Abstract
Despite historical efforts toward universal peace, media and politics worldwide tend to revolve around the idea that war is an inescapable element of human nature. Discourses of War and Peace seeks the ambitious goals of deconstructing the discursive work that lies behind war as a social project, and of understanding how war can be artificially constructed and normalized within society. But although a majority of the volume is dedicated to different aspects of the discourse of war, reflecting the current state of world affairs, the authors’ intention is to critically problematize the familiar and accepted narratives of war, so as to help cultivate alternative discourses of peace.
Part 1, ‘Justifying War’, is the largest. It focuses specifically on identifying and dismantling forms of discourse that position war as an inevitable aspect of the human condition. In Chapter 2, Dunmire examines US security policy documents, concluding that their negative conception of peace (as the absence of war) ignores other forms of social instability; especially in the case of developing countries, such peace is often an illusion. In Chapter 3, Hodges examines the methods that American presidents have used to convince US citizens of the necessity to go to war. The discursive manufacture of national consent he describes is focused on the strategy of reminding Americans of their desired image within the international community. Both Dunmire and Hodges show the effectiveness of the American state mechanism in promoting war through the Just War Theory. Chapter 4, by Podvornaia, focuses specifically on the rhetoric used by the US government in persuading citizens of the need to act after 9/11. The ‘call-to-arms’ rhetoric employed by George W. Bush, which blurs the concept of individual responsibility, shows little difference with that of Osama bin Laden. Podvornaia’s analysis of such hyperbolic appeals to the destruction of adversaries highlights the need for a broader social questioning of this dichotomous way of thinking. As in the previous cases, the official rhetoric of war she examines does not allow any room for social dialogue, let alone encourage public debate. In its exclusion of even the possibility of compromise, these discourses simplistically envision the world as a battlefield between order and chaos. In Chapter 5, Bhatia offers a critical study of the British Weapons of Mass Destruction Dossier, the key document used to justify the subsequent invasion of Iraq. The author focuses on the distinctive factual appeal of the document, as compared with the primarily emotional arguments that had been raised so far, but concludes that there is a substitution of concepts: the authors of the Dossier are trying to replace a perpetual peace demanded by the audiences with a political peace designed in the interests of the West.
The following three parts are, however, less homogeneous. Part 2, ‘Negotiating Military Deployment’, opens with Chapter 6, by Goldie, who analyzes the presentation of discursive and cultural clashes in the ‘Somalia Affair’, a series of scandals concerning Canadian peacekeepers in Somalia. Different groups promoted different frames on the matter: peacekeeping as war versus peacekeeping as peace. Goldie views framing not as a unique elite instrument of manipulation, but rather as a complex process in the course of which influences disperse in different directions. Chapter 7, by Nilep, focuses instead on political communication by the Japanese cabinet, employing the notion of ‘metaphorical promise’: a general expectation created without ever being explicitly articulated. This example showcases the importance of considering the historical circumstances and cultural peculiarities of the region. Part 3, ‘Responding to Armed Conflict’, shifts the emphasis to the conditions of people’s lives under armed conflict. Chapter 8, by Hallman, examines the strategy of commensuration employed in reporting victims’ conditions, comparing the Irish and the Palestinian cases. He argues that although commensuration is vital for human rights advocacy, constructing a common identity poses numerous potential pitfalls for activists. In Chapter 9, Schulthies analyzes in detail the affective reasoning produced by Moroccan families to frame and absorb mediated violence that has turned into one more element of everyday life.
Part 4, ‘Promoting Peace’, comprises the final two chapters. Trester, in Chapter 10, employs nexus analysis to analyze the self-presentation of Quakers. Her ethnographic study seeks to describe the ways in which they stand for peace. The Quaker motto is ‘let your life speak, so as to avoid language manipulation’. Silence, a powerful symbol in promoting peace, turns into a form of social action, for example, against the background of US involvement in Iraq. In the last chapter of the book, Suzuki contrasts the linguistic and discursive approaches used respectively by sightseeing guides and peace guides to construct narratives of Okinawa. Suzuki discovers two different approaches to history: from the point of war and peace narrations. This difference underlines the limitation of disaster tourism as a means of peace activism. Suzuki’s idea that narrative performances may be critically important for shaping or provoking social action reflects the message that is fundamental to the whole book.
Although the book perhaps raises more questions than it answers, Discourses of War and Peace doubtlessly achieves the goal of raising critical awareness of the processes and historical preconditions that lead to war. The largely Western focus of the first part is perhaps a weak point; Bhatia’s is the sole piece on non-American materials in it, while the militaristic discourses of other important world actors such as Russia, who have no less aggressive foreign policies, are omitted. In a similar manner, a single article on the Middle East only grazes the complexity of the matter. Nevertheless, the various case studies in the book clearly show that war is not an inescapable element of human nature, and open new avenues for the study of the discursive construction of peace.