L’espace létal, aménager pour tuer

• Main Author: Stéphane Rosière
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université de Reims Champagne-Ardennes 2019-07-01
• Series: L'Espace Politique
• Subjects: blockade; concentration camp; genocide; mass crimes; mass violence; nazi ghetto
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/espacepolitique/5908

This article discusses the notion of "lethal space" defined as the space "produced", designed or arranged to weaken or exterminate a human group. It is designed to exclude the battlefield and space directly subject to the action of weapons (no man's land). This interpretation refers to one of the characteristics of the crime of genocide under the 1948 United Nations Convention: "Intentional submission [of a] group to conditions of life intended to bring about its total or partial physical destruction. "Based on studies of mass violence conducted by historians and other experts in mass violence, this article aims to better understand the use of space in genocidal processes or mass violence. First, it presents the ghettos created by the Nazis during the Second World War as a starting point for reflection on the characteristics and morphology of lethal space. The article questions the relevance of this model and the conditions for its implementation. The author suggests a distinction between a "cyclical and shifting" lethal space in the struggle against separatist ethnic groups or armed movements based on the logic of blockades and a "regulatory and fixed" lethal space that refers rather to concentration camp systems. The elements of reflection put forward refer largely to the science of military siege, as this article highlights, the lethality of space is largely produced by the control of flows, coupled with the use of force and most often on the margins of an armed conflict.