Pierre Nora, National Memory, and Democracy: A Review

John Bodnar

Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past. Vol. 1: Conflicts and Divisions. Directed by Pierre Nora. Trans. by Arthur Goldhammer. Ed. by Lawrence D. Kritzman. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. xxviii, 651 pp. $37.50, ISBN 0-231-08404-8.)	1
Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past. Vol. 2: Traditions. Directed by Pierre Nora. Trans. by Arthur Goldhammer. Ed. by Lawrence D. Kritzman. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. xiv, 591 pp. $37.50, isbn 0-231-10634-3.)
Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past. Vol. 3: Symbols. Directed by Pierre Nora. Trans. by Arthur Goldhammer. Ed. by Lawrence D. Kritzman. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. xiv, 751 pp. $37.50, ISBN 0-231-10926-1.)
The study of national memory emerged at a time when the coherence of what was generally known as national history was severely contested and disturbed. The opportunity to review an English-language edition of Pierre Nora's massive study of French national memory for an American history journal is a reminder not only that this disruption marked the histories of many nations but also that the fracturing of national histories involved a beginning—a political transformation—that has yet to be fully examined or conceptualized. Scholars such as Michael Kammen in the United States and Raphael Samuel in Britain have brilliantly established the outlines of this alteration in nations other than France. It is less certain, however, when and how this change began and what the political consequences were for the nations involved.	2
The rise of modern nations was rooted in a crisis of authority. In the late eighteenth century democratic revolutionaries with visions of popular participation in government and greater personal freedom came forward to overturn autocratic regimes. Imbued with the faith of the Enlightenment in human reason and potential, these new states in places such as France and America took up the highly romantic project to make the future better than the past. This democratic upheaval did not eradicate conservative ideals less trusting of popular rule and personal independence. Indeed, a struggle between democratic and conservative dreams marked the political history of most nations touched by the democratic upheaval long after the founding of democratic regimes. There is little need to recount the familiar points of this political history. But there is a need to explore the connections linking the vast projects to promote democracy, those designed to construct representations of national pasts, and the controversies they initiated.	3
Although it exaggerates the coherence of former times, Nora's multivolume history of French national memory sharply raises the connection between the rise of democracy and the problem of making a national past. It centers its attention on three distinct topics: the key ideological streams that needed to be merged in French national memory after the Revolution of 1789; important sites such as medieval cathedrals or battlefields that were inscribed with the ideas and sentiments of French nationalism; and powerful symbols such as Joan of Arc that mediated diverse political interests and sustained a sense of a national past over a long period. Collectively, the volumes by Nora and his collaborators chronicle how ideas, places, images, stories, and rituals were fused together into a cultural edifice that was widely assumed by most citizens to be part of the natural order of things.	. . .