pIERRE NORA

Between Memory and History:

Les Lieux de Memoire

THE ACCELERATIO,'J OF HISTORY: ler us Lry [O gauge t.he signifi-

cance, beyond metaphor, of this phrase. An increasingly rapid slippage of the
present into a historical pa.st rhat is gone fo1· good. a general perception that
anything and evtT\'t hing m:1:· di:•;appcar-thcse indic:ue a ru prure or equilibrium.
The remnanrs uf experience s1ill lived in the \\'ariuth of tradi1.ioll. in the silence
of custom. in the repetition nf the ancestral. have been displaced under the pres-
sure of a fundamentall: hiswrical sensibility. Self-consciousness emerges under
1

the sign of th,11 H'hich has alread~· happened. as the fulfillmern of something
always already begun. \•Ve speak so much of memory because there is so little ot
it left.
Our interest in lit'ux rfr 111J11wirr' where memory crystallizes and secretes itself
has occurred at a panicular historical moment. a turning point where conscious-
ness of a break with the past i~ bound up with the sense that memory has been
torn-but torn in such <.1 \\·ay as 10 puse Li1e prohlelll of' rhe emboclirnent or
memory in certain sites where a sense of hiswrical continuity persists. There are
lieux de 111d111oin'. sit.es of memory. because there are no longer 111ilirn.\· de mhnoire.
real environmenr.s of me11101·~·-
Consicler. for example, t.he irrevocable bre~1k marked by the disappearance
of peasant culture. that quintessential repository of collective memory whose
recent \1ogue as an ol~ject of hisr.oricd study coincided with the apogee or indus-
trial growth. Such a fundamernal collapse 1) I' rnenHff~' is but one familiar example
of a movement. toward democratization and mass culture qn a global scale.
Among li1e new nations. i11dcpende11ce has swepl. inw history societies newly
awakened \'ro111 . their ethnolouical slumbers hv
~ ·, coloni,d violation. Sirnilarlv.
. . a
process ol' interior decolonization has affected ethnic mi1101"it.ies. families, ;_111<\
groups that until now have possessed reserves of menHH)' hut little ur no histor-
ical capital. VVc have seen 1.ht' end of socie1.ies 1.ha1 had 11,ng assured the tr~1ns-
inission and conservation qf' cn\leuively rernernhered values. whether through
churches or schouls. the b1nily or the sl.ate; the end 1.00 ot" ideologies that. pre~
pared a smooth passage fro111 t.he past. t.o t:he \'u1ure or l11at had indicated what
the future should keep from t.he past-whether for reaction. progress, or even
rcvolmion. Indeed. we have seen the lremcndous dibr.ion of our verv mode of
historical perception. \\'hich, with the help of Lhe media, has substit~1tecl Ii.ff a
 memory entwined in the intimacy of a collective heriwge the ephemeral film of
current events.
The "acceleration of history," then, confronts us vvith the brutal realization
of the difference between real memory-social and unviolated, exemplified in
but also retained as the secret or so-called primitive or archaic societies-and
history, which. is how our hopelessly forgetful m~dern s:>cieties. propelled by
change, orga111ze the pa.st. On the one hand, we fmd an mtegrmed, dictatorial
memory-unself'-conscious, con1manding, all-powerf.ul, spontaneously actual-
izing. a memory witholll a pas1 that ceaselessly reinvents 1radition, linking the
hiswry of its ancestors LO the undifferentiated time of heroes, origins, and myth-
and on the other hand, our memory. nothing more in fact tha11 sifted and sorted
historical lraces. The gulf between t.ht two has deepened in modern 1.irnes with
lhe growing belief' in a right. a capacity, and even a duty to change. ~roday, this
distance has been stretched to its convulsive limit..
This conquest and eradication of memory by history has had 1.he effect. of a
revelation, as ifan ancient bond of identity had been broken and something had
ended that we had experienced as self-evident-the equation of memory and
history. The fact that only one word exists in French to designate both lived his-
tory and the intellectual operation that renders it intelligible (distinguished in
German by Geschichtf' and Hist.uric) is a weakness of the language that has often
been remarked; still, it delivers a profound t:ruth: the process that is carrying us
fon,:arcl and our representation of 'that process are of the same kind. If we were
able to live ,,vithin memory, we would not have needed to consecrate lieux de me-
uwire in its name. Each gesture. down to the rnosl everyday. ,voulcl be experienced
as the ritual repetition of a timeless practice in a primordial identification of act
and meaning. \•Vith the appearance of the tr,ice. of mediation. of dist:ance, we are
not in the realm of true memory but of history. \,Ve can think, for an example, of
the Jews of the diaspora, bound in daily devotion to the ricuals of tradition, who
as "peoples of memory" found little use for hislorians until their forced exposure
to the modern world.
Memory and history, far from being synonymous, appear now to be in fun-
damental opposition. Memory is life, borne by li\·ing socielies founded in its
name. It ,:ernains in permanent evolution. open lO the dialectic of remembering
and forgetting, unconscious of its successive deformations, vulnerable to manip-
ulation and appropriation, susceptible to being long dormant. and periodically
reviv.ed. History, on the other hand, is the reconstruction, always problematic and
incomplete, of what is no longer. Memory is a perpetually actual phenomenon, a
bond tying us to the eternal present; history is a representation of the past.
Memory. insofar as it is affective and magical, only <tccommodates those facts that
suit it; it nourishes recollections that may be out of focus or telescopic, global or
detached, particular or symbolic-responsive to each avenue of conveyance or
phenomenal screen, Lo every censorship or pr<.~ject.ion. History, because it is an

8 REPRESENTATIONS
intellectual and secular production. calls for analysi.'i and criticism. l\'lemury
installs remembrance within the sacred; hiswry. always prosaic, releases it again.
Memory is blind to all but Lhe group it binds-which is to say, as Maurice Halb-
wachs has said. d1a1 there are as many memo1-ies as there are groups, that rnemlfry
is by nawre multiple and yet specific: collective, plural. and yet individual. His-
tory, on the other hand, belongs t.o everyone and to no one. whence its claim to
universal authority. Memory takes root in the concrete. in spaces, geswres,
images. and ol~jects: history binds it.self strictly t.o temporal continuities, to pro-
gressions and to relations between things. Memory is absolute. while history can
only conceive the relative.
At the heart of his wry is a critical discourse that is amithetical to spontaneous
memory. Hiswry is perpclually suspicious of n1t::mor~ and its true mission is to
1
•

suppress ~u1d destro.v it. .-\1 the horizon ol' historical suciet.ies. alt.he limits the ur
completely historicized world. there would occur a permanent secularization.
History"s goal and :irnbition is nol to exalt bnt to annihilate what has in reality
taken place. A generalized critical history would no doubt preserve some
museums. some medallions and monurnenls-that is tn sZl.\'. r.he rnat.e1·ials neces-
sary for its work-but it wo11lcl empt~, them of what. to us. would make them lieux
de ml'moire. ln the end. a socie1.y iiving wholly under the sign of history could 11ot.
any more than could a traditional society. conceive such sites for anchoring its
memon.

Perhaps the must taugiblc: sign of the split bet.ween hiswry and memory has
been the emergence of a history of history. lhe awakening. quite recent in France.
of a historiographical consciousness. History. especially the history of national
development.. has constituted the oldest of our collect.ive traditions: our quintes-
sential 'llliiicu rfr 1nh11.oin:. From the chroniclers of the Middle Ages to wday's prac-
titioners of "total" history. the entire tradition has developed as the controlled
exercise and automatic deepening of memory. the reconstitution of a past without
lacunae or Faults. No. doubt. . none of the areal
/')
historians. since Frois:•;art. had t.he
sense thal he was representing only a particular memory. Co111mynes did not
think he was fashioning- ;i nwrelv dvnas1ic 111e111orv. L~1 Popeli11it:'.re mcrelY a
French memory. Bossu,~t <.1 Cliri~t.ia;l and monarcl~ical memory. Volt.:tire ;he
memory or the progres.s of' hu111a11kind. Miclielet. exclusively t.he ·'people·s··
mernorv, and Lavisse sole\v the memorv of 1.he 11a1.iqn. On t.he conlr;irv. Lach
historia,n was convincer\ th~;·t his task con~isted in est~tblishing a more positive. all-
encompassi11g, and explic1tive memory. History's prncuremen1. in the last cen-
tury, of scient.ific methudolog-y has only intensified the effort to establish c1·itic1\lv
a ''true" memory. Every great hi!:!1.0rical revision has sought. to enlarge 1.he basis
for collective memory.
In a country such as France die history of history cannot be an innocent oper-

Bet.\\'cen i\'le111ory ;\11c\ Hiswry ~)

 ation; it amounts to the internal subversion of memory-history by critical histor
Every history is by nature critical, and all historians have sought to denounce tl,Y'
hypocritical mythologies of their predecessors. But something funcbmentallc
unsettling happens ,vhen histm·y begin.s to write its own history. A historiugraph~
ical anxiety arises ,.,•hen hiswrr assigns itself the task of tracing alien impulses
within itself" and discovers t.hat it is the victim of memories which it has sought to
mas1er. \Vhere history has not taken on the strong formative and didactic role
Lliat it has assumed in France. t.he history of' history is less laden with polemical
content .. ln the United Stat.es, for example, a cownry of plu1·a! memories and
diverse 1.radi1:ions, historiography is more pragmatic. Differern interpretations of
the RevoluLion or of the Civil \•Var do not t.hreaLen the American tradition
bec.:1use, in some sense, no such thing exists-or if it doe!:i. it is not primarily a
hi.s10rical cunstructiun. ln Fra11ce. 011 the otl1er !1a11d. liislOriugraphy is icono-
clastic and irreverent. It seizes upon Lhe mos1 clearly defined objects of' tradi~
tioll-i:t key bar.tie, like Bouvines: a canonical manual. like the H•til Lavis.~e-in
order to dismantle their mechanisms and analyze Lhe concliLions of their devel-
opment. Jt operates pi-ima1·il)' by inLroclucing doubt. b)· running a knife bet.ween
the 1.ree of memory and the bark of hislOl')'· That we study the historiography of
the French Revolution. that we reconstitute its myths and interpretations. implies
that we no longer unquestioningly identify with it.s heritage. To interrogate a
tradition. venerable though it may be, is no longer Lo pass i1 on intact. Moreover,
the history of history does not restrict itself to addressing the most sac1·ed o~jects
of our national tradition. By quesLioning ·its own traditional sLructure, its own
conceptual and material resources. it.,; operating procedures and social means of
distribution, the entire discipline of hiswry has entered its historiographical age,
consumrnating its dissociation from memory-which in turn has become a pos-
sible object of history.
lt once seemed as though a tradirion of memory, through the concepts of
history and the nation, had cr~ s1.al\ized in the synthesis of the Third Republic.
1

Adopting a broad chronology. between Augustin Thierr~.-s Lcttres sw· /'histoirf dr:
f''rancc ( 1827) and Charles Seignobos's Histoirr sincl'rc de la 11.at.iv11 franfaisf' ( l 933 ),
the relationships between history. memory. and the nation were characterized as
more than natural currency: they were shown LO involve a reciprocal circularity,
a symbiosis at every level-scientihc and pedagogical. theoretical and practical.
This national definition of the presen1 imperiously demanded justification
through the illumination of the past.. It was, however. a present that had been
weakened by revolutionary trauma a_nd the call for a general reevaluation of the
monarchical past, and it was weakened further by the defeat of 1870, which
rendered only more urgent, in the belat.ed competition with German science
and pedagogy-the real victors at Sadowa-the development of a severe doc-
umentary erudit.ion for the scholarly transmission of memory. The tone of

] () REPRESCNTATlONS
 national responsibility assigned LO the historian-half preacher. half soldier-is
unequalled. for example. in the first editorial orthe R.e1 1w' h.isloriq111' ( 1876) in
which Gabriel i'vlonod foresaw a "slow scientif-ic. methodical, and collective inves-
tigation" concluctecl in a "secret and secure manner fur the greatness of the
fatherland :is well as for mankind." Reading this text. and a hundred others like
it, one wonders how the notion rhar. positivist histor~' was nor cunwl~Hi\·e could
ever have gained credibility. On the C(llll.rar~·- in 1he teleological perspective uf
die nation 1he political. the rnili1ar~-. the biogrJphical. and the diplomatic all were
to be considered pillars of continuit~·- The defeat of :-\gincourt. the dagger of
Ravaillac, the dav of the Dupes, the additional clauses of the treatv of West-
phalia-each required scrupulous accounting. The most incisive erudition thus
served to Jc\d or take a,,,av some detail from the monumental edifice that was the
nation. The nation·s memor~' \\';-t:,- held to be powerfully unified: no more discon~
tinuir.v existed between our Creco~Roman cradle and the colonies of the Third
Republic than benn~en the high erudition that annexed new territories to t.he
nation·s herica_ge and the sc]rn()lhooks that pr()l"ess<~d its clog111a. The hoh· na1ion
thus acquired a holy histur~·: through the nation our me111or~' continued Lo rest
upon a sacred foundation.
To see how this particular s~. nthesis came apart under the pressure of a new
secularizing force would be to show how. during the crisis of the 1930s in France.
the coupling of state and narion was gradually replaced by the coupling of state
and society-and how. at. the same time and for the same reasons. history was
transformed. spectacularly. from the tradition of memory it had become into I he
self-knowledge of society. As such. history was able to highlight many kinds of
memory. even wrn itself into a laborawrv of past mentaliLies: but in disclaiming
its national icle1Hity. it also abc111doned its claim to bearing coherent meaning and
consequemlv lost its pedagogical authority to transmit. ,·,dues. The definition
?f the nation was no longer the issue. and peace. prosperity. and Llie reduction of
its power have since i!Ccomplislied the rest. With the advent or socie1:y in place of
the nation. legi1i111ation h~, the past and therefore hy history yields to legitimation
by the future. One c;m only acknowledge <Hid venerate the past and serve I he
nation: the fuwrc. however. can be prepared for: thus th<.: three terms regain
their autonomy. No longer a cause. the nation h~is become" f.siven; histor~' is now
a social science. 111cmory a purely private phenomenon. The memury-11a1ion was
thus the last incarnation of the unif-ica1.i<i11 o!" memory and history.

The study of lil'ux de 11u'uwirt:s, Lhen, lies al the inu.:rsection of two develop-
nients Lhat in France toda)' give it llleaning: one a purel)' historiographical move-
1nen1., the rcflcxin: I.urning of history upon itself, the other a movement that is,
Ptoperly speaking, hist.orical: the end of a tradition of memory. Th<·: motnenr. of
 lieux de mhnoire occurs at the same time that an immense and intimate fund of
memory disappears, surviving only as a reconstituted ol~ject beneath the gaze of
critical history. This period sees, on the one hand, the decisive deepening of his-
torical ,;t.udy and, on the other hand, a h~ritage consolidated. The critical prin-
ciple follows an internal dynamic: our intellectual, political, hist.orical frameworks
are exhausted bu1 remain powerful enough 1101 to leave us i11different: whatever
vitality they retain impresses us only in their most spectacular symbols. Com.
bined, these two movements send us at once 1.n hist.or/s mos1 elementary tools
and t.o the most symbolic ol~jects of our memory: tot.he archives as well as to the
tricolor: LO the libraries, dictionaries. and museurns as well as t.o commemora-
tions, celebrations, the Pantheon, and the Arc de Triornphe; 1.0 the Dictionnaire
Larou5sr as well as LO the \•Vall of' the Federes. where the last defenders of the Paris
cu11nuu1H:· \", crt: 111assacred in l OiO.
1

These lir.ux dr ,,nenwire are f'undamentally remains. the ultimatt embodirnents

of" a memorial consciousness tha1 has barely survived in a historical age that calls
ou\ for memory because i1 has abandoned it. They make their appearance by
vinue of the derirualization of our world-producing. rnanifesting. establishing,
construCling, decreeir:g, and maintaining· by artifice and by will a society deeply
absorbed in its own transformation and renewal, one that inherently values the
new over the ancie_nt, the young overt.he old, the future over the past.Museums,
archives, cemeteries. festivals, anniversaries, treaties. depositions, monuments,
sanctuaries, fraternal orders-these are the boundary st.ones of another age. illu-
sions of eternity. lt is the nosrnlgic dimension of these devotional institutions that
makes them seem beleaguered and cold-the~' mark the rituals of a society
without ritual; integral particularities in a society that levels panicuiarity; signs of
distinction and of group membership in a society that tends to recognize individ-
uals only as identical and equal.
Lieux df' mhnnirP originate with the sense that. there is no spontaneous memory,
that we must deliberately create archives. maintain anniversaries, organize cele-
brations, pronounce eulogies, and notarize bills because such activities no longer
occur naturally. The defense, by certain minorities, of a priYilegecl memory that
has retreated to jealously protected enclaves in this sense intense}~, illuminates the
truth of lieux de mhnoirP-thal without commemorative ,·igilance. history would
soon sweep them away. V1/e buttress our identities upon such bastions. but if what
they defended were 1101 threatened, there would be no need to build them. Con-
verse!)', if the memories that they enclosed were to be set free they would be
useless; .if history did not besiege memory, ~eforrning and transforming it, pen-
etrating and petrifying it, there would be no lir.ux dr ml"lnoire. Indeed, it is this very
push and pull that produces lieux dr nuhnoire-moments of' history torn away from
the movement of history, then r~turned; no longe1· quite life_. not yet death, li~e
shells on the shore ,,,hen the sea of living memory has receded.
•
/

]2 REPRESENTATIONS
 Memory Seized by History

Whal we call memory Loday is Lhen::fore 110L mell\f_ir}' hut ~dreacly his-
tort VVhat we take 1.0 be Hare-ups or
memory are in ract its final consumpdon in
the Hames of history. The quest for memory is 1.he search for one's hiswry.
Of CCJurse. we still GtllllOl do without t.he word. but we should be ,11,vare of
the difference between true men.10ry. which has Li.Lken reruge in gestures and
habits. in skills passed clowll b~, unspoken traditions. in the body's inherent self-

I knowleclge. in unstudied rel-lexes and ingrained memories, and memory trans-

formed by its passage through history. which is nearly the opposite: volunwry
and cleiiberate. experienced as a duty, no longer .'\pontaneous: psychological.
individual. and sul~jenive: but never social. collenive. or all encompa5sing. How
did we n1uve l"rom rhe hrsL 111emur~... which is inimediaLe. LU the :,econc\. which is
indirect~ VVe ma~' ,1pproach the question ur this contemporar~· met.amorphosis
from the perspective of its omcome.
Modern memory is. above all. archi,·al. It relies entirely on the materialitv of
the trace. the immediacy ol" L11e n.:curcli11g. the visihi\it\' of the image. \rVhat began
as writing ends c.1s high fidelity and tape recording. The less memur~ is experi- 1

enced from the inside t.he more it exists onl~ through its exterior scaffolding
1

and our.ward signs-hence the obsession ,,,ith the archive that marks our age.

i attempting at once the complete conservation of the present as well as the total
prese1Yatiu11 ul !he past. Fear of ;1 rapid ::me\ hnal disappearance combines with
anxiety ;iborn the meaning of Lhe pre.-;enl and uncertainty about the t·uture lU

I give even the most humble Lestimony. the most modest vesr.ige. the potential dig-
nity of the memorable. Have we nut sufficient\~- regretted and deplored 1.he loss
or destruction. by our predecessors. ol" potential!~, informative sources to avoid

I
:1
opening ourselves to the same reproach !"rom our successors~ tvlemory has been
wholly absorbed by its meticulous reconstitution. lts new vocation is to record:
delegatiug Lo the an..:hive Lhe responsibility nf" remembering, it sheds ir.s signs
upon depositing them there. as a snake sheds its skin.
What· we call memorv is in l";ict. the gigantic and breathtaking ston-..:housc of a
material .-;tock t)f what i1 would be impossible 1-"or us to remember. an unlimited
repert.qire of what. mig·h1 11eed to he rec1\lecl. Leibnit.z."s ··paptT memrn·/· h1.1s
becoi11e a11 au1011ornou~ institution or museums. lih1-;11"ies. depo.-;i1ories. centers ol"
<locu111ent.atiu11, and data hanks. Specialists cstimale that. in t.lie public archives
alone. in _just a few decades. die quantitat:ive revolutioll has 111ul1iplied dw
number of" records bv ol\e Li1ousand. No society has ever produced archives as
deliberate!~- ;1s our own. 11rn 011\~, h".1 volunw. not uni:' bv new technical means o\"
reproduction and prese1·va1ion. hu1 :ilso h~, its supersr.itious esteem. b~, its vener-
ation ol" the trace. Even ,1s traditional 111emo1·)' disappears, we i"ee! ol)liged c1ssid-
uously to collect remains, testimonies. documenls. ima~es. speeches. anv visible
signs of ,\·hat has been, .is if this burgeoning dossier \\·;ere to be called ~tpon to

lletwccn Mem,,,')' a11d Histo1y 13

 furnish some proof LO who knows what tribunal of his wry. The sacred is inv
. I I .. I . . . I I . . ested
111 t 1e trace t 1at 1s at t 1e same ume 1ts negauon. t Jecomes 1111poss1ble to prect·
what should be rememb':red-_whence the dis~nclinati~n t~ d~stroy an)'thing t~~~
leads to the correspondmg remforcement of all the ~nsutuuons of memory. A
strange role reversal has occurred between the profess1onal, once reproached fo
an obsession with conservation, and the amateur producer of archives. Toda r
private enterpi-ise and public administration keep everything, while profession;;
archivists have learned that the essence of their trr.:1de is the art of controlled
destruction.
In just a few years, then, the materialization of n1emory has been trCmen.
dously dilaLed, multiplied, clecenLralized, democratized. In the classical period
Li1e Lhrte 111ain producers uf archives were the great families. the church, and th~
stale. But who, today, does 1101 feel comptlltd tu recurcl his feelings, to write his
memoirs-not only the most minor historical acwr but also his witnesses, his
spouse. and his doctor. The less extraordinary the testimon)', the more aptly it
seems t.o illustrate the average 111entality.
The imperative of our epoch is not 0111) to keep everything-, 10 preserve every
1

indicator of memory-even when we are not sure which mernory is being indi.
caLecl-bu1 also to produce archives. The French Social Security archives are a
troubling example: an unparalleled quantity of documents, they represent today
three hundred linear kilometers. Ideally, the computerized evaluation of this
mass of raw memory would provide ;,i reading of the sum total of the normal and
the pathological in society, from diets LO lifestyles, by region and by profession;
yet. even its preservation and plausible implementation call for draslic and impos-
sible choices. Record a~ much as you can. something will remain. This is, to take
another telling example, the conclusion implied by the proliferation of oral his-
tories. There are currently in France more than three hundred teams employed
in gathering "the voices that come to us from the past'" (Philippe Jomard). But
these are not ordinary archives, if we consider that to produce them requires
thirty-six hours for each hour of recording time and that they can never be used
piecemeal, because they only have meaning when heard in their entirety. VVhose
will to remember do they ultimmely reflect. that of the interviewer or that of the
interviewed? No longer living memor(s more or less intended re1nainder, the
.1rchive has become the deliberate and calculated secretion of lost memory. It
adds to life-itself often a function of its own recording-a secondary memory,
a prosthesis-memory. The indiscriminate production of archives is the acute
effect of a new consciousness, the clet.iresl expression of the terrorism of histori-
cized memory.

This form of memory comes to us from the outside; because it is no longer a

social practice, we interiorize it as an individual constraint.

'
14 REPRESENTATIONS Il.
 The passage f"rom memo1)' tu history has required ever}' social group to rede-
fine its identity through the revitaliz;.nion of its own history. The task of remem-
bering makes everyone hi.'i own hisu,rian. The demand for hisrory has thus
largely overflowed t.he circle of professional historia11s. Those who have long; been
marginalized in traditional histor)' are nut the only ones haunted by the need lO
recover their buried pasts. Following t.he example of ethnic groups and social
minorities. every established group, int.elleoual nr not. learned or not.. h;_1s felt
the need to go in search of its own origins and identity. Indeed. there is hardly a
family toda)' in which some member has nut recenLly sought to document as accu-
rately as possible his or her ancestors' furtive existences. The increase in genea-
logical research is a massive new phenomenon: the national archives reports that
43 percent oft.hose doing· archi\·;.tl research in 1982 wen.· working 1rn genealogic~I
history. as cump~1red \\'ith the 3~ percem who we1·e university researchers. Lt. is
striking that we owe the most signihrnnt histories of biology, physics. medicine.
and music not to professional historians but to biologists. physicists. doctors. and
musicians. Educators themselves have taken charge of the history of education,
from physical education to instruction in educarion,il philosophy. In the ,,·ake of
attacks on established domains of kno,,,ledge. each discipline has sought valida-
tion in the retrospective perusal of its own origins. Sociology goes in search of it5:
founding fathers: anthropology undertakes to explore its own past. from the
sixteenth-century chroniclers to the colonial administrators. Even literarv criti-
cism occupies itself' in rel i-:icing the genesis tir its catcgorit:s and tradition. As Cnr
history, positivism. long since abandoned h~- professional historians. has f'ound in
this urgent need a popularity and necessity it never kne\\' before. The decom-
position of memor~•-history has multiplied the nurnber of private rnemo1·ies
demanding their individual histories.
An orde1· ls given to remember. butt.he responsibility is mine and it is I who
must remember. One or the costs of the historical metamorphosis or memory has
been a wholesale pre()CC11pat:ion with die individual psychology of remembering.
Indeed, the two phenomena are so intimately linked t:hat. one can hard)~, avoid
comparing them. down t.o their exact chronological coincidence. At the encl of
t~e last cenlury, when the decisive blow 10 traditional balances was felt-in par-
llc~lar the disintegration o\" the rural wor\d.,....-1nemury tlppearcd at the center of
P~ilosophica! thought, with Bergson; at the core of the psychological per~ona!it~'-
with Freud; at the hean of liter,;ry autobiography. with Proust. \.\le t)\Ve to Freud
and to Proust those two illt:imate ;111d y~t universal sites or memory, t.he primal
scene and the celebrated /H'lil1' 111r1.d1,(einr'. The transform~tiun of' memory implies
~ d~cisive shift rrom the his1orica! t.u the psychological. from t.he social to the
1nd1 vidun!, rrom the ()}~jective message 1.0 it.s subjective reception. from repetition
to rememoration. The total psychologization ur contemporary memory enwils a
completely new economy oC 1.hc identity or the .selL the nwchanics or memor~'.
a nd the relevance of the past.

Be1.ween f\,lemory and History 15

 In Lhe last analysis, iL is upon the individual and upon the individual alo
that the constraint of memory weighs insistently as well as imperceptibly. T~e
atomization of a gener;:il memory into a private one has given the obligatio e
to remember a power of internal coercion. It gives everyone Lhe necessit, t
remember and to protect the trappings of identity; when memory is 110 lo~ge~
everywhere, it ,vill not. be anywhere unless one takes the responsibility to reca _
I.lire it through individual means. The less mcmoq1 is experienced collectivej,
the more it will require individuals to undertake to become themselves memo/~
individuals, as _if an inner voice were to tell each Corsican "You must be Co;.
sican'· and each Bret.on "You must be Breton.'" To u11clerstancl the force and
ap1~eal of this sense of obli~ation, perhaps we should 1.~1i.nk of .Jewish memory,
which has recenli)' been revived among many nonpracucmg·Jews. In this tradi-
tion. which has no other hiswrr tliau iLs uwn memory, I.CJ be .I ewish is Lu remember
that one is such: but once this incontestable memory has been interiorized, it
eventually demands full recognition. \i\1 hat is being remembered? In a sense, it is
memory iLself. The psychologization of' memory has thus given every individual
t.he sense that his or her salvation uli.imatdy depends on the repayment of an
impossible debt.

In addition to archive-memory and duty-memor}', a third aspect is needed to

complete the picture of this modern metamorphosis: distance-memory.
This is because our relation to the past, at least as it reveals itself in major
historical studies. is something entirely different from what we would expect from
a memory: no longer a retrospective continuity but the illumination of disconti-
nuity. In the history-memory of old. accurate perceptions of the past were char-
acterized by the assumption that 1lte past could be retrieved. The past could
ahvays be resuscitated by an effort of rememorarion; indeed, the present itself
became a son of recycled, up-dated past. realized as the presenl through such
welding and anchoring. True, for Lhere t.o be a sense of the past there had 1.0 be
a "before" and an '·after," a chasm had to intervene between the present and the
past. But this was not so much a separation experienced as radical difference as
it ,..,,as a lapse experienced as a filic11.ion 1.0 be restored. Progress and decadence, I
the two great themes of historical intelligibili1y at least. since modern times, both '
aptly express this cult of continuity, the confident assumption of knowing to
whom and to what we owe our existence-whence the importance of the idea of
"origins," an already profane version of the mythological narrative, but one that
contributed to giving meaning .and a sense of the sacred LO a society engaged in
a nationwide process of secularization. The greater the origins, the more they
magnified our greatness. Through the past we venerated above all ourselves.
It is this relation which has been broken. Just as the fut.un-.:-formerly a vis-
ible. predictable, manipulable. well-marked extension of the present-has come

}6 REPRESENTATIONS
LO seern invisible, unpredicwhle. unco11Lruliable ..~o havt: we gune froni Lhe idea
ofa visible past 1.0 an invisible one; from i.L solid and s1.e;.1dy pas\ lO our rractured
past: fro111 ,1 histury s()ught. in the cun1inui1.y of memory t.o a memory GISI in the
discontinui1.y or history. We speak 110 longer 01· ··origins" hu 1 nl" "birlhs.'' l~iven 1.0
us as i-;lc\icdl}' other. the past has become a world apart. lro11ically. modern
memory reveals itself most genuinely when it shows how far we have come awav
from it.
We shuulcl not. believe. however. Lhat this sense of discontinuitv fo1ds only
unfocused and vague expression. P;iradoxically. distance demands the mjJ/nodu:-
ment that negates it while giving i1 resonance. Never have we longed in a more
physical manner t.o evoke 1.he weight of the land at our feet. the hand of the devil
in the year I000. or the stench of eighreenrh-cenltlrv cities. 1..-'et ()Ill~, in ;·1 regime
of disco1ninuity are such halluci11a1.i1.H1::-: ul" t.he pasl conceivable. Our relation to
the past is no\\' formed in a subt.k play beLween its imraClability a1Jci iLs disap-
pearance. a question of a representation-in the original sense of the word-
radicall:' clifferenl from the old ideal or resurrecr.ing the past. As comprehensiYe
as it may have wished to be. in practice such a resurrection implied a hierarch~·
or memory. ordering the perspective of the past beneath the gaze of a static
present b: the skillful manipulation of light ~Ille! shadow. But the loss of a single
1

explanatory principle, while casting Lis into a rragmentecl universe, has promoLecl
every ol~ject-even the most humble. the most improbable. the most inacces-
sible-to 1he r\igni1~. oLt hiswrica! m_vster:·- Since no one kno\\"S what the p;tst will
be made of next. anx.ieLv wrns evervi.hing· into ;1 trace. a possible indication. a
him of history thal cont;_;minaLes the innoc~nce of all things.
Representation pnKeeds by su·c.uegic higlilighting, selecting samples and mul-
tiplying ex~unples. Ours is an intense!~' retinal and powerfully televisual memory.
We can link the acclaimed "return ol' the narrative" evident in recent historical
writing and the omnipotence of imagery ancl cinema in contemporary culture-
even if. to he .sure. this narrative is ver~' different. from traditional narrative, \Vith
Its syncopated parts and formal closure. How czm we not: connect our scrupulous
respec1 for archival documents. themselves l'ragments put. before our eyes. and
t_he unique l"r:ime we g-ivc 1.0 oral li1.er.11 ure. quoting informants to render i1nel-
ligible their w>ices-;1rc :hcv ncH dcar!v conncucd 10 the sense or directness that
We have henlnle accust.omc.d to ,,::\se\vl~t're~ How can we b111 :-;ee ill our taste f'or
everyclc1y lire in 1he past ci resnrl to the only 1·en1:1inillg rne~1ns f"or restoring the
n~~ot· or Lhings. the slow rh~ 1hms of" pas\ times-and in the anonymous hi(;gra-
1

p lies of ordinary people the understanding· that t.hc 111;1.sses du not allow 1.hern-
wt;
selves LO he 111eas11rcd as a 111ass:" How c;111 f"ail 10 read. in 1he shards nf1hc p;1st
delivered Lo LIS hv so manv microhistories. the will rn make the historv we are
i·econst.ructing e~ual 10 th-e history we have lived:" \Ne could speak cirninor-
tneniory ii' all mirrors did 1101. reflect the same-l"or i[ i-s difference that we are
seeking, and in Lhe image or this di ffc1·ence. the ephemeral spectacle oLm u nre-

lkl\,·ecn i\•lemorv ;111d Hist or\" 17

 coverable identity. It is no longer genesis that we seek but instead the deci h
rnent of what we are in the liglu of what we arc no longer. p er.
Strangely, this alchemy of essentials contributes to making the practice
hiswry-from v11 hich the relentless drive toward the future ought LO have excus of
us-a repository for the secreL~ of the present. This thaumaturgical operatione~
accomplished more by the historian than by history. The historian's is a stran is
fate; his role and place in society were once simple and clearly defined; to be t~e
spokesman of the past and the herald uJ" the f uLU re. 1n this capacity his perso~
counted less than his services; his role was that of" an erudite transparenc)', a
vehicle of transmission, a bridge st.retched as lightly as possible betv. een the raw
1

materiality of the document and its inscription in me111ory-ulti111ately, an

absence obsessed with objectivity. But with the disintegration or history-memm·,
a new type of historian e1ne1·ges who. unlike his precursors. is ready tu confe:~
the intimate relation he maintains to his su~ject. Beuer still, he is ready to pro-
claim it, deepen it, make of it not the obstacle but. the means of his understanding.
Imagine a society entirely absorbed in its ov. ,n hisLOricity. It would be inca-
pable of producing historians. Living entirely under the sign of the future, it
would satisfy itself ,.,,ith automatic self-recording processes and auto-invemory
machines, postponing indefinitely the task of understanding itself. By contrast,
our society-torn from its memory by the scale of its transformations but all the
more obsessed with understanding itself historically-is forced to give an increas-
ingly central role to the operations that take place within the historian. The his-
torian is one who prevents histol')' from becoming 111ere(1• history.
In the same way that we owe our historical overview to a panoramic distance,
and our artificial hyper-realization of the past to a definitive estrangement, a
changing mode of perception returns the historian. almost against his will, to the
traditional objects from which he had turned away, the common knowledge of
our national memory. Returning across the threshold of one's natal home, one
finds oneself in the old abode, now uninhabited and practically unrecognizable-
with the same family heirlooms. but under another light; befOre the same atelier,
but for another task; in the same rooms, but with another role. As historiography
has entered its epistemo1ogical age, with rnernory ineluctably engulfed by history,
the historian has become no longer a rnemory-individua\ but, in himself. a lieu.de
11u:'11wire.

Les Lieux de MCmoire:

Another History

Lieux de mimoire are simple and ambiguous, natural and artificial, al

once immediately available in concrete sensual experience and susceptible to the i,
most abstract elaboration. Indeed, they are lie1tx in three senses of the word-

]8 REPRESENTATIONS
 material, symbolic, and functional. Even an apparenlly purely material site, like
an archive, becomes a lieu de 111.l!moin· only if the imagina1ion invests it with a sym-
bolic aura. A purely fu11niu11al site, like a classroom manual. a testament, or a
veterans· reunion belongs to the category only inasmuch as it is also the ol~jec1. of
a ritual. And the observance of a commemorative minute of silence. an extreme
example of a strictly symbolic action. serves as a concentrated appeal to memory
by literally breaking a temporal continuity. iV[oreover. the three aspects alwa~'S
coexist. Take, for example. the notion of a historical generation: it. is material b~,
its demographic cornent a11d supposedly- functional-since memories are crystal-
lized and transmitted from one generation tu the next-but it is also symbolic,
since it characterizes, by referring to events or experiences shared by a small
minority, a larger group thm may not have participated in them.
Lieux de mfmvire are created by a play of memory and history. an interaction
of two factors that results in their reciprocal overdetermination. To begin with.
there must be a will to remember. If we \\:ere to abandon this criterion. we would
quickly drift into admitting virtually everything as worthy of remembrance. One
is reminded of the prudent rules of old-fashioned historical criticism. which dis-
tinguished between ·'<lirect sources:· intentionally produced b~, socier~, with a view
Lo their future reproduction-a law or a work of art. for example-and the indis-
criminate mass of"indirect sources:· comprising all the testimon~' an epoch inad-
vertently leaves to historians. W"ili1uut the internion to remember, lirn1x de nu'lnoirt'
would be indistinguishable from lit'//.\" d'histoirf'.
On the other hand, it is clear r.hat without the intervention of history. time.
and change. we would contenl ourselves with simply a schematic outline of Lhe
objectsor memory. The lieux we speak of. then, are mixed, h)'bricl. mutant. buu11d
intimate!}' with life and de~nh. with time and eternit.y: enveloped in a ivliibius slrip
of the collective and t.he individual. the sacred and t:he profane, the im111utable
and the mobile. For ifwe accepl that the mos1 fundamental purpose or the lit!U de
mem.oirr. is to s1op time. tu block t.he wurk CJ!" J"CJrgerling. t.o establish a st.ate ur
things, Lo immort.rtlize deal h. to materialize the immaterial-just as if gold were
the only memory or money-all of 1.his in order to capture a maximum ol"
meaning in the fewest. of signs, it is also clear that lit?11x tf,, mduwire only exisl
because of their capacity for metamorphosis. an endless recycling ortheir
meaning and an unpredictable proliferation of their ramifications.
Let us take two very different examples. First.. t.he Revolutionary calendar,
which was very much a lit:u d,• 11u'moi1p since. as a calendar. it was designed to
pr~vide the a priori frame of' ref"erence for all possible memory while, as a revo-
lut,onar>, document, through its nomenclature and symbolism, it was supposed
to "open a new book to history," as its principal author arnbi1.iously put. it, or to
:•return Frenchmen entirely t.o themselves," according to another of-"its advocates.
fhe function of"the calendar, it ,,:as thought, would be LO halt history at the hour
of the Rtvulution by indexing future months, days, centuries, and years t.o the

Bet\\'ccn Mcrnorv ;ind 1-1;~.,,,.,, I0

 Revolutionary epic. Yet, to our eyes, what further qualifies the revolutionary cal-
endar as a lieu de mbnoire is its apparcntl)1 inevitable failure to have become what
its founders hoped. If we still lived today according to iLs rh)1thm, ir would have
become as familiar to us as the Gregorian calendar and would consequentlv, hav e
lost its interest as a lieu de nuhnoirc. 1t would have mehed into our memorial land.
scape. serving only to date every other conceivable memorial site. As it turns out
its l'ailure has not been complete; key dat.es still emerge from it to which it wilj
alwa)'S remain attached: VendCmiaire, Tl1ermidor, Brumaire. Just so, the lieu de
mim,oirr' 1urns in on itself-an arabesque in the defonni11g mirror that: is its truth.
Let us consider too the celebrated Tour de la Fra.na jJllr deux f~uJhnts. also incon.
testably a lieu. de mrJmoirc; like the PeLil Lavisst, it I.rained the memory of millions of
French boys and girls. Thanks tu it. the Minister of' Public Instruction could draw
l1is pocket watch at 8:US A.M. and· declare, "All of' our chilcli-en are crossing the
Alps." Moreover,' the Tou.r was a11 inventor)' of what one ought LO know about
France, an exercise in identif-ication and a voyage of initiation. Bur here things
get rnore complicated: a close reading shows that as of its publication iii 1877,
the Tvu.r portrayed a France that no longer existed, and that in this year, when
Ma)' 16 saw the consolidation of the Third Republic. it drew its seductive power
from a subtle enchantment with the past. As is so often the case with books for
children, the Tuu.r owed its initial success to the memory of adults. And later?
Thirty-five years after publication, on the eve of the war of 19 I 4 when it was still
a sovereign text, it seemed already a nostalgic instit.ut.ion: despite revisions, the
older edition sold more than the ne"''· Then the Tour became rare, employed only
in marginal areas in the remote counr.rysiclc. Slipping out of collective memory,
it entered historical memory, then pedagogical memory. For its centennial, in
l 9i7, however, just as the sales of an autobiogra ph,· from the provinces, Pierre
Ht:lias·s Le Cltcval d'orgueit, reached a million copies and when an incl us trial France
stricken by economic crisis discovered its oral memory and peasant roots, t.he Tour
was reprinted, and once again entered the collective memo1-y. a different one this
time, but still subjecl to being forgotten and revived in the future. \IVhat is the
essence of this quintessential lieu de mCm.oirr-its original intention or its return in
the cycles of memory? Clearly both: all liPux de mtmnirr are objects w.ises en abime.

It is this principle of double identity that enables us to map, within the indef-
inite·mulliplicity of sites, a hierarchy, a set of limits, a repertoire of ranges. This
principle is crucial because, if one keeps in mind the broad categories of the
genre-anything pertaining to the cult of the dead, anything relating to the pat-
rimony, anything administering 1.he presence of the past within the present-it is
clear that some seemingly improbable objects can be legitimately considered lieux
dr' 111.C'lnoirr while, conversely, many that seem t.o fit by definition should in fact be
excluded. VVhat makes certain prehis_toric, geographical, archaeological locations

20 REPRESENTATIONS
 important as sires is orten preci:-:.elr whaL uughr lu exclude them from being Lieux
de mimoire: the absolute absence of a will to remember and, by way of compensa~
tion, the crushing weight i111posed un them by time, scie11ce, and the dreams of
men. On the other hand, not every border marking has 1.he credentials of the
Rhine or the Finisttre. that "Land's End" at the tip or Britt.any ennobled in the
pages of iv[ichelet.. Every constitu_tion, every diplomatic treaty is a Lieu rt,, minwire,
although the constiLULion or 179~ lavs a differelll claim than th<ll or I 791. given
the foundational sr.atus of the Declaration of the Rights of Man: and the peace of
Nimwegen has a different status than, at both ends of the history of Europe. the
Verdun compromise and the Yalta conference.
Amid d1ese complexities. it is memory that dictates \vhilc history writes: this
is why both histor~; books Jnd historical events merit special au.e1uiun ..·\s llll:'111·
ory's ide::d hist.orical instruments, rat.her Lhan as permutations or hiswry and
memory, they inscribe a neat border around a domain of memory. A re not every
great historical work and the historical ge111·e itself. every gre.:it event and the
notion of event iLself. in some sense by defini1ion lie-u.x de mt11110i.re':: The question
calls for a precise anS\\'Cr.
Among history books. only those founded on a re\·ision of mernor~, or serving
as its pedagogical breviaries are li!!uX de 111i11wire. In France. there hc1ve been
relativelv few moments that have established a new hist.Orica! memory. The
thineenth•centur.v Grnnde.1 Chnmiques de Franu condensed dvnastic memory and
established rhe model for several cenr.uries ol' historiography. l 11 the sixteenth
century, during the \ \lars of Religion, the school
1
or SO•cJlled ·'perfect histor~-·,
destroyed the legend of r.he monarchy's Trojan origins and restored Gaulish
antiquity: Etienne Pasquier·s Recherdws dt! la France ( 1:)99), by the very modernity
of its title (referring to "research" and "France" 1·ather than to chronidi.ng and
dynastic rule). is an emblematic example. The historiography oF the late Rest.o-
ration abruptly introduced the modern conception of history: Thierry's Lt'llrt's
sur l'histoire de France ( 1820) provided the in~1ugural impulse, and their publication
as a volume in 1827 coincided. within a rew months. with an illustrious beginner's
first book. iviichelet's Prlcis rl'histoirr' 11wdanf' and with Guizot's rirst. lecrures on "the
history of European civilization ::me\ of France.'' Next. came the advent of national
positivist history, whose rnanil'esto was the /-?1'1111.1' hisforiq11f' ( 1876) and whose mon-
ument is still L1visse·s twenlv•seven-volume H1:~1oir1 de Vin11.a:. One could also cite
1

the rise or memoirs. as well ;ts autobiographies and diaries. C:hateaubriand's 1Vft•.
moires d'oufn:•lmnbe. Stendhal's \ii.,, rit: 1--frn,~,, JJrulurd, and r.he.founwl d'Ami.cl are lieux
de mimofrr. not because they arc bigger or beuer examples but because they com-
.plicat.e the simpk exercise ul" memory wit.ha set. of questions directed l.o 111eI11ury
itself. As much can be said f'or lhe memoirs of statesmen. From Sully to de Caulle,
froni Richelieu's 1l!slament. to the iVlt;morin! de Sainte.Hilinu: or Poin.car(:'s Journal,
the genre has its constants and specificities, independent. of the uneven ~1alue uf
the texts. It. implies an awareness of' other memoirs, a superimposition of the man

Between t-,'1c111nry and Hiswry 21

 of lett~rs a1~c\ the man o~ acti~n, the ~de'.1t.ificalion _of in~livi_clual discourse with
collecuve chscourse, the 111sert10n ·of 111c\1v1clual rat1onal1ty mto raison d'etat: ,
11
motifs that, in the broad perspective of national memory, compel us to think ~f
them as lieUx de ml!moire.
As for "great events," only rwo types are especially pertinent, and not in an,
way as a funCLion of their "greatness." On the one hand, there are those minuscul:
events, barely remarked at the time, on which posterity retrospectively confers
the greatness of origins, the solemnity of inaugural ruptures. On the other hand
there are those nonevents that are immediately charged with heavy symboli~
meaning and that, at the moment of their occurrence, seem like anticipated com-
memorations of themselves; contemponiry history, by means of the media, has
seen a proliferation of stillborn attempts 1.0 create such events. Thus. on one side
t.he eieCLion of Hugh Capet, an unremarkable incidenl but one Lu which ten cen~
wrie.s of posterity, ending on the scaffold, have given 8 weight it did not possess
at the start; on the other side, the wagon of Rethondes, the handshake of Mon-
toire, or the Liberation parade down the Champs-Elysees. The founding event
or the spectacular event, but. in neither case the event itself: indeed, it is the exclu-
sion of the event that defines the lieu df mimuire. Memory attaches itself to sites
whereas history attaches itself to events.
\Ni thin the category, however. nothing prevents us frorn imagining every pos-
sible distribution and necessary classification, from such natural, concretely expe-
rienced lieux de mtmoire as cemeteries, museums, and anniversaries: to the most
intellectually elaborate ones-not ·only notions such as generation, lineage, local
memory, but also those of the formal divisions uf inherited property (partages),
on which every perception or French space is founded. or of the "landscape as a
painting" that comes to mind when one thinks of Corot or of Cezanne's Mont
Sainte-Vicloire. Should we stress the l-in, de nu!muire·s material aspens, they would
readil)' display themselves in a vast gradation. There are ponahle heux, of which
the people of memory, the Jews, have given a major example in the Tablets of the
Law.: there are the topographical ones, which owe everything w the specificity of
their location and to being rooted in the ground-so, for example, the conjunc-
tion of sites of tourism and centers of historical scholarship, the Bibliotheque
nationale on the site of the H6tel Mazarin, the Archives nationales in the H6tel
Soubise. "f'hen there are the monumental memory-sites, 1101. to be confused with
architectural sites alone. Statues or monuments to the dead, for instance, owe
their meaning to their intrinsic existence; even though their location is far from
arbitrary, one could justify relocating them without. altering their meaning. Such
is not the case with ensembles constructed over time, which draw thei1· meaning
from the cornplex relations between their elements: such are mirrors of a world
or a period, like the cathedral of Chartres or the palace of Versailles,
If, on the other hand, we were to stress the functional element, an array of

22 REPRESENTATIONS
 h"eux de 11H'moirt' would display themselves. ranging l"rom those dedicated tu pre•
serving an incommunicable experience that would disappear along with those
who shared it-such as the veterans' associations-Lo those whose purpose is
pedagogical. as the manuals, dic1.iona1·ies, testaments, and memoranda drafted
by heads or families in the early modern period fur the edif-ication of their
descendants.
If f-inally. we were most concerned with the symbolic element, we might
oppose, for example, dominant and dominated Liew: de nuJmoire. The first, spec-
tacular and triumphant. imposing and. generally. imposed-either by a national
authority or by an established interest, but always from above-characteristically
have the coldness and so\emnir.y of official ceremonies. One attends them rather
than visits them. The second are places of 1·efuge. sanctuaries of sponrnneous
devotion and silent pilgrimage. where one finds the living heart of memory. On
the one hand. the Sacre·Coeur or the national obsequies o[ Paul Valery; on the
other, the popular pilgrimage of Lourdes or the burial of Jean.Paul Sanre: here
de Gaulle's funeral at Notre·Dame. there the cemetery of Colombey.
These classifications could be refined ;1c\ infinitum. One could oppose public
sites of memorv and private ones: pure sites. exhaustive of their commemorative
function-such as Cuneral eulogies. the battldield ol' Duuaurnon1. or r.he \-Vall of
the Federes-and r.hose composite sites in which the commemorative element is
only one amid man)' symbolic meanings. such as the national Hag, festival itiner-
aries, pilgrimages. and so on. The value ur a first au.empt at a typology \\'Ould lie
not in its rigor or comprehensiveness. not even in ii~ evocative power. but in the
fact that it is possible. For the very possibility of a history of lieux de mt!uwire dem•
onstrates the existence of an invisible thread linking apparently unconnected
objects. l t suggests thar. the comparison of the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise and the
Statistique genera le de la France is nut the same as the surrealist encounter oft.he
umbrella and the sewing machine. There is a differentiated ner.work r.o which all
of these separate identities belong, an unconscious organizatio11 of' collective
memory that it is our responsibility 10 bring to consciow;ness. The national history
of Fi-ance today traverses this network.

One simple but. decisive trait of lieux df 111.1!111.oirn sets thcrn apart from every
type of history to which we have become accustomed. ancient or modern. Every
previous historical 01· scientific approach to memory, whether national or social.
has concerned it.self with rt'al.ill, with things in t.hcrnselvcs and in their imrnediate
.reality. Contrary tu historical 1)l~jeus, ho\\'ever. /.ie11x dr, mimoire have no referent
1
~ reality; 01·. rat.hec the~' are their own referent: pure, exclusively self.referential
signs. This is not: t.o say that. they are without content, physical presence. or his-
tory; ir. is to suggest that what makes them tietL\: d(! mihnoire is precisely that by

Between Mernoty and 1-list<.>r)' 23

 which they escape from hisLOr}'· In this sense, the lieu de ,111-hnoire is double· a .
. . . , · Site
of excess closed upon itself, concentrated m 11:s ov,rn name, but also forever ope
tor.he full range of its possible significations. n
This is what makes the history of b:e1.l.i:: de nuhnoirr at once banal and extraor-
dinary. Obvious topics, classic material, sources ready at hand, the least. sophisti-
c;;ited methods: one would think we were rewrning 10 long outmoded historical
methods. But such is not t:he case. Although these ol~jects must be grasped in
empirical deLail, the issues at stake are ill suited 1.0 expression in the categories of
traditional historiography. RefieCLing on lieux (fr mbnai.rt' transf'orm.s historical
criticism into critical history-and nol only in its methods: it allows histor)' a sec-
ondary. purely Lransferential existence. even ;1 kind of rec1v-;akening. Like war, the
history of linLY dr mfmoi1"f' is an art of" implementatiu11. practiced in the fragile
happiness derived from relating tu rehabilitated objects a11d from the involve-
ment of the hislorian in his or her sul~ject. lt is a history 1.h:-1t, in the last analysis,
rests upon what it mobilizes: an impalpable, barely expressible, self-imposed
bond: what remains of' our ineradicable, carnal auachment to thesl:' faded sym-
bols; the reincarnation of history as 11 was practiced by Michelet, irresistibly put-
ting ro mind the r~covery from lost love of which Proust spoke so well-that
moment when the obsessive grasp of passion finalJ~, luosens but whose true sad-
ness is no longer to suffer from what one has so long suffered. henceforth to
understand only with the miners reason. no longer with the unreason of the heart
This is a very literary reference. Should we regret it or, on the contrary,
suggest its full justification? Once again. the answer derives from our present.
historical situation. In fact. memor~· has never known more than two forms of
legitimacy: historical and literary. These have run parallel to each other but until
now always separately. At present r.he boundar~· between the two is blurring; fol-
lo\\'ing closely upon the successive deaths of memory-history and memory-fiction,
a ne\\" kind of history has been born, which owes it.s prestige and legitimacy to the
new relation it maintains to the past. History has become our replaceable imagi-
nation-hence the last stand of faltering hction in the renaissance of the historical
novel. the vogue for personalized documents. the literary revitalization of hist0r-
ical drama. the success of the oral his1.0rical tale. Our in1.eres1 in these lieux de
111fmmrr' 1.hat anchor. condense, and express the exhausted capital of our collective
memory derives from this new sensibility. History has become the deep reference
uf a period that has been \Vrenched from its depths. a realistic novel in a period
in v,•hich there are no real novels. Memory has been promoted t.o the center of
hist.ory: such is the spectacular bereavement of literature.
-Translated bv Man: Roudebush
'
I

24 REPRESENTATIONS
Note

This tex1 constitutes the 1henre1.icn.l imrocluction to a vast collalx1r;1t.ive work on lhe
national memory of France that I titled Les Lieux drmimoint. The work is divided in10 three
parts: La RfJmbhque (I vol.. 198'1). La Ntaim1 (:1 vols .. 1~)86). Les Francl' (3 vols.,
forthcoming).
My intention was to substitute case studies for general bis1.orical developrne11ts. Thus,
the method used consists of a concemratecl analysis of the specific objects that codif) con- 1
•

dense, anchor Frnnce's national memory. These can be monuments (the chiilerrn of Ver-
sailles or the cathedral of Strasbourg): emblems. commemorations, and symbols (the
tricolor of the French Rag. the Founeenrh orJuly. the J\,Jarseill:iise); rituals (the coronation
of the kings at Reims) as well as monume111s (sur.h as t.he mm1111111 11/s rwx mnrls in every
1

French village or the Pantheon): manuals (a texd)cnJk used ll\' ,ill French children. ~1 dictio-
nary); basic r.exrs (the Declaration of the Rights or /vlan or the Cocfr civil): or mnttos (for
example, "Libene, Egalite, Fraternite'·}.
Each subject wa.s given to a .specialist. In 01·der to show how the subjects. to ail appear-
ances diverse, could be brought together under the same category of anal~sis and inter-
pretation, l used a tt:rm, lirux d1 ml moire. which did not exis1 in French. The entire wnrk
1

consists in the elaboration of this idea. its classification. hierarch\·. and typologv.
The term has no English equivc1!en1. 11 owes its origin to the admirable bonk h~
Frances Yar.es. TIU' Arl of Memory ( 1966). which traces a long tradition of mnemotecl1nia. As
codifie<l hy Cicero and Q11inr.ilian. che clc1ssical art of memory taught nr:-itor~ 10 rc-mernhe1-
their speeches by associating each topic r.o be covered with some part of a real or imagined
building in which the oration was r.o be delivered-the <H.rium. columns. rurniture. <ind sci
on. The art of memory was founded on an inventorv of memory places. /oCl Jllt'/1/0riat. The
term fiend,, 1111!11wini has profound con11ot,nions in hench: histnrical. intel!ecrnal. and erno-
lional, often subconscious. These are due. on the one kind. 1.n the specific role of memory
in the construction of the idea or the nation as well as in recent changes in li1e attitt1de of
the French people r.o their nzitional past. 11 is this role the work in ~1uestion attempts to
shed light on: ii is 1.his change in attitude it attc111pts in illus1.ra1.e: and it is precisely the
tern1 lieu th mhnoir<' that this introduction ;ill.empts to explain. elaborate. c1ndjustif~ 1
•

. I therefore thank Reprrsenla!iuns aud rny excellent translator for conserving the 1erm
m French. while occasionally using silr as c.m English equivalent.

lktM:t:11 !\krnory and History 25