Description
Various prolonged territorial conflicts in the contemporary era bear a similarity to the colonial era conflicts in terms of the questions of representation, repressions of rights, and resource extraction. I contend that the dominant narratives in such contemporary conflicts (relevant actors, issues at stake, trends) require a rethinking in normative rather than in power-political terms. I take the example of one such territorial conflict (in Kashmir) and put forward the original argument that the status quo drivers of these conflicts form a four-fold matrix of legitimacy, comprised of the use of agnotological governing practices for domestic populations; public diplomacy for non-government publics abroad; material gains for transnational corporations through sourcing of repression and surveillance infrastructures; and specific versions of the sovereignty argument for the international legal community.Viewing entrenched conflicts in this manner creates a move away from the dominant narratives and can aid in potential resolution by illuminating hitherto unrecognised levers of intervention. To conclude, I emphasise that the multidimensional human cost of such conflicts necessitates that we change our pedagogical lens and find the political intersections to build the material and ideational incentives for resolution.
