VLVL the "Movement"

[jbor]

on 17/4/04 12:38 AM, Malignd wrote:

> My main point, from the beginning was addressed not to the
> student movement per se, rather to the broader idea of
> a unified "counterculture," the "movement."

At various moments you were arguing that Berkeley was a single campus and
not representative of "'a' student movement" (the Berkeley protest in fact
provided a template -- a small number of radical activists were the
organisers, a civil liberties issue was paired with a university specific
one, a working agreement was reached between the radicals and liberal and
moderate groups at the uni -- for protests at other university campuses
throughout the rest of the decade); you were arguing over the precise date
of the demise of the "student movement" (certainly it was defunct several
years before the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, and SDS started to splinter
pretty badly during the 68-9 school year); and you were contending that the
campus strikes in 1970 "were arguably the most broadly organized student
movement of the 'sixties'; i.e., 1964-1972" (contesting my point that they
failed). The course of the student movement as it is reflected in the novel
has been one of my main focuses in the _Vineland_ discussion.

The question of contiguity between the student movement and the
counterculture (or "Movement") is a secondary point as far as I'm concerned,
but it is an interesting issue in and of itself. I'd still contend that all
the groups you categorise as comprising the counterculture were pro-civil
rights and anti-war, that these were the primary issues of the day, that
there was consensus, overlap, co-operation and even organisational
solidarity between the disparate groups in respect of these two causes, that
these causes had garnered considerable popular support outside the
"counterculture" as well thanks largely to the efforts of the disparate
groups within the "counterculture" who were advocating for them, and that it
doesn't make a jot of difference that Robert Lowell wasn't a Southern
Baptist for these circumstances to have been the case.

That there was some type or degree of relationship between the student
movement and the counterculture is obvious enough (I'd say that the student
movement was part of the "counterculture" and that it was one of the more
dominant groups within, or aspects of, the "counterculture", but I agree
that it was not the *only* group within, or aspect of, the counterculture).
I think it's certainly worthwhile considering what the impact on the
counterculture (and society and politics generally) of the breakdown and
collapse of the student movement was. Nixon's election in '68 and landslide
reelection in '72, the escalation of war in South-East Asia, the
deterioration of race relations -- how did it all go so horribly wrong.
(This seems to be a question which _Vineland_ is posing.)

best