Feeling Political on Armistice Day: Institutional Struggles in Interwar France

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter illustrates how disputes in interwar France between the state, the church, and veterans’ organizations were articulated through the emotional staging of commemoration ceremonies for those killed in the First World War. While the state sought to establish a ceremony that, in accordance with older traditions, would foster feelings of ‘glorification and triumph’, most veterans’ groups were opposed to this approach. They instead favoured an event that would promote a posture of humble mourning and devotion, a ‘funereal physiognomy’ that was more in tune with the rituals of the Catholic church. This conflict, which ran over the course of several years, gave rise to new emotional templates that in turn transformed and restructured the emotional framework of the institutions involved.