The recent death of André Glucksmann caused a stir in the French intellectual world. An emblematic figure of the post-1968 Maoism of the Gauche Prolétarienne — an organization whose political and cultural impact was considerable — and then, along with Bernard-Henri Lévy, of the anticommunist “New Philosophers” of the 1970s and 1980s, Glucksmann symbolized the transformations of an entire era.

Moving from the far left to pro-American Atlanticism, his path is in many ways crucial for understanding a strand of the Left that little by little abandoned any ambition to transform the world. Michael Scott Christofferson’s work on post-1968 France, as well as his current work on the anticommunist historian François Furet, offer a new understanding of both Glucksmann and his impact on the Left.

Christofferson was interviewed for Jacobin by Daniel Zamora, the recent author of Foucault and Neoliberalism.