Peace and Wilderness

Abstract

ost postmodern philosophy tends to set peace discourse aside. The present paper takes issue with this tendency and explores some reasons for such a neglect of rethinking peace. Relying on a longer work,1 the paper exclusively focuses on one aspect of wilderness and peace that may be indicated with the metaphorization of peace as homeless. Thus, the paper presupposes the ground that the longer work has covered. Such ground comprised mappings of some of the multiple political operations of the ‘metaphoricity’ of wilderness. It also comprised illustrations of how such metaphoricity heightens our awareness of the world of today: a world where peace is absent and various excuses and alibis for this absence play a pacifying role. Contemporary reality was there sketched as a constructed wilderness, unsuitable and unlikely qua peace’s dwelling place. The figurative substratum of that critique was formed through brief references to Aristophanes’ comedy Peace. This paper condenses the main thesis of the longer essay, which can be summed up as follows: the naturalization and normalization of the homelessness of peace that may be extrapolated from some postmodern discourses should be interrogated. Some discourses within the broad designation ‘postmodern’ make room for viewing the lack of abode as ontologically more appropriate for peace. Thought through, such discourses imply that all search for a home for peace amounts to seeking a stable, conflict-free and orderly world and ostensibly reflects a by now obsolete metaphysics of presence. Granted, these discourses offer us the opportunity to realize the need for a nuanced notion of conflict. And they show us the inescapability and significance of some conflicts for life – an issue neglected in a modernity obsessed with order. But,