Contenu du sommaire : Géopolitiques de la commémoration

This article examines how commemoration - as a performance located in a singular place – shapes a dominant spatial order, reflecting and reproducing relations of power, and to what extent this order can be contested. It is based on a participant observation of the World War II commemorations in the Soviet cemetery of Noyers-Saint-Martin (Oise, France), supplemented by interviews with various people involved in the ceremony, the analysis of archive and other textual documents. The article shows that, during the 2000's, Russian actors have succeeded in creating in Noyers-Saint-Martin a spatial order based on the preeminence of Russia over the other post-soviet republics and the diffusion of the Great Patriotic War myth, which is part of a “memorial soft power” strategy directed abroad by Russian authorities. However, since 2014, the moment of the ceremony is being used by Ukrainian actors to challenge this spatial order at the micro-local scale, to promote alternative memories of the Second World War and, further, to unveil the current destabilization of Ukraine by Russia in Donbass and Crimea. Nevertheless, the significance of this contestation is limited, because in the larger French political and commemorative space, Russian actors have more resources and dominant positions than Ukrainian ones. Unlike all-encompassing approaches, often assimilating commemoration and politics of memory, the article argues for an ethnographic approach of commemoration, giving weight to a detailed analysis of the spatiality of bodies and artifacts at the time of the ceremony.

This article by a young researcher aims to analyse different phenomena of commemoration in Cyprus. Taking this divided country and society, we wish to highlight the specificity of commemorative territories and artefacts, such as memorials and museums in the public space and commemorative processes in and around schools. It will also be necessary to analyse the discourses and ideologies associated with these commemorations. They have effects on the actors involved in these commemorations, ranging from a logic that stirs up hatred and mistrust, to an irenic and reunifying instrumentalization. Finally, a reflection on the globalization of memories will complete the last part of our reflection. Virtual territories take a tangible part in the transmission and commemoration of conflicting history. They also go beyond island borders to spread regionally and globally with the Cypriot diaspora and communities feeling in solidarity in these specific commemorations. They are linked to a financial and touristic logic, which rises new commemorative aims and visions that will be discussed here. The commemoration of the conflicting history in Cyprus seems complexified, trapped by the status quo regarding the Cyprus problem which is still relevant today. There are, however, emerging models of commemoration that will be emphasized here.

This paper presents the policy of commemoration with regard to young people and in particular schoolchildren during the Centenary of the Great War ; it shows how educational actions have led to international cooperation in response to the French conception of an "international" and "global" Centenary. Written by one of the actors in charge of the design and implementation of this policy, the paper discusses the multiple objectives assigned to this policy involving many stakeholders in France and elsewhere in Europe and around the world. It describes different modalities of international cooperation, illustrating both the educative and diplomatic stakes of the commemoration. Finally, it stresses the difficulties encountered in implementing international educational initiatives, underlining the fragility of the notion of "shared memory", given the domination of national or even nationalist approaches in war commemorations involving young people. Based on the author's experience and observations as a pedagogical advisor in the board of the "Mission du Centenaire", the French State Office for the Centenary, the paper presents a vision of this policy from the inside.

The author argues that commemoration is more complicated than simply “connecting” people to the past, promulgating particular political agendas or reinforcing collective rituals of national identity. Instead, she proposes that the we need to approach it from how it is felt and experienced, rather than focus only its history, discourse or symbolism. She advocates for an approach to commemoration that focuses on atmospheres, conceptually and empirically. In this paper, she suggests the use of methodologies that, by attending to atmospheres, consider how people feel in and about commemorative sites. She shows how digital, sensory and/or visual ethnographic approaches can be used, and explains how these are helping to extend understandings of commemorative spacetimes. Finally, she considers two areas of possibility offered her approach. If such moves can make possible new understandings of commemorative sites and events in peoples' lives, it is because they help illuminate the relationship between individual and collective experience, identifying how shared affects can amplify events and make them more meaningful, but also how feelings can be subverting or loosening our connection to state narratives. Attending to the experiential alongside the discursive, in other words, helps us understand both the durability and the fragility of shared identity narratives.

The different contexts of memory (re)construction processes will be the common thread of this article. What role could the different temporalities of the phenomenon of remembrance play in the development of a Holocaust-related tourism of remembrance? The possibility of tourist practices linked to the memories of the Shoah is part of historical, commemorative and memorial substrates that are strongly correlated to political and geopolitical agendas. In the first part, we will analyze the succession and coexistence of the four main (geo)political periods conducive to the emergence of remembrance and remembrance of the Holocaust as a political, heritage and tourist resource. In the second we will analyze more specifically the case of the Kazimierz district of Krakow, Poland.

On March 25th, 2012, the Memorial to the abolition of slavery was inaugurated in Nantes, France. The opening of that site, a place to remember the Atlantic Slave Trade in the former slave-trading port, represents the culmination of a long struggle for the recognition of a past that was marginalised for a long time. Since the opening of the memorial, at the heart of the urban centre, many commemorative events have been organised to pay homage, no longer to the millions of black people who were victims of the trade, but to the migrants leaving the African costs to go to Europe. This article, from an ethnographic study of the uses and practices of the Nantes Memorial, presents three events creating convergences between the memories of the western slave trade and those of the current African migratory phenomenon in France. The study thus highlights the circulation dynamics of memories as well as the situations of detour of space.

The Acadians are a geographically dispersed minority that nonetheless shares a common history and culture. Most of the population is located in the maritime provinces of Canada. Currently, the Acadians of the province of New Brunswick maintain leadership over the community due to their demographic superiority and their official recognition within the province. Conversely, the Acadians of the province of Nova Scotia are more culturally vulnerable, despite being home to the original Acadian settlements. They live in a few small geographically dispersed villages. In such a context, commemorations assume particular importance with regard to the short-term development of the community. Emblematic spaces and the regular hosting of Acadian congresses are considered important tools in the assurance of their cultural survival.

Epidemics that have marked the history of human societies have been the subject of active research for decades in fields as diverse as history, sociology, historical demography and archaeo-anthropology. However, the question of how these deadly events are remembered and the forms through which memory and commemoration materialised remains largely unexplored. This exploratory article contributes to filling this gap by providing an overview of the commemorative attitudes deployed by different societies, both past and present, towards these events and their victims. Based on the cross-examination of textual, iconographic and archaeological sources, the aim is to focus initially on the commemoration of the great plague epidemics that struck Europe during the Middle Ages and Early modern period. Secondly, we will look at the forms of commemoration linked to various epidemics of the Late modern period, particularly the most deadly (smallpox, cholera, typhus, Ebola, AIDS). The corpus studied highlights the diversity of the media mobilised in the construction of remembrance surrounding these events (emblematic places as material heritage, creation of memorials, celebrations and ceremonies, artistic representations). Giving a diachronic perspective, the data reported provide a converging set of evidence to the gradual changes that began in the second half of the 17th century, and even more so in the 18th century, as the ideological and political constructions of remembrance gradually took precedence over religious discourse.

The earthquake of January 12, 2010 hit the Haitian capital city of Port-au-Prince. Based on field anthropological research and studies in media archives, this article sheds light on the memory of the disaster and its dead. Doing so, it shows links between daily practices, official ceremonies and a political perspective of disregard between the State and the citizens. The literature mobilized ranges from newspapers factual notes on official ceremonies to academic work by specialist researchers, particularly on vodou, which is omnipresent in Haiti. Thus, this work puts into context the various dimensions of the memory of the 2010 earthquake, which oscillate between socio-cultural adaptations and more political dimensions. It shows that the relationships of power and domination in Haiti are reflected even in memory practices.The paper explains how the poorest dead have been often buried near the place of death or in mass graves. Families suffer from not knowing where the bodies of their loved ones are, because death was violent, sudden and collective. It is the practices and informal places of memory of the disappeared that are presented in the first part called “The scattered practices of memory in the heart of life and the city”. There are many places of “encounter” with the dead and death in general, notably thanks to vodou, in which there are intermediaries between the world of the living and the world “beyond”. These places can be material: one can go to cemeteries for example, and in particular near symbolic sites such as that the Cross of the vodou spirit “Baron Samdi”. There are also immaterial dimensions, very close to the previous ones, such as those where a living relative meets his deceased or the spirits through religious ceremonies. These different practices make it possible to remember, but also possibly to protect oneself from the dead who might be unhappy with their fate.In the second part, entitled “Materializing remembrance in the public space”, the article describes several memorials scattered throughout the city. They are often created on private initiative but are generally not accessible to a wide public, except the one in the park of the unsafe district of Martissant. The paper focuses on the evolution of the site of the main mass graves of Titanyen, north of the capital, which is emblematic because it includes a very large number of corpses and has been publicized in the media. Titanyen was quickly identified as the site of the “National Memorial” of the earthquake and was even officially renamed “Morne Saint Christophe”. But it is little frequented by the population, almost abandoned, and only invested by political representatives on the anniversaries of the disaster. Initially isolated, this memorial is still under construction and is increasingly surrounded by the giant post-earthquake slum of Canaan.The conclusion comes back to the historical non-accountability between the State and the Haitian population. The absence of a decent National Memorial embodied the fact that, even if the traces of the earthquake are still omnipresent, the numerous poor populations does not deserve to have a State recognition. The abandonment of the Titanyen site reflects the detachment and indifference of the rulers towards their citizens, who are already encountering many socio-economic difficulties linked to a State that has always forgotten the “outsiders” people. The tools of memory mobilized by people are therefore the usual cultural instruments, especially religious ones, drawn from the daily life of the inhabitants.

The ground-breaking ceremony of Istanbul's Third Bosphorus Bridge took place on 29th May 2013. The date chosen by the then Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to launch the construction of this urban mega-project transformed the inauguration into a commemoration of the 560th anniversary of the Ottoman Conquest of Istanbul by Fatih Sultan Mehmet. After explaining the significance of the 29th May 1453 commemorations in Turkey, in this article, we argue that the building of mega-infrastructures, such as the Third Bosphorus Bridge, has become the occasion for Erdoğan to (re)conquer the city of Istanbul, thus mirroring Fatih Sultan Mehmet more than five centuries ago. In the end, we argue that the “Conquest Festival” in Istanbul today is perhaps more than just a celebration of the 15th century Ottoman siege of the city, but instead a diverted way for the nation to commemorate - without necessarily ever acknowledging it openly - the ethnic and religious “purification” of Turkey during the 20th century.

The paper examines the “Andy Warhol” Millennium Show exhibited at the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg in 2000 and at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow in 2001. It first discusses why the U.S. government organized this show as part of America's millennium celebrations abroad and why it chose Andy Warhol as America's millennium artist. It then proceeds with explaining the political and art historical contents of the show, as well as its public reception by both the Russian media and the Russian artworld. The paper concludes that the “Andy Warhol” Millennium Show, despite its direct interrelatedness with the symbolic diplomatic ceremonial of millennium celebrations, was a groundbreaking cultural event, as it managed to familiarize the Russian public with key works of American Pop Art and with this build a “cultural” bridge between the U.S. and Russia in the post-Cold-War era.