Change (1968-85). French cultural journal and ‘collective’ founded by Jean-Pierre Faye. Other important editorial members included Philippe Boyer, Jean-Claude Montel, Jean Paris, Léon Robel, Mitsou Ronat, and Jacques Roubaud. The ‘collective’ was international and interdisciplinary in scope. It brought together writers, linguists, philosophers, mathematicians, and biologists. Influenced by linguistic and poetic theory (from the Russian Formalists to Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle) and by Marx, Change's objective was to show the impact of the ‘change of forms’ on material social change. Viewed as a real presence and not an abstract entity, language had to be transformed if society was to be transformed. Thus, the important formal and political notion of ‘transformationism’ for Change: ‘the thought that thinks through language and history’. Profoundly influenced by the events of May 1968 and their aftermath, the journal devoted numerous essays and special issues to linguistic minorities throughout the world, and to political oppression in North and South America, Europe, and South-East Asia.
[<auth>Danielle Marx-Scouras]
