Identité communale, République et communalisation. À propos des monuments aux morts des villages

Abstract

The monuments to the First World War dead reproduce an identifying symbolism which designates the municipality as a pole of collective identity located between the individual and the nation. This identifying configuration is consistent with the national-republican ideology, which emphasizes the municipality so as to reject any other reference possibly threatening to the Nation-State. However, the identifying dimension of the municipality is not limited to this ideological subtlety. Historically, the communal space has indeed been the seat of a communalization which founded collective identity. In producing this space already largely patterned by the Church, the spatial inscription of institutions devoted to national integration played a substantial role, particularly at the beginning of the Third'-Republic. The construction of collective identity in France thus applied to both local and national identity.