War and Peace in Time and Space

Abstract

This essay is a critical reflection on peace, written for a symposium issue on Law, Peace and Violence: Jurisprudence and the Possibilities of Peace. Peacetime and wartime are thought to be temporal concepts, alternating in history, but ongoing wartime seems to blot out any time that is truly free of war. In spite of this, peace is the felt experience of many Americans. We can understand why peace is thought to exist during ongoing war by turning to geographies of war and peace. The experience of American war is not only exported, but is also concentrated in particular American communities, especially locations of military bases. Memorialization of war death is one of the "spaces of the dead," as Thomas Laqueur calls it, separated from daily life. The persistence of war and the separation of killing, dying and the dead from the center of American life is an example of the way war and peace are spatial. War is also simultaneously infused into domestic life and segregated in the context of militarization. This has been on display in the crisis in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014. One thing that makes Ferguson so dramatic is the diffusion of war materiel into domestic policing. It also matters deeply that the officers pointing the weapons are largely white, and the demonstrators are predominately largely African American, making clear the racial geography of militarized policing. In the end, this essay raises the question of whether peace should be sought or celebrated. Perhaps the space of peace during persistent conflict can only be a space of privilege.

Keywords: peace, peacetime, war, militarization, violence, race, temporality, geography