What to Commemorate Means. The Memorial Apparatus of the “Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Bachaga Boualam Saïd and his Harkis” in France

The celebration of the “fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of the bachaga Boualam Saïd and his Harkis”, which was held on 18 May 2012 at Mas Thibert (Arles), shows how the past can be contorted during encoding processes. By linking the trajectories of Harkis and their families to the trajectories of the bachaga and his relatives, the event offers interesting keys for renewing the study of collective memory’s production. As a creative performance of the past, this celebration should be viewed as a memorial apparatus of a social fact.