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Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire: Pierre Nora
Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire: Pierre Nora
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intellectualand secular production, calls for analysis and criticism.Memory
installsremembrancewithinthe sacred; history,alwaysprosaic,releases it again.
Memoryis blind to all but the group it binds-which is to say,as Maurice Halb-
wachshas said, thatthereare as manymemoriesas thereare groups,thatmemory
is by nature multipleand yetspecific;collective,plural, and yetindividual. His-
tory,on the other hand, belongs to everyoneand to no one, whence its claim to
universal authority.Memory takes root in the concrete, in spaces, gestures,
images, and objects; historybinds itselfstrictlyto temporalcontinuities,to pro-
BetweenMemoryand History 9
ation; it amounts to the internalsubversionof memory-history bycriticalhistory.
Everyhistoryis bynaturecritical,and all historianshave soughtto denounce the
hypocriticalmythologiesof their predecessors. But somethingfundamentally
unsettlinghappens when historybegins to writeitsown history.A historiograph-
ical anxietyarises when historyassigns itselfthe task of tracingalien impulses
withinitselfand discoversthatit is the victimof memorieswhichit has sought to
master.Where historyhas not taken on the strongformativeand didactic role
that it has assumed in France, the historyof historyis less laden withpolemical
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national responsibilityassigned to the historian-half preacher,half soldier-is
unequalled, for example, in the firsteditorial of the Revue historique (1876) in
whichGabriel Monod foresawa "slowscientific, methodical,and collectiveinves-
tigation"conducted in a "secret and secure manner for the greatness of the
fatherlandas well as for mankind."Reading thistext,and a hundred otherslike
it, one wonders how the notion that positivisthistorywas not cumulativecould
ever have gained credibility.On the contrary,in the teleological perspectiveof
thebiographical,and the diplomaticall were
the nation the political,the military,
to be considered pillars of continuity.The defeat of Agincourt,the dagger of
BetweenMemoryand History
hieuxde memoire occurs at the same time that an immense and intimatefund of
memorydisappears, survivingonlyas a reconstitutedobject beneath the gaze of
criticalhistory.This period sees, on the one hand, the decisivedeepening of his-
toricalstudyand, on the other hand, a heritageconsolidated. The criticalprin-
ciple followsan internaldynamic:our intellectual,political,historicalframeworks
are exhausted but remain powerfulenough not to leave us indifferent; whatever
vitalitythey retain impresses us only in their most spectacular symbols.Com-
bined, these two movementssend us at once to history'smost elementarytools
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Memory Seized by History
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furnishsome proofto who knowswhattribunalof history.The sacred is invested
in the trace thatis at the same timeitsnegation.It becomes impossibleto predict
what should be remembered-whence thedisinclinationto destroyanythingthat
leads to the correspondingreinforcementof all the institutionsof memory.A
strangerole reversalhas occurredbetweenthe professional,once reproached for
an obsession withconservation,and the amateur producer of archives. Today,
privateenterpriseand public administrationkeep everything, while professional
archivistshave learned that the essence of their trade is the art of controlled
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The passage frommemoryto historyhas requiredeverysocial group to rede-
fineitsidentitythroughthe revitalizationof itsown history.The taskof remem-
bering makes everyone his own historian.The demand for historyhas thus
largelyoverflowedthecircleof professionalhistorians.Those who have long been
marginalizedin traditionalhistoryare not the onlyones haunted by the need to
recover their buried pasts. Followingthe example of ethnic groups and social
minorities,everyestablishedgroup, intellectualor not, learned or not, has felt
the need to go in search of itsown originsand identity.Indeed, thereis hardlya
familytodayin whichsome memberhas not recentlysoughtto documentas accu-
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In the last analysis,it is upon the individualand upon the individual alone
that the constraintof memoryweighs insistentlyas well as imperceptibly.The
atomization of a general memoryinto a private one has given the obligation
to remember a power of internal coercion. It gives everyone the necessityto
rememberand to protectthe trappingsof identity;when memoryis no longer
everywhere,it will not be anywhereunless one takes the responsibilityto recap-
ture it through individual means. The less memoryis experienced collectively,
the more it willrequire individualsto undertaketo become themselvesmemory-
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to seem invisible,unpredictable,uncontrollable,so have we gone fromthe idea
of a visiblepast to an invisibleone; froma solid and steadypast to our fractured
past; froma historysought in the continuityof memoryto a memorycast in the
discontinuityof history.We speak no longer of "origins"but of "births."Given to
us as radically other, the past has become a world apart. Ironically,modern
memoryreveals itselfmostgenuinelywhen it showshow farwe have come away
fromit.
We should not believe, however,that this sense of discontinuityfindsonly
unfocused and vague expression.Paradoxically,distancedemands the rapproche-
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coverable identity.It is no longer genesis thatwe seek but instead the decipher-
mentof what we are in the lightof whatwe are no longer.
Strangely,this alchemy of essentialscontributesto making the practice of
history-fromwhichtherelentlessdrivetowardthe futureought to have excused
us-a repositoryforthe secretsof the present.This thaumaturgicaloperation is
accomplished more by the historianthan by history.The historian'sis a strange
fate; his role and place in societywere once simpleand clearlydefined: to be the
spokesman of the past and the herald of the future.In thiscapacityhis person
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material,symbolic,and functional.Even an apparentlypurelymaterialsite,like
an archive,becomes a lieude memoire onlyifthe imaginationinvestsitwitha sym-
bolic aura. A purely functionalsite,like a classroom manual, a testament,or a
veterans'reunion belongs to the categoryonlyinasmuchas it is also the object of
a ritual.And the observanceof a commemorativeminuteof silence,an extreme
example of a strictly symbolicaction,servesas a concentratedappeal to memory
by literallybreaking a temporal continuity.Moreover,the three aspects always
coexist.Take, forexample, the notionof a historicalgeneration:it is materialby
itsdemographiccontentand supposedlyfunctional-since memoriesare crystal-
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importantas sitesis oftenpreciselywhatought to exclude themfrombeing lieux
de me'moire: the absolute absence of a willto rememberand, bywayof compensa-
tion,the crushingweightimposed on themby time,science,and the dreams of
men. On the other hand, not everyborder markinghas the credentialsof the
Rhine or the Finistere,that "Land's End" at the tip of Brittanyennobled in the
pages of Michelet.Everyconstitution,everydiplomatictreatyis a lieude me'moire,
although the constitutionof 1793 lays a differentclaim than thatof 1791, given
the foundationalstatusof the Declaration of the Rightsof Man; and the peace of
Nimwegen has a differentstatusthan,at both ends of the historyof Europe, the
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of lettersand the man of action, the identificationof individual discourse with
collectivediscourse, the insertionof individual rationalityinto raisond'etat:all
motifsthat,in the broad perspectiveof national memory,compel us to thinkof
themas lieuxde memoire.
As for "greatevents,"onlytwo typesare especiallypertinent,and not in any
wayas a functionof their"greatness."On theone hand, thereare thoseminuscule
events,barely remarked at the time,on which posterityretrospectively confers
the greatnessof origins,the solemnityof inaugural ruptures.On the otherhand,
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hieuxde memoire would display themselves,rangingfromthose dedicated to pre-
servingan incommunicableexperience that would disappear along with those
who shared it-such as the veterans' associations-to those whose purpose is
pedagogical, as the manuals, dictionaries,testaments,and memoranda drafted
by heads of families in the early modern period for the edificationof their
descendants.
If, finally,we were most concerned with the symbolicelement, we might
oppose, for example, dominant and dominated lieuxde memoire. The first,spec-
tacular and triumphant,imposingand, generally,imposed-either by a national
One simple but decisive traitof hieuxde memoire sets them apart fromevery
typeof historyto whichwe have become accustomed,ancientor modern. Every
previous historicalor scientificapproach to memory,whethernational or social,
has concerned itselfwithrealia,withthingsin themselvesand in theirimmediate
reality.Contraryto historicalobjects,however,lieuxde memoire have no referent
in reality;or,rather,theyare theirown referent:pure, exclusivelyself-referential
signs. This is not to say thattheyare withoutcontent,physicalpresence, or his-
tory; it is to suggest that what makes them lieuxde memoire is preciselythat by
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which theyescape fromhistory.In thissense, the lieude mbnoireis double: a site
of excess closed upon itself,concentratedin itsown name, but also foreveropen
to the fullrange of itspossible significations.
This is what makes the historyof lieuxde memoire at once banal and extraor-
dinary.Obvious topics,classic material,sources ready at hand, the least sophisti-
cated methods: one would thinkwe were returningto long outmoded historical
methods. But such is not the case. Although these objects must be grasped in
empiricaldetail,the issues at stakeare ill suitedto expressionin the categoriesof
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