Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / As a literary intervention, The Post-Genocidal Condition: Ghosts of Genocide, Genocidal Violence, and Representation is situated at the intersection of genocide studies, psychoanalysis, and literature so as to enable a critical engagement with the question of genocide and an attempt to think beyond its formulation as phenomenon. As the dominant framework for thinking genocide within international jurisprudence, and operating as the guiding terrain for interventions by scholars such as Mamood Mamdani, Linda Melvern, and William Schabas, the presumption that genocide may be reduced to a marked beginning and end, etched out by the limits of its bloodiness, is, I argue, incomplete and thus a misdiagnosis of the problem, to various effects. Moreover, I contend that it is this misdiagnosis that has led to what I name as the post-genocidal condition: a deferred return to the latent violences of genocide; enabled often through various mechanisms of transitional justice. This intervention is not a denial that under the rubric of the crime of genocide, as an attempt to destroy in whole or in part what Raphael Lemkin referred to as an “enemy group”, millions of people have died. Rather what I posit is that the physical violence of genocide is a false limit – that the bloodiness of genocide has been mistaken for the thing-in-itself. Thus this intervention is an attempt to offer another way of thinking the question of genocide by reading it as concept, enabling a consideration of its more latent violences, its ghosts. As such, I argue that genocide is first an attack on the minds of the persons who form the targeted people or group, through the destruction of cultural apparatuses, such as books, works of art, and the language of a people, to name but a few; and is lastly an attempt to physically exterminate a people. Thus this intervention invites a return to Lemkin’s formulation of the term in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (1944); that the word genocide is meant to “signify”, and as such offers a reading of the question of genocide as signifier, understood, I suggest, in the Lacanian sense. Thus, I posit that genocide, as signifier, operates on both the levels of metaphor and metonym, and as such both condenses and displaces its violence(s). The metaphor for genocide as signifier is, furthermore, rather than the signifying chain as Lacan would have it, the network. As such genocide is marked as text, rather than work; its perpetrators not authors, as Lemkin and various pieces of legislation have described them, but writers; and those who engage with the question of genocide, to whatever degree, as readers rather than critics. Consequently, this intervention stages the question of the reach of impunity and complicity, beyond the limit of judicial guilt and innocence. Metonymically, the relational displacement at work within the network of genocide allows for a reading of the various constitutive examples of the violence(s) that, in combinations and as collective, produce a new signification, other than that of the definitional referent.

In times of war, women are subjected to sexual abuse that is largely ignored by military organizations, media outlets, and international courts. Existing literature has illustrated how wartime rape was accepted or dismissed in the past, and how today, while this practice continues, international courts are beginning to identify the harm being done to women, making explicit how rape is used as a tool of genocide. In this thesis I argue that wartime rape serves as a means of genocide, a way to eliminate a group of individuals and their culture. A recent example of how rape worked as genocide is seen in the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Rape was used as a systematic policy to destroy a group of people, the Tutsi, through torture and the spreading of AIDS. The purpose of this research is to examine genocidal rape from the perspectives of women who were raped in Rwanda during the genocide. The focus is on gaining insight to wartime rape as a form of genocide and the aftermath of rape on the women and the culture within which it occurred. Qualitative, feminist analysis was used to answer the following research questions: How do women raped in the Rwandan genocide describe and explain their experiences with rape and its aftermath? How did the intersection of gender and ethnicity contribute to violence against women during the genocide? What are the implications of rape for the women who experienced it and for their families, communities, and their cultural group? / Master of Science

Pour les descendants des survivants du génocide arménien de 1915, les traumatismes actuels, liés à la confrontation aux épreuves du vieillissement et à l’hospitalisation, ont un effet attracteur des traumatismes transgénérationnels. Ces traumatismes génocidaires non subjectivés, transmis au travers des générations, tentent de prendre forme et sens, trouvant dans le présent du vieillissement une « correspondance hallucinatoire » (après-coup). Ces patients ont en commun d’avoir vécu une accumulation de traumas au cours de leurs vies : le deuil, la dépendance, la passivation, la crainte de mourir, rencontrés aujourd’hui, ont déjà fait partie de leur histoire individuelle et ont déjà induit dans le passé d’autres après-coups des traumatismes transgénérationnels. À l’heure du vieillissement, dans la psyché du patient, on assiste à un processus de « feuilletage traumatique », où les différents temps traumatiques présents, passés et transgénérationnels, résonnent et s’intriquent. Les entretiens cliniques sont l’occasion pour ces sujets de retrouver et de partager les mythes familiaux dont ils sont porteurs : en appui sur cet héritage mythique, ce feuilletage peut se « dé-collapser », la psyché réussissant alors à s’approprier l’expérience traumatique qui s’inscrit dans une histoire. Du feuilletage traumatique, d’abord inerte, peuvent advenir des remaniements psychiques remobilisés par la fonction transformatrice du mythe. Dans d’autres cas, les mythes familiaux ont, dans la psyché, une fonction davantage protectrice que transformatrice et le travail thérapeutique consiste à ranimer ce mythe figé, pour le réinscrire dans un mouvement dynamique. Ailleurs, on assiste aux efforts du sujet pour créer un mythe, à défaut de pouvoir en retrouver dans la mémoire. Les transferts parentaux et filiaux permettent de remettre au travail et de relancer, dans la relation thérapeutique, la transmission entre les générations. Les patients peuvent ainsi redonner vie, retrouver du sens à leur fin de vie et continuer à s’inscrire dans une « co-transmission » avec leur descendance. / For the descendants of the survivors of the 1915 Armenian genocide, the current traumas connected with the painful experience of ageing and hospital care have a drawing power on transgenerational trauma. Such traumas, passed on through generations, attempt to take shape finding a “hallucinatory correspondence” in the present ageing experience (deferred action). These subjects share the common experience of superposition of traumas that they have gone through all along their lives: bereavement, dependence, the constraint passivity, the fear of death, which are confronted with today, have already been part of their individual history and have already induced, in the past, other deferred actions ascribable to transgenerational traumas. When comes the time of ageing, in the patient’s psyche, we witness a process of “traumatic superposition” whereby the interplay of various traumatic times-present, past, and transgenerational resonate and become closely enmeshed. Psychological interviews conducted by the practitioner provide such subjects with the opportunity to revisit and to share the family myths which they carry within themselves. Relying on this mythical legacy, the superposition may “de-collapse itself”, the psyche succeeding in appropriating the traumatic experience that lies within the scope of a history. From the traumatic superposition, which is initially inert, there can happen psychic reorganisations which are mobilized anew by the transforming function of the myth. In other cases, family myths have within the psyche, a function more protective than transforming and the therapy consists in reviving this frozen myth in order to place it again within the frame of a dynamic movement. In other cases, what we may observe is the subject’s endeavour to create myth of his or her own for lack of being able to trace it backing his or her memory. Parental or filial transference makes it possible to start up and to stimulate again the transmission between generations within the therapeutic relationship. So doing, the patients can restore life; give back significance to the end of their lives and keep in line with a co-transmission with their descendants.

Os wayuu são um povo indígena de família lingüística arawak [arahuaca] que habitam na Península da Guajira, localizada sobre o mar do Caribe no extremo nordeste da Colômbia e na porção norte do extremo ocidental da Venezuela. Esta é uma tese que trata das dinâmicas coletivas e individuais dos wayuu. Eles estão culturalmente informados face à violência de genocídio no marco referencial do conflito interno armado na Colômbia. Sua dinâmica histórica e social tem sido perpassada pelo desdobramento da violência desde o período do contato colonial europeu, até os dias de hoje. Embora essa violência possa entender-se como um programa sistemático e racional de aniquilar as existências subjetivas e sociais do outro, pretendo ampliar essa perspectiva tomando em consideração uma dinâmica móbil e conflitiva de regimes de historicidade que aposta na agência social dos wayuu como sujeitos históricos. Os wayuu constroem, experimentam e significam dinâmicas culturais atreladas à violência de genocídio, mas que são ressemantizadas por eles através do protagonismo de entidades espirituais ativas que perpassam, tanto a vida como a morte enquanto planos contíguos, embora diferenciados, de existência social. Meu argumento é que wounmaikat (a mãe terra) dos wayuu é uma territorialidade física e social que tem como significante o espaço feminino no qual se vinculam as práticas sociais desse povo indígena. As mulheres wayuu constroem e mobilizam simbolicamente os sentidos da violência narrando e ressemantizando seus desdobramentos nos seus corpos e suas ações no palco das suas vidas cotidianas e no espaço público. Nessas ações elas reclamam pela reivindicação de direitos e travam embates com as estruturas políticas do Estado e do Para-estado. Nessa perspectiva são relevantes algumas questões: quais são os horizontes de sentido que mediam a ressignificação do genocídio no contexto social dos wayuu? Como as pessoas compreendem suas experiências individuais e coletivas na (e através) das relações sociais com seres existentes que potencializam também reivindicações por direitos dos wayuu? O que podemos dizer sobre a agência feminina wayuu e de uma etnopolítica em que as mulheres são tão visíveis e tão relevantes em seu protagonismo? Qual é o entendimento da territorialidade significada por eles como wounmaikat (a mãe terra)? Como se constroem as agências etnopolíticas dos movimentos indígenas, no espaço fronteiriço entre a Colômbia e a Venezuela? Para responder a essas questões, essa tese buscou uma aproximação com as lógicas na prática. O trabalho se sustenta em pesquisa etnográfica que tem como suporte metodológico a observação participante, em termos de uma relação de sentido com meus interlocutores wayuu. / The wayuu are an indigenous group of the Arawak linguistic family, and they inhabit the Guajira Peninsula, in northeast Colombia, on the Caribbean Sea, and the Western border of Venezuela. This thesis is about the wayuu´s collective and individual dynamics. They are culturally informed in the face of the genocidal violence contextualized by Colombia´s armed conflict. Their historical and social dynamics has been imbued by the violence that derived from the first contact with the European colonization, all through the present time. In spite of the fact that such violence could be understood as a systematic attempt to destroy the other´s subjective and social existence, I hereby intend to widen this perspective by taking into account a mobile and conflictive dynamics of historicity regimes that relies on the wayuu´s social agency as historical subjects. The wayuu build experience and signify their cultural dynamics related to genocidal violence. They confer such dynamics new meanings through the interference of active spiritual entities that impinge both on life and death as two continuous, though separate, realms of social life. I defend that wounmaikat (mother earth) is a physical and social place whose significant is the feminine space in which their social practices interlink. The wayuu women symbolically construct and mobilize the significance of violence by narrating and resignifying this violence, in the context of their daily lives and in the public sphere. In doing so, they claim for their rights and engage in political struggles against the State and the Para-State. In such context, some questions become relevant: what are the horizons of significance that mediate the resignification of genocide in their social life? How do these people understand their collective and individual experiences in the (and through) their social relations with existing beings that also enhance the wayuu´s claims for rights? What could be said about the wayuu´s feminine agency and about the ethnopolitics in which women are so relevant and visible? How do they understand territoriality, signified by them as wounmaikat? How are the ethnopolitics agency of the indigenous movements constructed in the border region of Colombia and Venezuela? In order to answer these questions, I have tried, in this thesis, an approach with the logics of practice. This paper is based on the ethnographic research, with participant observation as a technique, in the search of a relation of significance with my wayuu interlocutors.

Os wayuu são um povo indígena de família lingüística arawak [arahuaca] que habitam na Península da Guajira, localizada sobre o mar do Caribe no extremo nordeste da Colômbia e na porção norte do extremo ocidental da Venezuela. Esta é uma tese que trata das dinâmicas coletivas e individuais dos wayuu. Eles estão culturalmente informados face à violência de genocídio no marco referencial do conflito interno armado na Colômbia. Sua dinâmica histórica e social tem sido perpassada pelo desdobramento da violência desde o período do contato colonial europeu, até os dias de hoje. Embora essa violência possa entender-se como um programa sistemático e racional de aniquilar as existências subjetivas e sociais do outro, pretendo ampliar essa perspectiva tomando em consideração uma dinâmica móbil e conflitiva de regimes de historicidade que aposta na agência social dos wayuu como sujeitos históricos. Os wayuu constroem, experimentam e significam dinâmicas culturais atreladas à violência de genocídio, mas que são ressemantizadas por eles através do protagonismo de entidades espirituais ativas que perpassam, tanto a vida como a morte enquanto planos contíguos, embora diferenciados, de existência social. Meu argumento é que wounmaikat (a mãe terra) dos wayuu é uma territorialidade física e social que tem como significante o espaço feminino no qual se vinculam as práticas sociais desse povo indígena. As mulheres wayuu constroem e mobilizam simbolicamente os sentidos da violência narrando e ressemantizando seus desdobramentos nos seus corpos e suas ações no palco das suas vidas cotidianas e no espaço público. Nessas ações elas reclamam pela reivindicação de direitos e travam embates com as estruturas políticas do Estado e do Para-estado. Nessa perspectiva são relevantes algumas questões: quais são os horizontes de sentido que mediam a ressignificação do genocídio no contexto social dos wayuu? Como as pessoas compreendem suas experiências individuais e coletivas na (e através) das relações sociais com seres existentes que potencializam também reivindicações por direitos dos wayuu? O que podemos dizer sobre a agência feminina wayuu e de uma etnopolítica em que as mulheres são tão visíveis e tão relevantes em seu protagonismo? Qual é o entendimento da territorialidade significada por eles como wounmaikat (a mãe terra)? Como se constroem as agências etnopolíticas dos movimentos indígenas, no espaço fronteiriço entre a Colômbia e a Venezuela? Para responder a essas questões, essa tese buscou uma aproximação com as lógicas na prática. O trabalho se sustenta em pesquisa etnográfica que tem como suporte metodológico a observação participante, em termos de uma relação de sentido com meus interlocutores wayuu. / The wayuu are an indigenous group of the Arawak linguistic family, and they inhabit the Guajira Peninsula, in northeast Colombia, on the Caribbean Sea, and the Western border of Venezuela. This thesis is about the wayuu´s collective and individual dynamics. They are culturally informed in the face of the genocidal violence contextualized by Colombia´s armed conflict. Their historical and social dynamics has been imbued by the violence that derived from the first contact with the European colonization, all through the present time. In spite of the fact that such violence could be understood as a systematic attempt to destroy the other´s subjective and social existence, I hereby intend to widen this perspective by taking into account a mobile and conflictive dynamics of historicity regimes that relies on the wayuu´s social agency as historical subjects. The wayuu build experience and signify their cultural dynamics related to genocidal violence. They confer such dynamics new meanings through the interference of active spiritual entities that impinge both on life and death as two continuous, though separate, realms of social life. I defend that wounmaikat (mother earth) is a physical and social place whose significant is the feminine space in which their social practices interlink. The wayuu women symbolically construct and mobilize the significance of violence by narrating and resignifying this violence, in the context of their daily lives and in the public sphere. In doing so, they claim for their rights and engage in political struggles against the State and the Para-State. In such context, some questions become relevant: what are the horizons of significance that mediate the resignification of genocide in their social life? How do these people understand their collective and individual experiences in the (and through) their social relations with existing beings that also enhance the wayuu´s claims for rights? What could be said about the wayuu´s feminine agency and about the ethnopolitics in which women are so relevant and visible? How do they understand territoriality, signified by them as wounmaikat? How are the ethnopolitics agency of the indigenous movements constructed in the border region of Colombia and Venezuela? In order to answer these questions, I have tried, in this thesis, an approach with the logics of practice. This paper is based on the ethnographic research, with participant observation as a technique, in the search of a relation of significance with my wayuu interlocutors.

Os wayuu são um povo indígena de família lingüística arawak [arahuaca] que habitam na Península da Guajira, localizada sobre o mar do Caribe no extremo nordeste da Colômbia e na porção norte do extremo ocidental da Venezuela. Esta é uma tese que trata das dinâmicas coletivas e individuais dos wayuu. Eles estão culturalmente informados face à violência de genocídio no marco referencial do conflito interno armado na Colômbia. Sua dinâmica histórica e social tem sido perpassada pelo desdobramento da violência desde o período do contato colonial europeu, até os dias de hoje. Embora essa violência possa entender-se como um programa sistemático e racional de aniquilar as existências subjetivas e sociais do outro, pretendo ampliar essa perspectiva tomando em consideração uma dinâmica móbil e conflitiva de regimes de historicidade que aposta na agência social dos wayuu como sujeitos históricos. Os wayuu constroem, experimentam e significam dinâmicas culturais atreladas à violência de genocídio, mas que são ressemantizadas por eles através do protagonismo de entidades espirituais ativas que perpassam, tanto a vida como a morte enquanto planos contíguos, embora diferenciados, de existência social. Meu argumento é que wounmaikat (a mãe terra) dos wayuu é uma territorialidade física e social que tem como significante o espaço feminino no qual se vinculam as práticas sociais desse povo indígena. As mulheres wayuu constroem e mobilizam simbolicamente os sentidos da violência narrando e ressemantizando seus desdobramentos nos seus corpos e suas ações no palco das suas vidas cotidianas e no espaço público. Nessas ações elas reclamam pela reivindicação de direitos e travam embates com as estruturas políticas do Estado e do Para-estado. Nessa perspectiva são relevantes algumas questões: quais são os horizontes de sentido que mediam a ressignificação do genocídio no contexto social dos wayuu? Como as pessoas compreendem suas experiências individuais e coletivas na (e através) das relações sociais com seres existentes que potencializam também reivindicações por direitos dos wayuu? O que podemos dizer sobre a agência feminina wayuu e de uma etnopolítica em que as mulheres são tão visíveis e tão relevantes em seu protagonismo? Qual é o entendimento da territorialidade significada por eles como wounmaikat (a mãe terra)? Como se constroem as agências etnopolíticas dos movimentos indígenas, no espaço fronteiriço entre a Colômbia e a Venezuela? Para responder a essas questões, essa tese buscou uma aproximação com as lógicas na prática. O trabalho se sustenta em pesquisa etnográfica que tem como suporte metodológico a observação participante, em termos de uma relação de sentido com meus interlocutores wayuu. / The wayuu are an indigenous group of the Arawak linguistic family, and they inhabit the Guajira Peninsula, in northeast Colombia, on the Caribbean Sea, and the Western border of Venezuela. This thesis is about the wayuu´s collective and individual dynamics. They are culturally informed in the face of the genocidal violence contextualized by Colombia´s armed conflict. Their historical and social dynamics has been imbued by the violence that derived from the first contact with the European colonization, all through the present time. In spite of the fact that such violence could be understood as a systematic attempt to destroy the other´s subjective and social existence, I hereby intend to widen this perspective by taking into account a mobile and conflictive dynamics of historicity regimes that relies on the wayuu´s social agency as historical subjects. The wayuu build experience and signify their cultural dynamics related to genocidal violence. They confer such dynamics new meanings through the interference of active spiritual entities that impinge both on life and death as two continuous, though separate, realms of social life. I defend that wounmaikat (mother earth) is a physical and social place whose significant is the feminine space in which their social practices interlink. The wayuu women symbolically construct and mobilize the significance of violence by narrating and resignifying this violence, in the context of their daily lives and in the public sphere. In doing so, they claim for their rights and engage in political struggles against the State and the Para-State. In such context, some questions become relevant: what are the horizons of significance that mediate the resignification of genocide in their social life? How do these people understand their collective and individual experiences in the (and through) their social relations with existing beings that also enhance the wayuu´s claims for rights? What could be said about the wayuu´s feminine agency and about the ethnopolitics in which women are so relevant and visible? How do they understand territoriality, signified by them as wounmaikat? How are the ethnopolitics agency of the indigenous movements constructed in the border region of Colombia and Venezuela? In order to answer these questions, I have tried, in this thesis, an approach with the logics of practice. This paper is based on the ethnographic research, with participant observation as a technique, in the search of a relation of significance with my wayuu interlocutors.

Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide stipulates the definition of the crime. A key element of genocide is the criterion of “intent”; this requisite must be met in order to determine criminal liability. Even though “intent” is a paramount element of the crime neither definition nor guidance regarding its interpretation is provided for under Article II, this void of interpretation is absolute throughout the Genocide Convention. Hence, the purpose of this thesis is to examine this void in the provision. In order to fulfill the purpose of this thesis the following research questions have been regarded: How is the requisite intent defined in relevant preparatory work of Genocide Convention? How is the requisite intent interpreted in relevant case law and judicial doctrines and are these interpretations in line with the preparatory work of the Genocide Convention? Is the definition and interpretation of the requisite intent in the abovementioned legal sources consistent with the object and purpose of the Genocide Convention? We found that in the preparatory work of the Genocide Convention, the requisite intent has not been labeled. However, the Drafters definition of intent is in accordance with international criminal law’s definition of specific intent. Also, the case law and judicial doctrines that we have examined all fall within either the purpose-based or the knowledge-based approach. Both approaches acknowledge that a perpetrator needs to possess an inner aim or desire to meet the level of intent required for the Crime. Notwithstanding, the knowledge-based approach holds that “policy or plan” is part of the Crime whereas the purpose-based approach rejects it and consequently the application of genocidal intent is distinctively different. With regard to preparatory work, the purpose-based approach is in line with the definition of the Drafters whereas the knowledge-based approach is not in its literal meaning. However, the Drafters did not explicitly reject the knowledge-based approach in the preparatory work of the Genocide Convention. We have concluded that the purpose-based approach is not consistent with the object and purpose of the Genocide Convention. We hold that the knowledge-based approach is in line with the object and purpose of the Genocide Convention, and hence this approach upholds the goal of preventing and punishing genocide. Moreover, the method for this thesis is in accordance with the method in international law for interpretations of international treaties; the Vienna Convention on the law of Treaties. Hence, the selection, systemization and interpretation of legal sources are in line with the Vienna Convention.

In an attempt to bridge the gap between theories of violent escalation and those of genocide, this paper theorizes genocide to be a strategic choice by leaders in response to a situation which they perceive to lack alternatives. This situation is expected to evolve out of a violent escalation, more precisely civil war. The empirical test consists of a structured focused comparison of one positive and one negative case; namely the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the conflict in Georgia over the region Abkhazia. The finding gives some evidence to the theory, however a more adequate theory needs to also involve a theorization of the ability to perpetrate genocide and not only of a lack of other alternatives. The study builds on previous research on the relationship between violent escalation and genocide, and findings are in line with existing research.

Using Indigenous methodology and a story telling method this thesis is the result of research that looks at the benefits of traditional Indigenous ceremony and healing practices as a way to heal from traumatic experiences. A thematic analysis technique was employed to reveal four themes that emerged from the stories told by Indigenous Knowledge Keeper participants. The first theme is the importance of our connection to all living things including our own selves. Another is recognizing our greatest teachers nature and animals. Cleansing emerged at the center of all traditional healing strategies and the final theme encompasses all that we are as life on this planet spirit or energy. Trauma can be understood as any event that creates difficulty for the individual to cope whether the event that caused the experience was purposeful or accidental. While people do find amazing ways to cope with circumstances that are overwhelming, neurobiology tells us how trauma is processed and impacts the workings of the brain. Trauma in the nervous system can be understood as the result of a person or group or community’s inability to stay safe or to feel safe during the experiences. Indigenous people live with the ongoing effects of intergenerational trauma caused by colonization including the Indian Residential School experience, as well as ongoing systemic oppression. All traumas can activate the deeply held traumas that have been transmitted trans-generationally. In essence we carry intergenerational traumas. I believe that Indigenous people were practicing healing on a regular basis within their traditional ceremonies, dances and practices before contact and these practices may inform a model of health and wellness that could be useful in healing the effects of trauma that impacts Indigenous people today. Ceremonies and traditional teachings were shared communally before contact and are now being revived as we embrace the cultural practices of our ancestors across this land. Within our Indigenous ways of knowing we recognize that we are related to everything in creation we are connected and depend on one another. In 1884, under the Potlatch Law & section141 of the Indian Act our ceremonies, spiritual practices and traditional knowledges were made illegal; our people were imprisoned for practicing them (UBC First Nations Studies, 2009). Today we are in a state of desperation for healing strategies that work for who we are as a people. The Elders in this research shared how this can be done. / Graduate / 0452 / 0622 / 0347 / sheilanyman@shaw.ca

Le cadre global des persécutions juives en France, les mécanismes de la Shoah sont largement connus. Sur 330 000 Juifs qui vivaient France en 1940, 80 000 ont été victimes des persécutions d’État et des déportations. En deçà de cette histoire nationale, André Kaspi s’étonne en 1991 que des centres aussi importants que Lyon, Toulouse, Grenoble n’aient pas fait l’objet d’étude attentive et scientifique (Les Juifs pendant l’Occupation, Édition du Seuil, 1991, 150 p.). Les travaux locaux ont comblé ce manque depuis. Mais le déroulement sur le terrain au quotidien, au « ras des individus », mérite encore de faire l’objet de nouvelles investigations, sans perdre de vue la diversité des situations que l’on soit de part et d’autre de la ligne de démarcation. Lyon, en zone libre jusqu’en novembre 1942, n’est pas à considérer comme Paris occupée dès juin 1940. Dans cette étude nous n’avons eu de cesse de nous interroger sur ce qui fait les spécificités de Lyon. Globalement le sort des Juifs dans la capitale des Gaules a été proche de leurs coreligionnaires de la zone sud. Toutefois, écrire l’histoire des Juifs à Lyon de l’avant-guerre à la Libération, revient à s’intéresser à des itinéraires de vie et de survie dans une ville dont certaines caractéristiques lui sont propres. L’histoire des Juifs à Lyon de l’avant-guerre à la Libération, en plus de parler de la Shoah dans la cité rhodanienne, cherche à raconter les ondes de choc d’une Europe en guerre sur les individus pour comprendre ce qui leur arrive. C’est en étant plus attentifs au tissu de la vie quotidienne, dans sa diversité individuelle que nous nous proposons dans cette étude de restituer la dimension humaine d’un monde qui a été au bord du gouffre. / The global framework of the Jew's persecutions in France as well as the mechanisms of the Shoah are widely known. 80 000 Jews out of the 330 000 who were living in France in 1940 have been the victims of state persecutions and deportations. On this side of this national history, Andre Kaspi was surprised in 1991 at seeing that cities as populated as Lyon, Toulouse or Grenoble had not been given an active and scientific consideration (Les Juifs pendant l'Occupation, Édition du seuil, 1991, 150 p.). Local research have since then enabled to address this lack. However, the daily course of operations, as close as possible to each individual, still deserves to be submitted to new investigations, without losing sight of the diversity of situations on both sides of the line of demarcation. The city of Lyon, which was within the unoccupied zone until November 1942, is not to be compared with the city of Paris which had been occupied from June 1940.In this essay, we kept wondering about the causes related to the specificities of the city of Lyon. On the whole, the fate of the Jews in the capital of the Gauls was almost the same as for their co-religionists in the south zone. Nevertheless, writing about the history of the Jews in Lyon from the pre-war years to the Liberation comes down to taking an interest in different journeys though life and survival within a city which has its own features.Besides tackling the Shoah in the Rhone city of Lyon, the history of the Jews in Lyon from the pre-war years to the Liberation, also aims at telling about the shock waves experienced by individuals in a Europe in war and perceiving what was happening to them. By paying more attention to the fabric of daily life seen in its individual diversity, we thereby intend to reconstruct the human dimension of a world which was once on the brink of the abyss.