Last Monday, June 2, he died in Paris, at 93, Pierre Nora. Historian and historians, it was the key academic figure in the complex relationship between past and present. Centered in France, its extensive work was decisive to build a story outside the dictatorial parameters, in places like Spain, the Southern Cone or the ex -communist countries of Eastern Europe. It all started in 1984 with the coordination of its great bet, Memory placesa collective work of seven volumes, prolonged until 1993 and in which more than one hundred authors worked.
Memory placeshis great finding, his great idea, was the engine of renewal and impulse of new studies. That original study on the symbology of Republican France would set the so -called Public historya field that has not stopped growing and that places the past in the center of the debates on the role of citizenship in public space. The key is to understand that, far from being synonyms, memory and history are completely opposite. Memory is present and is constantly evolving, looks towards the future. The story, on the other hand, looks back, “erase the memory,” said Nora thinking about the role of the historian as a spokesman for a world, of a time, in full transformation.
In his first work on Algeria he showed this double problem in colonialism, moving away from the traumatic memory of post -war, the memory of Nazism, collaborationism and holocaust. From there he began to understand the changing meanings of the past in the present. A continuous work that has allowed a substantial turn in contemporary history itself, displaced, increasingly, towards the present. Because in a world in which groups and communities create their own memories while making their own demands, the past can only serve as a decoration. Hence the importance of the role of the historian as a referee between history and memory. Firm defender of the historian’s trade, did not only put the emphasis on the observance of the rule and the method but on the role in society, in the civic spirit that should show all historiography.
In full boom of the digital age, it returned to that double dimension between history and memory that was at the origin of everything and that was complemented in a very similar way to social networks. The story is made with documents or archiving materials that allow to reconstitute a fact, but it is always subsequent. Instead, memory is affective, psychological, emotional, and, above all, it is individual. He has many profiles and does not have time, it is a past always present. Nora thus demonstrated why we confused history and collective memory. He was proud of it, he liked to refer to him like this, as the historian of collective memory.
Otherwise everything was in the French intellectual world. Director of several collections of humanities at the Gallimard publishing house, founder of the magazine The debate y Member of the French Academy, lived one of his most controversial professional moments in 1997, when he refused to translate the fundamental work of Eric Hobsbawm the age of the extremes. Later, when he understood that this book did not really imply serious contradictions with his thesis, he returned to his concern about commemorations and changes in national symbols. This was demonstrated in the last Paris Olympiad that coincided with the anniversary of Dia D, the Normandy landing, in 2024. Nora shared the research and teaching until the end. Professor at the school of high studies since the 80s, he taught several generations to love history. Away from the Grandilocente National account but attentive to the risks of politicization and the dangers of manipulation of the past in the present.