ABSTRACT
The less memory is experienced spontaneously as lived history, the greater is the need for external props and tangible reminders. Since we no longer dwell among memories in an environment where tradition is woven into the fabric of everyday life, we rely on representational modes created to evoke the remnants of memory in contemporary consciousness (Nora 1996: 6-7). The historically themed restaurant that evokes the past is one such representational mode. It evokes memories by historicising the dining experience — evoking the past in its décor, its architecture, its memorabilia, its overall ambience and particularly its dishes. Halbwachs’s work on collective memory is critical because he displaces memory from the individual or subjective realm, the domain of psychologists, to the social or collective realm, paving the way for historians like Pierre Nora to adopt memory as a framework for the writing of cultural history (Halbwachs 1992). Nora’s innovative interpretation of French history through collective memory, which he argues is rooted in concrete lieux de mémoire, or ‘sites of memory’, such as monuments and buildings but also institutions, historical figures and books, is critical for my cultural approach to understanding how society knows and imagines its past (Nora 1996: 6-7). This chapter is built on Nora’s idea of ‘sites of memory’, to conceptualise the historically themed restaurants as settings that trigger collective acts of remembrance.
