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DOI: 10.1177/0002716204266630
2004 595: 122 The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Octave Debary
Deindustrialization and Museumification: From Exhibited Memory to Forgotten History

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10.1177/0002716204266630 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY DEINDUSTRIALIZATION AND MUSEUMIFICATION 595 September
This ethnographic study of the creation of a museum in
Le Creusot (France) provides an analysis of the heritage
industry that emerged in the wake of the demise of a
family company around which the town was built. This
museum was a reaction to the passing of an age when
industrial and urban environments were intrinsically
linked. Through this description of how the past is col-
lected and recollected in a museum, this article attempts
to determine if this duty of remembrance is not, to a cer-
tain extent, a strategy of forgetfulness. Is cultural regen-
erationthe staging of history fading into oblivionour
societys sole response to industrial regeneration?
Keywords: ecomuseum; i ndustry; Le Creusot
(France); memory; museum
In the dead of night, you could hear hissing
noises, gasping moans and terrible rumblings.
Julien was increasingly apprehensive:
What do we have here, Monsieur Gertal?
Some great tragedy seems to be taking place.
No, little Julien. Aheadof us lies Le Creusot,
the biggest factory in France and perhaps even
in the whole of Europe.
Bruno (1877/1970, 109)
1
Did Le Creusot give birth to the class war
or to the biggest factory in the whole of
Europe? From its creation in 1780 and the
arrival of the Schneider familythe new
ironmastersin 1836, the local industry was
applauded and vilified in equal measure.
122 ANNALS, AAPSS, 595, September 2004
DOI: 10.1177/0002716204266630
Deindustrialization
and
Museumification:
From
Exhibited
Memory to
Forgotten
History
By
OCTAVE DEBARY
Octave Debary is an anthropologist, Doctor (Ph.D.) of
the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Sociales de Paris, member of
the LAHIC laboratory (Laboratory of Anthropology
and History of Cultural Institutions, CNRS). His
research, which deals with the transformation of history
into a heritage industry through contemporary
museography, draws upon the anthropology of politics,
institutions, and memory. He has written several articles
on this subject for New York University, for the Muse
dEthnographie of Neuchtel in Switzerland, and for
LHomme et Publics & Muses in France. This article
takes up some aspects of his recently published thesis La
Findu Creusot oulArt dAccommoder les Restes (2002,
Paris, CTHS Press).
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Should Le Creusot be seen as a capitalist fiefdomwhich was stifled by its own feu-
dalism? Or was it an example of successful paternalism? (Perrot quoted in Cata-
logue de lExposition 1995, 306). Which of these two different stories should one
write?
The question was turned on its head at the beginning of the 1970s. The death of
Charles Schneider (1960) announced the onset of industrial decline andthe depar-
ture of his family, which had presided over the destiny of the most famous indus-
trial town in France for four generations. It was the end of a period of history dur-
ing which there had been a merger between town and industry; it also marked the
end of employment. With the advent of postindustrial modernity, the story of the
towns past startedcoinciding withits epitaph: industrial history, whichwas nowliv-
ing on borrowed time, tried to delay the inevitable outcome Scheherazade-fashion
by telling its own story.
The modernity of culture condemns history to celebrate what it once was and
therefore no longer is. The passing of time needs a rite of passage: old industrial
activities are turned into scientific curios worthy of a final discourse. We recognize
their beauty, we grant them the right to be exhibited for the last time, and finally,
we give them their own resting place: a museum. This article outlines some of the
practical and theoretical conclusions drawn from my extensive fieldwork in Le
Creusot (Debary 2002a, 2002b). My research is anattempt to study museums from
ananthropological point of view. More specifically, it is a meditationonthe time we
devote to exhibiting the past in order to forget it. Through the analysis of a histori-
cal watershed(the deindustrializationof a town) andthe emergence of the heritage
industry that accompanied it, I try to determine why culture and history are fasci-
nated by the loss of their frame of reference: the passing of time. My approach runs
counter to the historiographic work on memorial sites (lieux de mmoire) spear-
headed by Pierre Nora (1996) in France. Memory is not the equivalent (in lieu
of) of history. History becomes memory througha process of reconstruction of the
past (a past that is redefined, forgotten, and sometimes denied) not through mere
transmission. I posit analternative hypothesis concerning the relationbetweenhis-
tory and memory. Pursuing the idea that the past is recalled in order to be forgot-
ten, I attempt to understand howwillful amnesia lies at the heart of these so-called
memorial sites.
Schneider: A Family, a Company, or a Town?
Located in central eastern France, Le Creusot is renowned for its industrial
past. The creation of this town, as well as its expansion over more than 150 years,
was due to a family concern that organized the entire urban space around its facto-
ries. In 1836, the Schneiders became owners of a village (which then counted a
mere 800 inhabitants) where they located what was to become one of the biggest
factories in nineteenth-century Europe. For four generationsuntil 1960the
fate of this factory and therefore of the town (which at one point counted almost
15,000 workers out of 30,000 inhabitants) would be determined by this family. On
DEINDUSTRIALIZATION AND MUSEUMIFICATION 123
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October 21, 1836, the Schneider brothers (Eugne and Adolphe) launched a com-
pany whose destiny was legally bound upwiththat of the family. Eugne Schneider
explained that the legal status of the company was chosen in order to create a fam-
ily business (quoted in De la Broise and Torres 1996, 22).
In Le Creusot, the development of the iron and steel industry was linked to the
transformation of iron into finished goods: the company operated as an integrated
plant where extraction was followed by the transformation of metals and the pro-
duction of mechanical constructions. Through its ironworks and steelworks, the
Schneider factories produced railway tracks, bridges, locomotives, and weapons.
The originality of Schneider &Cie was the way in which its production systemwas
organized. The Schneiders settled in the middle of nowhere and built every-
thingincluding schools and hospitalsfrom scratch. The central production
unit was safeguarded by the organization and control of its external parameters:
Schneider hospitals with Schneider maternity wards, Schneider schools, houses,
The modernity of culture condemns history
to celebrate what it once was and
therefore no longer is.
stadiums, and old peoples homeseven the churches belonged to them! The
Schneiders omnipotence also took the shape of a series of monuments dotted
around town: each family member had his own statue and a church named after
him. The Schneiders moved into a castle in the center of town, which was sur-
rounded by a seventy-nine-acre park overlooking the factories. They also con-
trolled the local political scene. When the Schneiders themselves were not mayors
or members of Parliament, those positions were filled by friends or people who
worked for the Schneiders. Historians have definedthis systemas a formof indus-
trial paternalism. In the same way, Le Creusot could be described as a factory-
cum-town because of the overlapping productive and urban spaces. But this
expression does not do justice to the towns highly original identity. Le Creusot had
no urban center; the center was occupied by the factories themselves. Around
them, the town possessed a pluricentrality with the development of autonomous
neighborhoods, which all had their own churches, schools, parks, and sports infra-
structures. The Schneiders erected public buildings that connected the different
neighborhoods (Frey 1986, 273). The Schneiders housing policy enabled themto
control local urbanismwhile allowing locals to become owner-occupiers. Does the
name Schneider refer to a family, a company, or a town? In 1856, five thousand sig-
natories of a petition called for the town to be renamed Schneiderville.
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The accidental death of the last ironmaster, Charles Schneider (who slipped on
his yacht in Saint-Tropez), heralded the demise of this family capitalism. The
absence of male heirs (Charles Schneider had two daughters, Dominique and
Catherine) led to the breakup of the companys capital. Without a family member
at the helmof the group, Le Creusots industrial policy changed radically. In 1970,
the newmanagement decided to sell off the companys nonindustrial assets, which
had been the cornerstone of the Schneiders paternalism. The schools, houses,
churches, and stadiums were all sold to the town overnight. The castlewhich
until then had been the Schneiders official residence protected by a six-meter-
high wall and guards in uniformalso became municipal property. The local press
underlined the fact that this architectural jewel with its surrounding gardens was
now in the public domain! History was being unveiled for the first time because
this had always been a private space hidden away.
The local inhabitants inherited the Schneider dynastys power base. Its sheer
size caused acute embarrassment to the new owners. The town hall was reluctant
to move into this highly charged symbol of industrial power. Henri Graffare, who
was a member of the local authority teamat the time, explained, It never occurred
to us that the factories would be separated from the castle. We had no plans what-
soever; you cant do just anything with this sort of place. It was quite natural that we
shouldnt knowwhat to do with it (personal interview, 1998). How could the local
authority reconcile the history of this family power base with its new municipal
dimension? After examining several projects, they decided to conserve the castle
and turn it into a museum.
A Museum Project
The mayor chose not to put a local figure in charge of the project. Marcel
Evrard, a museographer and art collector, thus became the first curator. Evrard
was eager to involve politicians, industrialists, and trade unionists in the running of
the museum, but as it turned out, nobody wished to move in or be associated with
the staging of a chapter in history that was still being written at the time. Evrard
also had to deal with another tricky problem. Charles Schneiders widow and
daughters still lived in the castle and had no intention of leaving. After a whole year
of negotiations, Marcel Evrard moved in and the Schneiders moved out.
2
But the
castle was a residence not a gallery; its transformation into a museum began in
1972. Since Mme Schneider had taken the furniture and all her personal belong-
ings with her, the newmuseumwas left with nothing to exhibit and had to redefine
its project. The impossibility of opening a conventional museum led to the emer-
gence of a new type of museum that was dubbed ecomuseum (comuse) in
France. It would soon become the international symbol of a new form of
community-based museography.
In 1970, Le Creusot redefined its administrative identity through the creation
of the Urban Community (Communaut Urbaine) of Creusot-Montceau-Les-
Mines, a redrawing of territorial boundaries that brought together sixteen dis-
DEINDUSTRIALIZATION AND MUSEUMIFICATION 125
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tricts and some 120,000 inhabitants. The museum of Le Creusot would take this
new administrative area as its frame of reference. Its remit, which was now far
more comprehensive, was to accompany the economic and social transformation
of the Communaut Urbaine. Hugues de Varine, the then director of the Interna-
tional Council of Museums (ICOM), who took part in the launch of the project at
Evrards request, explained, We decided that it would be based on two things: the
end of paternalism (how do you move from paternalism to modernity?) and the
creation of an instrument that would assist the birth of the Communaut Urbaine
(personal interview, 1999). The museum would thus be a political instrument.
Hugues de Varine, who belonged to the international movement of redefinition of
the role and principles of museums, which flowered in the early 1970s, was one of
the driving forces behind this local cultural policy (Desvalles 1994, 15-39).
The new museum was seen as a revolutionary weapon and as a means of devel-
opment for the population: To achieve this, we need a revolution at the museum.
The museummust be decolonized culturally (Varine [1969] quoted in Desvalles
1994, 58). The theme of decolonization, which was then very much in vogue, was
extended to museums. In the context of a museum, the liberation of people meant
the liberation of objects. The first stage of the revolution in Le Creusot was the
extension of the museum to the entire Communaut Urbaine: The building is
replaced by the area which is that of a community (Varine [1979] quoted in
Desvalles 1994, 70). As early as 1973, Varine claimed that the whole community
forms a living museumwith permanent visitors. In fact, there are no visitors in this
museum, only inhabitants (Varine 1973/1991, 37). Objects were recruited in simi-
lar fashion: Any object, piece of furniture or building within the confines of the
Communaut is the moral property of the museumthis new notion of cultural
property has nothing to do with that of legal property (Varine 1973/1991, 42).
Through this moral abolition of private property, the local population became
the nominal, theoretical owners of the museum. The revolution had to be embod-
ied, fleshed out, and acted out: the population would thus be recruited to the cause
by the museums most fervent militants. These newconverts formed the museums
local power base. Marcel Evrard (the museums future curator) was more con-
cerned with art than with politics. The museumproject started distinguishing itself
from an ordinary museum by taking industry as the object of its study and by con-
fronting this world of labor with that of art (as a creative process and generator of
social practices). The liberation of objectsthrough Evrards aesthetics or Varines
politicsbecame an instrument of the liberation of humanity.
If the new museum was to be a means of revolution, a revolution had to take
place in the museum. The project was presented as a museum of a radically new
kind because of its revolutionary pretensions and its ambition to provide a frame-
work of local and even national regeneration. But could it still be described as a
museum? The verdict fell in May 1972. Varine and Evrard unveiled their project
during a conference organized by the ICOM: I explainedthat we wanted to create
a territorial museum without collections (Varine, personal interview, 1999). Jean
Chtelain, the director of Muses de France (Museums of France) who attended
this conference, soon gave his answer: Jean Chtelain got a bit angry and told me
126 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
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that it couldnt be describedas a museumif there were no collections (Varine, per-
sonal interview, 1999). Since they were not allowed to use the word museum, the
creators of the project turned to a newand radical formof museology that enabled
them to move away from the traditional concept of museums and gave them a sci-
entific guarantee. The impossible museum of Le Creusot was thus renamed an
ecomuseuma word coined in France in 1971 to describe the open-air ecologi-
cal museums created in former farming areas transformed into nature reserves for
tourists. The definition of these ecomuseums (which were not dependent on the
Ministry of Culture but on the newly created Ministry of the Environment) was
extremely vague, which enabled the museumof Le Creusot to join their ranks and
become the Ecomuseumof the Communaut Urbaine of Creusot-Montceau-Les-
Mines. This Ecomuseum was described as an open-air museum without walls or
collections, which was built around the local population.
The new museology had no historical
artifacts to put on display, but it found
much better: talking objects.
The new museum of Le Creusot inaugurated the transformation of industrial
history according to the rural model (nature reserves with their ecological
ecomuseums). In this instance, the Communaut Urbaine stood in for the nature
reserve, and its past was studied like nature in the other ecomuseums. The use of a
discourse borrowed from the ecological heritage industry made it possible to hide
the fact that Le Creusot was dealing with transforming industrial history into
museum exhibits. This would never actually be said openly. The organizers of the
museumclaimedthat they were talking about ecology andnot the local industry.
3
In the early 1970s, this local industry was in the process of being restructured
following the dismantling of the paternalist system on which it had always been
based, but nobody equated the birth of the Ecomuseumwith the death of industry.
The process of cultural reappropriation of history was to start with a visit of the
former ironmasters residence. Few people, however, dared to actually go in.
Maurice Camus, who used to work at one of the Schneider plants, explained, For
us, the castle was the Schneiders, it was still haunted by their presence over four
generations. In 1970 nobody wanted to go there, including me! Its hardly surpris-
ing when you think that it used to be protected by railings, guards and cannons
aimed at the street. . . . Its not so much that we were scared, its just that wed been
usedto glancing at the castle quickly as we walkedby whenwe were kids (personal
interview, 1999).
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Pierre Balland, a former metal worker at a Schneider plant, explained how the
park and its trees still bore the stigma of the employers presence: Eugne Schnei-
der was a real tyrant. He used to put marks on the branches of the trees that he
wanted to cut. But nobody was allowed to touch them, it was his park. Although
none of this had anything to do with industry. This is why the localsthe true
Creusotinswere scared stiff to go into the bosses castle (personal interview,
1998).
Considering these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that one of the very first
exhibitions (the third that ran from July to November 1973) was based on the
theme of Trees: From Prehistoric to Modern Times. Before turning the castle
into a permanent museum, a few temporary exhibitions were held to encourage
the locals to transcend their fear of the castle. The history of trees was such a pre-
text. The inhabitants were invitedto discover a park that just happenedto be that of
the Schneiders castle. The trees were labeledto identify them. Aroom, on the first
floor of the castle, was devoted to the presentation of the different varieties of
trees. A local paper, Le Progrs, was thus able to explain that the park is ideally-
suited to this kind of presentation (July 13, 1973). Every effort was made to turn
the former ironmasters private residence into an ordinary dwelling. Le Bien Pub-
lic, another local paper, wrotewithout a trace of ironythat the park surround-
ing the castle is an ideal introduction to an exhibition devoted to trees (August 14-
15, 1973). Nobody wanted to acknowledge that the exhibition marked the inaugu-
ration of the museum. Among the exhibits, you could find the Schneiders tree of
Lifethe family tree of the dynasty that used to live in the castle. Jean-Jacques
Badet, who belonged to the Ecomuseum, noticed that some people were more
attracted by the castle itself than by the exhibitions. They asked where the furni-
ture was, what the bedrooms looked like (personal interview, 1999).
The development of the Ecomuseum was based on substituting the preserva-
tion of nature for that of industry. Marcel Evrard stated, We never really took our-
selves as an ecomuseum (personal interview, 1999). Ecology was used as an
excuse for a form of genre-bending museography, which led to a great deal of con-
fusion. A member of the Ecomuseum explains that there was a permanent crisis
going on. We devoted endless meetings trying to define what the museum stood
for. What did Eco mean? We faced a permanent identity crisis (personal
interview, 1999).
From the Impossible Museum
to the Ecomuseum
The fact that it was well-nigh impossible to create a conventional museumin Le
Creusot was made up for by a series of pretext actions as the Ecomuseum man-
agement called them. These exhibitions (like the aforementioned one devoted to
trees) were held throughout the Communaut Urbaine. The organizers of the
Ecomuseum were denied the traditional working methods and even the status of
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an ordinary museum, but they responded with creative initiatives. Nothing was
fixed, at first, since the museumwas almost totally devoid of objects. Instead of col-
lecting objects, the Ecomuseumcollected the people who were likely to bring rele-
vant artifacts and talk about them. The inhabitants of Le Creusot took part in the
creation of their own museography. Between 1973 and 1975, exhibitions were held
throughout the Communaut Urbaine. Gradually, satellite museums were cre-
ated in every one of the sixteen districts. The empty castle and the Le Creusot site
in general were used to chronicle the activities of this devolved museum. In 1974, a
permanent exhibition was inaugurated at the castle, telling the story of the entire
region. The exhibition stood in for the absent family without ever mentioning its
members or factories.
The Ecomuseum, this museum without walls, was in a rather contradictory
position: the castle was presentedas part of the heritage industry as it usedto be the
Schneiders residence, but the plants that the family once ran were still working.
Le Creusot was exhibitingits factories as a signof a past that was still alive. The pop-
ularity of the Ecomuseumwas due, inpart, to the numerous meeting opportunities
it offered. Visitors were able to discover what was about to disappear. Short of a
conventional exhibition on local industry, you could catch the live show by visiting
the town and the factories that had not yet been closed down. Besides trying to
involve the local population in its activities, the Ecomuseum quickly started to
express its opposition to industrial paternalism. The Ecomuseum became famous
for criticizing the industrial world. The various events it organized (exhibitions,
international conferences, publications, research programs, and visits) were per-
ceived as revolutionary. Le Creusot became a magnet for academics and artists. A
comprehensive list of all these visitors would include several hundred names. Le
Creusot became a fashionable place to hold cultural or political meetings and to be
seen. As museologist Kenneth Hudson would later put it, the Ecomuseumbecame
a religion with its prophets, martyrs and reforms (Hudson 1992, 27), adding
that museologists the world over started making a pilgrimage to Le Creusot
(Hudson 1996, 61).
Marcel Evrards charisma, combined with his talent for mobilizing and forming
efficient research teams, enabled the Ecomuseum to become a reference point in
the world of museums. Academics saw the town as a history book and the local
workers as exhibits. The newmuseology hadno historical artifacts to put ondisplay,
but it found much better: talking objects. Evrards teammembers also became the
objects of their own studies to the point of displaying themselves as exhibits. All
those who were involved in the daily running of the Ecomuseum, and who were
exhibited at conferences or in the offices, gradually became actors in their own
plays. This is how history came to repeat itself. According to one of his employees,
Marcel Evrard started reproducing the very paternalism he had been studying in
social movements. The spectacle of the downfall of paternalism was staged at the
castle, but the Schneider trial proved so successful that it led, paradoxically, to its
rebirth. As another employee confided, Evrard was able to unite all the different
strands of opposition to paternalism, but paradoxically enough he also created a
very paternalistic structure (personal interview, 1999).
DEINDUSTRIALIZATION AND MUSEUMIFICATION 129
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Between 1983 and 1984, the conflict between Evrard, the new symbol of cul-
tural paternalism, and his employees reached its climax. The government had no
other option but to intervene. The choice was simple: either Evrard left or the
Ecomuseumwould have to disappear. The Ministry of Culture finally decided that
Evrard had to go and that the Ecomuseum would become a more conventional
type of museum. The fate of the local industry closely followedthat of the museum:
the Schneider factories went bankrupt and closed down the same year; paternal-
ismand its factories disappeared at the same time as the Ecomuseum. This is hardly
Museums tell the story, and so,
the past can become a memory.
surprising given that the Ecomuseum was created to accompany the disappear-
ance of the towns industry by transforming the downfall of paternalisminto a spec-
tacle. The Ecomuseumbecame a countercultural model at a time when politicians
were looking for a way to make up for the decline of industry.
After 1985, a whole newstory began. Le Creusot nowreally belonged to history
and a museum was needed to store it away. The impossible museum of the 1970s
began its metamorphosis. The reformof the Ecomuseuminvolved turning the cas-
tle into an ordinary museum. A few years later, in 1990, the idea of putting on a
Schneider exhibition was floated. Displaying the deceased had always been on the
agenda, but it was impossible without a corpse or any objects to showoff. The new
curator of the museum organized the exhibition in collaboration with Charles
Schneiders daughter. The objects that had left the castle at the beginning of the
1970s were returned to where they belonged. They were arranged and displayed
by Dominique Schneider, the new exhibition designer.
4
There were 27,400 visitors out of a total population of 28,900 inhabitants. As if
to pay a final tribute to history, the museum was visited by the equivalent of the
towns entire population! This marked the end of a long wait: the return of the
Schneiders and their belongings to Le Creusot. That twenty-five years had to pass
before an exhibition devoted to the Schneider family could be organized is highly
significant. The Schneiders had become exhibits in a museumobjects symboliz-
ing a past history that could nowbe disposed of. Museums tell the story, and so, the
past can become a memory. The passing of a generation was therefore necessary
before history could select the objects it wanted to exhibit for all eternity. The
museum played an important part in the mourning process, which followed the
demise of the local industry. Today, this funeral rite is complete. I became aware of
this when I decided to followvisitors around the museumto analyze their behav-
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iorand had to wait for more than two hours before anybody showed up. This may
be the museums real success: it has succeeded in becoming useless and deserted.
The museumendedupbeing abandonedinturn, leaving only the objects behindas
sole keepers of the remains of history.
From Exhibited Memory
to Forgotten History
The theaters of memory are laidout like exhumationtables, andthe operationof
the heritage industry consists in preserving the leftovers that cannot be sacrificed.
The burial of Le Creusots industry took almost thirty years. The museum accom-
panied the dismantling of the paternalist production system. The museum, located
in the ironmasters former residence (the chteau de la Verrerie), became the
object of this story. The rise and fall of the Schneiders local paternalism was reen-
actedinthis living museum, whichattractedscores of artists andresearchers. Once
this story had been toldonce it was truly overthe objects of bygone days
(belonging to the Schneiders) returned to the chteau, which turned into a run-of-
the-mill museum. The cultural revolution that took place at the museum of Le
Creusot constantly reenacted past social struggles. While waiting for the return of
the Schneiders objects, the impossible museum of local class war kept looking for
its own.
Cultural inexorability takes place within a ritual that transforms leftovers into
garbage. Class war became a warehouse, a garbage dump for dead objects and sto-
ries. The museumrites were supposed to keep the living alive. In a first stage, the
actors of this story were calleduponas witnesses before becoming the spectators of
their own exhibition. The time devoted to exhibiting the past masked the time it
took to forget it. Memories turn into images and can be contemplated like curios,
culturalperhaps even touristicdaydreams. If museum culture originates in
this fascinationwithloss, it also serves as a consolation. It is this culture that leads to
the appeasement of a restored memory. But can the memory of Le Creusot be
appeased?
As Paul Ricur showed (2000), there is a tension in the link between memory
and history. Memory, like museums, is not history regained and authenticated.
Quite the contrary, in fact, memory contains its other, a space filled with uncer-
tainty that is oblivion. One can only remember because one has first forgotten:
every memory implies a prior process of forgetting. The difference betweena paci-
fied memory and one that has been falsified lies at the heart of this problem.
Beyond this lies the ethical and political issue of defining what characterizes a fair
recollection or a fair memory: how does a society treat its past?
The work of memory takes place within different modes of history (rgimes
dhistoricit), to use Franois Hartogs (2003) expression. In museums, memories
are transformed into exhibited objects. The historian Philippe Braunstein (2003,
10) wondered if human suffering could really be an object of historical study: this
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question should be extended to the sphere of museums. What types of museums
and what types of objects can tell the story of the past? Whether history can be
reduced to an object or not, one must recognize that the historiographic process
transforms absence into the past by separating experience from history. This pro-
cess lies at the heart of a human science that turns history into a tale of separation
and even of death (De Certeau 1975/2002, 138-42). From this point of view, the
history of the Ecomuseum of Le Creusot is the tale of the impossible return of the
past, of the quest for an object that can neither be found nor exhibited: class war.
The impossibility of reducing human experience to an object is the mirror image of
the impossible reconciliation of discordant times: how can one say that the past is
indeed past if one has not yet mourned its passing?
According to Hannah Arendt (1968/1993) and Franois Hartog (2003), this
unspeakable threshold marks the birth of history. Both consider the same extract
fromHomers Odyssey as a poetic paradigmof the first historical tale. When Ulys-
ses asks the poet Demodocos to sing the story of the Trojan war and its hero, Ulys-
ses finds himself in the testing position of having to listen to his exploits recounted
in the third person (Hartog 2003, 63). Howdoes Ulysses react upon becoming the
witness of his ownstory? He breaks downandcries. His tears are not due to the fear
of death but to this experience of alienation that we could call the discovery of his-
toricity. How does one apprehend ones own past in its past dimension? Ulyssess
responsehis incapacity to respondare symbolized by his tears. The tears of
Ulysses are the tears of memory. His return is the utopian voyage that endows the
present with meaning.
Notes
1. Written by Augustine Fouille under the pseudonymG. Bruno (a reference to the Italian philosopher
Giordano Bruno), Le Tour de France par Deux Enfants (1877/1970) tells the tale of two orphaned brothers
who travel throughout France. Subtitled Devoir et Patrie (duty and homeland), it was used for many years as
an instrument of Republican propaganda.
2. Marcel Evrardsent many letters (betweenFebruary 12, 1971, andJanuary 20, 1972) to the mayor of Le
Creusot askingtoinvite MadameSchneider toleave the castlewithher furniture(Ecomuseums archives).
3. Hugues de Varine claimed that if we had been recognized as a museum we would never have called
ourselves an ecomuseum. I was forced to compile a totally fictitious dossier for the Ministry of Environment
justifying the ecological dimension of the project of Le Creusot (personal interview, 1999).
4. The exhibition was first held at the Muse dOrsay, from February 27 to May 21, 1995; it then trans-
ferred to the Ecomuseumof Le Creusot (June 23 to November 30, 1995). It is nowa permanent exhibitionat
Le Creusot.
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