Memory in progressive politics: how the Commune was recollected in Nuit Debout

This chapter examines the memory-activism nexus, specifically of the role played by cultural carriers of memory in shaping the actions and expectations of social movements. Using the analytical tools of cultural memory studies and narratology, it examines how the Paris Commune (1871) was recalled in the streets of Paris during the Nuit Debout movement (2016). It argues that invocations of the Commune drew their meaning and affective force in 2016 from their resonance with earlier mediations in text, image, music, and film; and that, in the history of representations of the Commune, narrative has been deployed as a way of both remembering and forgetting it by overwriting the memory of its defeat with the memory of its hopeful beginnings. It concludes that memory in progressive politics may operate in a distinctly non-linear way, rather than offering a narrative of events as they unfolded over a longer period.