Contenu du sommaire : Fêtes et célébrations des groupes ethniques.

Rituals and ceremonies have always been important in the life of ethnic communities which have created their own calendar of celebrations. The analysis of these lieux de fête can highlight the process of assimilation and acculturation as well as the struggle to invent a new identity in American society. Civic celebrations, processions, parade and pageants, anniversaries and commemorative events are symbolic acts, communal rituals through which the groups redefine their relation to the past, their diverse loyalties and strategies.

Incursions in time and space are a way of exploring primal myths. In her writings, Paule Marshall charts the poles of this exploration, opposing two symbolic spaces : the island, sacred land of the ancestors, and its antithesis North White Plains on the continent. Through her representation of fundamental personal and communal rites — pagan or Christian, African or American — Marshall creates another ritualistic experience, not only for the protagonists of her narratives but also for the reader.

Two forms of commemoration, two « sites of memory » are devoted to the victims of the Nazi Genocide. The first one is represented by the Memorial books, collective local histories of Jewish communities written mostly in Yiddish, sometimes in Hebrew, published in various countries, mainly in the United States and in Israel, by the survivors after World War II. The second one is The Unknown Jewish Martyr Memorial, inaugurated in Paris in 1956, meant commemorate to all the victims of the Genocide. But the idea aroused opposition first among Jews in France, then in Israel who believed that Israel was the place central to such a commemoration. This debate shows that what is at stake in commemorations is very often a struggle for the control of the collective memory of a social group.

Two Los Angeles Memorials are devoted to the memory of the victims of the Nazi Genocide. The first one concentrates upon the Destruction of European Jewry ; the second one broadens its scope to encompass the problem of intolerance in general. Both approaches, according to Joëlle Rameau, may be dangerous : the first by considering the Genocide as a specifically Jewish problem instead of showing it as the major catastrophe of the civilized world at large, the second because by including this unprecedented event into the vague concept of intolerance it may contribute to dilute and trivialize it.

After the Mexican Revolution, the Minister of Education, Jose Vasconcelos, initiated a new tradition of « open air festivals ». As post-revolutionary celebrations, these festive events were influenced by the strong anti-positivist and spiritual trend which prevailed at the turn of the century, and by the Soviet example with its emphasis on the necessity of educational and cultural reforms. The Mexican festivals, whose function was at the same time cathartic, moral and esthetic, were meant to develop the interest in national « folklore ». They also give evidence of the growing influence of the State in the cultural life.