L'expérience sensible du politique: Protagonisme et antagonisme en mai-juin 1968.

Relying on archives and testimonies, this article focuses on the emotions expressed by participants in the May–June 1968 events in France and treats those emotions as an object of inquiry in their own right. By exploring the emotional experience of politics from below, this essay demonstrates that emotions helped establish the crisis atmosphere of May '68 and shaped its unfolding dynamic. From joy aroused by the opening of a wide field of possibilities to propulsive anger, mutual hatred, and fear, emotions were at the core of the "protagonism" of people discovering their capacity to influence the course of history and of the antagonisms among political stakeholders. Thus the article emphasizes both the benefits of analyzing moments of crisis through the prism of emotions and the significance of crises for the study of emotions in the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]