: Pour une sociologie politique du traitement des restes humains

International audienceThis special issue brings together five case studies to analyze the political treatment of dead bodies deemed “problematic”, due to their number or the conditions of their demise. They may be the bodies of victims of mass crimes, of terrorists killed in the course of their attacks, or bodies buried in graves that may be either hidden or exposed, according to their nationality. They have in common that they pose a problem for nation-state authorities, who cannot easily deal with such bodies: some may be absent, untraceable or poorly identified; others, on the contrary, are present but are ‘unwanted’ to the point that they are denied a grave or may only receive a discreet one. The different contributions gathered here describe the collective politicization of these problematic corpses – but above all, they show its limits: because these bodies have been considered as “vile”, their treatment never becomes the issue of a major controversy