Multitextual Analysis in the Service of Peace: Local People and Peacekeeping

The authors explore the use of personal narratives as a method for the study of conflict and peace, selecting as a site for interpretation the militarily and ethnically divided island of Cyprus. The international community has made a considerable investment in peacekeeping operations, but the many active sites of these operations can only be understood in terms of the multiple, intersecting, and often contending accounts of both the truth and the reality of the local circumstances, including the accounts of local citizens. This article presents an illustration of how personal narratives and official narratives derived from the Greek Cypriot side of the conflict combine to create a cohesive, culturally shared narrative. The ultimate goal of the research project is to write the many different voices, or “texts” that surround the ethnic dividing line in Cyprus, especially those that deviate from the dominant narratives in the service of elusive peace.