Sites of Memory

RAN WRITES HERE:
came across this article on sites of memory, quite handy on understanding milieu/lieu de memoire.

Pierre Nora edited a monumental work of seven volumes about the loci memoriae of France, entitled "Les lieux de mémoire" (1984–92). What are such sites, or realms, of memory?

"A lieu de mémoire is any significant entity, whether material or non-material in nature, which by dint of human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community (in this case, the French community)" (Nora 1996: XVII)

In other words, sites of memory are "where [cultural] memory crystallizes and secretes itself" (Nora 1989: 7). These include:

• places such as archives, museums, cathedrals, palaces, cemeteries, and memorials;
• concepts and practices such as commemorations, generations, mottos, and all rituals;
• objects such as inherited property, commemorative monuments (see image right), manuals, emblems, basic texts, and symbols.

Ancient monuments too are sites of memory (Schnapp 1996: 13; Demoule 1998). Today as timemarks they transport the past into our everyday lives and become foci for our cultural memory and various phenomena of history culture. They may have played a similar role in later prehistoric Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

According to Nora, however, sites of memory are not common in all cultures and are exclusively a phenomenon of our modern time. Sites of memory replace a 'real' and 'true' living memory which was with us for millennia but now has ceased to exist (cf. Maier 1993). In Nora's view, a constructed history replaces true memory. Sites of memory are artificial, and deliberately fabricated. They exist to help us recall the past – which is perhaps necessary in order to make living in the modern world meaningful (Marquard 1986).

The purpose of sites of memory is "to stop time, to block the work of forgetting", and they all share "a will to remember" (Nora 1989: 19). Nora argues that his definition of sites of memory excludes prehistoric and archaeological sites, since what makes them

"important as sites is often precisely what ought to exclude them from being lieux de mémoire: the absolute absence of a will to remember and, by way of compensation, the crushing weight imposed on them by time, science, and the dreams of men" (1989: 20f.).

But this view is misinformed. Prehistoric monuments arguably originated as expressions of prospective memory, which is precisely 'a will to remember'. Likewise, old monuments in the ancient world were already treated as timemarks and became significant in different cultural memories, thus constituting true sites of memory (Assmann 1992: 60). There is abundant evidence for memory crystallizing at ancient monuments not only in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece, but also in later prehistoric Europe—as shown in the work of Richard Bradley as well as in this work.

Sites of memory should therefore not be seen as recent successors to living memory, but as important elements of most, if not all, societies in both past and present.

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Literature

Demoule, Jean-Paul (1998) Lascaux. In: L. D. Kritzman and P. Nora (eds) Realms of Memory: the construction of the French past. Vol. 3: symbolism, pp. 163-190. New York and Chichester: Columbia University Press.

Maier, Charles S. (1993) A Surfeit of Memory? Reflections on History, Melancholy and Denial. History and Memory 5, 136-151.

Marquard, Odo (1986) Über die Unvermeidlichkeit der Geisteswissenschaften. In: O.Marquard, Apologie des Zufälligen, pp. 98-116. Stuttgart: Reclam.

Nora, Pierre ed. (1984–1992) Les Lieux de mémoire (seven volumes). Paris: Edition Gallimard.

Nora, Pierre (1989) Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire [1984]. Representations 26, Spring 1989, 7-25. (also in Nora and Kritzman 1996: 1-20)

Nora, Pierre (1996) From lieux de mémoire to realms of memory. In: Nora and Kritzman 1996: XV-XXIV.

Nora, Pierre and Lawrence D.Kritzman eds (1996) Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past. Vol. 1: conflicts and divisions. New York and Chichester: Columbia University Press.

Schnapp, Alain (1996) The Discovery of the Past. The Origins of Archaeology [1993]. London: British Museum Press.

© Cornelius Holtorf, last updated on 5 May 2002