Si la mafia est un objet d’étude, certes récent, l’antimafia reste en revanche un trou noir de l’historiographie du Mezzogiorno alors que les assasssinats des représentants de l’État sont des moments de tenisons dans l’histoire de l’Italie républicaine. Nous avons choisi de concentrer notre attention sur quatre figures emblématiques assassinées au cours des crises de violence mafieuse de 1982 et 1992 : Pio La Torre (député et secrétaire régional du PCI) ; Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa (assassiné alors qu’il était préfet de Palerme) ; Giovanni Falcone et Paolo Borsellino (magistrats). Afin d’observer le processus de construction d’une mémoire publique de la lutte contre la mafia, nous utilisons un panel de sources typique de l’histoire du temps présent, archives, presse, productions mémorielles écrites et audiovisuelles, mais aussi des sources orales grâce aux entretiens réalisés lors de notre enquête de terrain. Ces sources nous permettent tant de comprendre le contexte que d’analyser l’évolution des représentations des martyrs de la lutte contre la mafia.La première partie est consacrée à l’étude du moment des assassinats et de la construction d’une mémoire immédiate. L’analyse de la presse au lendemain des crises de violence mafieuse fait émerger les caractéristiques de la mémoire immédiate des victimes et révèle un mobilisation civile antimafia sans précédent. La deuxième partie s’intéresse à la construction et à l’institutionnalisation de la mémoire des victimes, à travers l’étude des commémorations et des représentations. L’analyse croisée des différentes sources met au jour les différentes strates de la construction mémorielle. Enfin, la troisième partie montre que la mémoire de l’antimafia, bien qu’institutionnalisée et structurée, est en réalité une mémoire tourmentée, comme le démontrent les manquements de la justice, les usages politiques de la mémoire de l’antimafia ou le conditionnement des commémorations décennales par l’actualité. Faire l’histoire de la mémoire de l’antimafia nous permet ainsi de révéler, sous un jour nouveau, un certain nombre de tensions qui caractérisent l’Italie contemporaine. La mémoire de la lutte contre la mafia apparaît donc comme un observatoire privilégié pour examiner les mutations politiques, sociétales et culturelles de l’Italie républicaine. / Though the Mafia has become recently an object of study, the Antimafia remains a black hole in the historiography of the Mezzogiorno while the assassinations of officials constitute tense moments in the history of Republican Italy. We have chosen to focus our attention on four emblematic figures that were murdered by the Mafia over its 1982 and 1992 outbursts of violence: Pio La Torre (deputy and regional secretary of the PCI); Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa (assassinated while he was Palermo prefect); Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino (magistrates). In order to observe how a public memory of the fight against the Mafia was built, we use a panel of sources that is typical of the present time history: archives, press, written and audiovisual memory productions, but also oral sources thanks to the interviews we lead during our field investigation. These sources allow us to understand the context as well as to analyze the evolution of the representations of the anti-mafia fight’s martyrs.The first part is dedicated to the study of the moment when these four officials were assassinated and an immediate memory built. The analysis of the press, in the wake of the outbursts of violence of the Mafia, brings out the characteristics of the immediate memory of victims, and reveals an unprecedented anti-mafia civil mobilization. The second part deals with the elaboration and the institutionalization of the victims’ memory, through the study of the commemorations and the representations. The cross-study analysis of our various sources brings to light the different strata of the memory elaboration. Finally the third part shows that the anti-mafia memory, though institutionalized and structured, is actually a tormented memory, as is revealed by the justice breaches, the political uses of the anti-mafia memory or the conditioning effect of current events on the decennial commemorations. Making the history of the anti-mafia memory thus allows us to reveal under a new light a number of tensions that are characteristic of contemporary Italy. Therefore the memory of the fight against the Mafia appears as a privileged observatory to examine the political, societal and cultural mutations of Republican Italy.

Considered an integral part of Metropolitan France, the island of Corsica is situated nonetheless on the very periphery of the modern state that claims it. Actually situated geographically closer to Italy than to any part of France, its culture and its people are likewise more closely related to their Italians neighbors than to the rest of what Corsicans term "Continental France." Following the acquisition of Corsica, both government officials and bourgeois travelers would seek to visit the island, often recording their findings and publishing these memoirs for others to know of their travels. This concept of travel memoirs, specifically those regarding Corsica, had already been a fairly common practice among the British, as they had often placed interest in the island itself. From this group of French and British travel memoirs would come the writings of James Boswell, P. P. Pompéi, and the Baron de Beaumont, among others. Corsica becomes a place of unique setting for novels and short stories throughout the century, with tales of banditry, vendetta, and violence from the island. For those authors seeking to place their stories in Corsica, inspiration was drawn from the very travel memoirs they had read regarding the island, although often they chose to ignore them in favor of stereotypes. I have chosen three specific 19th century authors in relation to the images created by the travel memoirs of Corsica: Prosper Mérimée, Honoré de Balzac, and Guy de Maupassant. The purpose behind each author's use of the images of Corsica was very different and shows different ways that these images were used. Mérimée directly used Corsica to question the triumph of the civilized over the uncivilized, Balzac used Corsica to represent France itself, and Maupassant used Corsica to show that "reality" is really nothing more than a personal illusion. Though when publishing their travel memoirs the authors might not have expected much to come of them, they have actually influence an entire century of writers, and possibly an entire nation, with their images of Corsica.