ABSTRACT

This chapter contributes to the current epistemological reflexions on the nature of memory. It advocates the importance not to mainly consider memory as ‘a content’ but as a relational process. The chapter illustrates the empirical potentialities of Maurice Halbwachs theorisation of memory and space. It focuses on a contemporary iconic case study related to the memory of a Holocaust related past: the existence of internment camps at the very centre of Paris between 1943 and 1944. If collective memory derives its force and duration from a group of individuals, these are after all individuals who remember as members of a group. From the 1980s onward, an increasing number of researchers in the social sciences have become interested in the topic of ‘memory.’ Halbwachs’s intuition opens a new direction to conceptualise memory as something other than content coming from the past, which is so often described as ‘collective memory.’.