The Marshal’s cards (Audio)

Here you can listen to the genealogy of a memory. A family memory more precisely, as we are used to hear it on Sunday afternoon, at coffee time. The story is that of a little girl during the occupation, who is given the duty by her school to sell cards with the effigy of Marshal Pétain, and then to bring him back the money collected. Her father refuses and gives her enough money so that she does not have to obey what she is asked to do.
However, the story does not end there. For to have access to a memory, one must always remember it. And this act presupposes that one can make a mistake, because there is no guarantee of its truthfulness. So how does one come to construct history, its history, and thus its identity ? Seemingly anecdotal in nature, this account reveals through its intimate character a whole section of our relationship to historical reality and the way in which each person appropriates it. (Sylvain Maino)