Bringing Counterculture to France:ActuelMagazine and the Legacy of May '68

This article considers the nature and role of counterculture in France in the aftermath of 1968. It engages with recent work by Kristin Ross who has argued that demagogic characterisations of May '68 around notions of ‘youth’ and ‘generation’ serve to depoliticise the event. This emphasis on the ‘cultural effects’ of 1968 is linked in Ross's account with the idea of counterculture, but the link between depoliticisation and counterculture is made without a sustained examination of counterculture's actual instances. A reassessment of the nature of French counterculture is therefore made here via an examination of Actuel magazine (1971–1975), which constituted an important node of youth cultural practice in those years. This article charts the rise and fall of Actuel, analyses how it first created and then related to its constituency, and provides key insights into the development and (de)politicisation of youth cultures in France in the years after 1968.