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The Nation, Rescaled: Theorizing the Decentralization of Memory in Contemporary France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 March 2012

Alexandra Kowalski
Alexandra Kowalski*
Affiliation:
Central European University
*
alexandra.kowalski@gmail.com
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Extract

For more than forty years now, the French state has produced, legitimized, and supported local identities through national policies of historic preservation and public discourses about heritage. Rather than simply replaying the old, anxious, and nostalgic tune of national identity, the advent of heritage in France marked a singular moment of cultural transformation and rupture. The national past became articulated, in public speech and political practice, with the cultures and identities of local and regional territories. Given France's centralist tradition, and its political culture that is often cast as the archetype of “an ideology concerned with boundedness, continuity, and homogeneity” (Handler 1988: 6), this historical transformation presents a puzzle, to which this paper provides answers through historical and theoretical inquiry.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , April 2012 , pp. 308 - 331
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2012

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