Preliminary Programme

In France the academic year 2004-2005 has been marked by the commemoration of the Lieux de mémoire. The work edited by Pierre Nora has in turn become a “realm of memory”. While the book ended up denouncing “the era of commemoration”, it has itself become part of the commemorative process. This paradox encourages investigation of the appropriations of the term « realm of memory » by various French historians. In view of the diversity of empirical fields and scales of observation of their studies, I would like to offer the hypothesis that the omnipresence of this reference can mostly be explained by a metaphorical way of thinking memory as an object for humanities researches. The success of the term “realm of memory” may be analysed as the expression of a professional anxiety felt by French historians, who see their traditional role in the formation of the Nation threatened by the pluralisation of memories and by recent historical evolution. In this respect, it is revealing that, in his epistemological work on “memory”, Paul Ricoeur uses the concept of « realm of memory » for nothing else than expressing nostalgia for a “model that one may call historical, since French self-understanding has been identifying itself with the history of the nation-state. It is being replaced by memories that are particular, fragmented, local and cultural” .
Hence, if the term of « realm of memory » is being regularly used, the empirical examples which the eponymous work deals with are rarely alluded to. “Memories” which prevail today in political debates, but also in the academic field, have not been approached at all in Pierre Nora’s book. In her critical review of the Lieux in 1995, Lucette Valensi was already expressing her surprise about the total absence of references to colonial memory or that of minorities. Likewise, slavery, communism or Vichy and the Second World War are not given specific entries. Today several authors, often from disciplinary backgrounds others than history, insist on a critical reappreciation of the working nature of the concept of “realm of memory”. Paradoxically this detachment occurs at a moment in time when the term “realm of memory” is imposing itself in most other European countries as a accurate frame to deal with the past. (Show less)

In different European countries, following the French example, projects have been built around the notion of "lieu de mémoire"; in Belgium not. What are the causes? Is it linked to the Belgian historians or to the national specificity? What about Flandern and Wallonia? Did the regional entities produced specific research on that topic? (Show less)

In 2003 the national research fund (FNR) of Luxembourg launched a programme entitled Vivre demain au Luxembourg to tackle environmental and societal problems the country was expected to be confronted with in the near future. On the basis that "identity crisis" posed potential danger to "social cohesion", the FNR accepted to finance a three year research project on the role of "lieux de mémoire" in the construction of identities. As the project nears completion, this paper will assess the difficulties it encountered in working with Nora's concept and the critics it had engendered, as well as the epistemological choices it had to make, notably the degree to which it could disentangle itself from participating in the creation of national and European "identities" while rendering research results accessible to the public through a museum exhibition. (Show less)

When Pierre Nora published the first volume of the Lieux de mémoire in 1984, one of the aim was to draw up « un inventaire des lieux où elle [la mémoire nationale] s’est électivement incarnée ». This was considered necessary because the seventies seemed confronted with the « disparation rapide » of this memory . At length, however, Nora’s work came to be seen as one of the symptoms of quite the opposite phenomenon. The eighties and the nineties were overwhelmed by a wave of commemorations. Another unsuspected consequence of this work was the rapid integration of the new paradigm in other national historiographies. Although Pierre Nora never publicly opposed the usage of the concept in other countries, he never hid his scepticism of the Europeanisation of the lieux de mémoire.
The rapid integration of this concept in different national historiographies is an interesting historiographical phenomenon. Rarely has a paradigm been transferred and accepted so swiftly on such a large scale. Following the linguistic turn, historians became more and more interested in the functioning of their own discipline. More particularly, the focus of attention was on the ways of writing national history . Inspired by the work of Michel Werner , my paper will analyse how the French paradigm derived from the “lieux de mémoire” was introduced in other national historiographical traditions. What was the institutional background that facilitated these transfers? How was the concept transformed? Can a paradigm initially developed to analyse national frames become a European paradigm? Finally, is the rapid assimilation of the lieux de mémoire indicative of the formation of a European “social communication” space as defined by Karl Deutsch ? (Show less)