A criticism of totalitarianism. Method and what is at stake.
Philippe RAYNAUD - Professor (université Panthéon-Assas Paris II)
Bernard BRUNETEAU - Professor (université Rennes 1)
Gil DELANNOI - Director of Research at FNSP
Philippe DE LARA - Associate Professor (université Panthéon-Assas Paris II)
Gérard GRUNBERG - Professor (I.E.P de Paris)
The following research is organized around four books.
At the center of The Century of Camps lies this question : how can we explain the historically unprecedented extension of concentration camps in the preceding century? The work offers a typology of the concentration camps that seeks to explain the phenomenon by reference to the different political systems that made use of them.
North Korea: A Rogue State examines the evolution of a state that is sometimes described as the ultimate development of totalitarianism. The work endorses this view, allowing for certain nuances with regard to North Korea's sectarian modus operandi and the idiosyncrasies specific to its reigning ideology.
Sunset over Havana is a history of Cuban communism as the creation of an act of will, and of its relations with the rest of the world with special attention to the illusions to which it gave rise.
Georges Albertini is the biography of a socialist and pacifist of the 1930s who became a leading French Collaborator, without forsaking the left and its revolutionary project. These studies all bring us back to totalitarianism and the problems raised by this concept in the study of political science. They offer opportunities to reflect upon the connection between work conceived as an act of militancy by its author, and the objectivity that is the necessary condition of scientific study and the acquisition of knowledge. Would there not be a heuristic quality inherent in a moral and political bias? The latter requires a focus on the fates of individuals and matters of human rights the significance of which are denied by totalitarian systems