BGL
Precarious and Revealing Sites of Memory

Although the notion of celebration touches on a great number of issues, those having to do with memorials are particularly complex. By virtue of their capacity to transform memory into stone, to petrify a fragment of the past in order to make it visible to a number of people and thereby to partake in the construction of their collective identity, ­memorials ­highlight the work of selection and, by the same token, reveal the ­necessity of consensual choice in such matters. What should we keep from the past? What should we safeguard from oblivion? And, as a result, what should we preserve for future generations, as the foundation of our future actions?

Such questions have arisen over the past few decades in the ­context of what French historian Pierre Nora has termed a “commemorative ­bulimia” and its transformation into the “duty to remember.” In his book in which he studies “sites of memory,”¹ 1 - Pierre Nora (ed.), Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past, English ­edition ed. by Lawrence D. Kritzman, tr. Arthur Goldhammer, 3 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996–1998). Nora deals in particular with the case of France. Nora observes that there is now a proliferation of commemorative events and objects of celebration, a ­tendency which has been accompanied by the belief that the future appears bleak. One of the consequences of such a phenomenon is that a “war of memories” is being waged between communities; it is indeed not uncommon for such groups to evoke the horrors of the past—be they part of actual experience or of a present set of claims—as a means to gain attention for their cause and to argue for its importance.² 2 - These ideas were discussed on radio on the 8 August 2008 broadcast of France Culture’s Mythographies, a show that dealt specifically with the theme of ­memorials. Thus, it would seem that we have reached a “political age of memory.”³ 3 - Ibid.