Richard Wolin is Distinguished Professor of History, Comparative Literature, and Political Science at the City University of New York Graduate Center. His books, which include Heidegger's Children and The Seduction of Unreason (both Princeton), have been translated into ten languages. His articles and reviews have appeared in Dissent, the Nation, and the New Republic.

Prologue ix
Introduction: The Maoist Temptation 1
Part I: The Hour of Rebellion
Chapter 1: Showdown at Bruay-en-Artois 25
Chapter 2: France during the 1960s 39
Chapter 3: May 1968: The Triumph of Libidinal Politics 70
Chapter 4: Who Were the Maoists? 109
Excursus: On the Sectarian Maoism of Alain Badiou 155
Part II: The Hour of the Intellectuals
Chapter 5: Jean-Paul Sartre's Perfect Maoist Moment 179
Chapter 6: Tel Quel in Cultural-Political Hell 233
Chapter 7: Foucault and the Maoists: Biopolitics and
Engagement 288
Chapter 8: The Impossible Heritage: From Cultural Revolution to Associational Democracy 350
Bibliography 371
Index 385

Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Julia Kristeva, Phillipe Sollers, and Jean-Luc Godard. During the 1960s, a who's who of French thinkers, writers, and artists, spurred by China's Cultural Revolution, were seized with a fascination for Maoism. Combining a merciless exposé of left-wing political folly and cross-cultural misunderstanding with a spirited defense of the 1960s, The Wind from the East tells the colorful story of this legendary period in France. Richard Wolin shows how French students and intellectuals, inspired by their perceptions of the Cultural Revolution, and motivated by utopian hopes, incited grassroots social movements and reinvigorated French civic and cultural life.

Wolin's riveting narrative reveals that Maoism's allure among France's best and brightest actually had little to do with a real understanding of Chinese politics. Instead, it paradoxically served as a vehicle for an emancipatory transformation of French society. French student leftists took up the trope of "cultural revolution," applying it to their criticisms of everyday life. Wolin examines how Maoism captured the imaginations of France's leading cultural figures, influencing Sartre's "perfect Maoist moment"; Foucault's conception of power; Sollers's chic, leftist intellectual journal Tel Quel; as well as Kristeva's book on Chinese women--which included a vigorous defense of foot-binding.

Recounting the cultural and political odyssey of French students and intellectuals in the 1960s, The Wind from the East illustrates how the Maoist phenomenon unexpectedly sparked a democratic political sea change in France.