• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Welcome to My Website
  • Phil’s Blogs
  • Projects Map
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • Newsletter
  • Contact Phil

Phil Cohen Works

  • Autobiography
  • Poetics and Other Arts
  • East London and Post Olympics
  • Generation and Gender
  • Mapping the Pandemic
  • Race Class and Imagined Community
  • The Cultural Politics of Knowledge
  • Living Maps – Critical Cartographies of the City

Formations Of Self And Society 1943-73: A Conversation With Cynthia Cockburn

October 16, 2012 by philco

2008  was forty years after  the student uprisings which  caused a storm in the teacups of the political establishment across the world. The anniversary was an occasion for  that generation, my generation, to take stock, to look back at the conjuncture  and consider how it had shaped  our politics  and subsequent lives.  As someone who  had been a student in the early sixties but had dropped out and become part of what became known as the ‘underground’ counter culture in London, I felt somewhat ambivalent about this spate of ‘memory work’,  most of it produced by ex student activists who had gone on to become established academics. Perhaps understandably their accounts  ignored anything that was not happening in  the universities. One of the motivations in writing my memoir, Reading Room Only   was to  correct this bias, and insist that there was other stuff going on, including the squatting movement in which I was involved, that should be included in the public record.  

A friend and colleague of mine, Nora Rathzel, with  whom I had collaborate on a joint research project into young people’s narratives of place in  Hamburg and East London ( Finding the way home)   and who had been very active in left wing politics and the women’s movement in West Germany  during the 60’s and 70’s  set up a  reminiscence group  to bring together a range of people who, in different ways, had become radicalised in and by the 60’s,  to explore  areas of commonality as well as difference. One member of the group was Cynthia Cockburn, who is a leading feminist, pacifist and gay activist, as well as being a freelance researcher and writer. I first met her when she did a book about Youth Training for a series  I edited for Palgrave in the 1980’s  (Youth Questions).

Nora  invited me to join the 68 reminiscence group and suggested that Cynthia interviewed me. The interview took place in Cynthia’s house, over two sessions  in the Spring of 2006. An edited version  of the first session  is reproduced here.

Here is the programme:  Formations Of Self And Society

 

Filed Under: Autobiography

Primary Sidebar

Forthcoming Events

Things Ain’t What They Used To Be

Cartographies of Violence/Rhetorics of War

Recent Books

Things Ain’t What They Used To Be

New Directions in Radical Cartography

A Long Life in the Making

Political Mindfulness: Fresh Perspectives on Multiple Crises’

There Must Be Some Way Out of Here

Phil’s Blogs

In Praise of the Heimlich Manoeuvre

Text of speech given at Wivenhoe House on June 3rd 2023, on the occasion of my 80th birthday. Reasons to be Cheerful : that so many people managed … [Read More...] about In Praise of the Heimlich Manoeuvre

UNEASY LIES THE HEAD : ON LOSING THE ROYAL TOUCH  NOW AND THEN

Note: This is a revised and updated text of an article  originally published in Livingmaps Review  and posted online in 2021. It is due to … [Read More...] about UNEASY LIES THE HEAD : ON LOSING THE ROYAL TOUCH  NOW AND THEN

ON LIVING IN A GREY ZONE

This text is an introduction to  Waypoints Volume 2 ,  a new collection of occasional writings  from the last five years due to be published  in the … [Read More...] about ON LIVING IN A GREY ZONE

Recent Posts

In Praise of the Heimlich Manoeuvre

UNEASY LIES THE HEAD : ON LOSING THE ROYAL TOUCH  NOW AND THEN

Things Ain’t What They Used To Be

ON LIVING IN A GREY ZONE

On being left behind : the haunting legacies of London 2012

Footer

Available from
EYEGLASS BOOKS
Available from
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Available from
EYEGLASS BOOKS
Available from
Compass
Available from
Compass
Available from
EYEGLASS BOOKS
Available from
EYEGLASS BOOKS

Copyright © 2023 · Phil Cohen · Site designed and maintained by Dallura Web Design