Memory on My Doorstep

In-depth case study of memorialisation processes after the November 2015 Paris attacks

On November 13, 2015, three gunmen opened fire in the Bataclan concert hall at 50 Boulevard Voltaire in Paris and subsequently held the venue under a three-hour siege. This was the largest in a series of coordinated terrorist attacks that eventually killed 130 people and injured 500. During the aftermath of these attacks, expressions of mourning and trauma marked and invariably transformed the urban landscape.

Sarah Gensburger, a sociologist working on social memory and its localisation, lives with her family on the Boulevard Voltaire and has been studying the city of Paris as her primary field site for several years. This time, memorialisation was taking place on her doorstep. Both a diary and an academic work, this book is a chronicle of this grassroots memorialisation process and an in-depth analysis of the way it has been embedded in the everyday lives of the author, neighbours, other Parisians and tourists.

This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Introduction
Between Research and Everyday Life: Photography, Family and Ordinary Conversations

26 Paris, 11th arrondissement, Boulevard Voltaire
December 27, 2015 — September 20, 2016

Event(s)
December 27, 2015

Distance
December 28, 2015

Traces
December 30, 2015

Trace
December 31, 2015

Disappearance
January 1, 2016

Appearance
January 4, 2016

Plaques
January 5, 2016

Gazes
January 6, 2016

Interpretation
January 8, 2016

Photography
January 9, 2016

Reflections
January 10, 2016

Messages
January 11, 2016

Detour
January 12, 2016

Solidarity
January 14, 2016

Tourism
January 15, 2016

Nationality
January 17, 2016

Nation
January 18, 2016

Normality
January 21, 2016

Data
January 26, 2016

Pilgrimage
February 2, 2016

Property
February 6, 2016

Invisibility
February 8, 2016

Witnesses
February 13, 2016

Collecting Messages
February 16, 2016

Groups
February 24, 2016

Holidays
February 28, 2016

Neighbors
March 1, 2016

Journalists
March 7, 2016

Demonstration
March 10, 2016

Conflict
March 17, 2016

Mobilizations
March 21, 2016

Normalization
March 26, 2016

A Place to Sit
April 8, 2016

Reading
April 13, 2016

Memories
April 18, 2016

Place
April 23, 2016

Meaning
May 1, 2016

Seeing and Being Seen
May 13, 2016

Privatization
May 19, 2016

Shift
May 20, 2016

Banner
May 22, 2016

Sacred
May 24, 2016

Trauma
June 13, 2016

Color
June 14, 2016

Icons
June 18, 2016

Preaching
June 18, 2016

Reconquest
June 19, 2016

Flags
June 27, 2016

Empty
July 1, 2016

Date
July 16, 2016

Silence
July 24, 2016

Ephemeral
August 1, 2016

T-Shirts
August 12, 2016

Cycle
September 1, 2016

Heritage
September 20, 2016

Conclusion
An Unfinished Memorialization: Archives, Monuments and Museums

Acknowledgement

References

Format: Monograph - paperback

Size: 234 × 156 × 15 mm

252 pages

157 color illustrations

ISBN: 9789462701342

Publication: March 13, 2019

Languages: English

Stock item number: 127206

Memory dynamics in times of crisis: An interview with Sarah Gensburger

Working at the intersection of political science, ethnographic sociology, and contemporary historiography, Sarah Gensburger specializes in the social dynamics of memory. In this interview, she talks about her book ‘Memory on My Doorstep: Chronicles of the Bataclan Neighborhood, Paris 2015–2016’, which traces the evolving memorialization processes following the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, their impact on the local landscape, and the social appropriations of the past by visitors at memorials and commemorative sites. 

Stef Craps, Catherine Gilbert, Memory Studies 2021, Vol. 14(6) 1388–1400, https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980211054345

Gensburger’s superb visual ethnography reveals memory as lived and remade in the aftermath of the 2005 Paris terrorist attacks. Her personal and vivid chronicles offer us a radical memory studies that eases by the political limits sometimes imposed by traditional academic culture and form. Gensburger’s finely attuned sociological gaze finds the city not in the paralysis of terror’s shadow, but rather active in mobilised memorialisation, and deserving of our attention. 
Andrew Hoskins, University of Glasgow

Gensburger is a careful observer, as well as a well-read one, and with a relatively light touch she is able to present the memorial efforts, the changes to them, and the tensions and cleavages that the memorialization reveals. […] This book is unusual—in style, content, and tone. The material is inherently fascinating, and the questions at the heart of the book are crucial. This is a terrific, unique book.
Scott Straus, University of Wisconsin–Madison

La mémoire est en vogue. Et pourtant, rares sont les travaux qui s’attaquent au cœur de ce phénomène : la mémoire vive. L’ouvrage dont il est ici question fait exception. Consacré aux chroniques sociologiques d’un quartier situé entre la place de la République et la salle du Bataclan, de décembre 2015 à septembre 2016, il interroge les pratiques sociales liées à la mémoire des attentats perpétrés à Paris. Sur le plan de la forme, l’ouvrage est un petit bijou. Truffé de photographies, éclairé par plusieurs cartographies, il livre des questionnements qui débordent de loin la gestion mémorielle des attentats perpétrés le 7 janvier 2015 dans les bureaux du journal satirique Charlie Hebdo et le 13 novembre 2015 au Bataclan. 
Valérie Rosoux, Droit et Société, 06/03/2018