Postcolonial Archives - Rewriting peace and conflict

Re-thinking Peace and Conflict Studies in a Postcolonial World

Organised by the competence network Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict in cooperation with the Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM), the conference Re-thinking Peace and Conflict Studies in a Postcolonial World, took place in Tunis in October 2025. The event marked the culmination of four years of collaborative research by members of the network, while also opening a space for collective reflection on the implications of the network’s contributions to the field. Over the four days in Tunis the discussions demonstrated the deep relationship between knowledge production and global hierarchies, showing that rethinking peace and conflict studies necessarily entails confronting epistemic foundations while remaining attentive to the ongoing geopolitical developments, uneven power relations and political economies that continue to shape the field.

Urbicide

This contribution examines the concept of urbicide – the deliberate use of urban destruction and the violent reorganisation of city spaces with the aim of denying, annihilating or homogenising place. Through a postcolonial lens, the analysis engages with urbicide as a phenomenon with specific historical conditions of emergence. This approach focuses on how colonial discourses and practices enable modern warfare to justify and conduct operations based on the deliberate destruction of cities. By interrogating these dynamics, the article underscores the socio-political stakes of urbicide and its role in reinforcing hierarchies of domination and exclusion.

Security. Speaking with Fanon?

The anticolonial writer and psychiatrist Fanon became famous in the 1960s for his radical criticism of colonial racism and its influence on the colonized peoples. His descriptions of how colonialism destroys people not only physically but also mentally and emotionally have inspired many political movements and theoretical concepts to this day. His work highlights the enduring nature of colonial relations and the different ways in which (in)security and its protection is perceived differently depending on the very position in society. However, Fanon’s name also remains inextricably linked with his most controversial and uncompromising stance: his commitment to the right of colonized peoples to insecure others by the use of violence in their struggle for liberation. Post/decolonial research as one of the heirs of Fanons writings challenges critical security research till today. In the following, the article uses post/decolonial research to indeed point to multiple ways in which both theoretical fields enrich the articulating and practicing of (in)security.

Postcolonial and decolonial differences

Amid academic fondness for embracing trends and ‘turns’, it is reasonable to ask about the actual difference between post- and decolonial perspectives and to consider whether this difference warrants our attention. This lemma seeks to provide some answers, engaging critically with key arguments by decolonial scholars on how their work differs from postcolonial perspectives. I argue that we should pay attention to the key debates sparked by the ‘decolonial turn’ while avoiding the use of buzzwords and strawman arguments. Additionally, I demonstrate the synergies and frictions between post-/decolonial writings within peace and conflict studies, focusing specifically on the deconstruction and reconstruction of human rights.

Inter-Subaltern Hierarchies

The world is assumed to be formally decolonised. But can one legitimately assume that the existing social, political, cultural, and economic power relations are completely free from their colonial past? If colonialism continues to shape the present day, to what extent does postcolonial intellectual and political discourse on subalternity relate to these colonial continuities? How would the replication of originally Western models such as the nation, the modern state, and nationalism shape the power hierarchies and resultant conflicts? What are the implications of these structures for building peace?

Transitional Justice and Decolonisation

This entry outlines the key debates with respect to transitional justice (TJ), a range of processes that a society may undertake to reckon with the legacies of gross and large-scale violations of human rights and humanitarian law in the past. Although the literature on transitional justice and postcolonialism is emerging, this entry explains why transitional justice might not sufficiently address the complex issue of decolonisation. The entry argues that true decolonisation requires a more radical approach to the future of the field. Transitional justice should not only engage more with genealogies of decolonial thinking; it also needs to be decolonised in itself.