resistancialism
레지스탕스주의
A concept coined by historian Henry Rousso to analyze postwar French memory. It denotes a myth that generalized the minority Resistance as representative of the whole nation while minimizing Vichy's social reach and collaboration.
In depth
Rousso described resistancialism as a process that marginalized Vichy, turned the Resistance into an exaggerated object of memory, and projected that memory onto the nation as a whole. He introduced the term in his 1987 study The Vichy Syndrome, using it to analyze aspects of postwar memory politics associated with both Gaullists and Communists. It should be distinguished from résistantialisme, a polemical term used from 1945 to criticize acts and political uses attributed to the Resistance.
Sources
- fr.wikipedia.org (Henry Rousso's 1987 concept: postwar memory that minimized Vichy, exaggerated the minority Resistance, and generalized it to the nation)
- hup.harvard.edu (publisher description of Rousso's study of how France remembered and concealed the Vichy experience, and the interaction of reality and myth)