“That’s Where...” Peyruis and The Memorable Little Places of a Family Life Story
Memorable places (hauts lieux) play a fundamental role in the symbolic marking of territory and in its linkage with official history. They express a collective identity that is shown at different political and sociological levels, from the nation down to the family – a scale of analysis hitherto neglected. To see how individuals’ space-time meshes with that of society, I began to research my own family and its birthplace – Peyruis, Alpes de Haute-Provence in France. By reconstructing the private geography of three sisters and a brother in this small 1940s Provençal town, we move from institutional memorials to commonplace ones: everyday places more linked to daily activities than regular acts of remembrance. These small yet significant sites are found in a social space. They embody virtual and limited-in-time appropriation of a public territory by private memory.