1 Introduction
Nathalie Barrandon et Isabelle Pimouguet-Pedarros

2In this introduction to the articles published in La transgression en temps de guerre, de l’Antiquité à nos jours, is presented the work at the origin of this book, i.e. the debates of the three round tables which were held at the University of Nantes between 2017 and 2019 (CRHIA/CERHiC).

3 Transgression in Times of War: Presentation of the Subject and Thematic Opening
Nathalie Barrandon et Isabelle Pimouguet-Pedarros

4The authors define the notion of transgression and place it back in time of war, then they outline the methodological frameworks of the study, highlighting the problematic and the issues. Finally, they open up research perspectives by focusing on fundamental themes to the understanding of the subject, such as memory, identity or cruelty.

5 A Matrix of Transgression in the Western World? The Conquests of Croesus and Cyrus According to Herodotus
Jeannine Boëldieu-Trevet

6In the Inquiry, Herodotus rarely uses verbs that indicate transgression (parabainô—three occurrences—and paranomô—only one). And yet transgression is very present in the structures of the narrative, the reported speeches or the interventions of the author. The analysis of book 1 narrating the wars of Croesus and Cyrus reveals how conquest constitutes a transgression. The defeat inflicted on Cyrus by Tomyris, queen of the Massagetes, is a privileged point of approach to this thematic developed here over time. The study of various authors of Antiquity taking up the theme and, beyond, of several literary and pictorial works until the 17^th century allows to discuss the notion of matrix announced in the title. Should we prefer that of paradigm, of traces or always inventive echoes?

7 Transgressions and Divine Sanctions in Wartime in Ancient Greece
Jérôme Wilgaux

8From Homeric epics (8^th century BC) to the Life of Alexander written by Plutarch (2^nd century AD), this article confronts four greek stories of extreme violence, combining wartime transgressions and divine sanctions. If an ethical and religious reading of the successions of events can be proposed, the gods relentlessly sanctioning those found guilty of transgressions, it is especially the constant presence of third parties that this study analyzes. Beyond the victims and actors of extreme violence, it is these witnesses, mortal or divine, who give meaning to events and reaffirm the values, not only moral and religious, but also political and identity, which set up social order.

9 War, Norms and Transgressions in the Greek World
Isabelle Pimouguet-Pedarros

10The rules relating to armed conflicts did not have the same meaning; it depended on whether they were sacred laws, uses linked to the rights of populations (unarmed or disarmed) or even rules applicable to a particular type of fight. The purpose of this article is to reexamine all of these laws, both in their contents and in their foundations, to take into account their strength constraining (Were they easily transgress or not?) and to question their relevance face of the evolution of war, siege warefare especially. Under what circumstances were they transgressed? Why actions deemed against the rules could have force of law? If the examples selected are mainly based on the classical period, the fact remains that the subject extends beyond in order to understand the problem over time.

11 Stasiology: Thinking about off-limit War
Ninon Grangé

12Starting from the insufficiency of the reference to the law of war alone to assess the regularity of war, a pre-existing norm for former pseudo-legal behaviour, i.e. made to look like legality, is taken into consideration. In fact, norms are changeable, so it is necessary to have a nomal reference (from nomos and not from normal or normative). Then it is appropriate to look at what, independently of the abstract reference to the duel war, is irregular in essence: this is what we find with the Greek notion of stasis (στάσις). Being not only a political concept, stasis is the concept of war beyond limits. If the rule is both a power of adaptation and a power to produce its own means, then stasis is not reduced to a moral, anthropological or strategic understanding, it has a connotation that goes beyond politics. There is therefore a need for a stasiology, which is the study of stasis, in so far as it is a certain adaptation to the rules and a use of the rules of war. The tendency to rule can be imitation of the law or behaviour in accordance with a moral code. The “off-limit” is in principle (the stasis at Corcyra, for example), and stasiology makes it possible to assess the tendency to the limit.

13 Transgression in War at the Time of Cicero: Law and Cruelty
Nathalie Barrandon

14This article offers an analysis of the relationship between law and war, especially at the time of Cicero, then what cruelty represents for the latter in order to enrich reflection on transgression in war, by questioning in particular the notion of victim. The relevance of the use of the concept of transgression in relation to ius feciales, ius gentium and ius belli is therefore assessed. An exhaustive study of the Latin vocabulary of cruelty in Cicero’s work allows us to question the relationship he establishes between cruelty and the death penalty, then with tyranny. Finally, by focusing on comparatives (crudeliores) and superlatives (crudelissimi) we can enhance the denunciation of transgression in Cicero’s work through the prism of three themes: hospitality, family and body.

15 A Beyond Violence? Reflections on the Practices of Cruelty during the Genocide of the Rwandan Tutsi (April-June 1994)
Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau

16This contribution seeks to establish a fundamental distinction between violence and cruelty, the latter having to be read as violence which has become its own end and intended to produce additional pain in the victim, pain as much bodily as psychic and symbolic. As such, cruelty is profaning, it undermines the sacred of the victim himself, but also his family, loved ones, and community. It more specifically aims at filiation while provoking the enjoyment of the pepetrators.
The genocide in Rwanda was largely linked to the deadly overturning of neighborhoods, without which one cannot imagine the massacre of a million people between April and July 1994. The cruelty was consubstantial with this violence in the neighborhood. It alone could create the missing difference, which had to be built up and deepened. It is therefore in the extreme proximity that the answer to the enigma of the 1994 genocide could be found. Not in the “minor” difference pointed out in its time by Freud, but in a non-existent difference.

17 Siege warfare, paroxysm and transgression (Alexander and the Great hellenistic monarchies)
Isabelle Pimouguet-Pedarros

18The sieges, in the Hellenistic period, had in some circumstances a paroxysmal character; and even if they are not mentioned as such, the metaphors associated with them leave no doubt about how they were lived: like calamities with effects comparable to those of a natural disaster. The besieged at that time experienced a “beyond violence”: to the atrocities perpetrated against people and their property could be added the mass massacre, the enslavement of the survivors, the annihilation therefore of the whole community. These traumatic events have contributed to the development of obsidional terror in the Greek world of cities, the collective suicide of which constitutes the ultimate extension and appears to be an extreme response to the intolerable. Transgressive acts, or judged as such, particularly frequent in siege warfare, were not always the result of war furor; in some cases, notably under Alexander, they had the function and not only the consequence of terrorizing the peoples and the cities.

19 From the Individual Body to the Social Body: Around Transgressions in Times of War in Byzantium
Nicolas Drocourt

20If Byzantium was associated with violent acts of war–such as the blinding of Bulgarian prisoners of war in July 1014 by Basil II, the so-called ‘Bulgar slayer’ —some texts suggest that both the notion and reality of transgression were known by the Byzantines. The aim of this study is to give a first approach to this theme through three sets of situations during the mid-Byzantine period. At first the long confrontation of the Empire with its oriental neighbors, Persians, Arabs, and Turks, offers interesting cases to analyze. Without any doubt, the violence of some of the military confrontations opens the way to acts that could have been considered as forms of transgressions, including dismemberment or decapitation of prisoners, associated or not with the publicity or even propaganda made of these acts. To sap spirits of the enemy and ruin his economy was also the aim of destructions of crops and of animals. Finally, desecrating corpses was another red line that at times was crossed. This leads us to a second aspect, linked to transgressions of what was considered sacred. Attacks on priests or holy places appear sometimes, and are always condemned. A cross reading and interpretation of various texts describing the assault of heathen Rus’against Constantinople in June 941 is instructing. The transgression could thus target not only isolated persons, but persons as representative of a group. As such, Greek and Latin testimonies reveal very detailed and enlightening perspectives to us concerning two other famous episodes of 1182 and 1185. The slaughter of Latins in Constantinople and the seizure of Thessaloniki by the Normans respectively offer other insights for this subject and close our article.

21 The body of the enemy and its image: from the naked soldier to the collective entities
Ninon Grangé

22We start from the hypothesis that the individual-group relationship, in the hostile relationship, goes through a gap between image and representation, associated with a gap between the naked body and the clothed body. Starting with the case of the naked soldier, we are interested in clothing, disguise, and manners (the ancient “guise”) in wartime. The issues at stake are the international law of war, but also anthropological and moral. However, while the case of the naked soldier is often analyzed in ethics, it is almost never analyzed as a naked body. We take up the analyses of Michael Walzer, the objections of Cora Diamond and Nicolas Tavaglione. But, beyond the idea of a “right to life” that would occasionally emerge from nudity, beyond a moral feeling that we would like to believe shared, we will complete these analyses with an “aesthetic”, both an experience of the environment and an aesthetic experience. Reciprocity and resemblance are also the result of the emergence of images, particularly images of peace in times of war. Moral analysis is incomplete, that by the law of war is insufficient, the individualgroup relationship has therefore to be integrated. The vision of the enemy, naked or in uniform or in deceptive clothing, stems from the feeling of belonging to a political community. The question of belligerence and international law is overtaken by moral reflection (values) and ethical reflection (wartime behaviour), themselves largely informed by anthropology. But one cannot be satisfied with the alternative between “serving as a soldier” and “behaving morally”. It is necessary to rethink the question on the basis of what the images, alongside the representations themselves, provide, and to include in the analysis what they teach us about a more complex relationship between the individual and collective entities.

23 Greeks against Trojans: An Aesthetic of Disorder and Transgression in Attic Ceramics
Nikolina Kéï

24The article provides a synthesis on a number of attic vases (6^th and 5^th centuries BC) representing acts of transgression that took place during the Trojan War, such as the outrage of Hector’s body, the rape of Cassandra, the sacrifice of Polyxene, the death of Troïlos, Astyanax and that of Priam suppliant. These are images of violence, excess and disorder adorning vases whose shape indicates that they were intended for the banquet (symposion). Strange as it may seem to us Westerners, these images, far from being designed to condemn violence or arouse indignation, are made for the visual but also intellectual pleasure of the guests; they challenge their memory and their knowledge—the Homeric epics being at the basis of Greek education—and at the same time, they stimulate and nourish exchanges around values such as andreia, arete and kleos. For, in reality, these images actually represent states of mind, that of Achilles, Ajax and Neoptolemus, which, by going against heroic ethics, reverse the iconographic codes: the heroes are unleashed like wild beasts against defenceless victims, while the rites of funerals, sacrifice, marriage and the practice of banquets are diverted. The anger and hybristic behavior of these heroes engender borderline experiences such as fear, revenge, helplessness, supplication, outrage, defilement, experiences that, visually, can only fascinate the viewer.

25 Rape and Sexual Violence in the Goya War Disasters. War Crime and Transgressive Erotic of the Image
Frédéric Prot

26In his collection of engravings the Disasters of War (1810-1815), Francisco de Goya establishes rape and sexual mutilation as a metonymy and paradigm of war violence by synthesizing its power of transgression: violation of natural law and law of war; reification and desecration of the enemy’s body; abject enjoyment found in the crime. War exacerbates the codification of gender relations and becomes a continuation of sexuality by other means. The Disasters of war are not only the archive and repertoire of war crimes. They also deploy an eroticism of transgression. Goya is not only a memorialist: he contributes to the modern definition of “war crime” and “crime against humanity”.

27 Audiovisual Dramaturgies of Terror in Syria. Amateur Videos of Syrian Soldiers and ISIS Video Shows
Cécile Boëx

28Since 2011, the uprising and the war in Syria have generated a considerable mass of video footage uploaded on YouTube, from the different protagonists of the conflict. Some have filmed to document the revolt, to witness, or to remember their dead, some to promote their armed actions to their sponsors and others to humiliate and spread horror. This contribution is dedicated to the latter, from the perspective of two actors of terror: the forces affiliated to the regime of Bashar al Assad, and the Islamic State. At different phases, theses actors have particularly exploited video footage to torture and to kill. The former, (nearly) clandestinely, whereas the other has pushed to an extreme the display of awfulness, widely reflected in the global media. How, in this peculiar war-related and technological context, video can be an essential part of an economy of extreme violence and produce new forms of transgression? The aim is to investigate dramaturgy of extreme violence deployed in images and sounds while also questioning how political, ideological and religious elements shape these videos and their audiences.