This intervention argues that Morrison’s Beloved highlights the workings of memory (Erinnerungsarbeit) rather than the concept of memory as a duty, as well as assesses the debate known as “memory wars” in France and gives a brief survey of what has been achieved at the level of the French state in the midst of a violent controversy about history, national memory and memorials. It closes on the ways in which slavery is fictionalized and analyzed, from Morrison’s A Mercy (2008) and Chivallon’s anthropological approach (2012) to the discovery of archives, such as the lawsuit brought by the slave Furcy against his master (2011).