Abstract EN:

This study of the case of 20th century Nantes focuses on those who structure the collective memory one can observe on the scale of a town, means and themes. The two world wars and then the rapid growth of voluntary organisations in the eighties, increased the number of collective forces involved in this evocation, whose reasons for behaving as they did were different and sometimes conflicting. The analysis of the means they used - commemoration ceremonies, street names, plaques, their writings and pictorial production - makes it possible to distinguish different periods in this construction of a collective memory, which was marked by a few outstanding events and by longer economic movements. From 1914 to 1944, the Great War was the most important working site for the common memory in Nantes; it was used as a source of power revealing what was at stake for the ideological divides and their continuity. After 1945, memories of the Second World War divided rather than united, as illustrated by the separate ceremonies in commemoration of the fifty hostages of October, 1941. From the seventies onwards, there was a trend towards a dual movement. On the one hand, organizations were formed to uphold the memory of the group or to unearth parts of the town's past that had been forgotten. On the other hand, innermost sanctuaries of the collective memory, like the fifty hostages, were re-examined while themes that had been repressed, such as the slave trade, were brought to light. Between 1914 and 1992 the town seemed to go from a pluralist memory to the juxtaposition of different memories.