1. Introduction
This article examines the usefulness of an encounter with queer theory to contribute to the peaceful resolution of armed conflicts,Footnote 1 to question the traditional frontiers of international law, and to lay the groundwork for envisaging different forms of peace and peace-making. In a field where, arguably, little genuine progress has been made to resolve armed conflicts and to address underlying forms of violence, queer theory can reinforce a pluralistic understanding of law and suggest much-needed unsettling and creative approaches.
Most of today’s peace agreements and the processes leading to their conclusion take very different forms from classic, inter-state peace treaties, and negotiations. They need to address a greater number of issues and are, hence, much more complex. Above all, so-called non-state actors, and in particular representatives of armed groups, are regularly involved as negotiating parties and shape the normative framework of peace negotiations.Footnote 2 In this sense, representatives of armed groups and civil society actors are not beyond the reach of law, and law is not beyond their reach. However, in keeping with a long tradition, international law has been much more concerned with regulating the resort to and conduct of armed conflict than with the practice of negotiating and making peace, especially in the context of internal armed conflicts.Footnote 3 In fact, international law has never articulated a clear concept of peace,Footnote 4 despite the quest for peace being ‘in the last resort, its raison d’être’.Footnote 5 It is worth noting that this scant engagement with peace as a concept has nothing to do with the fact that international law, unlike queer theory, would refuse definitions and reject metanarratives. Indeed, dominant approaches in international law are clearly preoccupied with the attainment of a state of negative peaceFootnote 6 and remain anchored in a dichotomous, nation-state-centric model, where defined territories, protected borders, and centralized, disciplining governments prevail. These approaches do not adequately account for the legal agency of many, if not most, people affected by armed conflicts but excluded from their resolution; nor does it provide the necessary space to address underlying forms of violence and to re-think the currently hegemonic forms of organizing society.
Even if queer theory was first articulated in the context of debates around gender and sexuality,Footnote 7 we believe that its principal tenets and inherent ‘curiosity’Footnote 8 are valuable to address other issues and to pursue structural critiques, such as of international law’s inherent biases with respect to power, authority, violence, and the use of force. Indeed, queer theory and its perpetual and possibly disturbing questioning has always had the potential of being applied broadly,Footnote 9 including with respect to legal issues. Queer theory can help expand the possibilities of critique, notably by questioning common assumptions, recognizing difference, and by remaining, to some extent, fluid and non-identifiable itself. As it has been argued, ‘queer theory’s political commitment is specifically to the unknowability, the non-identifiable, of its own identity in the future’.Footnote 10 In other words, queer theory’s only possible future consists in being redeployed – or queered – to address new political challenges.Footnote 11
In this article, we focus on queer theory’s critique of the construction and normalization of hierarchies, categories, and identities, which almost always – whether explicitly or implicitly – lie at the heart of armed conflicts and frame peace negotiations, without ever being truly reconsidered. This allows us to examine highly controversial issues in the context of peace negotiations, such as the status of armed groups and the inclusion of civil society actors. We see queer theory as opening up new possibilities for peace-making and international law and as a compelling invitation for these fields to self-critically reflect on their contribution to the organization of society more generally, in a context of a relative dearth of radical critiques and methods in these fields.Footnote 12
We claim that queer theory offers particular – and often particularly useful – perspectives that challenge and disrupt the normal and normative, and thus the dominant and often oppressive. It should be noted that other critical theories, like feminist and post- or de-colonial approaches to international law, share of course some of queer theory’s concerns and offer similar critiques of institutional hegemonies and liberal – or neo-liberal – thinking.Footnote 13 Our objective here is not to define in exactly which ways queer theory is distinct from such theories but rather to emphasize common ground and possible alliances.Footnote 14 In addition to challenging the pre-eminence of the neo-liberal nation-state and its construction on ‘loyalty and connection to the narrow and racially imbued band of “natural” reproductive ties’,Footnote 15 queer theory enables us to imagine both peace, or rather peaces (to reflect the many possible understandings of peace), and law as ways of being in relation with one another and as processes that are characterized by and open to uncertainty, as aspirational endeavours that are constantly evolving. We argue that recognizing this relationalFootnote 16 and fluid legal agency as well as the relevance of listening to different voices and experiences – without predetermined categorizations – can contribute to working towards peace(s) and to enhancing the emancipatory potential of international law. Despite its hegemonic tendencies, international law, as we suggest, has a particular and enduring role to play in the context of the peaceful resolution of internal armed conflicts, and in making, building, and forming peace more generally.Footnote 17 However, and although international law has, of course, undergone important changes, especially since the end of the Second World War, dominant international legal thought continues to imagine law as coterminous with the state, and international law is almost exclusively applied and made by states. Such a state-centric model is deeply problematic, above all because it ignores various actors and precludes them from assuming their full legal agency and from effectively using international law. It also hides the inherent biases of a necessarily disciplining state built on heteronormative imaginaries.Footnote 18 Transcending the monopolies of the state and of state-based law implies an unusual openness to all actors, independent of their formal status, and to the infinite varieties of human relationships. We argue that this openness is crucial for various contemporary processes, such as the negotiations seeking to end internal armed conflicts and that a joint reliance on queer theory and legal pluralism reveals important shortcomings of the dominant ways of thinking and approaches to international law, peace, and the resolution of armed conflicts.
We start the article by queering the standard academic format through a dialogue between two figures, imagining what Peace and qt* might want to tell each other. In other words, we attempt to queer not only peace and law – in line with queer theory’s objective to challenge the normalFootnote 19 – but also, some of academia’s normativities, its dominant forms of expression, and knowledge-production. This endeavour is motivated by ‘a certain disloyalty [of queer theory] to conventional disciplinary methods’,Footnote 20 and in particular by queer theorists who attempt to consciously transcend methodological orthodoxies.Footnote 21 Inspired by queer theory’s proposition that academic research may be ironic and funny,Footnote 22 we also draw on the metaphor of the baroque and its playfulness, subversion, and continuous transitional state,Footnote 23 which blurs and interrogates existing forms of expression and knowledge-production. Moreover, the format we have chosen seeks to complement the analysis of complex problems through difficult language,Footnote 24 which only the so-called expert can easily decode.Footnote 25 The following dialogue is hence an invitation to explore, in a different and determinedly dialogic way, the usefulness of queer theory in the context of peace negotiations, and for international law more generally, by raising key points, sometimes rather bluntly and sometimes more implicitly or metaphorically. In that sense, the encounter is not only playful but, of course, also intended to be thought-provoking. We hope that this dialogue will engage and unsettle a number of readers, ranging from those who are already well versed in critical theories, and who may hence be more interested in methodological and epistemological questions, to those who could be considered to be more ‘mainstream’ international lawyers or peace scholars and practitioners, and who might be surprised by some of the substantive critiques raised.Footnote 26
2. Peace meets qt*
Peace sits in a dimly lit office and stares at a map of the world, not quite knowing how to ‘bring peace’ to all the current zones of armed conflict and violence. Enters qt*.
Peace: Aagh! You scared me! I wasn’t expecting anyone. Who are you? You look kind of funny …
qt*: Sorry – I didn’t mean to upset you. You’re Peace, right? You can call me qt*. Nice to meet you! Don’t worry too much about how I look. Perhaps I am just a bit different, and I tend to change my appearance quite a bit too. But more importantly, are you ok? You look really disheartened.
Peace: Well, there are good reasons to be disheartened! The world isn’t a very peaceful place at the moment. I do what I can to make things better, but obviously I am not successful enough.
qt*: Are you thinking of conflicts like the one in Syria?
Peace: Yes, Syria is such a mess! And there are many other armed conflicts going on. I thought that Afghanistan and Iraq would be doing better at some point, but they are not really. Lots of other places, like Yemen, the Central African Republic, and Burundi, are far from peaceful, although nobody quite notices that … Even South Sudan has abandoned me, again. Some experts tell me that overall, I am doing a better job than a few decades ago, that worldwide there are less people dying as a consequence of armed conflict. But I’m not convinced and, anyway, that’s not enough …
qt*: Tell me, what have you been doing lately to try to improve these situations?
Peace (increasingly content with this rare opportunity to talk to a careful listener): Mainly bring those who are fighting to the negotiating table, which – trust me! – is itself a hard thing to achieve. You know, most of today’s wars are not won on the battlefield anymore but are settled through so-called ‘peace negotiations’. So, I should have a real chance to do something meaningful, to have a real impact. And, of course, I have realized that concluding a ceasefire agreement is not sufficient. The fighting parties must get along with each other; they must share the power; minorities must be protected and so on and so forth. Plus, we can’t let just the representatives of the fighting parties talk to each other: civil society actors must be involved, at least at some point and in some form, because the underlying causes of the conflict must be addressed.
qt*: So, if I understand you correctly, making peace is not all about some formal status. That’s interesting …
Peace: That’s exactly what I mean! It’s not just about formal status, although my friend International Law does tell me that states are still really important and that I should therefore stick to that concept of ‘state’. But armed groups are, of course, a particular and significant challenge, and Mr IL hasn’t been able to give me a very clear answer as to what to do with them. Believe me, I have been trying hard to get answers from him! Isn’t he the one who is supposed to have these answers? For a long time, he was telling me that armed groups don’t have any status, but recently – surprise! – he has started to say that they have some obligations, sort of like states. How am I supposed to work if there are no clear guidelines?
qt* (in a slightly ironic tone): So, we could say that, for International Law, one set of obligations is extended from one category of actors to another one …?
Peace: Sort of, yes. In any event, my negotiations are not only between representatives of the fighting parties anymore, as I have just mentioned. Very often – and I am quite proud of that – there is now significant involvement of civil society, who voices various concerns and brings issues on the agenda that the fighting parties might not really be interested in, like human rights, transitional justice, and gender issues. I think this is really promising.
qt*: But, Peace, if I may ask you something, don’t you think it’s too easy to speak of ‘civil society’, as if anyone could represent the interests of everyone, or, in fact, represent at all?
Peace: Well, maybe … But many big players, like the United Nations, want me to involve more and more civil society actors, especially women, who have traditionally been absent from my negotiations, and to address sexual and gender-based crimes that are committed during these conflicts.
qt*: Oh yeah … I have heard about Security Council Resolution 1325 and that Women, Peace, and Security agenda.
Peace (getting excited):
Oh good! So, what do you think about that initiative? Isn’t it inspiring that many agreements now include references to women and gender issues? Take the Darfur Peace Agreement, for instance, which was concluded in 2006. Look, I have it here. Just to give you a few concrete examples, in this agreement, the equality between women and men is guaranteed in regard to human rights … that’s article 28(a). Special concerns and needs of women are highlighted throughout the text, and there is even a whole section on the ‘protection of women and children’ in articles 275 to 279 – it’s all here! And regarding the representation of Darfurians in the executive, the Government of Sudan expressly committed itself in article 69(d) to making special efforts ‘to ensure that women are represented’ in the nominations to be made. Don’t you find all this very promising?
qt*: Yes, I can definitely your good intentions. But, and I’m sorry if I’m too direct, it seems to me that you content yourself with fairly easy answers, although you are dealing with very complex problems. And as a consequence, other problems are created on the way.
Peace: What do you mean? You must agree that it’s a good thing that women’s issues are now – or let’s say more and more – considered in the context of peace negotiations, right? Let’s take sexual and gender-based violence, for instance: it took so long to put these issues on the agenda, to have rape recognized as a weapon of war, as an act of genocide, a war crime, etc. Nobody talked about this a few decades ago, although countless women, throughout history, have been raped during armed conflicts.
qt*: Sure, you are right. Something must be done. But it seems that there are still a number of over-simplifications at play in international law, peace, and security discourses. ‘Here, the powerful, bad soldiers and fighters who rape; there, the weak, vulnerable women who are raped.’ Consider the same Darfur Peace Agreement that you’ve just shown me. There are basically two categories that are created: the powerful and the weak: women constitute this latter category, together with children. They must be protected, and who will protect them?? It’s perhaps implicit, but of course, we have men in mind … as if women didn’t have any agency at all. And when it comes to sexual and gender-based violence, we pretend that men can’t also be victims.
Peace: Good point! Especially male sexual violence is still a big taboo in many societies. But we – I mean International Law and myself – do talk about it more and more. It’s not only a few feminists who do not equate gender with women anymore. For instance, I have recently had quite interesting conversations with my fairly young colleague Masculinity Theory about the ways in which different concepts of masculinities affect the behaviour of various actors, including women. In other words, my feeling is that we are starting to have a better and more nuanced understanding of sexual and gender-based violence.
qt*: Right, I wouldn’t disagree with that. But I also think that we should listen more carefully, and to more people, to try to understand what’s really going on in these contexts. Like, why is there all this violence in the first place, and what kinds of violence do people actually experience? In my opinion, all this really goes to the heart of our ideas about categories and of how they work, of sexuality, and gender, and perhaps of violence more generally.
Peace (intrigued): Um … could you please elaborate on this?
qt*: One of the main problems I see is that most people still think so much in terms of identities: are you a man or a woman? Masculine or feminine? Hutu or Tutsi? Arab or African? Muslim or Christian? Sunni or Shia? No matter the question, it always ends up excluding someone. I don’t want to accuse you, Peace, or to put you on the spot. Everyone seems to think along such lines. I’m also not saying that one cannot belong to a group. What I mean is that way too much emphasis has been put on artificial identity markers that are based on an outdated and silly – sorry! – Western binary thinking. As if it would always have to be one or the other as if there was nothing in between, or beside, or under! And as if people could not evolve. Can’t we think outside the box, and even perhaps forget the box?! Of course, difference matters greatly – we are not all the same, and we do not face the same challenges. But we need to better understand how these categorizations, including along gender, class, origin, and ethnicity, produce and reproduce power, privilege, and disadvantage. And we must also try to understand that the focus on such categorizations can prevent us from appreciating various forms of violence experienced by different people.
Peace frowns and remains silent, thinking about the implications of what qt* has said.
qt*: To go back to that peace agreement you showed me, we could ask why we talk about ‘women’ and ‘men’ in the first place. What do these categories mean? Why do we rely on them, and what are the – often unintended – consequences of relying on them? Are they really useful? It also seems that some people don’t fall within either category or don’t care much about this presumed distinction.
Peace: Wow. You raise very interesting points, and I will have to think more about them. In the meantime, can I ask you a personal question, qt*?
qt*: I suppose you can, although I’m not sure how it will be useful.
Peace: Are you at peace with yourself?
qt*: If I am at peace with myself? That’s a difficult question. If you’re wondering whether I am happy and content with myself and the world, the answer would probably be ‘no’. To be clear: I am happy to be in this world, but not really to be in this world. In fact, the whole point of my existence – and I have a hard time defining my existence, although I wonder whether I should even have a go at it! – is to critique, unsettle, transgress, deconstruct, de-hierarchize, de-categorize, de-identitarize, provoke, show that there is no absolute truth, and reveal what’s not working in this world. Obviously, this also means that I constantly critique and question myself.
Peace: Hm … this must be tiring!
qt*: Maybe. But the alternative, which would consist in believing in comforting concepts, like a fixed, monolithic identity, or some perpetual peace – or whatever Kant called it – is not an option for me. I feel like I am true to myself that way.
Peace (winking): So, in the end, you are suggesting that there is such a thing as a ‘truth’?!
qt*: Ha! That’s not what I mean, Peace. But I recognize and appreciate that you have been listening very carefully to what I have been saying. Being true, or perhaps I should say truer, to myself means that I will never believe in an absolute truth – like in a male/female or hetero/homo-binary, or in one kind of peace or one way of peace-making – but that I will always embrace and encourage several truths. By the way, this makes me think that you should consider being called PeaceS, in the plural form. You don’t want to be essentialized, do you? What do you say?
Peace: ‘PeaceS’? That sounds a bit weird … But you have a good point, and I suppose I can get used to it. You might be surprised to hear this, but it’s not as if I believe in one particular concept of ‘peace’ myself. I know that I mean a lot of different things to different people. To go back to thinking about different truths, this seems to be a major part of your identity, right?
qt*: But I am not concerned with my ‘identity’, PeaceS! And I would prefer not being labelled at all. Of course, one could say that I have certain characteristics, but that’s nothing I am overly concerned with. You know, I don’t wake up in the morning and ask myself: ‘who am I?’ Actually, it’s more interesting to try to understand why people would want to ask themselves such a question.
PeaceS (seriously puzzled): I beg your pardon? I don’t understand what you mean.
qt*: Well, let’s go back to yourself and the fact that peace can mean very different things to different people. So you may, for instance, want to go beyond asking whether there is war or peace; whether some agreement has been formally signed; whether certain categories of people have been included in the negotiations; whether certain forms of so-called sexual and gender-based violence have been addressed; and whether the agreement complies with some international law standards. Instead, perhaps you could start thinking more carefully about the ways in which you are negotiated and formed, without taking too much for granted.
PeaceS: But surely, I can build on what I have learned in another context, right? And also take some advice from International Law? Sometimes, he does sound quite competent when he explains what can and cannot be done, and when he says that it’s really important to be able to distinguish legal from illegal conduct, especially in times of crisis, like armed conflicts. Moreover, since there are many injustices that occur during armed conflicts, I must care about the pursuit of justice, and justice obviously has a lot to do with law.
qt*: I think you must be very careful. It’s easy to generalize and believe that some recipe or guideline can be followed. Generally speaking, I am very critical of normativities, so I would always be suspicious about what International Law – and for that matter, the whole Law family – says. But maybe that’s easier for me because I can live with tensions. Different ways of life and different theories can coexist. I even think that a plurality of opinions, even if they are irreconcilable, can be good. This also implies that not everyone must believe what I think … What I was hinting at earlier is that every situation – and every person – is different, and sees and feels the world differently. We should always keep that in mind. To be clear, I am not saying that everything International Law says is wrong or flawed. But as far as I know, he is, for instance, still so heavily concerned and reliant on rational subjects and this old-fashioned construct called the state. And I don’t need my anarchist friends to tell me that being so focused on the state inevitably causes lots of problems! How could only states be seen to be making and applying certain rules that are, on top of it, supposed to be universally valid? And how can these entities remain the privileged actors in the context of peace negotiations, even if they are themselves contested and the source of a lot of violence that generates or fuels the conflict? There are all sorts of normative actors around, and we should not allow a few actors, who claim to be the ‘true’ representatives of International Law, to lure us into something.
PeaceS: I understand what you mean, and in fact, I have been trying to work a lot on all this already. But you have to admit that putting all this in practice isn’t easy! There is something else I wanted to ask you. Based on the little I already knew about you before our encounter today, I would have said that you are more concerned with gender and sexuality issues, right?
qt*: You’re quite right, of course, that’s where I come from. But my sense is that what I have thought and felt through since I was born around three decades ago, is not only useful for debates around sexuality but relevant in other areas as well. In fact, considering the global order through the lens of sexuality and gender reveals a lot about the ways in which power and violence are authorized and legitimized, and about various forms of exclusion and injustice. In my humble opinion, all this is relevant for you and your friend International Law as well.
PeaceS: This actually makes a lot of sense, thank you. There is something else, something rather personal, I’d like to tell you, although I think I already know what you will say. As you may know, I have been in a monogamous, heterosexual, long-term relationship with this guy called Mars, although things haven’t been that great lately …
qt*: Well … I might not be the best marriage counsellor, but perhaps being in this close relationship is problematic in itself. I mean, defining yourself only in opposition to this ‘other’, to Mars, to a state of war can’t be healthy in the long run. If you want my advice, perhaps you should consider other ways to define yourself or, even better, stop trying to define yourself.
PeaceS: That does sound like good advice … and confirms that taking a little break from Mars has not been a bad idea.
qt*: Space and time to think can never hurt.
PeaceS (with another wink): So should we toast to this, to having more space and time to think, perhaps with some pink champagne? Isn’t that your favourite colour?!
qt*: Ha, ha. Very funny.
PeaceS: Ok, let’s be serious for a second. Do you have any suggestions as to what I should do now to bring myself – or should I say myselves? – to all these situations of armed conflict?
qt*: Well, I am flattered that you are seeking my opinion on this matter as well. The thing is that I don’t feel well placed to make concrete suggestions. But if I have contributed to making you reflect differently on what you do, and what you don’t do, that’s already a good start.
PeaceS: In any event, as they say, I will remain ‘actively seized of the matter’.
qt*(a bit irritated): You mean like the UN Security Council, that some people think is still in charge of ‘international peace and security’? This archaic, patriarchal body, 100% state-based and veto-ridden by a handful of nuclear powers? Come on, this is 2020, not 1945! Anyway, as you know, the diplomatic jargon of ‘remaining actively seized of the matter’ translates pretty much into ‘let’s all continue to do nothing, absolutely nothing’. Or respond with even more violence. And when they try something apparently new in the area of peace-making, like this ‘Women, Peace and Security’ agenda, they often entrench stereotypes and co-opt other ways of seeing and being in the world into their logic of security, war and so-called ‘peace’.
PeaceS: Ok, ok, I got it! If you are done now with questioning everything, I would suggest that we grab a bite and, if you are interested, that I tell you more about my practice. Perhaps that could inform your thinking too.
qt*: I happily accept this kind invitation! But obviously I am not done with questioning everything … How could I ever stop being myself and not question things anymore?
PeaceS’ and qt*’s voices slowly fade away, although the conversation obviously continues.
PeaceS: Well, at least we don’t have to solve all problems tonight … And if I may say this, I feel that this is only the beginning of a long-term and fruitful relationship and that we will have many more occasions to continue this conversation.
qt*: I agree! But why lose more time?! What I think is really crucial …
PeaceS: qt*! I am really hungry now! Please, let’s continue over some food …
As any engagement with queer theory implies, there can be no closure but only open-ended encounters …
3. On playing with the standard academic format
With this format hors norme, we have deliberately tried to transgress boundaries, but we are aware that this also has important limitations. A more radical change of the format could, for instance, have implied transcending Western culture’s chirographic bias.Footnote 27 Perhaps a performance, like a puppet show, Chinese shadow theatre, creative dance, or one that transcends a certain vision-centredness or, at least, the use of a non-hegemonic language (like Esperanto) could have queered the format more radically. Moreover, the use of two figures may appear inherently restrictive and bring to mind such classic forms of the Western tradition as the Socratic dialogue. Imagining a participative-deliberative assembly of a social movement could have allowed doing greater justice to the complexity of and varieties within queer theory and within the fields of peace studies and international law.
However, we also believe that putting the finger on certain common assumptions through a dialogue, and through the figures of qt* and PeaceS, has, ironically, the potential to be even more unsettling, as it exposes some of the dominant modes of thinking of various actors – scholars, practitioners, and advocates – in these fields. What is more, pursuing dialogues, and bringing into conversation different actors, approaches, and fields, continues to be important and appealing.Footnote 28 Neither qt* nor PeaceS are perfect incarnations of their respective fields, and they are not ideal figures either, but at least they are ready to engage in a dialogue, and they both seem to be careful listeners who, as we hope, will take responsibility for what they have heard.Footnote 29
While we have refrained from using footnotes to preserve the flow of this experimental encounter and to free ourselves, at least temporarily, from academic methodological and linguistic orthodoxies, its content is obviously inspired by a variety of queer sources and arguments. The figures of qt* and PeaceS display, in an ironic and intentional move, common and somewhat stereotypical, but certainly not exhaustive, characteristics of queer theory and of the peace and conflict studies literature. The hyper-critical qt*, who apparently looks somewhat different, at least to PeaceS, embodies of course only one version of queer theory. This (changing) embodiment should not be considered as prescriptive or as reflecting queer theory in all its complexity – in fact, complexity theory, with its emphasis on openness and uncertainty,Footnote 30 is another ally of queer theory – and perhaps qt* would not be sufficiently radical or disruptive for some.Footnote 31 In line with the theory’s foundations, qt* remains imprecise and indeterminate, rejects metanarratives, like the state, resists definition, and refuses closure.Footnote 32 In fact, as it has been argued, ‘attempting to define what queer is … would be a decidedly un-queer thing to do’.Footnote 33 PeaceS’ insinuation that qt* must like pink is an ironic reference to an apparently still common association,Footnote 34 as, in many instances, queer theory is still equated with lesbian and gay studies.Footnote 35 What PeaceS considers to be qt*’s identity crisis goes, in fact, to one of the core targets of queer theory. This is, of course, not easy to understand at first for PeaceS: how could PeaceS not be concerned with identity, especially in the context of the resolution of internal armed conflicts, in which ethnic and/or religious fault lines are all too often exacerbated and instrumentalized? Yet, it should not be forgotten that identities, even if their analysis allows recognizing particular forms of suffering, are often imposed, which is why, in our approach to queer theory, qt* prefers not to define – and hence possibly reify – such identities.Footnote 36 Clearly, feminist arguments that have been made specifically with respect to gender and gender identity – for instance, that gender is ‘produced by institutional assumptions and frameworks that prioritize and reinforce a gendered normative order that both empowers and disempowers’Footnote 37 – are relevant here, and they can be extended to other categories. As Richard Thompson Ford has noted, ‘queer denotes not an identity but instead a political and existential stance, an ideological commitment, a decision to live outside some social norm or other’.Footnote 38 Or, in Nikki Sullivan’s words, queer can be understood ‘as a deconstructive practice that is not undertaken by an already constituted subject’.Footnote 39 qt*’s somewhat obscure ‘name’ reflects this. In fact, the name is not necessarily ‘qt*’; the figure only says at the beginning of the encounter that PeaceS can call them ‘qt*’. This is inspired by and draws on Jack Halberstam’s arguments and refusal ‘to deliver certainty through the act of naming’.Footnote 40
Similarly, Peace, or PeaceS, as qt* ends up calling them in a somehow postmodern, complexity-theory-inspired and perhaps even anti-identitarian turn, should not be considered as an embodiment of all possible versions of peace. The figure of PeaceS, fairly traditional and mother-like,Footnote 41 who has been in a long-term relationship with Mars, the Roman god of war, evokes the common assumption that War and Peace – pace Tolstoy – go together. This also reflects the dominant and unhelpfully binary view in international law and conflict studies of peace as an absence of physical violence, as a condition that is negatively, and never positively, defined.Footnote 42 That being said, PeaceS have already started to reconsider their relationship with Mars.Footnote 43 And while they continue to appear a bit naïve at times, they are also open-minded and have clearly been exposed to a few critical approaches, including vis-à-vis international law – who has, in our reading of the dominant paradigm, evidently male connotations! – and the liberal peacebuilding paradigm.Footnote 44 Moreover, PeaceS are aware of the fact that peace can ‘mean a lot of different things to different people’ and is hence not ontologically stable. This important insight can build on increasingly nuanced theorizations of various forms of violence, such as structural, cultural and environmental violence, and of concepts of peace, including notions stemming from the critical peacebuilding literature, like feminist, popular, hybrid, everyday and transrational peace, and the very idea of ‘many peaces’.Footnote 45 Peace, in fact, may be conceptualized not as an objective, based on an ontological metanarrative, but rather as a process and methodology.
It should also be noted that the conversation between PeaceS and qt* often turns around marginalized individuals and groups, and one may sometimes wonder who exactly they have in mind – besides women, a category that is often referred to in paternalistic and gender-stereotypical terms in international law and peace-making.Footnote 46 We have purposefully refrained from letting our characters list such excluded individuals or groups in order to break with the common tendency to hyper-categorize and over-simplify identities. Similarly, queer theory cannot simply be ‘applied’ to a specific context of peace negotiations or be relied upon to prescribe certain scenarios in any tangible way. In fact, qt* would probably not want to sit at a negotiating table as an ‘expert’ on certain issues but would prefer that all those involved (which comprises, of course, those that are currently excluded) internalize a constant and radical questioning. In this sense, the encounter between PeaceS and qt* can perhaps best be conceived of as a call for an increasingly critical self-examination by peace and conflict resolution scholars and practitioners as well as international lawyers in the form of a dialogue, both with oneself and with others (however, in line with the latter’s anti-prescriptivist ideals, we would prefer to leave this question open …).
In the following section, we briefly revisit the significant and enduring role of international law in conflict resolution, with a particular emphasis on peace negotiations in the context of internal armed conflicts. Discontent with the current state but still having what has been described as ‘critical faith’ in international law,Footnote 47 we then argue that a joint reliance on legal pluralism and queer theory can render this role more constructive and enhance the emancipatory potential of international law.
4. Revisiting the role of international law in conflict resolution: An alliance between queer theory and legal pluralism
International law, although traditionally concerned with inter-state relations, plays an important role in the resolution of internal armed conflicts. Among others, since the domestic legal order in conflict or post-conflict situations is often dysfunctional, or its legitimacy is challenged, legal norms recognized at the international level may be referred to as the only available or legitimate formal source of law. International law is ‘continuous and enduring’ and often used ‘to bridge shifting understandings of legality’Footnote 48 in this context.
Non-state actors do draw on international law to strengthen their claims in light of their unclear and contested legal status. International humanitarian law, under which armed opposition groups might have acquired some form of international legal personality,Footnote 49 is, for instance, a fairly common reference to determine and legitimize, at least implicitly, the controversial participation of representatives of non-state actors in the negotiations. Furthermore, it has become increasingly accepted that these non-state armed groups have international obligations not only under international humanitarian law but also under international human rights law.Footnote 50 In addition to the Drittwirkung and horizontal effect theories, which pertain to the relationship between non-state actors, generally speaking, the notion of vertical authority – in a traditional sense only exercised by states – can also be relevant in the case of armed groups, especially when the non-state actor in question effectively displaces the state.Footnote 51 A very tangible initiative to extend international obligations to armed groups consists in the efforts of the non-governmental organization Geneva Call. Since 2000, this organization has made dozens of armed opposition groups commit themselves, among others, to stop using anti-personnel mines through the signature of a ‘Deed of Commitment’.Footnote 52 This mechanism has allowed non-state armed groups to express, explicitly and formally, that they consider themselves to be bound by particular international obligations comparable to those of states arising, for instance, under the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention.
The traditional distinction between subjects and objects of international law has, of course, been criticized for quite some time now. The significant and increasingly recognized contribution of various non-state actors, like non-governmental organizations, corporations, and experts, to the development and application of international law is particularly visible in certain fields, such as international environmental law, international human rights law and international trade law.Footnote 53 Various concepts have been put forward to grasp these trends. These include the concept of ‘epistemic communities’, which refers to knowledge-based transnational networks across the state/non-state divide,Footnote 54 and the concept of ‘participation’, which is based on the argument that states are artificial entities and that people have roles and identities that are distinct from the state and its territory.Footnote 55 Moreover, certain non-state actors, such as armed opposition groups, are sometimes recognized as having a law-making role, albeit a limited one, based not only on the reasoning that they have rights and obligations but also on the fact that many voices are systematically unrepresented by states.Footnote 56
Despite their merits, most of these approaches remain heavily dependent on a Weberian, (neo-) liberal and heteronormative state-centric model and its fundamental tenets, which are based on a number of well-established categories and hierarchies, including an international rule of law.Footnote 57 By way of example, and as feminist approaches have highlighted, the sovereign state continues to be metaphorically imagined, in a persistent analogy, in the same way as the individual, namely as a ‘bounded, unified self’.Footnote 58 This model, which is rooted in liberal-legalistic and binary thinking, does not adequately account for the multiplicity and complex legal agency of – and relations between – the various actors involved. It also means that trying to resolve internal armed conflicts by (re-)building a nation-state will almost inevitably cause significant violence to many people. Moreover, the attempt to extend, somehow, the application of international human rights treaties to certain non-state actors implies that these actors are, at best, considered to be addressees of international obligationsFootnote 59 or legal subjects, but not legal actors. Yet, as a pluralistic understanding of law expounds, armed groups and other actors are not only potential addressees of international law, they also produce legal knowledge and fashion their legal environment, no matter their categorization according to predetermined standards. Whether consciously or unconsciously, they contribute as norm-applicants and norm-generators to the development of the legal-normative framework of peace negotiations and of international law more generally. However, currently dominant forms of categorization prevent many actors from furthering this endeavour in a genuinely emancipatory and transformative way.
A pluralistic understanding of law allows appreciating the norm-creative capacity of all the actors involved in peace negotiations and the continuous creation and adjustment of international legal norms. Law itself is here construed as interactional, as a way to be in relation with one another. It is ‘a set of relationships, processes, and institutions embedded in social context’.Footnote 60 Moreover, based on a critical-radical form of legal pluralism, legal actors are considered as dynamic, the formal origin of the norm is irrelevant, ex ante definitions are avoided and presumably authoritative interpretations rejected.Footnote 61 Against the still prevailing positivist, top-down, and enforcement-driven conception of law, this approach can hence be seen as promoting a certain democratization of the creation and application of legal norms. It should be noted, however, that this process is not left to the free market in a neoliberal sense, where legal actors are made to compete in the legal process. While legal pluralism is traditionally not overly concerned with particular sets of power relations and hierarchies, such as class or gender, its professed goal is to empower and emancipate each legal actor, whatever the extant obstacle or form of disadvantage, in relation and interaction with others. In this sense, law is far from being a static, one-way projection of authorityFootnote 62 that must necessarily be resisted;Footnote 63 it is a process that is continuously negotiated by legal actors, and it is through interaction that the norm-creative capacities of the actors involved in peace negotiations materialize. Peace negotiations seeking to end internal armed conflicts are indeed rich norm-generating processes, which escape much of the formalism in traditional law-making.
Non-state actors – just like state actors – might reject the legitimacy of international legal obligations, or they might believe in their legitimacy and claim to comply with them. It is significant that international legal norms are a common part of the negotiating parties’ discourse, which is not only illustrative but also constitutive,Footnote 64 with every norm being located in discourse.Footnote 65 For instance, the quite creative referral to international law by non-state actors to justify their participation in peace negotiations demonstrates that these actors consider themselves able to apply and interpret international law, similar to state actors that they oppose. In 2010, when the Sudanese government did not allow the leader of one of the main rebel movements to return from Libya to Darfur and argued that a ceasefire agreement had to be signed first, a spokesperson of this movement dismissed this line of reasoning by claiming that ‘international law grants [us] this right as rebel group participating in a peace process’.Footnote 66
Legal pluralist critiques of the state-centric model and of orthodox legal positivismFootnote 67 find an ally in queer theory and its rejection of categorizations and ex ante definitions. As could be pointed out from a queer perspective, many peace agreements reveal the undue importance given to the traditional categories in international law, whether they are based on status, like state or non-state, gender or ethnicity. So-called power-sharing agreements, such as the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement that officially ended the armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, are a particularly obvious continuation of identity-based war-making through other means.Footnote 68 This constitution-like agreement provided for political representation based on ethnic identity, with the presidency, for instance, consisting of three members, namely one Bosniak, one Croat, and one Serb.Footnote 69 While contributing to ending the bloodshed, it precariously entrenched over-simplistic and finite mono-identities,Footnote 70 disempowered Bosnian people and also their representatives,Footnote 71 and arguably created an institutionalized obstacle to attaining a more sustainable, and positively defined, peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
While critical legal pluralism already argues that everyone is – and should be allowed to be – a multifaceted legal actor, this understanding of law, when informed by queer theory, becomes more sensitive to difference, privilege, and disadvantage. A joint reliance on critical legal pluralism and queer theory hence suggests that no one should be frozen or have to freeze itself into a fixed legal identity (or even set of identities) within presumable natural, stable, and clearly delineated borders. Borders are, in fact, not stable: they are ‘conceptually, psychically, and materially unstable’,Footnote 72 and both states and sovereignty are not natural but discursive and cultural constructions.Footnote 73 This view thus challenges the very raison d’être of rigid and only seemingly durable forms of organizing society, which is of particular relevance in post-conflict societies. In these situations, various issues relating to the political, legal, and social are opened up and subject to discussions. In other words, peace negotiations are privileged moments to imagine new and possibly more fluid – and ultimately more just – ways of organizing society.
With regard to the inclusion of traditionally marginalized actors in the context of peace negotiations, for instance, queer theory induces us to engage in a deeper analysis on ways of exclusion and inclusion, instead of simply identifying certain groups of people that are excluded. Indeed, from the perspective of queer theory, the main problem does not lie in the fact that we rely on certain, oftentimes outdated categories – or ‘zombie categories’, as Ulrich Beck has called themFootnote 74 – such as the ones created by the state/non-state distinction, but that we rely on categories per se to define, impose, freeze, and control identities.Footnote 75 As Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has written, it is more important ‘to ask how certain categorizations work, what enactments they are performing and what relations they are creating, rather than what they essentially mean’.Footnote 76 Indeed, a common argument in peace and conflict studies is that more inclusive and participatory peace negotiations have more potential to be effective than exclusively elite-driven peace processes, which have rarely been able to bring about durable peace.Footnote 77 The pertinence of including in the negotiations women’s associations, indigenous peoples’ organizations, faith-based groups, and other civil society actors – as part of official delegations, as separate parties at the negotiations or as intermediaries – has hence increasingly been recognized.Footnote 78 However, the question as to how such participation is to be organized and legitimatized is far from being settled, and a much more nuanced thinking about different ways of inclusion is needed.Footnote 79 More fundamentally, as a queer perspective reminds us, inclusion, representation, and representativity are inherently problematic and biased, especially if based on identity politics and the construction of fixed and presumably natural groups, which can only lead to exclusions. Queer theory also highlights the shortcomings of the currently dominant approach, which operates with simplified assumptions about civil society actors and how they are supposed to be clearly separable from the state and other belligerents.Footnote 80 Furthermore, the potential of civil society actors to reduce tensions is often overemphasized, as if such actors never pursue particular political objectives,Footnote 81 are automatically peace-loving, and both willing and able to restrain violence.Footnote 82
Without denying the positive implications for previously marginalized individuals and groups who may feel empowered by more inclusive negotiations, a queer perspective points out continuing forms of exclusion and possibly further marginalizations in the context of a peace process. In addition to not being the representatives of the government or of certain armed groups, or of vocal civil society organizations, some individuals and groups may simply ‘fail to fit within other historically organised and valorised categories’.Footnote 83 Therefore, adopting a queer stanceFootnote 84 means that we never forget that no matter how well-intentioned we are and how much we try to include, we always risk creating exclusions,Footnote 85 and that we will probably never be able to seize all past, present, and future forms of exclusion.
5. Queer theory’s perpetual questioning
Queer theory, as suggested throughout this article, presents itself as a useful approach, above all because of its perpetual questioning of dominant concepts and assumptions. While most theories contain the risk of becoming imperialist,Footnote 86 prescriptivist, and totalizing, in the case of queer theory, the general rejection of dominant normativities and metanarratives does not imply the promotion of a new queer normativity. Instead of striving towards a final state that could somehow be achieved, queer theory will always ask difficult and disturbing questions. qt*’s careful contempt of PeaceS’ relationship with Mars can be considered in this light: it is not a rejection of all bases for identity but an apprehension of dominant and largely unquestioned normativities.Footnote 87 Moreover, any endeavour drawing on queer theory’s insights, if it takes itself seriously, will continuously interrogate itself to avoid becoming the normative.
Queer theory is certainly not a new approach in the field of gender and cultural studies anymore, but it is still a novel stance in the realm of law, and in particular of international law.Footnote 88 In fact, the engagement from a legal perspective with new concepts and approaches developed in other disciplines often takes some time. Even if these insights are introduced into law after having been heavily critiqued in their original fields – and might hence not be revolutionary anymore in these fields – law can and should benefit from an alliance, even if a late one, with approaches like queer theory.
Importantly, queer theory reveals the constant and inherent danger of the silencing or co-option of unsettling narratives by the dominant one.Footnote 89 This danger is reflected in the tendency to ignore feminist critiques of militarism and gender essentialism as well as existing contributions of women to peace and security, for instance in the context of the United Nations Security Council resolutions on Women, Peace, and Security,Footnote 90 as well as in the co-option of LGBT rights claims into dominant family law paradigms,Footnote 91 with many queer theorists opposing same-sex marriage. As Ford has written:
[w]hile its matronly stepsister gay rights wants equal access to mainstream social conventions—however ramshackle and dilapidated or procrustean they may be—queer theory is interested in shaking them up so we can see which ones aren’t fit for human habitation.Footnote 92
In this sense, claiming the same status and rights that states have under international law (or acceding to this status) corresponds to claiming the same status and rights that heterosexual couples have. If revolutionary for some, such claims do not challenge what presents itself as a given. Indeed, they do not put into question the underlying social convention of marriage and the nuclear family, nor the hegemonicFootnote 93 institution of the disciplining sovereign state and the hierarchies,Footnote 94 exclusions, and forms of domination that come with it. Moreover, treating non-state actors like states in the context of peace negotiations, at least for certain purposes, does not transcend the underlying binary categorization and dominant forms of human association.
One of the paradoxes in the context of internal armed conflicts consists in the fact that most non-state actors who fight against the ruling government of a state do not challenge the existing, hegemonic model itself. Indeed, most actors do not want to abolish the state in an anarchist sense but rather seek to take over the power, or at least to be included in its sharing. Perhaps aside from indigenous worldviews, which remain marginal (unfortunately in our opinion), the main forms of identities, hierarchies, and categories, especially those associated with the state, are well entrenched and rarely contested, even in the context of major armed conflicts. Daesh, or the so-called Islamic State, is one of the only contemporary examples of an armed group that rejects the model of the modern state and does not seem to be interested in adhering to the international community of states. While this may come as an uncomfortable thought – might queer theory, in principle, be used to promote the ideology of such a group? – the conflict with Daesh and its seemingly impossible resolution by conventional means (aside from military force) are perhaps another invitation to reconsider the dominant ways of conceiving society and of fostering the loyalty of citizens to their nation-state.Footnote 95
That being said, we suggest that thinking about peace negotiations as informed by queer theory – hence, among others, in an inclusive, unprejudiced, and non-formalistic way – does not imply a total levelling of the normative playing field. Moreover, queer theory has never limited itself to asking questions; to the contrary, many queer theorists had and have a clear normative and/or political agenda.Footnote 96 Yet, rather than promoting specific and easily identifiable change, queer theory can help expand the possibilities by questioning common assumptions and by remaining, to some extent, non-identifiable itself. In other words, even though queering peace negotiations and international law certainly means breaking normative boundaries, respecting and encouraging – or perhaps becoming – the normative outsider,Footnote 97 it does not preclude normative judgments about the values and means and methods of ‘warfare’, whether of states, armed groups or other actors, or about different forms of violence and strategies of peace-making. Such normative judgments are, nevertheless, not the primary concern. Rather, queering peace negotiations and international law implies re-centring the focus on underlying questions of exclusion and inclusion and putting the finger on inherent flaws and shortcomings of the dominant system.
Like playing with the standard academic format, thinking about the resolution of armed conflicts and international law more generally by drawing on queer theory and legal pluralism means challenging much of what is traditionally associated with such endeavours. In addition to the hierarchies, categories, and identities discussed in this article, we could also question negotiation timelines (fixed and linear); negotiating tables (symmetric); the limited number of carefully selected representatives of the negotiating parties (male, powerful, violent); the presumed neutrality, impartiality, and objectivity of mediators (neutral? objective? Footnote 98 ); the reliance on maps – as PeaceS does in their office – that can, however, never be truly objectiveFootnote 99 etc.
And while queer theory is difficult to ‘apply in practice’, we can, tentatively, imagine ways towards peace (or peaces) that benefit from some of the theoretical insights suggested in this article: fully embracing each and every actor, including the so-called non-state actor, in all forms and in all their difference; imagining and facilitating human relationships and modes of belonging that transcend the nation-state and other seemingly natural groups;Footnote 100 listening carefully and taking responsibility for what is heard; and being as self-critical as possible, which implies a recognition that far-reaching and invasive decisions that ignore, exclude and alienate are constantly and probably inevitably being made. At the same time, there is much that will always remain unknown and unimaginable, something that we actually need to cherish. Queer theory is unstable, and it is disturbing and destabilizing.Footnote 101 But it is this kind of instability that might, in fact, be needed. With respect to peace negotiations, we might have to accept, as queer theory suggests, that they can never be truly inclusive and that there is simply no perfect model. Indeed, one of the implications of thinking about peace processes and about the role of international law in this context consists in a commitment to consider both as that: as processes. There can be no predetermined state of peace, only relative peaces, and ongoing peace processes, and law must continuously reconsider and reinvent itself in order to assume a constructive and emancipatory role.
