Citation

Audoin‐Rouzeau S. Int. Soc. Sci. J. 2002; 54(174): 491-497.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2002, UNESCO, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/1468-2451.00403

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Most of the social scientists - historians especially - who specialise in the study of war ‘overlook’ the violence of combat voluntarily,though seldom as a conscious choice. This article aims to argue for a project to reveal and analyse the extreme violence of combat situations and of the combatants who are both the victims of this violence and its authors. The intention is not to disparage or undermine the study of extreme violence inflicted on unarmed populations by armed ones, but to reflect upon the foreshortened view that must result from any research effort prepared to neglect the reciprocal violence between armed groups. The violence of combat is not a sort of ‘constant’ in the activities of war that we need not bother to describe or analyse. This wilful blindness becomes a hindrance to any study of what is actually done in the violence of war, in this ‘language’ which can often quite starkly reveal the agents' systems of representation. It also leads to overlooking how porous the boundary is between violence on the field of battle and violence against unarmed populations. The interchanges across that boundary need critical investigation, if we wish to understand not just this or that aspect of acts of extreme violence in time of war, but the totality of such acts.