Paper short abstract:

This paper proposes a methodological and epistemological reflection on the collection of autobiographical memories, based on empirical material concerning two separate migratory situations: that of Portuguese families who immigrated to France in the 1960s and that of Portuguese families repatriated from Angola in 1975.

Paper long abstract:

This paper proposes a methodological and epistemological reflection on the collection of autobiographical memories, based on empirical material concerning two separate migratory situations: that of Portuguese families who immigrated to France in the 1960s and that of Portuguese families repatriated from Angola in 1975. In both cases, the ethnographic enquiry was marked by a temporal rupture: the transition from a generalized silence about a traumatic memory to a "collective remembering" in published accounts, novels, documentaries, etc. However, analysing this kind of material circulated in public space is one thing, going to collect words, including those of people who do not necessarily want to talk about the past, in private space is another. In a context in which the collective memory becomes prescriptive, and taking into account the status of words in our societies (Bourdieu, 1982), does the interview situation not become a command to evoke, therefore to remember? In revealing what might not have been expressed outside the interview situation, does anthropology not alter the social meaning of what might not have been mentioned (but had not necessarily been forgotten), by thus acting "on a resource put by for future social representations" (Bloch, 1998)? What is the status of silence (Lapierre, 1989) and of forgetting (Augé, 1998) in our societies and what methodological challenges do they present?