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languageconflictandpeace · 2 years ago

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Doing justice to peace: From 'Words with Guns' to 'Language, Conflict, and Peace'

I've had this blog in mind for a long time now. Originally, though, it was called 'Words with Guns'.

The name change is the result of my reflecting on a conversation I once had with an elderly Londoner, back when I was doing a master's degree there. It was the kind of chance encounter you hold on to: something you could write about for ages. Our conversation was about war, peace, and the unequal attention we give to them.

We were sharing a bench, watching people feed ducks and swans at Hyde Park. People who have visited the park will be familiar with the Serpentine, a lake where you can rent pedal boats. I've rented those pedal boats on many sunny days, whether with friends, or by myself, to enjoy a serene afternoon while reading a book.

On this particular day, both the old man and I were sitting on a bench not far from the Serpentine Bar and Restaurant, a little place where one can enjoy a nice brunch with a view of the lake. I was trying to focus on reading a book on genocide – required reading for a class. He kept sneaking glances at the book. Eventually, he spoke.

"You a student?"

I looked up – hadn't expected him to talk to me. "Yeah. International history."

"Good sign," he said. To my enquiring look, he answered, "You name the studies first, not just the university. Some people, you ask if they're a student, and the first thing out of their mouth is the name of their college. Not what they're doing there. They ought to care more about what they're studying, than where."

"Vocation over location," I said.

He seemed to like that, as he let out a funny little giggle. "So, whereabouts?"

I told him.

"Thought you'd be up at the King's College. Awful book like that."

I had no idea what the connection was between King's College and "awful books", but noticed his disparaging tone. "Well, they're a pretty good uni."

"Better than yours?" His tone was slightly teasing this time.

"Oh, I don't know about that ... But I wouldn't have minded going there. They have a War Studies department." For some reason, this fact that I had learnt about KCL had really made quite an impression on me. Perhaps I just thought it sounded interesting to meet a literal student of war.

Unfortunately, this didn't land well with the old man. "War Studies?" He made a hmph sound. "No Peace Studies then?"

"Sorry?"

"We know all about war. There's a new war every week, isn't there?"

"Yeah, true."

"What we don't know enough about is peace. Fairness."

I didn't really know what to say to that. Something occurred to me after a few moments. "Ironic, that we're having this conversation in the capital of the former British Empire."

He said, "Sod the British Empire."

(What a surprisingly anti-establishment old man, I thought. This struck me as something that might be said by someone who'd spent his youth at punk shows around the UK in the 1970s. It then dawned on me that I might in fact be talking to a punk in his retirement age. I'd often wondered what had happened to the fans who'd seen Joe Strummer and Sid Vicious in their prime, then outlived them - had they carried that spirit on or eventually 'grown up'?)

I didn't agree with what he'd said about war being fully understood. As a species, we are inventive in the most horrific ways. Sure, you could list some generalities about conflict: the various types of it, the various types of actors involved, methods of warfare, et cetera. But to know war is to know humanity, and each is ever-evolving.

Take genocide, for example - the subject of the "awful book" I was reading (not an awful book, but a book about an awful thing. These are two distinct concepts). On a superficial level, one might have fairly simplistic assumptions about what genocide is. "Group A is powerful and high-status, and persecutes the less powerful and lower-status Group B." But in 1994, the Rwanda genocide upended that perception. The genocide was marked by a shift in power dynamic between the Tutsi and Hutu ethnic groups, with the initially elite-status Tutsi minority become brutally persecuted and slaughtered by the non-elite Hutu majority.

This doesn't even account for the various legal definitions of the term "genocide". The word was first coined by the Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944. These definitions continue to be debated and updated as the horrific acts that may constitute 'genocide' continue to develop.

Even the concept of "evil" isn't as simple as once thought. Evil is not always characterised by an overtly violent action. Sometimes evil is just "action", or lack thereof. Evil can even just be words. Words are in fact what often lie behind the violence, the thin quavering line between "harmless" and "harmful".

Hannah Arendt had written about the banality of evil. In 1963, she observed the trial of Adolph Eichmann, the Nazi responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews during the Holocaust. In her book, she describes Eichmann as "terrifyingly normal". She saw in him no devilish glee or hateful gleam – he was a normal person who believed he had simply been doing his job. This is one of the many reasons the horrors of the Holocaust continue to haunt the western world to this day. It bore witness to the fact that evil can have a "civilised" face, and moreover that it can be structural and organised.

I spoke my thoughts to the old man. "Of course," he said. "There's no end to the depths of human depravity. Believe me, I know." (I immediately realised that I had been youth-splaining history to an elderly person. Oops.) "Question is, why do we never pay more attention to the more positive outcomes? They matter very much. All I'm saying is, if you're gonna make a War Studies department, you should also have a bloody Peace Studies department. They don't come hand in hand, those two. You don't learn how to be peaceful by learning about war. When you learn war, you just learn war."

I countered, "Isn't it possible for two people to read about a conflict and walk away with different lessons? One student may approach from the lens of diplomacy, for example – what went wrong there, what could have been done better. Or international law – how have international systems failed to address the problem early on, what kind of action was needed, and what needs to be different next time. One of the most famous interpretations of the Cuban Missile Crisis places a lot of importance on JFK's role as a peacemaker. Dunno if I agree with that, but just an example. The Americans have kind of spun it into White House propaganda on what a fantastic guy he was."

I was aware I was being a little pushy – just let the man believe what he wants, Aiza. But there was a part of me that felt what he was saying to be similar to the whole "Who needs books and higher learning!" – an attitude that has always annoyed me. Now that I look back on it, I should have just let him impart his pearls of wisdom and move on. But to be fair, he did seem to be enjoying the exchange.

He stood his ground, the old oak. "The language matters," he said. "The packaging matters. If you're going to study war from the angle of peace, then you should be calling it Peace Studies. If you're gonna learn about war for the sake of peace, then you should be calling it Peace Studies. Otherwise, you're learning about war for the sake of being good at war."

This was actually a pretty good point. I conceded: "Yeah. That is true."

It reminded me a little of the exchange Kurt Vonnegut, himself once an American prisoner of war in Germany, describes at the beginning of Slaughterhouse Five. The wife of one of his fellow veterans had raised an outcry at the initial title of his book, claiming that if he truly intended it to be an anti-war tale, he'd give it a title that didn't glamorise warfare. And so, he gave his novel the subtitle The Children's Crusade, to remind each and every reader that the young soldiers being made to kill each other in war are in fact just children: a brutal reminder of the innate inhumanity of armed conflict. And why did Kurt Vonnegut agree to adjust the title? Because, as the old man told me, "The language matters. The packaging matters."

As previously mentioned, I had initially named this blog "Words with Guns" - a title that I already knew was not exactly the most academic thing in the world, but was catchy. As someone with copywriting experience, I'm a sucker for catchy.

But, reading through some old journal entries from my time in the UK (I had immediately jotted down the entire conversation with him, beginning my furious scribbles as soon as he left the bench), I became aware that I was neglecting the very important lesson both he and Kurt Vonnegut had tried with such passion to impart. I realise this is an insanely long write-up simply to explain why I changed the title of a blog that nobody has read, but in a way these words will guide me in my reading and writing about the subject.

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