Scrutinising UN peacebuilding: entangled peace and its limits

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the suitability of entanglements and relations to think and see peacebuilding events. Through a reflection upon the limited results of the United Nations (UN) in securing lasting peace in war-torn scenarios, the text critically engages with three debates on contemporary peacebuilding literature: the inclusion of ‘the locals’, the achievement of an organisational system-wide coherence and the agential condition of peacebuilding actors. Whilst acknowledging the analytical potential of affirming the entangled ontogenesis of actors and processes in the conflict-affected configuration, the article ends with a cautionary argument about entanglement fetishism, namely the celebratory, normative and exclusionary projection of a relational world. Entangled peace is an invitation to read the peacebuilding milieu, and by extension the broader theatre of the real, as radical openness, where events emanate from the collision of an infinite multiplicity of possible worlds.