" (not defined by th ilu |* n i \ i, m-fiiis at first glance to matd n......... m ii Inn I he ruling group.2 .....I' mi .i broad sense) the members i ml.....I the ( cntial Committee, the sul mil ilu members of the Central Corj munion for Financial I lontrol, we find, in relation to the date n which each oi ilu ■.(' members joined the above ruling group, a pyramid which looks as follows.- Number / )ate of entry into Percent the ruling group 4 3.1 1920-1944 19 15.2 1945-1957 36 28.5 1958-1967 42 33.3 1968-1972 25 19.8 1972-1976 I he match between the distribution of political generations within the body M members and the ruling group seems to be a satisfactory one, given a natural I h ruing and the appropriate time needed to go from one to the other: Date of Membership Members Ruling Group ■ Entry into Ruling Group (percent) (percent) 1920-1944 5.1 3.1 1945-1957 12.1 15.2 1958-1967 21.6 28.5 1968-1972 31.2 33.3 1972-1976 30.1 19.8 I leceptive illusion. In fact, if we take as a criterion for the generational pyra-kl nl the ruling group, not the date of their entry into that group, but, as for ......1"TS. tneir date of membership in the party, the results are quite different: / Li 11-of Hi mbership !"'|] 1944 i"i'. 1957 i'"'M 1967 |9nH 1972 i" ! 1976 Political Bureau Central Committee (Regular) Central Committee (Substitute) Financial Control Commission Total 10 47.6% 29 39.1% 0 3 42 29.3% 8 38.5% 37 50% 11 45.8% 2 58 40% 3 19% 8 10.9% 11 45.8% 41 28.6% 0 0 2 8.3% 2 3.9% 0 0 0 0 1.....w strikes the eye immediately that the figures do not correlate: Date of Members Ruling Group Membership (percent) (percent) 1920-1944 5.1 29.3 1945-1957 12.1 40.0 l"5H-1967 21,6 28.6 1968 1972 11.2 3.9 1972-1976 in i 0 Thus, although nearly two-thirds ol the members have been In the party f< less than ten years, it is only true of 3.9 percent ot the ruling group. On tl other hand, more than two-thirds of this ruling group joined the party befoi 1958, over twenty years ago. They came to a party which was then the pride < international Stalinism. They must have felt comfortable with it, since the stayed in it. Thus, the renewal of the ruling group has since then been a pseudd renewal: it only takes place within categories of members who joined when ilirj French Communist Party was the "best French Stalinist." Such is its stablT nucleus. MATILDA WHITE Uli .FY \ i • 1111 ■, Social Change, and the Power of Ideas' References •Cf. Cahiers du Communisms, March 1976. The breakdown into the five generations used here| the one employed by the communist author of the report. 2 All data concerning the membership dates of members of the ruling group as well as the date I their entry into that group were kindly provided by the Secretariat of the Communist Party to Je Elleinstein, Le Parti Communist (Grasset, 1976), pp. 185 ff. The definition of the ruling group is th used by Elleinstein. The computations are mine. Translated by Elisabeth HirsC liuliv ■«11i.iIs who belong to the same generation, who share the same year of i ■ 11111. lire endowed, to that extent, with a common location in the historical ■lull, ri .ii>ii of the social process. Karl Mannheim2 ■ iv\ i ii vr death is inevitable. And we are widely led to believe that • hi i he life course is also inevitable, that the process of growing up and '4' old must inexorably follow an immutable pattern. Yet a principal tenet 1 11........logy of age, a newly emerging scientific specialty,3 is that aging is in i iialilv prescribed, that there is no "pure" process of aging, that the ways lili I' i hildren enter kindergarten, or adolescents move into adulthood, or Mi pi. 11 .le retire are not preordained. In this view, the life course is not fixed, nli l\ llexible. It varies with social change—not only with the changing • ■i 11 it- family, the school, the workplace, the community, but also with ni|i ideas, values, and beliefs. As each new generation (or cohort)4 enters ........if history, the lives of its members are marked by the imprint of >i i Ii 1111<- and in turn leave their own imprint. I In I heme of this essay concerns the relationship between the life course 1 .....1 change. It concerns the dynamic process by which social change i In course of our lives and by which the course of our collective lives .....il change. The essay touches first upon this theme in general and its liial background, then focuses on one aspect of the theme, on the mean-il inn lives as we age from birth to death. The meanings we attach to the mi i , the theories of aging we espouse, have power over individual lives. • I I.....i.in lives in the aggregate, too, these meanings have power to shape il i......is and institutions, to guide social change. According to the well- ii du mm of VV. I. Thomas, if situations are defined as real, they are real in ■ hi ipiences. A sociology of age points to the differing life situations that «i i«i ii h social change, to the differing definitions of these situations by succes- l..... "I human beings, anil to the consequences of these differing cohort lit Ho ii ii iir, lor Inn her social change. \riur and Social Change: A Sociological Perspective I' * i 11 ii p.i.i liftcen years, a numbei i >i us have been al work in the sociology 11 ii i iitllat in p .mil -.pi i 11 \ Ml)' i In COIK'cpl Ulli sehe me that inn lei lies (his