“Do you think we’ll remember it?” Collective memory of COVID-19

(1)

Journal Identiﬁcation = NRP Article Identiﬁcation = 0623 Date: June 11, 2021 Time: 4:35 pm

doi:10.1684/nrp.2021.0623

REVUE DE NEUROPSYCHOLOGIE

NEUROSCIENCES COGNITIVES ET CLINIQUES

12 Point of view

Rev Neuropsychol

2020 ; 12 (S1) : 12-5

“Do you think we’ll remember it?”

Collective memory of COVID-19 ^*

« Tu crois qu’on s’en souviendra ? » Mémoire collective du Covid-19

Denis Peschanski Senior Researcher at the CNRS Historian, European Center for Sociology and Political Science (CESSP) (University of Paris 1, CNRS, EHESS), Hesam, 15 rue Soufﬂot, 75005 Paris

<denis.peschanski@univ-paris1.fr>

To cite this article: Peschanski D.

“Do you think we’ll remember it?”

Collective memory of COVID-19.

Rev Neuropsychol 2020;12(S1):12-5 doi:10.1684/nrp.2021.0623

1.

The difficulty with the collective memory is that we do not always know which events will remain anchored there and for how long. Asking this question today, when the epidemic is not extinct, may seem odd, but the specificity of this memory is that it begins in the contemporaneity of the event, that it is incomprehensible without taking the past into account, and that it will strongly evolve with time. If we start from the definition of collective memory as a selective representation of the past that participates in the construction of the group’s identity (group as a segment of society or society as a whole), we must ask ourselves what is this immediate past, this event that we collectively remember. Is it therefore an extraordinary event? This will be our first interrogation. That an event may seem extraordinary does not necessarily mean that belongs to collective memory and, to a further extent, that it will be there for a long time. We must therefore meet what I call the conditions of narrativization. In other words: what are the conditions for the event, however important it may or may not be to the specialist, to be “selected”? Obviously, this selection responds to very complex mechanisms that have very little to do with the reasoned decision of adeus ex machina. The definition gives a clue: this remembered event must have a meaning, a social utility and participate, whether the event is positive or negative, in the construction of the group’s identity. The question becomes even more complex if the event is global as such is the is the case with COVID. Can we even imagine the construction of a memory pattern (“régime mémoriel”), another conceptual tool that I propose, a sort of dominant memory configuration in a

∗This article is an English language translation of the following article: Peschanski D.«Tu crois qu’on s’en souviendra ?»Mémoire collective du Covid-19. Rev Neuropsychol2020 ; 12 (2) : 128-31.

doi:10.1684/nrp.2020.0547.

Correspondence:

D. Peschanski

given time and stable enough in a certain duration, a conﬁ- guration that is structured by this or that ﬁgure structuring?

I have been working for some time on the memory of the Second World War and the memory of the latest generation of terrorist attacks, I see how the ﬁgure of the hero and that of the victim intertwine, following the moments, what is the place of the ﬁgure of the State or of civil society. It is easy to understand how all these questions justify that one can won- der about the memory of COVID-19 which could develop in France. We do not and cannot live without memory.

2. What is the extraordinary dimension of the COVID-19 event?

The very wording of the question may seem biased since the answer is implicit. But in my view, it is indeed an extraordinary event, not because of one speciﬁc characteristic, rather because of all of them.

The crisis is a multidimensional one. As a health crisis, it has massively mobilized the French health care service until it became congested for a while and resulted in high mortality. On this subject, there are two pitfalls to avoid: the statistics not yet stabilized show, in the French case, that mortality is significative. The daily mortality rate is compa- rable to that of the famous 1969 Hong Kong flu, even if it does not extend, to this day, over such a long period of time. Mortality from winter influenza is not, whatever one may say, at such a high level even if the 2018 level was high.

On a global scale, in a short time and on a smoothed average, and not counting the unlikely statistics from Russia, Brazil or even the United States (despite Johns Hopkins!), the death rate competes with hepatitis and tuberculosis among the infectious diseases. If we widen the focus, the heatwaves of the summers of 1976, 1983 or, more moderately, of 2019 are much less deadly but, conversely, the peak of the 2003 heatwave, however, concentrated for the most part over a period of about ten days, should be highlighted. In a word, this is not anecdotal, far from it. It is also necessary to consider the excess mortality over one year, because many of the patients who needed urgent treatment postponed their

(2)

13 Point of view

appointments, fearing the virus or not wanting to overload the services. Finally it will be necessary to consider the morbidity, and in particular the psychological disorders.

However, we are very far from other forms of morbidity and non-war morbidity, such as the famous Spanish flu a century ago, or cancers or even hunger in the world. Another fruitful comparison would be the two conflicts world-wide, among many others in this century of mass death. The point here is that mortality alone is sufficient neither to make it a unique event, nor to create a lasting memorial grip.

A multiple crisis, we said. Let’s start by going through the other dimensions. A ﬁrst step would be to observe the economic and social crisis, in France and around the world. The announced drop of 8 to 11 points in GDP in France [in fact 13% between April to June] is to be read in comparison with the very serious subprime crisis in 2009 whose drop was of 3%. The only reference the French economist Daniel Cohen refers to is the crisis of the 1930s, with a fall of nearly 20% if we take the low point of 1935, as well as, obviously, the two world wars, with -30% and -40%. These comparisons cover much longer periods. In meta-analysis of political economy, we seem to be moving towards another conﬁguration: the new reference models will probably not be the same. As for the social crisis, it isn’t here yet since the French model has implemented a “nationalization” of wages, with the 10 to 12 million partially unemployed being taken care of up until now by the State, including the contribution of employ- ees’ future pensions. The moment of truth is thus delayed until this Autumn, but with a social mattress that contrasts with the radicalism of a model such as the American (15%

unemployment at the end of April; ﬁnancially inaccessible hospitals to many Americans). The political crisis is more complicated to equate and measure. It involves at least a drastic questioning of the reference models of the Head of State, his government, but perhaps also of some of the political forces. How does this affect public opinion? Any conclusion would be premature. The enormous volatility of opinion polls in the midst of the crisis and, even more so, between the peak and the exit, will take on a higher proﬁle over a longer period of time. It will also be necessary to measure what is happening, segment of society by segment of society, as well as the world of caregivers and the world of teachers. For the time being, speaking of a political or an institutional crisis is irrelevant. The opinion reveals undoubtedly important changes in systems of representation but they are more complicated to consider because spread over a longer period of time.

We will be succinct on another feature of this event- driven crisis: it is of multi-scale nature. For those who want to understand it fully, it will be necessary to consider the scales of the individual, the family, the town or village, the region, country, Europe and the world. There are ele- ments playing at every level and interactions complexify the picture.

There remains the absolute singularity of the individual and collective experience of the complete lockdown (“conﬁnement”) over two months, that dragged on for at

least another month. It was easy, in the classical media and social networks, to point out the liberties taken by citi- zens with the law, but what is striking is the reality and the extent of this accepted lockdown. Including in areas that, after a few weeks, were found to be weakly or not affected at all. It was not a foregone conclusion, because many thought that the virus was inexorably spreading westwards (over the French territory). It was certainly not a foregone conclusion given the protesting habits of the French. Social imaginaries are a good excuse. The fact remains that this glaciation under the rays of a beautiful spring sun has pro- foundly altered the usual economy of intra-family, social and professional relations.

It is therefore, albeit without hindsight, a major event revealing a multidimensional and multi-scale crisis, without the mortality, which we think of a priori, making it a singular event. The radical originality of conﬁnement has come to interact with each of these components and levels, to the point that it will be very complicated to see it as an anecdotal episode –understatement.

3. But can we be sure that this event will be part of French people’s collective memory?

It is not that obvious. When we look at the history of the great contemporary conﬂits, there are many examples of major events for the historian which have not imprinted the collective representation of the past. Let’s take two classic examples from Second World War. The exodus threw eight million French people on the road in the spring of 1940.

The inner collapse. Add to this the millions of people who welcomed them, or simply watched them pass through a country with only about 40 million people in Metropoli- tan France. Paris was almost empty when German troops entered the city on June 14, 1940. And yet. Who can say that this event, major in its scale, its signiﬁcation and its con- sequences, really became part of the collective memory?

At what point was it a structural component that triggers the imaginaries? There were books and ﬁlms, of course. But deep down, memory was elsewhere. What can a society do, build upon with fear, shame, ﬂight, or theft? One does noth- ing with it. Or more precisely, it does not have the meaning, the social utility necessary to participate in the construction of society’s identity. We could also take the example of the Allied bombings in Normandy in the summer of 1944. In three months, there were many more deaths, wounded and destruction in that region than during the entire Occupa- tion. But what does the memory of bombs dropped by the very people who come to free you do? Strictly speaking, this event makes no sense, no social utility. It is a double penalty: the destruction deeply experienced at the heart of each family and a sad observation – the lack of relay in the collective memory of the French people of the fragmented memory of Norman families.

What does that mean? That there are conditions for memory-telling. The event must be of importance to reach a mass audience, but, as we have understood, this is not enough. It does not have to be necessarily “positive”. We know the importance of the ﬁgure of the resistant hero in

(3)

14 Point of view

the French memory of the Second World War, but we also know the importance of the figure of the victim or even the hated figure of the Vichy State. The event must participate in the construction of society’s identity. In the case of COVID, the question is whether the event as a whole will be part of the collective memory, but also – if, as I am convinced, it will be the case – which dimension of this event will be privileged. On a completely different subject, the memory of Islamist terrorism in the first two decades of theXXI^stcen- tury, the structuring figure, in France, is the figure of the victim, whereas it could just as easily have been that of the hero helping, as, since 11 September 2001, at least for the Americans, that of the New York firemen or that of the pas- sengers who got up to try to neutralize the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.

However, the memory is not fixed. There are new confi- gurations at each step that respond as much to the event remembered as to the weight of the context in which it is remembered. This is why I speak of a memory pattern (“régime mémoriel”), a sort of dominant memorial configuration in a given society, that lasts long enough to be significant, structured around such and such a figure.

4. Then I’ll take a bet.

It’s a low-risk bet, by the way. The COVID-19 event is of such magnitude and plurality, it has taken such a form that it is already leading to a singular memory pattern. Are you surprised by the compound past or the present? It is that collective memory begins in the present of the event.

It also refers to an essential notion in history, that of representation. For what is most involved in a decision-making process or in an individual or collective opinion? It is not the event as the historian can reconstruct it and give it meaning, but the representation that the actors have of it. And so the representation of the event takes status of event. Thus a representation is sketched out at the very moment, which, once stabilized, quickly takes on the form of a memory pattern in its complexity.

I am thus taking the bet that a collective memory of this extraordinary event is being built from now on. It is not, as we have understood it, the sum of individual memo- ries, but a widely shared representation that transcends the experienced event.

The conditions of narrativization are met in view of the magnitude of the event, but all the more – and it is a sine qua noncondition – because it participates in an identity building. The meaning we give it, the social utility it has are linked to the very figures that structure this collective representation of the past. Since the 1980s, the figure of the victim is structuring. This applies to the memory of the Sec- ond World War. Contrary to what has been said about it, the figure of the Jewish victim did not impose itself in the mid-1970s. The emergence of vectors of memory, such as the historical books of Robert Paxton and the struggle and writings of Serge Klarsfeld, were mistaken with inference in opinion. It was not until 1985 that the structuring figure of the victim in France, and particularly of the Jewish victim in a new memory pattern, was imposed. The figure of the

hero, the resistant fighter, didn’t disappear it rather moved to the background, feeding a weak memory against the new strong memory. Yet the victim is just as much a part of the memory of terrorism. It was in 1986 that Françoise Rudet- zki, victim of an attack three years earlier in Grand Véfour, set up the association “SOS Attentats” and played a major role in the creation, that same year, of the Guarantee Fund for Victims of Terrorism and Other Crimes¹, “the FGTI”. In the aftermath of November 2015 attacks, two victims associations dedicated especially to these attacks, Life for Paris, which will be home to the young people of the Bataclan and the terraces, and13onze15 Fraternité et Vérité, which is mainly composed of bereaved parents. This centrality of victims can be found in other associations created before, such as the Association française des Victimes de Terror- isme, the AFVT, or after, such as those associated with the Nice attacks. In all cases, the focus is on the victim much more than on the caregiver - there is no strong mention of the notion of heroe. As mentioned, the American example draws a very different memory pattern. We must thus never forget what is happening in other countries, especially when it comes to the memory of a pandemic.

In this context where heroic memory is usually a weak one, and victim memory a strong one, what about the memory of COVID-19?

All seems to indicate that the medical hero will be the structuring figure of COVID-19’s collective memory. Not that we’ll forget the victims, but everything points to the fact that, as of today, this is the path we’re on. Add to the great narrative that is being constructed, the ritual of the 8:00 p.m. applause, which was so strong that the French President of the Republic himself postponed the beginning of his televised speech by four minutes, reflects the solidarity of the people around these/their new heroes. Beyond the deviations, basically limited, from the instructions of confinement imposed by the State but also requested by caregivers, French confinement finds its full place in this shared narrative that founds and identifies the memory pattern. In the Pantheon of this memorial will be, at the summit, the heroes who gave their lives to protect the lives of others.

It is undoubtedly to them that the living traces of the nation’s homage will be dedicated. Beyond that, we will honour all the caregivers. On the level of the State, this begins with two decisions passed on 14 May 2020, one updating an old medal, the other granting a special bonus to exposed staff. They will also be given career upgrades.

Caregivers will be honoured at the July 14 commemoration.

In a society of solidarity, there is applause from everyone, and it also addresses those generally forgotten categories who held out in these tragic weeks, the cashiers or post- men, the garbage collectors or the salesmen. The people of the medicals are being honoured in a context where political and economic elites are being jostled. The place

1 Fonds de garantie des victimes d’actes de terrorisme et d’autres infractions.

(4)

15 Point of view

of researchers and experts in the memory pattern is still unsure. Concerning the most famous of them, a joke is cir- culating on social networks: “There are so many doctors on TV that if you call on 15, you’ll get direct access to the BFM switchboard”[“15” is the call number for emergencies.

BFM is a little CNN]. The political and media adventures of the scientist from Marseille (French joke about Didier Raoult:«le savant de Marseille»/«le savon de Marseille»] have undoubtedly contributed to the confusion which to this day makes it impossible to know whether the place of researchers working on treatments or vaccines will be fully recognized. Without too much assertion, it is probable that each molecule will be of speciﬁc use at a particular moment in the development of the disease, but, barring surprises, there will be no miracle global drug. On the other hand, the likely discovery of a vaccine should help to raise the proﬁle of the researcher. Alongside them will be all those in civil society who have mobilized to help on a voluntary basis, either individually or collectively. Radio and televi- sion programs have regularly reported on these multiple gestures of action that, as always when the mobilization thus responds to the emergency and constituted exceptional aid, outside the usual channels. These individual and collective behaviours can be decisive in the construction of the shared narrative.

The victims, apart from the heroes, come as a background to the painting. Not that they are forgotten; they will be there as a trace of the deep sadness that has accompa- nied these months of struggle and will remain the backdrop of the national tribute. The commemorations will never be done in the joy of the glory of who has won the war.

What will be the place of the State, the President, the Government and the Administration? They will accom- pany this process of remembrance, which I believe to be inescapable. Tensions seem too high to imagine that they will ﬁnd their place in the shared homage. The point here is not to determine whether they have failed or not, whether their commitment should be saluted or not. We are in the realm of representation. The issue of remembrance will be decisive for the executive, as it always is, because it has a key role in the construction of this remembrance system. Let us bet that the executive’s speech and gesture of remembrance will aim at sending back to the people of solidarity as well as to the heroes of this exhausting struggle a resolutely positive image: the Republic stood ﬁrm.

Conﬂict of interest None.

“Do you think we’ll remember it?” Collective memory of COVID-19

12

Point of view

Rev Neuropsychol

“Do you think we’ll remember it?”

Collective memory of COVID-19 *

« Tu crois qu’on s’en souviendra ? » Mémoire collective du Covid-19

1.

13

Point of view

14

Point of view

15

Point of view

Collective memory of COVID-19 ^*