Finding the Symbols

Abstract

In the relative absence of economic and political resources in the immediate post-war years, symbolic actions and images assumed great significance for the management of the state and of public responses to the events of the day. In particular they enabled the French political and cultural elites to overcome the serious difficulties of re-establishing national unity and dealing with the complex aftermath of catastrophic wartime events. The importance of symbols is a familiar part of everyday experience in the twenty-first century, with the pervasive presence of the audio-visual media and the endless repetition of significant images, vested with enormous symbolic power. It now seems evident, for example, that the image of an aeroplane flying into the World Trade Centre condenses a multitude of issues, attitudes, people and events. But this obviousness is achieved by long months of repetition on a global scale, in many media, and in a wide diversity of contexts. For France in 1944, symbolic images had a more limited national context, and a less diverse range of possible meanings. But their action was no less powerful within their context.