Maurice Halbwachs: Official and hidden memory

Abstract

This article tries to show, in general terms, how Maurice Halbwachs  has discovered presence and vitality in the collective memories which have been excluded from the socially-institutionalized world. In order to decipher his opaque writing, one should try for a sociology of the depths, for a sociological look that, separating itself from the dominant positivism of the social sciences, manages to penetrate the hidden logic that permanently underlies social life. This article seeks to uncover the nature of a collective memory that respects the vicissitudes of time, as well as its difficult relations both with official memory and with the dominant historical record.