2010/10/01 by Christina Theodosiou · 3 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · Psychology · #Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis #World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact #French Historical and Cultural Studies #Mnemonic #Spanish Civil War #Historiography #Narrative #Abandonment (legal) #Cultural memory #History #Politics #Politics of memory #Sociology #Identity (music) #Collective memory #Cult #Law #Political science #Aesthetics #Anthropology #Literature #Psychology #Ancient history #Art
paper · doi:10.1080/19475020.2010.517439
published in First World War Studies 1(2), 185-198 (Taylor & Francis)
openalex publication_date 2010/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Over the two past decades, a new approach to the Great War has progressively developed. Shifting their focus of inquiry to the social and the cultural, away from the economic and the political, the historians of the Great War are particularly attached to the study of the legacy of the war on the cultural and social structures of European societies. The study of war's memory has therefore been placed at the heart of historical research in most of the countries that took part in the war. In France, the mnemonic turn of the cultural historiography of the Great War is thus seen in several works which, through the various forms of commemoration such as the war memorials or the cult of the Unknown Soldier, examine the relationship between memory and identity as well as between remembrance and mourning at both the public and individual levels. This article about Armistice Day in France explores the difficulties of the transmission of memory in the aftermath of war. It questions the persistence and the abandonment of war values and culture in the years that succeeded the Great War. It aims to demonstrate the interaction between memory, trauma, and the creation of symbolic narratives. It also argues that the celebration of Armistice Day should be seen as a public sphere of discussion where two different conceptions about the past, the present, and the future, of the national community are confronted. It finally claims that the mnemonic practices should consequently be treated as a network of cross-perspectives among the expectations of the future, the reception of the past, and the experience of the present.