Comparing Family Memories in France and Germany: The Production of History(ies) Within and Through Kin Relations

Abstract

This article is based on a Franco-German collective research project on family memories that has been conducted at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) of Paris over the past five years by a dozen of young German and French researchers and coordinated by the two authors. Based on an empirical study of eight family monographs, method inspired by the anthropology of kin relations, this article traces the process that has led us from the analysis of family memories toward the analysis of the production of history(ies) within and through kin groups. It is the Franco-German comparison, but also the necessity to interrogate the concepts of family and history/memory which has led us to propose an original approach of family memories, ultimately leading to a dissatisfaction with the conceptualization we started with. The term “family memories” suggests simultaneously the existence of a group (the family), common souvenirs (collective memories), and underlines their difference to history (produced by professionals). This triple definition finally reveals being little useful for this research, since we have rather tried to investigate ways in which individuals and groups, linked through relations of kinship, produce histories through reappropriations of stories constructed and transmitted within several institutions. It is the practices of kin relations, common or contradictory discourses, communicated and linked through emotions, which will produce these (hi-)stories. These multidimensional interactions and configurations contribute in turn to the production of history.