1968-2008: Constellation and class struggle. The hopes of the past in the present

Abstract

Drawing on the study of dialectical images (Walter Benjamin), the article seeks to rescue historical representations of class struggle in the present. It highlights how, in the concentration of images accumulated in discourses and expressed in a reconfiguration of the past in the present, silenced hopes resurface. It shows how the dialectical manifestations of the past take part in contemporary debates on the appropriation and subjectivity of social antagonism. By showing how these images are attempts at silencing within the discourses of power, it highlights the reconstructions of defeats: both the limits imposed by repression and the possibilities opened by class struggle in the present.