The Memorial Culture of Modern French Monarchism

Abstract

Though the political system of France is distinguished by strong traditions of republicanism and civil nationalism, this article is focused on monarchism as a form of memorial culture and historical politics of modern French society. The purpose of the study is to analyze monarchism as a form of historical memory. The author analyzes the role and place of monarchical intellectuals in the development of historical politics and the memorial culture that is formed and developed in monarchical historical imagination. The novelty of the research lies in the study of the current (modern) stage in the development of monarchical ideology in France, not as a form of political participation, but as a form of development of historical memory and memorial culture, based on the principles of both historical revisionism and French nationalism that is different from its dominant republican versions. The article shows that 1) monarchism shapes and cultivates its own ideas about the past and history; 2) the historical imagination of monarchism is a form of historical revisionism, since the monarchical past and heritage is subject to consistent positive mythologization and ideologization in the political imagination of its supporters; 3) in its historical imagination, monarchism builds alternative versions of historical memory and memorial culture which differ from those offered by the republican identity. It is assumed that the visualization of the collective historical memory of the unique historical experience of the French monarchy, including the narrative and discursive tactics and strategies of modern monarchists, contributes to the actualization of the heterogeneous nature of the memorial tradition of modern France, stimulating the consolidation of unique ideas about the past that shape the basis of the monarchical historical imagination and memorial culture as a form of alternative memory. The article shows that monarchical forms of historical memory contribute to further transformations of memorial culture, stimulating the parallel codevelopment of alternative countermemories in the political and ideological coordinates of monarchism.