The Concealed Violence of Modern Peace(-Making)

In: Millennium: journal of international studies, Band 36, Heft 3, S. 555-574

Abstract

By drawing on the work of anti-Eurocentric critics, this article inquires into the legitimisation of military interventions and the imposition of certain practices of governance in the name of peace. Special emphasis is put on the approach of transmodernity that rejects the standard picture of modernity and modern identities as utterly European/Western products and tries to reveal the concealed violence of European and North-American modernism. In view of current military interventions, the article analyses how an obligation of the Western self to produce peace is derived from the allegedly precedent unwillingness or inability of the non-Western other to maintain peace. It is argued that contemporary protagonists of modernity, thus, do not take seriously their own contribution to the violence they claim to fight. With reference to non-military practices performed as peace-making, it is shown how Eurocentric reason is prone to non-listening and ignoring the experiences of others.