The politics of violence, glue-sniffing, and liberation: making 1968 in Japan

By Professor William Marotti, the Department of History at UCLA

In January of 1968, violent confrontations between protesters and police transformed perceptions of state force and legitimacy, creating new political possibilities within a global 1968. I consider the relation between a politics of violence and space, and the radical cultural politics of the moment, including art, theater, counterculture, and abject communities.

Speaker Bio

William Marotti is associate professor in the Department of History at UCLA and Chair of the East Asian Studies M.A. Interdepartmental Degree Program. He teaches modern Japanese history with an emphasis on everyday life and cultural-historical issues. Marotti's Money, Trains and Guillotines: Art and Revolution in 1960s Japan (Duke University Press, 2013) addresses politics in Japan in the 1960s through a focus upon avant-garde artistic production and performance. His current book project, “The Art of Revolution: Politics and Aesthetic Dissent in Japan’s 1968,” analyzes cultural politics and oppositional practices in Japan, with particular emphasis on 1968 as a global event.