1 - Stories that Shape Spatialities: Lieu and Milieu de Mémoire through the Lens of Narrativity

Summary

Abstract

This chapter offers an examination of the nexus between space and memory by exploring the concepts of lieu and milieu de mémoire. My aim is to show how, in memory-making processes, these two semiotic configurations are not mutually exclusive, as Pierre Nora argues, but mutually articulated. In the first part of the chapter, I will discuss Nora's definitions, comparing them to Michel de Certeau's articulation of lieu and espace and through the lens of Algirdas J. Greimas's model of narrativity. In the second part, I will translate theoretical and methodological reflections into a practical analysis, specifically through an exploration of the case of the Italian concentration camp of Fossoli.

Keywords: Place of Memory; Fossoli; Algirdas Julien Greimas; Pierre Nora; Michel de Certeau.

Ever since the publication of Pierre Nora's monumental collection (Nora 1996 [1984]), the category of lieu de mémoire – translated as ‘place’ or ‘site’ of memory – has offered one of the main conceptual prisms through which to analyse the space–memory nexus. In the introduction to the collection, Nora explains that ‘collective memory was rooted, in order to create a vast topology of French symbolism’, and that the aim of his work is to analyse how ‘the collective heritage of France was crystallised in places of memory’ (Nora 1996 [1984]: xv). According to the historian, the category of lieu de mémoire describes the way memory assumes and reaches a cultural and collective dimension in our times. Despite the focus on France, the category of lieu de mémoire has been used to interpret the meaning of tangible and intangible heritage in other, sometimes very different, national contexts (for Italy see, for example, Isnenghi 1996–1997).

This chapter argues for a semiotic reinterpretation of the notion of lieu de mémoire in terms of a particular and specific way of – among others – forming space and memory, and the nexus between them. In fact, Nora's concept ‘tends to emphasise one layer only, one point in the entire life cycle of a given location’, preventing any acknowledgment of ‘the coexistence of a plurality of meanings and experiences’ (Arrigoni and Galani 2019: 164) in the way we produce and connect spatiality and memory.