War as Peace, Peace as Pacification

Abstract

Challenging the established consensus around the notions of "peace" and "war," the author prompts inquiries into established knowledge, such as the assumptions of modern political theory, and the persistence of temporalities like the colonial period, through the reiterated pattern of contact between Europeans and "other" peoples. The meanings of the terms "peace" and "war" are examined, recognizing the presence in international law of the use of war to produce peace and security, presuming recourse to expropriation and the expedient of violence against these groups. "Pacification," therefore, reveals the conditions under which peace is established for market conditions, guaranteed in the figure of a constant enemy, activated as a code for the permanent pacification demanded in contemporary politics, which reveals security as the "supreme concept of bourgeois society."