Belgium is a country highly divided into two linguistic communities that interpret their common past based on some strong antagonistic emotions. Some of these emotional states like resentment or humiliation are very rarely openly expressed by people or by media.
We adopted a bottom-up approach that aimed to favor the expression of those partly hidden collective memories about the past through nine meetings of Belgian personalities from different domains (politicians, journalists, sport people, film makers, writers, poets, religious world, trade unions, company managers) in which they addresses what they considered the most important historical events, most importants figures (most liked and most disliked), and public places (most liked and disliked). The presentation will highlight some key patterns of collective memories that emerged from these meetings. It includes the role of images, a focus on present times, the weight of personal past, reciprocal ignorance of central public figures of the other community, the role of language, the intensity of emotions, the choice of silence, and ways of adressing what cannot be addressed. We will then discuss how fruitful this approach is for psychology, history, literature, and political sciences and how it can complement more classical methods to approach collective memories.
