Contenu du sommaire : Patrimoine et identité

The notion of heritage has evolved considerably since 1789, to the point of raising doubts regarding its nature. The various phases of this mutation must be examined before we can pass any value judgement. This is because heritage has been successively privatized, nationalized and democratized in the name of the legacies and historic destinies of a France that has been both civilian and military and both royal and then republican. Heritage has been reinvented but not abandoned.

After abolishing the Ceausescu regime in December 1989 in a spate of radical violence, Romanians have rediscovered different pasts and a memory that is complex in its diversity. So, post-communist reconstruction projects have been based on varied arguments concerning identity, to the point of becoming conflictual, at the same time as they are part of a generalized rush for the consumer society.

Many jihadist movements have destroyed archaeological heritage sites, whether in Afghanistan, Mali, Syria or Iraq. These acts have targeted every religious community without exception—Christians, Druze, Shiites, Sunnites, Yezidis, Buddhists etc. Studies repeatedly explain these actions in terms of the desire to “clear the decks of the past and to destroy everything that came before, motivated by a thirst for destruction and limitless desolation”. However, factual research takes us out of the domain of the irrational and plunges us into the essence of these acts: this essence is not only religious but also societal and political.

This article first provides a non-exhaustive analysis of the practical difficulties and conditions implied in any heritage project wishing to be authentically military, i.e. true to the fundamentals and missions assigned to the armed forces. Subsequently, with the aid of two examples, the military parade and the uniform, the article examines the dangers that ill-conceived and poorly managed heritage projects can pose to the bond between the military and the nation, partly by trivializing military identities and partly by cutting them off from the rest of society.

As the second main cultural officer of the French State after the Culture Minister, the Defence Minister has inherited, preserves and continues to enrich and develop a considerable spiritual and material heritage, entrusting its management to specially trained officers.

The origins of this form of military ceremony date back to the 17th and even the 16th century. At the time, it was used to verify the combat capability of the troops and to carry out administrative and financial checks. So, people may believe that it is no longer useful today and that symbolism and habit are the only reasons why military parades have been preserved. However, this is not true: as a veritable tool of communication, the parade is able to send out a variety of political and diplomatic messages, with a capacity for nuance that unsuspected by the neophyte.

When the Great War started, the French army was the only army to have a battle—uniform that was unsuitable for modern war. However, its replacement had been designed well before 1914. But, after passionate debates both in and outside the War Ministry, tradition won the day over operational efficiency, at the price of the heavy losses during the first months of fighting. So, the question of uniform is by no means anodyne. It corresponds to the need for operational performance. As a distinctive sign of the military condition and a mirror of discipline, the uniform is also a symbol of identity, authority and representation. As a factor in the creation of collective identity, it embodies the tragic nature of the soldier's destiny. The initiatives of the French Army concerning uniforms are consistent with these reflections. Having reached full maturity, the French Army is at the dawn of a major cyclic change: its uniforms, balancing modernity, innovation, stability of identity and attachment to the core values of the solider, will reflect this change.

Why do the members of the “Académie Française”, other than clergy, wear a sword at their side? When did it first appear? Does it have any relation to the military?

French sailors, exercising the profession of the armed forces at sea, a highly demanding environment, and dressed in their'blue or white uniforms, are proud to be recognized at first glance by their brothers in arms and fellow citizens and even by foreign navies. It is true that, for more than a hundred years, certain effects of tradition have forged an almost universally recognizable identity. So, in a context of constantly increasing unification, the French navy is preserving specific traditions and uniforms, to which its officers, petty officers, quartermasters and sailors are deeply attached, since they signal both their identity as part of the French armed forces and the fact that they belong to the world of the sea. Combining functionality, tradition and aesthetic quality, the French navy uniform is resolutely sober and elegant. This means that the sabre, the double-breasted jacket, the tunic with its blue collar, the striped T-shirt and the hat with the red bobble, even though they may be judged to belong to another epoch, still have a bright future.

In 2013, the supply officers and logisticians of each of the French armed forces became “military commissaries”. This transformation overhauled centuries-old identities and raised the question of building an identity for this new officer corps. The new ceremonial uniform and the insignia adopted by this corps have provided an initial response. They give material visibility to a military vocation and also lay the foundations of an identity drawn from the three branches of the military. In perpetually changing forms, military clothing is therefore helping to transmit a heritage and to give a promise of posterity.

From the “galette”,, a fringeless epaulette once worn by students of the Saint-Cyr military academy with mediocre or very poor grades, by ways of the “galette officers” or “fine galettes”, rebels against the norms of Saint-Cyr, to today's La Galette, a song that has become the anthem of the Saint-Cyr Academy—what circumstances and detours of symbolic thinking brought about this transformation of an object that once symbolized resistance to authority for the students of Saint-Cyr?

The military song is an exceptional vector of the human soul, due especially to its psychological effect. It is both the gardener and the fruit of identity, because it takes part in the creation of an identity, while it is also composed and sung as a response to this identity. However, it can also serve and follow the excesses and deviations of the search for identity. History proves this, and so we must remain vigilant today.

The phenomenon of war has heavily marked the planning of cities. Military personnel, by essence denizens of the ramparts of the City, are being increasingly pushed back into its centre. However, can utilitarian function fully eclipse the function of prestige and the display of public power? Can utilitarian and budgetary functions stifle the essential human motivation of pride, which is so important to the military? When will we be seeing new military buildings that combine their utility and practicality with prestige?

As a strong strategic hub for France and then for the German Empire after its annexation of 1870, Metz has seen its city planning guided by military realities for four centuries. Today, with the French Ministry of Defence letting go of a number of its possessions, the municipality is acting to safeguard this heritage, which constitutes the identity of the city.

Cultural heritage has today become one of the challenges in the relations between France and its former colonies. For example, on the African continent, a number of monuments, especially those erected to the glory of the French and indigenous soldiers fallen during the two world wars, after being forgotten, taken down and sometimes destroyed are now receiving a new lease of life in the name of shared history. This is the case of the Demba et Dupont statue group in Dakar. Its tribulations provide a good illustration of the ambiguities and limits of the “duty to memory”.

The collections of the French Army's museums constitute a conservatory of military art and traditions, sciences and techniques as well as human adventures… Although the majority of their visitors are civilians who have come to discover the history of France through the history of its armed forces, military personnel, especially young recruits and young NCOs visit the museums to find the identity of their chosen arm, as a fundamental component of their “esprit de corps”. In these cases, the museum becomes a veritable training ground. Or again, a Memorial.

Relocated to the Balard site in 2015, the armed forces and administrative departments rapidly appropriated the premises. However, given the large-scale standardization of the complex, induced by the generic character of the tools provided, and after the initial search for community, the need for distinct identity was rapidly expressed, especially among its military personnel.

In the architectural project of the new Ministry of the Armed Forces built in Balard, the entrance hall was initially planned to house monumental sculpture titled Vivre libre (Living Free). But there is still no sculpture today. The project's architect and the artist who created the sculpture reflect here on this absence and question how an institution apprehends its heritage.

The vestiges of terror sites have a very particular status, and their preservation is not a matter of course. For example, many former Nazi camps have disappeared without trace. But some have been protected in the name of a notion of heritage unconnected to artistic considerations but to the construction of post-war European identities. The vestiges of these concentration camps were intended to contribute to remembrance, edification of the masses and reinforcing a joint political project founded on freedom and democracy to the west of the Iron Curtain, and on commemoration of the anti-Nazi struggle to the east. A number of questions arise regarding the way in which the death camps have been transformed into heritage sites. The example of the Natzweiler camp is illuminating.

The memory of captivity evolved over the second part of the 20th century. Initially bundled together with the memory of the other actors of the Second World War, it became specific, but still collective, at the end of the 1980s, before, in response to the wishes of the prisoners, it evolved into individual and family memory. This memory started becoming more widely diffused at the exact moment that it became less visible, because it had become rooted in the family, with the result that from the early 2000s onwards it resurfaced in the form of books, shows, graphic novels and documentaries. By paying tribute to their ancestors, the descendants of prisoners-of-war are part of a fertile literary and historic current in these early days of the 21st century.

Appeals for innovation and audacity are regularly heard in all forms of strategic discourse, to the point where they can appear to be leitmotifs. The military domain is no exception, and the union of innovation and audacity is presented as one of the most appropriate responses to the complexity of the modern world. However, the fields of exploration ploughed by operational research remain entirely classical. True audacity lies in appealing to universes that at first sight seem totally foreign to military affairs. In this respect, art has indisputable resources, not only for nourishing technical military innovation but also for reinforcing the knowledge and understanding of the “other”, in other words the enemy.

This article first provides a non-exhaustive analysis of the practical difficulties and conditions implied in any heritage project wishing to be authentically military, i.e. true to the fundamentals and missions assigned to the armed forces. Subsequently, with the aid of two examples, the military parade and the uniform, the article examines the dangers that ill-conceived and poorly managed heritage projects can pose to the bond between the military and the nation, partly by trivializing military identities and partly by cutting them off from the rest of society.