Tracés (Nov 2009)
Sur quelles bases aborder le débat sur la loi, la mémoire et l’histoire ?
Abstract
The debate on the so-called “memory laws” was not grounded on relevant bases with the December 2005 call of “Liberté pour l’histoire” (“freedom for history”), which drew no distinction between the law about the teaching of the benefits of colonisation, then the target of a wave of protest by academics, and the laws about negationism, the Armenian genocide and slavery. The call was a clear condemnation of a number of articles in these four laws, criticized for having “restricted the historians’ freedom”, for having “said to historians, on pain of sanctions, what they should be looking for and what they should find”, for having “imposed methods and set limits” and even for being, “a shame on our democracy”. In spite of the widely-admired work of many of the call’s authors, the text cannot be considered as a starting point for serious discussion. Certainly, the law should not have the final say in matters of historical truth. However, the role that can be played by the law regarding memory struggles, and more generally regarding the risks involved in the various uses of history, should be articulated in a different way. I did take part in the protest movement against the February 2005 law about the teaching of the benefits of colonisation, and in the creation of the Comité de Vigilance sur les Usages publics de l’Histoire (CVUH). What is at stake is to try and combine the defence of the autonomy of historical research, and the acknowledgement of the existence, and perhaps the legitimacy, of the claims which are made about memory.
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