Demanding the Impossible explores the inheritance of Paris legendary political carnival of May 1968, in which 11 million workers went on strike and ultimately brought down the government of Charles de Gaulle, and asks what has become of the ideal and the myth of resistance. The German occupation of France during the Second World War gave the idea of resistance its heroic glamour for more than sixty years, but the recital of resistance stories has always had to do with attempts at the recovery of honour. Questions about where resistance and collaboration met and tangled remain alive and sensitive to this day.
In its search for the power of 'No' or 'Enough', Demanding the Impossible combines elements of fiction, history, reportage and analysis, and cuts back and forth in time and place (Paris, Papua, Timor, Sydney, Ernabella, Alice Springs). Sylvia Lawson's interest in the entanglement of history, culture and politics as it applies to everyday resistance, is best exemplified by – but not limited to – journalistic obsession.
As wartime resistance recedes from living memory, and 1968 becomes faded and distorted, historical retrieval becomes important. It is not a case now of asking what's left of resistant action and great moments, and certainly not a case of pointing to morals. What's important is to tell these stories again in new contexts, dispelling myth in favour of history, and submitting history to the uses of the present and the future.
