Setting out from the brief reconstruction of an event and its internal dynamic, the author examines the successive phases involved in its mnemonic appropriation, tracing the objectives and practices of the various actors involved and the shifting contextual meanings. It shows how the event is appropriated by the actors through the successive transformation of its living memory into heritage, either in the form of monuments or commemorations. Living memory is replaced by institutionalized remembrance and the event's actors by heroic figures constructed according to the contextual meanings elicited by the demands and objectives of the institutional actors.
Work of Memory; Commemoration; Experience; Heritage; Anthropology of the Sensible