Some critical voices about the “memory industry” (aka the “therapeutic alternative to history” :), its methodology and errant orientation:

Confino, A. 1997. “Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method.” American Historical Review 102: 1386-1404.

*Reasoned, intelligent critique of the subject and the methodological issues raised by it. Concludes by saying “ perhaps the first task of the history of memory is to historicize memory.”

Klein, K. 2000. “On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse.” Representations 69: 127-50.

*Lively, trenchant critique of the “memory industry” and the “hypostatization of memory.”

Todorov, T. 1995. Les abus de la mémoire. Paris.

*The title says it all. Argues that le culte de la mémoire blinds us to present and future challenges. Published three years after the appearance of the last volume of Nora’s Lieux de mémoire.