This article investigates the figure of the French sociologist and anthropologist Roger Bastide in relation to the theory of memory that he elaborates in the context of his studies of Afro-Brazilian cultures. Following the studies of Maurice Halbwachs and Claude Lévi-Strauss, Bastide elaborates an idea of memory as the result of a dialectic interplay between the processes of collective memory and those of bricolage. This idea of memory could be useful in a more general analysis of the role of the past in contacts between different cultures.
