Agonistic Peace: A Postmodern Reading

Abstract

This paper considers the postmodern concept of agonism and its relationship to the concept of peace. Connolly's concept of `agonistic respect' is seminal in this regard because it can be argued that such a formulation gestures towards an iteration of postmodern peace. However, this paper will reread Connolly's version of agonism through Foucault's analytic of war and peace to draw attention not only to Connolly's own deeply entrenched indebtedness to `liberal peace' but to indicate why Foucault's more expansive analytic of agonism is better suited to interrogating international relations' most intractable sources of conflict. I seek to reposition the discussion of agonism in such a way that it opens up a critical research agenda with the potential to resist the trap wherein peace emerges as just another tactic for reinscribing hegemonic structures of domination, exclusion, and marginalisation. The implications of such an approach are significant because it ultimately requires that we problematise considerations of respect and recognition when we approach the study of conflicts and that we self-reflexively question our own moral analytical frameworks embedded in the structural components of the peace we strive to create.