Peace, Learning and Unlearning

Fry, Tony

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-24720-1_7

Tony Fry²

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Abstract

While prior reference has been made to the breakdown of the binary relation between war and peace it is now looked at in some detail. Initially, the problem of the concept of peace in the late modern world, and the nature, hopes, failures and history of peace activism and studies are all considered—this from the perspectives of philosophy and institution. Then the redundancy of peace is considered against the backdrop of the changing character and future of war. The relation of peace to the state and democracy is also discussed. Unstaging war is then positioned, this as underpinning the entire critique of peace, and in the recognition that another discourse and practice is now needed to counter the propensity and omnipresence of the pluralisation of war.

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Notes

1.
Carl Schmitt (1996) [1919], Political Romanticism (trans. Guy Oakes), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 19.
2.
Ibid., p. 64.
3.
Masatsugu Matsuo (2007), ‘Concept of Peace in Peace Studies: A Short Historical Sketch,’ Institute for Peace Studies Report, Hiroshima University, p. 13.
4.
See https://www.transcend.org/files/Galtungs_Production_1948-2016.pdf.
5.
Johan Galtung (1967), ‘Theories of Peace,’ Institute of Peace Research Paper, Oslo, p. 6.
6.
Matsuo, ‘Concept of Peace in Peace Studies,’ pp. 16–18.
7.
Johan Galtung, ‘Violence, Peace and Peace Research’ 1969 cite by Matsuo, ‘Concept of Peace in Peace Studies,’ p. 18.
8.
Johan Galtung (1981), ‘Social Cosmology and the Concept of Peace,’ Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 167–191.
9.
Jacques Novicow (1911), War and Alleged Benefits (trans. Thomas Seltzer), New York: Henry Holt.
10.
Such a politics marks the transition of Kantian idealism to the political directed policy—see Laurent Goetschet (ed), (2011), The Politics of Peace, Hamburg: Lit Verlag.
11.
On the problems of pragmatic peace, see Edwina Thompson (2008), Principled Pragmatism, Monrovia, CA: World Vision.
12.
Leo Shane and Patrice Kime, ‘New VA Study Find 20 Veterans Commit Suicide Each Day,’ Military Times, July 7, 2016. http://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/2016/07/07/new-va-study-find-20-veterans-commit-suicide-each-day/.
13.
There is perhaps no more contemporary tragic example than Israel as is evident in papers like Gerald M. Steinberg’s, ‘Postcolonial Theory and the Ideology of Peace Studies,’ Israel Affairs, Vol. 13, No. 4, October 2007, pp. 786–796. Steinberg’s position on postcolonialism is equally myopic in it fails to acknowledge is the colonialism is violence and in term of relations with the colonizer can ever be a relation between equals.
14.
Ibid., p. 789.
15.
Jasmine-Kim Westendorf (2015), Why Peace Processes Fail: Negotiating Insecurity After Civil War, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishing, p. 3.
16.
Ibid., p. 14.
17.
Tony Fry (2015), City Futures in the Age of a Changing Climate, London: Routledge, pp. 90–95.
18.
Adriaan Peperzak (1993), To the Other, an Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, p. 127.
19.
Nick Mansfield (2008), Theorizing War: From Hobbes to Badiou, New York: Palgrave, p. 25.
20.
James Dodd (2009), Violence and Phenomenology, London: Routledge, p. 136.
21.
Emmanual Levinas (1999), ‘Peace and Proximity,’ in Alterity & Transcendence (trans. Michael B. Smith), London: Athlone Press, p. 132.
22.
Ibid.
23.
Ibid., p. 133.
24.
Here is the end as that “beyond history” and “all instances of time”—Emmanuel Levinas (1969), Totality and Infinity (trans. Alphonso Lingis), Pittesburg: Duquesne University Press, pp. 23–24.
25.
Ibid., p. 142.
26.
Sabastian Rosato, ‘The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory,’ American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 4, November 2003; David Kinsella, ‘No Rest for the Democratic Peace,’ American Political Science Review, Vol. 99, No. 3, August 2005.
27.
The critique of Imperialism and the doctrines of classical liberalism and laissez-faire economics spans from the mid and late nineteenth century as seen in, for example, the writings of the British political theorist and sociologist Leonard Hobhouse (1864–1929), the present. See Jahn Beate (2013), Liberal Internationalism, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
28.
Giorgio Agamben (2005), The State of Exception (trans. Kevin Attell), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 50.
29.
Daniel Ross (2014), ‘Democracy, Authority, Narcissism: From Agamben to Stiegler,’ in Violent Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
30.
A saying attributed to Roman general Vegetius.
31.
Nan Tan, Aude Fleurant, Pieter Wezeman, and Siemon Wezeman (2017), Trends in World Military Arms Expenditure, 2016, Stockholm: SOPRI.
32.
Saeed Kamali Dehghan, The Guardian, February 20, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/20/global-arms-weapons-trade-highest-point-since-cold-war-era#img-1.
33.
Henry D. Sokolski (ed), (2012), The Next Arms Race, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute.
34.
John Keys, United Nations Failed Syria, October 2, 2015. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/762891/john-key-united-nations-failed-syria (accessed August 9, 2016).
35.
As Mohammad Amir Anwar reports, while positing faith in the law the actual UN record of the ratification of subsidiary bodies like the International Court of Justice has been poor. ‘UN Security Council’s Failure Stretches from Syria to Crimea,’ The Conversation, March 5, 2014.
36.
The nature of the human has of course become a major and growing area of research and debate with an ever-growing literature. See for example Stefan Herbrechter (2013), Posthumanism: A Critical Analysis, London: Bloomsbury.
37.
Chris McGreal, ‘What’s the Point of Peacekeeping When They Don’t Keep the Peace?’ The Guardian, September 17, 2015.
38.
See for example Emily Gilbert, ‘UN Peacekeeping Mission Failure in Mali: An Operational and Strategic Failure,’ Georgetown Security Studies Review, October 4, 2016.
39.
Ewen MacAskill, ‘Clinton Backs Reform of UN Peacekeeping Role,’ The Guardian, September 6, 2000.
40.
Raymond Aron (1959), On War (trans. Terence Kilmartin), New York: Doubleday. See also the discussion on Aron Eric Alliez and Antonio Negri (2003), ‘Peace and War,’ Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 109–118.

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Architecture and Design, University of Tasmania, Launceston, TAS, Australia
Tony Fry

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Fry, T. (2019). Peace, Learning and Unlearning. In: Unstaging War, Confronting Conflict and Peace. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24720-1_7

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24720-1_7
Published: 25 July 2019
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-24719-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-24720-1
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