Une Statue monumentale de la Republique

Since the Revolution of 1789, successive regimes in France have used public space to control the meaning given to historical events. Street names, monuments, statues surround citizens with symbols designed to remind them of the glorious past. The narrative structures generated by these symbols have some gaps: for although it is common to find monuments marking the sites where soldiers died defending France, and countless plaques indicating the houses of famous artists and statesmen, Paris bears almost no trace of the 30,000 victims of the Commune of 1871. In this article, I analyse the process by which the Third Republic reconstructed the public spaces of Paris in order to control the meaning given to the events of the Commune and eradicate the social ideas it represented. I will focus on one example in particular, the project to erect a monumental statue of the Republic. (In French) (jb)