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Confiscated Histories: Access to ‘Sensitive’ Government Records and Archives in France
[journal article]
Abstract In France, the culture of secrecy continues to dominate access policies. The acceptance of or resistance to this culture by various social actors, including government officials, civil servants such as archivists, historians, independent scholars, and journalists, partly explains the historical tens... view more
In France, the culture of secrecy continues to dominate access policies. The acceptance of or resistance to this culture by various social actors, including government officials, civil servants such as archivists, historians, independent scholars, and journalists, partly explains the historical tension between advocates of a more restrictive or liberal policy of access to government records deemed ‘sensitive’. Unlike the American case with its long-established right to access, in France, access to information is just starting to be considered a citizen’s right. Initial reactions to the first version of my book (1994) sparked a rather violent debate. In the controversy, most of the archivists and some influential historians either denied or justified the difficulty of accessing so-called ‘sensitive archives’. Indeed, thanks to the ‘invisibility’ of this question until then, a book dedicated to the ‘Vichy Syndrome’, which had been published some years before, did not even mention this problem as evidence of France’s difficulties in facing the past.... view less
Classification
General History
Political Process, Elections, Political Sociology, Political Culture
Free Keywords
Kalter Krieg; Historiographiegeschichte; Internationale Beziehungen; Cold War Studies; Recht; Vergangenheitspolitik
Document language
English
Publication Year
2013
Page/Pages
p. 123-130
Journal
Zeithistorische Forschungen / Studies in Contemporary History, 10 (2013) 1
ISSN
1612-6033
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed