“Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire”
Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Représentations, no. 26 (1989): 7-24. Available on JStor with subscription.
This landmark text in the field of Memory Studies develops the concept of the ‘site of memory’: a particular location in public space that seeks to define or congeal collective memory around and according to an official narrative. Nora problematizes the way in which these memorial devices seek to assert and maintain hegemony over the process by which individual memories transition to shared history.