Claire Mauss-Copeaux

Bio: Claire Mauss-Copeaux is an academic researcher. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 10 citations.

Appelés en Algérie : la parole confisquée

Abstract: "Dechires entre l'impossible oubli et la memoire impossible de cette " guerre sans nom ", les recits des appeles de la guerre d'Algerie ont ete longtemps retenus. Compose a partir de leurs temoignages, ce livre est une contribution majeure a l'histoire de la guerre .,comment les appeles d'Algerie ont-ils vecu ce conflit, les dilemmes moraux de la guerre ? Continent voyaient-ils l'armee de metier ou les Algeriens ? Claire Mauss-Copeaux, en leur donnant la parole, apporte une contribution majeure a l'histoire orale, et revele un pan oublie de notre passe national."

The ‘War without a Name’, the French Army and the Algerians: Recovering Experiences, Images and Testimonies

Abstract: Jules Roy, pied-noir writer and veteran of the Second World War and Indochina, could have been speaking of Algeria when he claimed that: ‘It was hardly worth going to war against the Nazis only to become the Nazis of Indochina.’2 They had the taste for liberty, the sense of justice and the instinct for generosity. They wanted to create a multiracial, free, fraternal and prosperous society, to set an example for a world divided between rich and poor peoples. One word symbolised their ambition: ‘integration’! Opposite under the striking red and green banner of Islam, the enemy preached racial hatred and religious fanaticism, the arbitrary terrorism of a one-party dictatorship… To win the hearts of the population, they turned themselves into medical orderlies, administrators, water irrigation project managers, overseers of the rural economy… To protect them, they also became policemen, judges and executioners.3

“Post-Heroic Warfare” and Ghosts—The Social Control of Dead American Soldiers in Iraq

Abstract: According to some researchers, the public acceptance of military intervention is conditional upon the minimization of military mortality. Once a threshold of military death is crossed, political leaders are obliged to limit their ambitions. This research proposes to consider the idea of threshold as mythical. Instead, it suggests focusing at the presence of the ghosts the dead American soldiers in the public sphere and the way they are ``ventriloquated'' in order to support or contest the intervention.

Validar a guerra: a construção do regime de Expertise estratégica

Abstract: This article is intended to contribute to the interpretative analysis of war. For that purpose, it investigates how some apparatuses located in strategic thinking help to make modern war a social practice considered both technically feasible and, at the same time, legitimate for soldiers. In so doing, it makes use of two different but closely related theoretical fields, pragmatic sociology (finding inspiration in the work of scholars such as Luc Boltanski, Nicolas Dodier and Francis Chateauraynaud), and the sociology of scientific knowledge (based mostly on the work of Bruno Latour). On the one hand, the sociology of scientific knowledge has developed a productive questioning of the construction of scientific facts that is particularly relevant to the present research. On the other hand, pragmatic sociology generates a compatible framework able to describe collective actions. The combination of both approaches allows the description of the formation of a strategic expertise regime that supports the technical legitimacy of the use of military force. Together, the sociology of scientific knowledge and pragmatic sociology bring a particularly relevant perspective to research pertaining to war.

Peut-on dévoiler les imaginaires ? Questions sur l'interprétation d'un massacre

Abstract: Le livre de Raphaelle Branche, L’embuscade de Palestro, Algerie 1956, a le merite de proposer une definition plus exacte des faits qui se sont produits le 18 mai 1956 dans la vallee de l’Isser, d’interroger la transformation de l’embuscade en massacre et d’eclairer l’evenement a partir de l’etude du passe colonial de la region depuis la fin des annees 1860. Palestro est traite comme un fait anthropologique dont la comprehension exige de prendre en compte la participation de la population locale, elle-meme enjeu du conflit entre l’armee francaise et l’ALN. Mise en relation avec la memoire de l’insurrection de la Kabylie en 1871, qui avait provoque un premier cycle de resistance et de repression, cette violence est abordee a partir de sa reception du cote francais, ou l’auteur s’efforce de faire la part des representations coloniales. Mais l’importance meme de Palestro aurait merite un traitement plus approfondi. L’hypothese selon laquelle ce nom fait echo dans l’imaginaire collectif au massacre des premiers colons en 1871 est insuffisamment etayee. La demarche historienne demeure incomplete et se heurte au probleme logique et methodologique de l’inference causale des lors qu’il s’agit de rendre compte des intentions d’agir des individus a partir de donnees d’observation de leurs comportements.