A thought-provoking reconsideration of how the revolutionary movements of the 1970s set the mold for today's activism. The 1970s was a decade of "subversives". Faced with various progressive and revolutionary social movements, the forces of order--politicians, law enforcement, journalists, and conservative intellectuals--saw subversives everywhere. From indigenous peasant armies and gay liberation organizations, to anti-nuclear activists and Black liberation militants, subversives challenged authority, laid siege to the established order, and undermined time-honored ways of life. Every corner of the left was fertile ground for subversive elements, which the forces of order had to root out and destroy--a project they pursued with zeal and brutality.
In The Subversive Seventies, Michael Hardt sets out to show that popular understandings of the political movements of the seventies--often seen as fractious, violent, and largely unsuccessful--are not just inaccurate, but foreclose valuable lessons for the political struggles of today. While many accounts of the 1970s have been written about the regimes of domination that emerged throughout the decade, Hardt approaches the subversive from the perspectives of those who sought to undermine the base of established authority and transform the fundamental structures of society. In so doing, he provides a novel account of the theoretical and practical projects of liberation that still speak to us today, too many of which have been all but forgotten.
Departing from popular and scholarly accounts that focus on the social movements of the 1960s, Hardt argues that the 1970s offers an inspiring and useful guide for contemporary radical political thought and action. Although we can still learn much from the movements of the sixties, that decade's struggles for peace, justice, and freedom fundamentally marked the end of an era. The movements of the seventies, in contrast, responded directly to emerging neoliberal frameworks and other structures of power that continue to rule over us today. They identified and confronted political problems that remain central for us. The 1970s, in this sense, marks the beginning of our time. Looking at a wide range of movements around the globe, from the United States, to Guinea Bissau, South Korea, Chile, Turkey, and Italy, The Subversive Seventies provides a reassessment of the political action of the 1970s that sheds new light not only on our revolutionary past but also on what liberation can be and do today.
Industry Reviews
"Michael Hardt's journey liberates the seventies-a decade that our time seems keen to forget- from a double lock: the counterpoint between a peaceful, luminous sixties and the eighties as the definitive introjection of political defeat. An in between time that, from a transnational perspective, we may reread with new insight into shared revolutionary experiences and the actual dynamics for the construction of power for the people. Hardt throws new light on
their dilemmas and their conceptualizations, and brings them home to us. They come intimately close, 'and this will improve our position in the struggles' of the present." -- Verónica Gago, Universidad de
Buenos Aires, and author of Feminist International
"Hardt provides an alternative and, dare I say, hopeful, history for contemporary political struggles. Rejecting the story that we live in the shadows of the '60s, which often ends in failure, fragmentation, and cooptation, Hardt rescues the '70s with a fragmented, global story about struggles that sought to subvert existing power relations and offer their own liberatory visions. And despite the distances and differences among them, Hardt finds another kind of
unity in the concepts they used to understand their struggles." -- Lawrence Grossberg, author of Under the Cover of Chaos: Trump and the Battle for the American Right
"Like putting on a pair of glasses that finally has the right prescription: the edges of the world become sharper and what seemed distant is suddenly near. A dazzling achievement." -- Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and On Fire
"Damned or forgotten, obscured by the 'global Sixties' or by military dictatorships and incipient neoliberal hegemony, the revolutionary movements of the 1970s continue to speak to us. Michael Hardt takes readers on a breathtaking tour across those movements in different parts of the world, reactivating their political imagination for the needs of the present. A must-read book for anybody interested in a politics of liberation in its genealogy and its
contemporary stakes." -- Sandro Mezzadra, Professor of Political Philosophy, University of Bologna, and author of In the Marxian Workshops
"In offering his generous panorama of the militant movements of the 1970s, Hardt does us a remarkable service. He lets us revisit and rethink the past in a way that explains and unsettles our present. The watchwords of autonomy, ungovernability, and revolution that reverberated during that stormy decade did not wither on the vine. They are on the lips and in the hearts of young radicals today." -- Andrew Ross, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York
University
"In this major contribution to movement politics, Hardt deftly combines inspirational stories with strategic insights." -- Kirkus
