What does peace mean in today’s world of endless wars? Why has the project of ‘universal peace’, so ardently hoped for by the drafters of the UN Charter in 1945, failed so profoundly? I reflect on these questions through three stories of peace. The first is told by a series of four stained-glass windows in the Peace Palace in The Hague; the second is of the world’s demilitarised zones; and the third of a peace community in Colombia. These stories provide a springboard to reflect on how we might rethink peace in the context of today’s world, drawing on feminist, queer and postcolonial analyses. My discussion exposes the limits of the UN Charter’s approach to peace, and the impossibility of its methods ever achieving ‘universal peace’. The Charter’s reliance on militarism and collective enforcement, as well as its commitment to peace as an evolutionary process, maintain rather than dismantle global hierarchies of domination. I also question the dualism of war and peace, which obscures much of the violence of what we call peace. The task of rethinking peace is urgent. To do so we need to go beyond the worlds we know, beyond the confines of law and the inevitability of quotidian hierarchies of gender, sexuality and race, to invent new methods of peace-making, outside the ‘frames of war’.

中文翻译：

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从酷儿女权主义的角度重新思考国际法和政治中的“和平”

在当今充满无休止战争的世界中，和平意味着什么？为什么 1945 年联合国宪章起草者所热切希望的“普遍和平”计划却以如此严重的失败告终？我通过三个和平故事来反思这些问题。第一个是海牙和平宫的四扇彩色玻璃窗；二是世界非军事区；以及哥伦比亚和平社区的第三个成员。这些故事提供了一个跳板，以反思我们如何在当今世界的背景下重新思考和平，并借鉴女权主义、酷儿和后殖民主义的分析。我的讨论暴露了《联合国宪章》和平方法的局限性，以及它的方法不可能实现“普遍和平”。《宪章》依赖军国主义和集体执法，以及其对和平作为一个渐进过程的承诺，维持而不是拆除全球统治等级。我还质疑战争与和平的二元论，它掩盖了我们所谓的和平的大部分暴力。重新思考和平的任务迫在眉睫。要做到这一点，我们需要超越我们所知道的世界，超越法律的范围和性别、性取向和种族的日常等级制度的必然性，在“战争框架”之外发明新的建立和平的方法。