Pierre Nora

Pierre Charles Nora (; 17 November 1931 – 2 June 2025) was a French historian elected to the Académie Française on 7 June 2001.Template:Sfn As editor at Éditions Gallimard, he established the Library of Social Sciences in 1966 and the Library of Histories in 1970. He was director of studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences from 1977 for four decades. Nora is known for having directed , four volumes focused on places and objects of remembrance which incarnate the national memory of the French, writing a new history ().

Early life and education

Nora was born in Paris on 17 November 1931,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn the youngest son of four children – the others were Simon, Jean and Jacqueline – born to Gaston Nora, a prominent Parisian urologist,Template:Efn and his wife, Julie Lehman.Template:Sfn During the war, he became acquainted with intellectuals Jean Prévost and Jean Beaufret, who was to become a major figure in the introduction of Heidegger's philosophy to France.Template:Sfn In the 1950s, together with Jacques Derrida,Template:Sfn he took hypokhâgne and khâgne at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand but, contrary to popular belief, he thrice failed to be accepted at the École Normale Supérieure.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn This setback, which he shared with his school-mate Pierre Vidal-Naquet, was one which Nora came to regard as a stroke of luck, particularly in terms of the example set by another friend, Jean-François Revel,Template:Sfn since it made him believe he was led to live a far more interesting life than would otherwise have been the case, contrasting his own situation with that of Gérard Granel.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Around this time, the poet René Char came to play an important role in his formation. Through him Nora met his first love, Madagascan Marthe Cazal (1907–1983), a major model for the figure of Justine in Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet.Template:Sfn Thereafter, he obtained a (equivalent to the Bachelor of Arts) degree in philosophy.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn He passed the in 1958.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Career

Nora taught at the Lycée Lamoricière d'Oran in Algeria from 1958 until 1960. He wrote a book about his experiences, published under the title ("The French of Algeria") (1961).Template:Sfn In 1962, when the Évian peace treaty was signed – later confirmed by a subsequent referendum – which ended the Algerian War, a ceasefire came into effect. Nora, despite not knowing a word of Hebrew was asked to travel there and both look into the situation of Algerian Jews and secure their archives for repatriation. He met Ben Bella who, embracing him, asked Nora to sit by his side as his motorcade drove into Algiers the following day. Ben Bella was under the impression that Nora, whose account of Algeria he had read with admiration while in prison, was a member of the local Algerian Jewish community. During the same May week, he was stopped with several others by a group of insurgents and stood against a wall for execution, a fate avoided by the timely intervention of the local police.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

From 1961 to 1963, he was a resident at the Fondation Dosne-Thiers. From 1965 to 1977 he was first assistant and then lecturer at the (Paris Institute of Political Science). Template:Sfn From 1977 he was the director of studies at the (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences), holding the post for four decades.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn In 2014, Nora received the Dan David Prize for his contribution to "History and Memory."Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Publishing

Concurrently, Nora had pursued an important career in publishing. He joined Éditions Julliard in 1964, where he created the Archives paperback collection.Template:Sfn In 1965 he joined Éditions Gallimard:Template:Sfn the publishing house, which already had a good market share in literature, wanted to develop its social sciences sector. It was Pierre Nora who achieved this mission by creating two important collections, the Library of social sciences in 1966 and the Library of histories in 1970, as well as the collection in 1967.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn At Éditions Gallimard, under Nora's direction many major works of scholarship were published that became landmarks in their respective fields, such as books by Raymond Aron, Michel Foucault, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie,Template:Sfn Georges Duby, Georges Dumézil, François Furet and, Jacques Le Goff, and translations of books by Elias Canetti, Ernst Kantorowicz and Thomas Nipperdey.Template:Sfn

This important role gave to Nora a certain power in French publishing and he was also the object of criticism. He declined to translate Eric Hobsbawm's work, The Age of Extremes (1994). Nora admired the book, admitted its high quality but after a long delay, turned it down, telling Hobsbawm that the high costs of translation would make its sale price prohibitive, and the French left itself, given the times, would be hostile. A further reason, Nora mentioned to a third party, was that the Shoah by then had moved to the centre of cultural memory and the word Auschwitz only appeared once in Hobsbawm's book.Template:Sfn Publicly, he stated in 1997 that his rejection stemmed from the author's "attachment to the revolutionary cause". Nora explained that context of hostility towards Communism in France was not appropriate to that type of publication, that all the editors, "like it or not, had an obligation to take account of the intellectual and ideological situation in which they had written their works".Template:Sfn

Intellectual life

In May 1980, Nora founded at Gallimard the review Template:Sfn with philosopher Marcel Gauchet; this quickly became one of the major French intellectual reviews.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn In 1983, French historian Jacques Julliard judged Nora to be the natural heir to the role played by Raymond Aron.Template:Sfn.Template:Efn This law, at line 2 of article 4, was abrogated on 15 February 2006, establishing that research programmes must be accorded more importance in lieu of French overseas presence and that the programmes of study came to recognize the positive role. - bring back only with a ref --> Nora was well known for having directed , three volumes which gave as their point the work of enumerating the places and the objects in which are the incarnate national memory of the French.Template:Sfn Nora's book ("The French of Algeria") (1961) has received scholarly criticism for its alleged bias against French Algerians ("Pieds-Noirs") – a prejudice held by many French intellectuals of the time. Nora posited that the French Algerians (or settlers) were different from the French of the Metropol. His opinions were developed from his two years as a high school teacher in Algiers. "The French of Algeria" is described as synthesizing "a self-righteous anti-pied noir discourse".Template:Sfn "The French of Algiers" is often cited as a scholarly work, though some dissent. David Prochaska, American historian of French Algeria argues that it is in fact "not based on original research and is devoid of the usual scholarly apparatus".Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Personal life

Nora was the brother of Simon Nora, a senior French administrative professional. He was the uncle of Olivier Nora, the president and publisher of the French publishing house Editions Grasset.

He was married to art historian and curator Françoise Cachin from 1964 to 1976Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn, and had a 40-year relationship with Gabrielle van Zuylen,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn who died in 2010. After 2012, he lived with French journalist and TV anchor Anne Sinclair, ex-wife of journalist Ivan Levaï and of former politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn He had a son, now a biologist in San Francisco,Template:Sfn by a third companion.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Nora was an Ashkenazi Jew.Template:EfnTemplate:Efn In 2001, on the occasion of his induction into the Académie française in the wake of the death of the novelist Michel Droit, he had his ceremonial sword inscribed with the Star of David to attest to his feeling that 'the Jewish contribution to the world belongs to things of the mind more than to weaponry. Because I shall consider myself Jewish as long as somewhere a Jew is threatened because of his identity.'Template:Sfn

Nora died in Paris on 2 June 2025, at the age of 93.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Honours and awards

Honours

• Grand Officer of the Legion of HonourTemplate:Sfn
• Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit (France)Template:Sfn
• Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des LettresTemplate:Sfn

Awards

• 1988: Prix Diderot-UniversalisTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn
• 1991: Louise-Weiss Award of the Bibliothèque nationale de FranceTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn
• 1993: Grand prix Gobert of the Académie FrançaiseTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn
• 1993: French Grand National History Prize.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
• 2012: Prix Montaigne de BordeauxTemplate:Sfn
• 2014: Dan David PrizeTemplate:Sfn

Honorary degrees

• 1989: Université LavalTemplate:Sfn

Bibliography

Nora's works include:

• 1961: , prefaced by Charles-André Julien (Julliard, Template:ISBN).Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
• 1970–1979: (Armand Colin, Template:OL)Template:Sfn
• 1973: (Gallimard, Template:ISBN)Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
• 1987: (Gallimard, Template:ISBN)Template:Sfn
• 1984–1992: (Gallimard), abridged translation, Realms of Memory, Columbia University Press, 1996–1998 (Template:ISBN)Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn
• 1999: Rethinking France: Les Lieux de mémoire, Volume 1: The State (University of Chicago Press, Template:ISBN, Template:OL)
• 2006: Rethinking France: Les Lieux de mémoire, Volume 2: Space (University of Chicago Press, Template:ISBN, Template:OL)
• 2009: Rethinking France: Les Lieux de mémoire, Volume 3: Legacies (University of Chicago Press, Template:ISBN, Template:OL)
• 2010: Rethinking France: Les Lieux de mémoire, Volume 4: Histories and Memories (University of Chicago Press, Template:ISBN, Template:OL)

See also

• Memory space (social science)

External links

• Template:Trim/ Template:PAGENAMEBASE at IMDbTemplate:EditAtWikidata
• Template:In lang Catalogue of the Collection Archives of Gallimard Julliard (founded by Pierre Nora in 1964; Template:Webarchive)