Description
Sylvester’s (2009) call to study international relations where we least expect it - at the museum – has generated a range of pioneering Feminist IR interventions on the politics of war displays. This literature has generated important tools with which to explore the politics of museum displays but has tended to emphasise representations of war within militarised societies. While peacebuilding scholars have also sought to attend to peace displays, museums are an under-interrogated site of peacebuilding knowledge, an elision that maps onto the broader subjugation of peace knowledge in IR (Jackson 2018). This paper sets out to examine peace displays in two museums sites in the United Kingdom: The Imperial War Museum and The Peace Museum. Critically engaging with the objects, narratives and aesthetics of museum displays, the paper asks how and why peace is put on display. More broadly, it reflects on the impact of these displays on imaginaries of peace, peace-making and peacebuilding in the United Kingdom.
