This issue of Cahiers du Mimmoc results from the Day Conferences organised on 8-9th October 2009 on the "Paradigm of the Wall in contemporary society. The research presented here is part of the cultural and political poles for the MIMMOC research team at the University of Poitiers. The main aim of our laboratory is to explore issues of "Memory, Identiry and Marginality in contemporary Western cultures". Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the physical dissappearance of what is known historically as the "Wall of Shame", wall-frontiers remain on the surface of the globe and in people's minds. The Paradigm of the Wall, as a representation of the world and a spatial translation of conflict, appears to have experienced an even greater interest, and has led to its use by a wider range of disciplines. Whether it be the "wall in people's minds" between Ossies and Wessies which soon became a characteristic of German Unification (G.Badia, 1991) or the "wall of denial" surrounding the Genocide of Armenians in Turkey, the wall erected by the United States along the Mexican frontier to prevent immigration, the cultural and geographical wall that separates the 93 Paris suburban departement from Paris intra muros, or again, the gap between the two Europes "threat of a new Iron Curtain" (La Stampa, mars 2009), the paradigm of the Wall was far from over on the evening of 9th November 1989, including on German soil. The artistic dimensions of the paradigm of the Wall must also not be forgotten, often criticised, often polemical (and therefore political). These became evident from the beginning with the impact of the 13th August 1961, in European cultural practices and beyond, which have continued to evolve since 1989.