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# In 2011 the distinguished French historian Pierre Nora gave an interview to the Russian scholar of identity, Doctor of Historical Sciences Elena Filippova
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/v-2011-g-izvestnyi-frantsuzskii-istorik-per-nora-daval-interviu-russkoi-issledovatelnitse-identichnosti-d-i-n/
- Published: 2020-07-08T17:29:51.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:42:33.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Interviews, Observations, Society, People

In 2011 the distinguished French historian Pierre Nora gave an interview to the Russian scholar of identity, Doctor of Historical Sciences Elena Filippova, and touched upon a subject of some interest in present circumstances: the French constitutional reform of 2008.

I give an abridged extract:

“A good example, which I often cite, is the problem of regional languages in France. Today we are seeing a revival of them. For those who live in Brittany, Alsace or Corsica this process is very important, since it is a matter of preserving languages which, after the Revolution of 1789, were gradually displaced by French. Regional languages were regarded as coarse local dialects, to be eradicated. The defenders of the French language, however, consider attempts to revive the regional languages artificial. There is no question of banning them; they have even received state support through their inclusion in the system of education, but it is also impermissible to impose their use, since at the national level they have no legal status.”

The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages helped to establish certain rights for languages fighting for their survival, although France did not ratify it.

“So, in the course of the constitutional reform, the regional associations organised powerful pressure on parliamentarians in order to secure, at the very least, the inclusion in the text of the Constitution of a sentence stating that regional languages form part of the national heritage. Moreover, they wanted this sentence to be placed in Article 2, which reads: ‘The language of the Republic shall be French.’ Full stop. In place of that full stop they proposed a comma, to be followed by: ‘regional languages form part of the national heritage.’ But what, strictly speaking, does ‘part of the national heritage’ mean? National cuisine, for example, is also part of the national heritage: it occurs to nobody to write that into the Constitution! So that sentence contained some special meaning, some opposition of the regional languages to the state language.

A conflict flared up in which neither side managed to achieve complete victory. The regional associations secured the inclusion in the text of the Constitution of a sentence about regional languages, and in that sense they won. But the sentence found its place not in the second article but much lower down, closer to the end of the document, which means the battle was half lost. There you have an example of two versions of collective memory colliding, entirely opposed to one another, and a political decision was needed to resolve the conflict that had arisen. In this case a compromise was found. The example is also a good one for understanding that behind a conflict of different versions of collective memory there always lies a conflict of identities, and nothing more. When we say ‘memory’, we mean ‘identity’. This word, which came into circulation some 30 years ago, is understood by everyone today. Modern societies are in the grip of identities. There is nothing to be done about it.”

And if Pierre Nora speaks of the impossibility of entering national cuisine into a constitution as something self-evident, I fear that only 9 years later, on one sixth of the earth's land surface, the prospect of enshrining in a constitution something even more unfathomable no longer seems so preposterous. But what is to be done? The power of identities, and with identities comes the unction!