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How To Write the History of France: Pierre Nora and His Lieux de mémoire

  • Korean Review of French History
  • Abbr : KRFH
  • 2010, (23), pp.185~201
  • Publisher : KOREAN SOCIETY FOR FRENCH HISTORY
  • Research Area : Humanities > History

Lee Yong Jae 1

1전북대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The ‘lieu de mémoire’ is a historical concept first advanced in Lieux de mémoire(7 volumes, 1984-1992) directed and edited by Pierre Nora. The rapid disappearance of national memory seems to impose an inventory of ‘lieux’ in which memory has been selectively embodied or remained as the most brilliant symbols. According to Nora, this ‘lieu’ in its full sense can embrace all the objects from the most material and concrete(monument, person, museum, archive, etc.) to the most abstract and intellectually constructed(symbol, event, institution, etc.). Widely different from the positivist national history of the 19th century and also from the history of mentalities, highly esteemed in the Annales school, Lieux de mémoire is accommodated in the purely symbolic dimension. That is called a ‘symbolic history at the second degree’. The vast fresco Lieux de mémoire has created an immediate and significant stir in the period of memory reserves in which we live. The widespread praise which has greeted this publication in general has, however, been tempered by criticism. Some see in Lieux de mémoire the resurgence of a Lavisse-type project of History which is strictly nationalist. Nora explains the sense of his enterprise. The deep modification of the national consciousness, witnessed in our times, supposes another model of ‘Nation’. Lieux de mémoire is located in the present times in which ‘the national’ gets back in the foreground to be altered and exploded into ‘the patrimonial’. Historian can and must pay his attention on this changing national identity, not for the purpose of celebrating the pride of his own nation, but of contributing to the invigoration of ‘a nation without nationalism’.

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