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Penser l’événement. 1940-1945
L’événement que l’historien Pierre Laborie (1936-2017) nous aide à penser est celui, majeur, de Vichy, de l’Occupation et de la Résistance,
tel que les Français l’ont vécu au jour le jour, sans savoir ce que seraient les lendemains. Pour ce faire, il convient de se débarrasser au préalable d’innombrables idées fausses induites par les usages politiques et mémoriels de cette période et qui, à force d’être répétées, ont pris valeur d’évidences.
Les mots de Pierre Laborie, forgés pour étudier l’opinion publique et les comportements des années 1930 et 1940, appartiennent désormais au langage commun des historiens : ambivalence, mental-émotionnel collectif, penser-double, non-consentement. Ils aident à retrouver les clés, les gestes, les paroles, les masques, les silences, les non-dits, l’implicite des expériences du temps perdu et dispersé des années "troubles".
"Il y a des mots qui font vivre', écrivait Paul Éluard. Tel est bien le cas de ceux de Pierre Laborie, convaincu que 'l’Histoire s’efforce, au-delà de la fragilité des émotions, de tisser quelques-uns des fils qui transmettent l’expérience pour que l’héritage serve à un dialogue de raison, qui font des fidélités maintenues une volonté de dépassement du néant".
tel que les Français l’ont vécu au jour le jour, sans savoir ce que seraient les lendemains. Pour ce faire, il convient de se débarrasser au préalable d’innombrables idées fausses induites par les usages politiques et mémoriels de cette période et qui, à force d’être répétées, ont pris valeur d’évidences.
Les mots de Pierre Laborie, forgés pour étudier l’opinion publique et les comportements des années 1930 et 1940, appartiennent désormais au langage commun des historiens : ambivalence, mental-émotionnel collectif, penser-double, non-consentement. Ils aident à retrouver les clés, les gestes, les paroles, les masques, les silences, les non-dits, l’implicite des expériences du temps perdu et dispersé des années "troubles".
"Il y a des mots qui font vivre', écrivait Paul Éluard. Tel est bien le cas de ceux de Pierre Laborie, convaincu que 'l’Histoire s’efforce, au-delà de la fragilité des émotions, de tisser quelques-uns des fils qui transmettent l’expérience pour que l’héritage serve à un dialogue de raison, qui font des fidélités maintenues une volonté de dépassement du néant".
544 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 2, 2019
5 people want to read
About the author
Pierre Laborie
11 booksPierre Laborie was a French historan, expert on the Vichy regime, professor emeritus of the Toulouse II-Le Mirail University.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 9, 2020
[Vichy France phase]
I picked this up via a longstanding morbid interest in Vichy France, assuming originally that it was going to be a social history of sorts. What it is in fact is a body of historiography and commentary around how Vichy France and its consequences (Resistance, 70,000 deported Jews, Liberation, vengeance, etc) have been viewed since the war, how changing and mutable that picture has been and the challenges of any historian to avoid being swerved by political manipulation and the 'vulgate' (wonderful word) / received wisdom, generated by depictions from memorial, celebration, media, TV, memoir, etc.
Once we cut through the dense woods that are historiography and method (never the most interesting subjects), what emerges is highly informative for the layman; I had no idea that 'resistance' was so contested and contestable, or that this had been a political football between Gaullists and communists. The conclusions the study seems to reach is that there were, indeed, multiple forms of resistance, that 'silence' might well not have meant collaboration, that to see resistance as a matter of maquis and armed struggle is probably over-simplistic - and that, my god, processing 1940, Vichy and resistance must surely remain quite a moral bind for the average, educated French citizen of good faith even today - with little of the clarity of, say, the German experience or, for example, the British experience. What a fascinating matter.
Good, passionate work, and doubtless his non-historiographic stuff is where to head.
I picked this up via a longstanding morbid interest in Vichy France, assuming originally that it was going to be a social history of sorts. What it is in fact is a body of historiography and commentary around how Vichy France and its consequences (Resistance, 70,000 deported Jews, Liberation, vengeance, etc) have been viewed since the war, how changing and mutable that picture has been and the challenges of any historian to avoid being swerved by political manipulation and the 'vulgate' (wonderful word) / received wisdom, generated by depictions from memorial, celebration, media, TV, memoir, etc.
Once we cut through the dense woods that are historiography and method (never the most interesting subjects), what emerges is highly informative for the layman; I had no idea that 'resistance' was so contested and contestable, or that this had been a political football between Gaullists and communists. The conclusions the study seems to reach is that there were, indeed, multiple forms of resistance, that 'silence' might well not have meant collaboration, that to see resistance as a matter of maquis and armed struggle is probably over-simplistic - and that, my god, processing 1940, Vichy and resistance must surely remain quite a moral bind for the average, educated French citizen of good faith even today - with little of the clarity of, say, the German experience or, for example, the British experience. What a fascinating matter.
Good, passionate work, and doubtless his non-historiographic stuff is where to head.
Displaying 1 of 1 review