Description
Albeit widely employed in political discourse, military victory is both an opaque and undertheorized concept. Throughout history, different cultures and intellectual traditions have put forward diverse and competing notions of victory. Most importantly, victory has often acquired contrasting meanings for the victors and the vanquished. The lack of a broad theoretical conceptualisation notwithstanding, victory is capable of guiding policy-making, it directly affects our understanding of war and the conduct of hostilities, and influences post-conflict politics. This paper argues that by expanding our research horizon beyond Western cosmologies, a new, theoretically nuanced and significantly bolstered, understanding of victory emerges. Drawing on contributions from an array of different disciplines such as International Relations, War and Strategic Studies, Anthropology and History, the paper highlights the centrality of time and temporality to a thorough understanding of victory. After systematising and critically engaging with Western accounts of military victory, this paper problematises the dichotomizing power that Western thought classically attributes to victory – i.e. its conception as a clear-cut watershed separating war- from peace-time. Secondly, the paper turns to a theoretical discussion of the fundamental dimensions – political, social, and spiritual – that inform a temporally grounded understanding of victory. Lastly, the paper brings these theoretical intuitions into the colonial context. As a result, a renovated understanding of victory emerges, one in which triumph always entails a comprehensive reconstruction of the colonial Self.
