Entre lares et pénates : les objets de la diaspora

• Main Author: Régine Azria
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Presses Universitaires du Midi 2016-10-01
• Series: Diasporas: Circulations, Migrations, Histoire
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/diasporas/443

There are some objects that are so loaded with meaning and feelings that they are considered essential by people migrating from one place to another, to such an extent that they cannot imagine being separated from them. In so doing, they invest these objects with real and concrete power, convinced as they are that their unfailing presence by their side will ensure their life’s continuity in spite of the existential break of having been torn away from their home. The presence of these objects thus has the power to temper the violence of the rupture of before and after. They also accompany the necessary transition and the reconstruction. This paper examines these bridge-objects whose function as mediators is particularly important: it identifies their specificities, and analyses their roles and functions, to try to understand how they helped fashion the social fabric, and even more so its repair and reconstruction.