‘Devoir de mémoire’: The post-colonial path of a post-national memory in France

Abstract

The expression ‘devoir de mémoire’ (‘duty to remember’) started to be commonly used in the French political discourse in the French political discourse in the 1990s, thanks to a reconfiguration of the ‘national narrative’. It implied two new obligations for the French state: to commemorate the memory of the victims for which France was acknowledging its responsibility (Jewish deportees during the Vichy Regime), and the recognition of a community (the Jewish one) victim of genocide. This new political contract also offers one paradigm for post-colonial memories as people sought, at the end of the 1990s, an official recognition of crimes against humanity such as slavery or colonization. These demands were elaborated and negotiated by new actors, carriers of these memories, by means of socialization with the expression ‘devoir de mémoire’. Through an exploration of this ritual of apology in France, specifically on how the ‘Taubira law’ on slavery was created and passed (1998–2001), this text intends to show how the use of the ‘devoir de mémoire’ led to interactions between different collectivities, mentioned as a ‘speech act’ meant to modify social relations through the official understanding of the national past.