Contenu du sommaire : Commémorer

The cultural and political landscape is overrun with commemorative events. Forgetting is henceforth prohibited. However, beneath this apparent loyalty there lie political issues and intentions that provide food for debate. In 2014, what should we remember about 1914? What date should be set for remembering the end of the Algerian War? In a bid to prevent deep divisions that perturb the image of national unity, the Politician turns to the educator. And thus educational tourism is born, a cultural tourism that eliminates the specific nature of a period in time, the unique character of the individual event… Memory has become a consumer commodity.

The Hôtel des Invalides is a powerful matrix of commemorative motifs. Nonetheless, its various themes are activated, or not, depending on the political breaks in the history of France and the perception of a specific type of continuity in the military at the service of the State.

Profane, commemorative and “patriotic” ceremonies are affected by a paradox: there have never been so many of them yet they are attended by few people. Yet every effort is made to draw the crowds. To ensure that such efforts are not in vain, it is essential that two conditions are met, indeed will suffice: that the ceremony has meaning – a clear conception of this meaning by the people initiating the ceremony is a prerequisite in the organisation of any ceremony –, and that this meaning is expressed in such a way that the ceremony both appeals to the public's understanding and arouses its emotions; this is the aim of the ceremonial.

For the military community, commemoration does not so much mean celebrating the past than consolidating the present, with a more practical rather than moral purpose. For the soldier, commemoration is primarily about a sense of being together, here and now, to give meaning to the present and moral strength to the collective. In other words, it is about preparing for the battle to come, especially the daily battle.

For war veterans, commemoration ceremonies are a moment of public recognition and fraternity, but not of finding peace. They can even be particularly painful for those who recall the events of the war as vividly as the day they occurred: every year, they are reminded of the horror and are expected to give an account of what they lived through, in spite of their daily battle to forget. For such veterans whose wounds are psychological, commemoration could be replaced with an alternative moment, namely, a medical assessment. In such a moment, what the doctor is interested in is their singularity.

It seems almost impossible to dissociate the “two conditions” now used to describe history, memory and commemoration, which now serve as the support for all kinds of accounts, often fragmentary and provisional, and widely taken up by sociopolitical players in the field of public action. Everything seems to happen as if the ills of contemporary society were no more than the perverse and persisting effects of ills from which the French State has never healed. This has led, all too often, to the emergence of claims of victimisation hand-in-hand with demands for compensation, whereas it would be more appropriate to draw up a rational inventory of our recent past than an invective against our disappointed hopes. It is indeed painful to acknowledge history for what it is and so pleasant to imagine it as one wishes it were. Yet, in continuing on this course, we remain blind to ourselves. In this context, the historian's job is to provide the context, position the milestones and make the world a little more intelligible, as well making his fellow citizens more lucid.

In light of the increasing confusion and tension between the dimensions of memory and history, Paul Ricœur, in Memory, History, Forgetting, published in Year 2000, carries out a decisive work of clarification, showing that, rather than think of these two dimensions as alternatives, it is better to think of them as complementary, especially since they are different in nature, with history's ambition being truth, while that of memory is faithfulness. This clarification is all the more important in that the issues involved lie outside philosophical circles, since it helps us to understand the specific issues at stake in memory disorders, either too much remembering or too little, not to mention the processes of blocking out or manipulating the past. This essential dialectic between memory and history leads to the question of present action, of constructing a being-together that might generate a future of expectation and hope.

Unlike pre-1989 Europe, which was little more than a memory space, Europe today is a “memory community”, full of conflict and division, certainly, but where the stakes involved in commemoration are fundamentally the same across the continent and transcend the sense of belonging to a specific nation. Thus, the events commemorating the First World War will certainly be more European and more international than ever before. Yet, however strong the will of all parties to ensure that they serve to improve mutual understanding and work toward reconciliation, they will also demonstrate that although Europe is now a community of memory, its memory, far from unified, is in fact disparate and divided.

Our difficulty now in commemorating the conflicts of the 20th century can be explained by changes that affect our collective memory, the duty to remember and the wars themselves. The way in which we try to understand them is not as direct. Perhaps one day we will not even know anything about them. Or we will replace the memory of them with a kind of cosmopolitan memory tourism. Such uncertainty should make all of us, historians, professors, associates, culture managers, elected officials, not pessimistic but rather keen to seek out the situational intelligence appropriate to the scale of these current provoking questions and be more convincing in our determination to pursue the only way forward: to gain a better understanding of the wars of the 20th century, to relate their history as faithfully as possible, and transmit this knowledge to future generations.

The Jewish calendar of religious holidays is based on an ellipse, providing the possibility of reliving what our ancestors lived through and being able to reinterpret their successes and failures in order to progress a little further than they did, to fly a little higher. So, this is not a question of commemorating and revelling in the past, but of reinterpreting the fabric of their undertakings, of rediscovering the spirit of inspiration and the same freedom to act or not act. In fact, we re-enter their history to make it our own, to give it meaning for ourselves, today, and so that we can lean on their experience to help avoid the obstacles of our time.

Bearing witness on behalf of others, writers also take part in the commemorations: as journalists, they report on official ceremonies; as novelists, they dedicate their books to the dead; as poets, they praise the memory of the dead so that past actions, whether heroic or humble, as part of war or daily life, will not be forgotten. Some do however contest the need for remembrance, the construction of which, in a postmodern society, can be ambiguous. There is a alternative way to oppose the violence of the world: silence.

The Great War still holds a special place in our collective memory and in the memory of practically every family. As we begin commemorating its centenary, General Irastorza talks here about the part he played in the Commission for the Centenary of World War One.

Former head of the Commission for the Bicentennial of the French Revolution, Jean-Noël Jeanneney has just published a work on the commemoration of the 1914-1918 war: La Grande Guerre si loin si proche, réflexions sur un Centenaire. For this issue of Inflexions, he examines the huge differences between a civilian commemoration and its constituent role in France, and an international military and civilian commemoration. He asks whether the military's relation to commemoration is not radically different from that of the civilian, whether military memory and civilian memory can be contradictory.

The army in the public space. This is the issue raised in the June 2012 issue of Inflexions. This article proposes to re-examine this issue of the place of the military's “voice” in the national debate. What mechanisms have come into play in deceiving the hopes inherent in statutory changes? Also, to what extent do soldiers themselves contribute to their own relegation? What ideas can we come up with to reinstate them sustainably, credibly and above all audibly, at the centre of the national media melee?

The end of the Cold War in 1990 and then the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 mark the start of a new “golden age” for mercenaries. While it never totally disappeared, up until the arrest of Bob Denard in 1995, the profession bore the burdensome legacy of being the “Affreux” (the dreaded ones) of decolonisation. But now there is no such thing as a mercenary. He has been replaced by the contractor. This private soldier is now a professional, hand-picked by well-established companies, some of which are listed in the stock exchange. From logistics to armed protection and intelligence, our English-speaking allies have definitively institutionalised the use of private military companies (pmc) during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. For better or worse. In France, where the preferred term is entreprise de service de sécurité et de défense, roughly translated defence and security services company, the debate is far from closed and people are still reluctant to accept the idea. But it looks as though a change is in sight. An overview of the situation.

In 1789, the French wanted the Royal army to change in line with Enlightenment principles, but they refused any possibility of introducing military service for the French citizen. The Constituent Assembly thus rejected conscription in December 1789. In the context of a dramatic drop in the number of soldiers and then the war with European monarchies, the Assemblies considered the volunteers from the National Guard to be a support force which nonetheless they did not plan to use instead of the professional army. However, the fate of the Revolution was sealed in the tragic summer of 1793 and, on 23 August, a general mobilisation was decreed by the Convention, the first ever form of compulsory military service. This was an exceptional measure which did not provide any mechanism for renewing the classes of conscripts and, as the war continued, the armies under the Directoire were also affected by a drop in numbers. It was for this reason that, in 1798, the Jourdan Act institutionalised the experiments carried out during Revolution and proclaimed universal conscription, although not yet military service by the individual citizen.

For the military community, commemoration does not so much mean celebrating the past than consolidating the present, with a more practical rather than moral purpose. For the soldier, commemoration is primarily about a sense of being together, here and now, to give meaning to the present and moral strength to the collective. In other words, it is about preparing for the battle to come, especially the daily battle.

Unlike pre-1989 Europe, which was little more than a memory space, Europe today is a “memory community”, full of conflict and division, certainly, but where the stakes involved in commemoration are fundamentally the same across the continent and transcend the sense of belonging to a specific nation. Thus, the events commemorating the First World War will certainly be more European and more international than ever before. Yet, however strong the will of all parties to ensure that they serve to improve mutual understanding and work toward reconciliation, they will also demonstrate that although Europe is now a community of memory, its memory, far from unified, is in fact disparate and divided.