L’histoire entre la guerre des mémoires et la Justice

Abstract

The question arises as to whether justice is capable of repairing the tragedy of history. François Dosse situates his analysis on the pragmatic axis of the citizen's concern expressed by Ricœur from the first lines of Memory, History, Forgetting when he says he is troubled by too much memory here and too much forgetting elsewhere. We are witnessing a progressive judicialisation of the historical discipline. It has resulted in a disturbing, memory inflation since the Gayssot law of 1990. The functions of the judge and the historian certainly have common features, as Marc Bloch has shown in Apologie pour l’histoire and Carlo Ginzburg in Le juge et l’historien. The examining magistrate can be compared to the historian, but not to the judge who must render the judgment. This progressive hold of justice over the past perversely results in an attempt to sanction historical questions. Ricœur helps us to rethink the relations between justice, history and memory by distinguishing and articulating these various dimensions through the work of a clarification of concepts. He makes it possible to better articulate the judicial function, the work of memory and the historiographic operation while respecting the validity of each of these dimensions.

Keywords

• Mémoire, Justice, Histoire, Lois mémorielles