Inventing the French Sexual Revolution, 1945-1970

Abstract

This thesis sheds new light on historical and sociological debates on the sexual revolution by moving away from the question of whether a sexual revolution really happened. It explores instead the literal meaning of the expression ‘sexual revolution’, used as a political concept to articulate revolutionary politics and sexuality in the postwar period. Relying on published sources about sex and politics, testimonies, private archives from activists and intellectuals, leaflets, billboards, university and police archives and newspapers, the thesis explores how the idea of sexual revolution was constructed as a political concept in France between 1945 and 1970, tracing the emergence and the circulation of the idea that the personal was political.
Discussions on the sexual revolution first emerged from isolated individuals in the postwar years. In the aftermath of the war, talking publicly about sex went against the consensus of the Liberation which saw Communists, Gaullists and Catholics largely perpetuate Vichy sexual politics because of their association of sexual permissiveness with Nazism. However, from the beginning of the 1950s, intellectuals and activists interested in radical sexual politics came to constitute a network. The idea of sexual revolution became a way for them to criticise puritanical communism in a Cold War context, as well as a way to integrate their own intimate experiences into their revolutionary politics. From the mid-1960s, these discussions started to reach students. During their struggle for the freedom of movement in university halls and during May ’68, students used radical sexual politics for new purposes, to subvert society’s expectations about young people. Despite their perpetuation of heterosexist stereotypes, students gave a wider audience to the sexual revolution and contributed to decompartimentalising discussions on sexual politics, therefore paving the way for the emergence of the feminist and gay liberation movements in the 1970s.

Date of Award	28 Sept 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Joan Tumblety (Supervisor) & Josie McLellan (Supervisor)