Deconstructing Peace

This book interrogates the peace process by developing and applying concepts from the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, applying this novel analysis of the contested post-conflict political situations. The approach will both examine how this political context has developed, and provide a means of moving beyond it, through a 'deconstructive conclusion' which targets historical narratives of the conflicts, while simultaneously disrupting their contemporary political consequences. This provides a fresh interpretation of how the entrenchment of division in Northern Ireland and Bosnia and Herzegovina transpires, an examination of the ways in which this reification of division fails, and a means of moving beyond the dysfunction produced by this failure. This study provides a key contribution to both peacebuilding and Derridean scholarship within IR, through bringing a new critical perspective to the peacebuilding literature, and by demonstrating the utility of Derrida's key ideas through their application to fresh empirical terrain. This theoretical approach will demonstrate how Derridean concepts can be utilised to provide deep understandings of the real-world events under discussion, as well as allowing political interventions to be made into these processes--