How Nicolas Sarkozy and his advisers tell the story of France ? What must be the attitude of the historian in the face of the political uses of history and collective memory ? In a militant work, Nicolas Offenstadt seeks to analyze the devices of distortion of historical reality by the current power.
Among the symbolic policies, those which stage the collective past enjoy a privileged status due to a massive anthropological phenomenon: there is no identity (individual or collective) without support for history and memory (individual or collective). No political institution is an exception to this phenomenon. We can call “ memory policies All the interventions of public actors who aim to produce and impose memories common to a given society. The construction of a collective story by the public authorities is an integral part of this mode of public action. These stories are supposed to bring together members of a society around a common history, even if these narrative configurations sometimes say more about the way in which power is staged and in value than on the state of the actual collective memory.
The red line of decontextualization and falsification
Nicolas Offenstadt’s latest work, lecturer in history of the Middle Ages at the University of Paris I, helps to test these few data of political anthropology. He targets ten episodes (from the years 2007-2009) of the memory and history policy carried out at the initiative of the Élysée. On the border between scientific discourse and anti-sarkozy pamphlet, the text of Nicolas Offenstadt is a militant book, that of a historian exasperated by the abusive intrusions of the power in place in the field of history. This fight is part of a broader epistemological problem and a field of struggle between learned and symbolic political history: the historian has the monopoly of the writing of history ? Can political power instrumentalize as historic reality in the name of its own legitimacy ? Two legitimities (scientific and democratic) and two scriptures in history clash.
At no time of his work, Offenstadt only claims the historian to have the monopoly of the writing of history, even less that of the appropriation of the past. He does not hesitate to fully recognize the right to the legislator to produce a symbolic policy where history has the right of city. However, it comes back to historian ethics a duty of vigilance when political power crosses a red line which consists not only in falsifying historical reality, but, moreover, in encroaching on the field of freedom of education and research. However, since Nicolas Sarkozy was elected to the supreme magistracy, this red line continues to be trampled on. The processes of distortion of history, in addition to the side “ bling-bling “,” flashy “,” seer »(P. 22) Events thus theatrical, focus on the techniques of ideological disaffiliation and decontextualization of historical events and characters.
These techniques are perfectly assumed by the brain and the pen of the memorial policy of the Élysée, Henri Guaino: whether on the left or right, whether they are part of an era far from the current issues, the historical figures who have marked the history of France belong, for the adviser of the Head of State, to a common heritage in which political power can draw as his fundamental references. Besides that this strategy throws disorder on the side of a partisan left already deeply disunited, these techniques allow, in the order of political competition, to seduce a wider electorate, invited to recognize itself in a Sarkozy singing the praises of Blum or Jaurès. The most symptomatic example, analyzed in detail in the work, concerns the instrumentalization of Guy Môquet in 2007. Heritage in presidential speeches and in ministerial circulars, the political commitment of the young man, declared “ Death for France », Is systematically decontextualized. This is a device that hits the frontethos of the historian:
“” This is a complete ignorance of what the strength of communist engagement can mean at the time, the inscription of this commitment in a partisan culture, submission to the line of IIIe International which is requested from activists, especially, as is the case of Guy Môquet, when he places himself in a family struggle (his father is indeed a communist deputy elected in 1936) (P. 30).
The pages that Nicolas Offenstadt devotes to dissecting these devices are undoubtedly the richest and echo another work on the same subject he has co -edited.
These deformation processes nourish according to the author the same design: to revive a memorial regime of national unity. It is a question for the power in place to take up root in the symbolism of the great founding stories which developed in particular at the start of the IIIe Republic. These great stories intrigue a unitary and immutable conception of the nation, suspicious towards particularisms, anxious to magnify national quantities and to silence the dark pages of the history of France. This nostalgia of the national novel would reciprocally explain the rejection by the Sarkozy power of all forms of historical and memorial policies which require repentance, which point the finger at the “ dead because of France (To use the analysis of Serge Barcellini here) and which have the consequence of dishonoring national pride and disintegrating living together.
Dead because from France
It is here that the offenstadt thesis can be discussed. It is that the Elysian memory policy does not hold in a single ideological block, unlike the official speeches of the president himself on the end of repentance. If there is indeed a heavy trend, described by Offenstadt, which consists in restoring the unitary national novel, it is to recognize the presence of memory and history policies which are indeed in the path drawn by the predecessors of Sarkozy (in particular Jacques Chirac and Lionel Jospin), that is to say in the recognition of particular memories where are honored “ the dead because of France ». So many “ injured memories “, Formerly obscured, dissonant for the national novel.
It will be enough to give some examples that have made a date. In February 2008, Nicolas Sarkozy issued the proposal according to which the students of CM2 will have to take care of the memory of a dead Jewish child during the deportation. The same head of state did not disavow, during his speech of November 11, 2008, former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin by paying tribute to the mutineers of 1917. In the first part of the Dakar speech (July 2007), before the scandalous passage on the “ immaturity “Historical of the African man, Sarkozy does not hesitate to qualify the slave trade as” crime against humanity », In the spirit of the Taubira law.
This means that in the Sarkozy symbolic policy, two contradictory tendencies coexist, one that seeks to restore the unitary national novel, the other which is part of a victim of recognition of particular memories. We can hypothesize that the “ Art of confusion (In the sense, Éric Fassin) of Sarkozy’s policy, aims to seduce heterogeneous audiences by playing on the rope of antagonistic memory diets. By way of comparison, the KASPI report (analyzed in chapter 7 of the book, p. 91-98) relating to the modernization of public commemorations takes clearly done for a unequivocal recovery of the national novel. The report indeed proposes to retain as founding moments of national identity only heroic events (July 14, May 8, November 11) of a unitary and victorious nation, manifestly leaving the “ negative commemorations ».
The book of Offenstadt takes an even more militant turn when the historian is attentive to the protection of “ Buried memories », Occulted by a one -sided national novel. This position is reflected in particular by attachment to so -called memorial laws (Gayssot law, Taubira law, law on the recognition of Armenian genocide), with the exception of the law of February 23, 2005 relating to the positive role of colonization. It is then that the fight against the current political power is coupled with a struggle which crosses the field of historians, some (grouped in particular around the association “ Freedom for history ! »), Judged by the nostalgic author of the national novel and in the balance of power, the others (grouped in particular around the association« Vigilance committee in the face of public uses of history ), Attached to the rehabilitation of forgotten memories, rented for their ethical and critical position.