Description
Taking the provocation of ‘forgetting’ International Studies, this roundtable reflects on the role of art, aesthetics and creative methods in facilitating a critical engagement with the politics of war and peace beyond the narrow conventions of deterministic and state-centric approaches. We bring together scholars who have been working at the intersection of cultural studies, feminist IR, and peace and conflict studies to discuss how the arts, in various forms, have enabled their attunement to the legacies of violence, conflict, and “post-conflict” failures, as well as aspirations for life and peace otherwise. Building on the longstanding work of feminist and other critical IR scholars ( e.g. Agathangelou & Ling 2009; Lisle 2010; Zalewsky, 2013; Hozić 2016; Bleiker 2017; Choi 2018; Choi, Selmeczi & Strauss, 2020; Särmä, 2020), we start from the premise that turning to aesthetics and creativity as a research ethos can help us challenge and re-imagine the stories we tell about the global politics of violence, war and peace. We ask our contributors to reflect on how mobilising creative methods might enable us to navigate the forces of conflict, violence and destruction, but also to stand in better proximity to dramas of adjustment, fragile solidarities and affective reorientations that dispel war’s totalising shadows. Contributors will address the following questions:
- Drawing upon your research, what makes the arts as a distinct mode of knowledge production/site of engagement in the politics of conflict and peace?
-How can the arts and creative methods equip the discipline of International Studies to respond to spectacles of conflict, enduring slow violence and failed promises of peace?
-Can the arts, in their various forms, inspire visions for peace and alternative ways of being in the world?
-To what extent can artistic and creative methods help us interrogate and resist disciplinary boundaries, hierarchies and exclusions reproduced in the academy?
