La mise en scène du passé

About the Book

Le spectacle de l’histoire is a collective work examining how the past was staged from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth century. The book adopts a culturalist approach, structured around twenty case studies divided into three parts: the role of heroes, the place of women, and the spectacular. It explores these themes primarily through theater (eight articles), films (six articles), and public commemorations or reenactments (four articles).

The editors—Stéphane Haffemayer, Benoît Marpeau, and Julie Verlaine—emphasize a non-judgmental, understanding-based perspective, focusing on how cultural productions appropriate the past rather than evaluating their historical accuracy. The goal is to analyze the fabrication of concrete forms and identify period- and space-specific identity stereotypes, including staging choices, costumes, set designs, and actors' physical performances.

Key Themes and Analyses

• Reception and Public Perception: Many articles examine how audiences and critics anticipated or received these cultural productions, questioning how art "embodies" history and the interplay between historians' narratives and artists' spectacles.
• Realism and Detail: Several authors, such as Jean-Marc Leveratto, Fanny Robles, and Erika Wicky, explore the role of details in creating a sense of realism. Creators often conducted archival research to satisfy audiences' expectations for authenticity, using small elements to craft an "illusion of perfection."
• Cultural and Social Norms: The book interrogates notions like verisimilitude and realism, emphasizing how preexisting genres, shared historical memory, and cultural inheritances shape representations. The focus is on the relationship between these forms and contemporary social and artistic conventions, rather than their fidelity to historical facts.
• Gender and Postcolonial Studies: Nearly half the articles adopt approaches from gender or postcolonial studies, a notable contribution in the French context. Topics include:
  • The "ethnological show business" (Fanny Robbles).
  • Theatrical challenges to colonial culture (Isabelle Scaviner).
  • The reevaluation of Native American figures in John Ford's films (Jean-Louis Libois).
  • The social valorization of women in an 1830 Paris ballet (Hélène Marquié).
  • The confinement of women to the private sphere in 1920s militant plays (Léonor Delaunay).
  • The political symbolism of Joan of Arc (Julie Déramond and Danièle Sansy).
• Contemporary Relevance: The book aims to uncover what societies reveal about themselves through their engagement with the past. Some articles highlight how spectacles reflect contemporary issues more than historical inquiry, though this approach is critiqued as occasionally redundant.

Methodological Reflections

The book grapples with the distinction between historical events, historical writing, and shared memory, though this distinction is not always sharply defined. While some authors, like Johannes Landis, draw on Paul Ricœur to argue that historians' constructions of heroes are subjective and culturally shaped, this perspective is not consistently developed across the volume.

A recurring tension exists between the book's nuanced problematization of "spectacle" and its sometimes dated conception of history. Most articles focus on cultural productions centered on historically significant events or figures, aligning with classical representational history. However, the book could have expanded its scope to consider how spectacles themselves transform social spaces, treating film releases, theatrical performances, or TV series as historical events. This shift would have bridged the gap between history (particularly political history) and spectacle, moving toward a cultural history of the relationship between past and performance.

Maryline Crivello's article, Quête du Graal et légendaire contemporain: Les mises en spectacle historiques du médiéval, exemplifies this potential shift. By studying village festivals centered on the Middle Ages, Crivello examines their social utility in the present, including their role in memory tourism and community-building. She argues that these events shape contemporary perceptions of the past while reflecting modern conceptions of communal living, even if they sometimes distort history.

Publication Details

Edited by Stéphane Haffemayer, Benoît Marpeau, and Julie Verlaine, Le spectacle de l’histoire was published by Presses Universitaires de Rennes in 2012. The articles originated as revised papers from a 2010 colloquium held at the IMEC, with select sessions available on France Culture.