Peace, unconditional. Politics. Histories. Memories. Futures.

On 22 and 23 November 2023, the IKSS will host a conference “Peace. Unconditional. Politics. History. Memories. Futures”.

The authors of the papers presented at the Peace. Unconditional conference thematise the issues of peace in a historical perspective, through different approaches and optics, in different time periods, but with a predominant focus on Eastern Europe, to thus contribute to debates and reflections on the conditions of peace in the early 21st century.

Location: Atrij ZRC. The event is open to the public and will be held in English.

Programme:

22 November 2023

09:00 | Greetings, Intro | Oto Luthar, Martin Pogačar

9:30–12:10 |  Peace and the arts / Chair: Katja Kobolt

09:30 | Zdenka Badovinac: Peace as a space for the third

10:10 | Faris Kočan, Rok Zupančič: Ethnic distancing through aesthetics in Bosnia-Herzegovina: appraising the limits of art as a peacebuilding tool with a socio-psychological experiment

10:50 | Jošt Franko: A memory without evidence

11:30 | Jelena Vesić: Active neutrality as the war for eternal peace: Non-aligned movement's politics of war and peace, revisited by contemporary art

12:10–13:40 / Lunch   

13:40 | Barbara Šurk: Surviving peace / Chair: Martin Pogačar

14:20–16:20 | Once there were futures / Chair: Ana Hofman

14:20 | Katja Kobolt: Pictures of war, pictures for peace: children as the harbingers of tomorrow

15:00 | Ovidiu Tichideleanu: In the iconography of socialism, peace reigns supreme

15:40 | Nika Grabar: Post-war non-peace

16:20-16:50 | Coffee break

16:50–18:50 | Round table | Ana Kladnik, Anna Graf-Steiner, Aidan Ratchford, Severyan Dyakonov, Tina Filipović: Cold War and the changing discourses and practices on peace

19:00 |  Dinner

23 November 2023

9:00-9:30 | Morning coffee

9:30–12:10 | History, politics, and cultures of peace / Chair: Martin Pogačar

09:30 | Janez Weiss: An outline of the architecture of peace in Europe between the 15th and the 21st century

10:10 | Petra Svoljšak: The war to end all wars: A broken promise of peace

10:50 | Peter Klepec: On cruelty (of war)

11:30 | Yurii Sheliazhenko: What Ukraine could learn from Slovenia's culture of peace

12:10–12:40 | Coffee break

12:40-14:40 | From the mundane to resistance / Chair: Nika Grabar

12:00 | Tomaž Mastnak: Unconditional? The idea of peace in the political context

12:40 | Nina Žnidaršič: Autonomy, political friendship, solidarity and socialism: collective search for coexistence, the case of Yugoslavia

13:20 | Danijela Lugarić Vukas: War and peace - from the perspective of feminist anti-war resistance

14:00–14:30 | Closing remarks / Lunch

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Call for papers and contributions

Peace, unconditional. 

Politics. Histories. Memories. Futures.

The post-WWII world – framed through the values of freedom, a better future, and peace – emerged out of the ruins and devastation, suffering and displacement. The psychosocial damage, the millions of dead and displaced, the destroyed cities and infrastructure was framed and mythologised as an opportunity of a new beginning. It was marked by infrastructural reconstruction, societal recreation, reinvention of the world in both the socialist east and the capitalist west. What is more, the post-WWII era saw the coming to fruition of a number of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial movements in the South that managed to end centuries of colonial rule, significantly inflecting the planetary debates not only about international relations, but also the economy, culture, media, and the prospects of peace. 

After 1945, the drive for peace in politics, the arts and popular culture came following after the previous peace movements, most notably from the WWI onwards. It was coupled with the emphasis on economic cooperation and cultural exchange, and it bore a promise of different futures. Peace as unconditional value was enshrined in the 1948 UN Charter. Later on, it became a central tenet of the Non-Alignment Movement framed in the idea of peaceful coexistence. By the 1960s, peace became a commodified emblematic marker of the anti-war counterculture in the US, Europe and elsewhere. For several decades, and amidst continuing conflicts and wars, peace remained a value and a goal in international politics, it was thought of on a wide, planetary scale and from a number of positions and perspectives. 

Yet, with the collapse of socialism, both the west and the east had lost their alternatives. The world was left with one ideologically waning hegemonic power, and a number of aspiring ones, that takes pride in its self-ascribed role as the exclusive keeper of freedom and democracy, liberalism, and free market. Left unchecked, the West took on the role of the only right way, declaring as it did any other ideology or value system an autocratic threat, existential danger. In such discursive constellation, any criticism of such hegemonic setup necessarily posits the critic as adherent of authoritarianism or dictatorship; at the same time, any other social, political or economic initiatives are delegitimated as unfree and undemocratic. Having thus discredited any alternative, the consequence is the normalisation of war rhetoric and violence, hysteric arms race, and militarisation of conflict resolution. 

Today, peace is rarely discussed or taken seriously. At best it is seen as an irrelevant by-product of political and economic processes. In a culture of normalised violence and war against humans, animals, plants, and the planet as a whole, in a culture of endless extraction of organic and inorganic entities, of space and time, legitimated by the mindless run for profitability, peace became a decentred and delegitimated condition of existence, a nuisance and an obstacle to “freedom, democracy, progress”.

And if ideas of peaceful coexistence, of peaceful conflict resolution on international, national, collective, individual levels are no longer desirable, when talking about peace is off-limits in public discourse, interpreted as radical or passe … are we not then inviting and legitimating ever more aggression, violence, destruction?

The devastating war in Ukraine, and a number of other armed conflicts and wars across the planet make the above all the more clear. At the same time, these events also expose the need to reignite the debates about peace, to re-envalue its potential as a critical element of planetary conviviality and solidarity. 

Therefore, we invite researchers and artists to reflect on the role, prospect, and fate of peace in the 21st century in research presentations and works of art (painting, graphics, computer animation, photography, literary interventions). For inspiration, a set of questions: 

·      What are the diverse perspectives on the definition of peace, and who holds the authority to define it? 

·      What role do power dynamics and geopolitics play in shaping the definition and application of peace at local, regional, and global levels?

·      Is (thinking about) peace structurally possible in neoliberal, extractivist regimes?

·      How can we think about peace in the 21st century, and after the collapse/restructuring of the post-WWII world after 1989/91? What were the effects of the end of socialism on the conceptualisation and the practice of peace?

·      How can we think about peace in a time when violence and war and arms race are normalised? When the debate about peace is often presented as anti-democratic extremism?

·      Is there room for planetary peace movement in the time of an all-out aggression? To what extent can environmental sustainability and protection be integrated into the definition and pursuit of peace?

·      How can memories of peace (as a dream, movement, value), including past peace movements and initiatives, be preserved, acknowledged, and integrated into collective narratives and historical accounts?

·      What can we learn from the histories of peace initiatives, movements, and politics (WWI, WWII, 1960s, NAM, collapse of socialism)? Are any of these legacies applicable today?

·      In what ways do artistic expressions (visual arts, literature, music), depict and explore the concept of peace?

·      In what ways do (and can) the arts challenge dominant narratives, ideologies, and power structures, offering new perspectives and possibilities for imagining peace?

·      Is there a "right time" for peace? Can thinking about and practicing peace happen in the time of crisis that demands taking sides? Or is it better fit for post-conflict contexts?

Scholarly and artistic thematisations will be presented and exhibited at an in-person event at ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, Slovenia, on 22 November 2023. The event is conceived and organised by the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies, Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Please send paper abstracts and ideas (up to 300 words) and a bio (up to 200 words) by 20 September 2023, to: martin.pogacar@zrc-sazu.si.