This article argues for the need for memory studies to go beyond its present focus on traumatic memories and to develop analytical tools for capturing the cultural transmission of positivity and the commitment to particular values. Building on an emerging interest in the relationship between memory and activism, it puts its case for a re-orientation of memory studies through a close analysis of the commemoration of the Paris Commune which shows how the festive mode of commemoration itself turned the memory of defeat into a carrier of hope.
Keywords: Commune; civic memory; conviviality; counter-narrativist remembrance; multiscalarity; social movements.