Symbolic stories of family in the language of peace

Abstract

What feelings foster peace? This question is rarely asked in International Relations. This article, therefore, sets out to analyse the way people involved in peace processes speak about feeling by using one particular set of metaphors and allegories, namely, such tropes that refer to family in any way. The article presumes that family metaphors are particularly well suited to speak about difficult feelings since they are inherently ambiguous: on one hand, families are a universal experience, which means that their use speaks to a wide and general public; on the other hand, families are a personal and subjective experience, so that metaphors and allegories can be left unspecified, for each listener to be filled with their own ideas. By looking at speeches by Nobel Peace Prize laureates, the article explores how this ambiguity is used when talking about peace. It finds that family metaphors can build bridges and imagined connectivity; but they can also be used to deny a shared relation between two parties. The article concludes that family metaphors and allegories are capable of not only breaking up conflict lines but also of cementing them in an elusive and subtle way.