Generations of Social Movements: The Left and Historical Memory in the USA and France

French political culture has long been seen as a model of leftist militancy, while the left in the United States is often perceived in terms of organizational discontinuity. Yet today’s crisis of social democracy suggests that while the archetypal European welfare state is in danger, critics and citizens interested in understanding or reviving progressive politics are invited to consider the US, where modes of creative activism demonstrate potentialities for a renewed leftist culture. This volume uses a transatlantic perspective to identify activist influence through the designation or rejection of specific intellectual and militant figures across generations.