An anthropologist at Paris-Cité University and a former member of the scientific council created during the Covid-19 pandemic, Laëtitia Atlani-Duault works on the impact of various crises on memories.
In her book "Covid-19 Ad Memoriam, Fragments pour les mémoires" (La Documentation française), she highlights several traces of a "tipping point" through anonymous testimonies collected from 2020 to 2024, photographs of everyday objects from the Covid era that entered the MuCem in Marseille, and press cartoons by Plantu.
Q. You speak of "deep traces" of the "individual and collective tipping point," or even of the "anthropological rupture," of the Covid-19 pandemic. Which ones do you consider significant?
A. “Many have lost loved ones, sometimes without being able to say goodbye or see their faces one last time, an experience that remains very striking. A birth in a country in lockdown, children at home with parents working from home, couples who are tearing each other apart, families separated in different countries, the pain around nursing homes, and, sometimes, the happiness of this period are also in the memories.
At the same time, the pandemic has accentuated the fault lines, as testimonies recount. The virus, discriminatory by nature, has hit the most vulnerable hardest, due to their age, socioeconomic status, or foreign origins. We also see that crisis management rules, uniform in the name of equality, have often exacerbated existing disparities.
Q. The Covid page isn't really closed?
A. "The effects of the crisis are not all behind us, and we are still experiencing its delayed effects. While we have learned to live with the virus, our hospital services are no longer overwhelmed, and the main measures taken during the pandemic are a thing of the past, there are still forms of despair and social suffering that do not only concern bereaved families, and even physical suffering for people with long-term Covid.
This crisis has left deep scars, it has caused deaths, widened inequalities, sacrificed students, professionals and the sick, it has sometimes left a bitter aftertaste for all those who, applauded every evening in the spring of 2020, then found themselves thrown back into anonymity and working conditions more difficult than before.
There is also a very strongly affected relationship with vaccines, a stronger distrust in the authorities."
Q. Why are you, along with associations and health professionals, advocating for a duty to remember the pandemic?
A. "To pass on knowledge to future generations, but also to learn lessons to prepare for future crises, not just health-related ones. Memories of the pandemic will be multiple, but the important thing is to collectively imagine rites of passage."
For several years, town halls have organized tributes every March 17th. Why isn't there a desire on the part of the government to include a day of tribute in the national calendar, possibly on March 17th? Some are asking for tributes to Covid victims, others to the bereaved, and still others to healthcare workers; my proposal is for a tribute to French society as a whole. This would be a form of counter-gift from the government, all the more important given the much-talked-about distrust of the state and science, as well as preparing for other major crises.
Several bills have been tabled since 2021, unsuccessfully, to create a national day of remembrance on the national calendar. A new bill, led by a cross-party group of MPs and to which I contributed, was tabled on March 11 to relaunch this debate in the National Assembly.
Some town halls have also created monuments in memory of Covid, but there is no national site. Since we cannot expect everything from the State, I am creating a place of remembrance of the pandemic: it will open in September on rue de l'École de Médecine, within the Paris-Cité University, and will be a dedicated space with permanent and temporary exhibitions, conferences and events."
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