Cahiers de mai

The journal Cahiers de mai was created in the immediate aftermath of the May 1968 protests and was published until 1974 under the direction of Daniel Anselme. The journal collected direct testimonies and ideas from workers across the country, in the form of the enquête, an experimental form of collective writing by workers themselves, in opposition to sociological, journalistic, or political-theoretical analyses of workers’ conditions and struggles.[1]  The concluding pages of the journal’s second issue (1–15 July 1968) features a text about the Atelier Populaire, which was published in the aftermath of the police raid of the École des Beaux Arts on June 27th that terminated the Atelier Populaire’s poster production. Members of the Atelier Populaire compiled a document to be published in Cahiers de mai, featuring a timeline and overview charting the workshop’s principles and methods, including key texts, such as the “Motion of May 15” by the Strike Committee occupying the school and the manifesto: ATELIER POPULAIRE: OUI, Atelier bourgeois: NON.[2] The article concludes with a call for the continuation of the struggle and for the emergence of many other ateliers populaires.[3] The text is accompanied by several reproductions of posters that were created by the Atelier Populaire.

[1] Kristin Ross, May ’68 and Its Afterlives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 111-12.

[2] Atelier Populaire, “Document: l’atelier populaire,” Cahiers de mai, no. 2, July 1968, 14-16.

[3] Ibid, 16.