Pierre Nora and French National Memory

Histoire des Mentalites:

"Realms of Memory belongs to the genre known as histoire des mentalites, which grew out of the desire of French historians to free themselves from the Comtean determinism of nineteenth-century historical writings and the Marxist-inspired Annales without lapsing into the perceived elitism of the history of ideas." (Ho Tai, 2001:907)

Influence of Renan (relation with Atatürk?)

"Nora's aim is no less than to dislodge Lavisse from his pedagogical pedestal and offer his own project as France's new memory site.[...] Lavisse's Histoire, on which the condensed Petit Lavisse was based, embodied the synthesis of nation and republic that Ernest Renan expounded in his influential lecture of March 11, 1882, "What Is a Nation?" [...] Against German determinism based on language and race, Renan represented the nation as a "daily plebiscite" but ignored the colonial reality  when he affirmed: "A nation never has any real interest in annexing or holding on to a country against its will."  (Ho Tai, 2001:908)

Lack of Colonial History:

"...neither Lavisse, writing during the Third Republic, nor Nora, during the Fourth, takes the experience of empire into his consideration of how the French nation and national identity were constructed, or assesses its role in French collective memory [...] Even though postcolonial studies have reshaped scholarship on both former colonial countries and one-time colonial powers, their influence is noticeably absent from Realms of Memory."  (Ho Tai, 2001:910)

Double Colonialism of France:

"Internally, through the imposition of universal conscription and free compulsory education and the expansion of the bureaucracy to the provinces, and externally, through the expansion of the empire in Indochina and Africa." (Ho Tai, 2001:911)

Historical Revisionism of Nora:

"...the pull of that narrative [the France of Franks and Gauls] remains so strong that Nora has not quite succeded in fashioning an American-style embrace of multi-ethnicity and multiculturalism or achieving true polyphony while avoiding cacophony." (Ho Tai, 2001:912)

Three Components of the Third Republic's Nationalizing Project: 

Language, universal conscription and bureaucracy (organization of public memory). 

According to Ho Tai (2001) the English version of Lieux de memoire presents a more top-down and Jacobinist France with uncritical regionalism  and a lack of subnationalism.

According to Ho Tai (2001) Nora's distinction between lieux de memoire and milieux de memoire echoes the discredited notion that only the West has history.

According to Ho Tai (2001) Nora is trying to build a symbiosis between national identity and history (after Renan and Lavisse), unlike American scholars who are more concerned with the potential construction of social memory by the nation-state and the need for counter-hegemonic memory as a source of opposition to power or the post-socialist scholars who focus on the way in which official history shapes memory.

"French collective memory has been indelibly shaped by a primary and secondary curriculum that was put in place under the Third Republic." (Ho Tai, 2001:917)

Amnesia as a necessary component of national memory:

"Nora and a few of his contributors, notably Ozouf, bring up the issue of amnesia as a necessary component of collective memory (a point made by Renan originally)." (Ho Tai, 2001:919)

Ho Tai (2001)'s comments on Balkans, as a territory where history and memory are constantly recycling each other to produce violence, may also be applied to the context of Turkey.

"It would seem that nations are most likely to be in need of lieux de memoire when they are in their most liminal states: when they are being born and are in need of instant antiquity or when they are besieged, either by internal or external forces" 2001: 921 ---bölüm öncesi

"Realms of Memory is written from the center and embodies a top-down approach to its subject."

Theme parks 921

internet age 921