Resistance and the Post-Liberal Peace

Critical agency, resistance and a post-colonial civil society

“…Subjectively, has been affected by resistance and compliance. This has produced a Manichean struggle over the binary that has emerged between state and international forms of political mobilization (as well as economic interaction) and the hidden but significant agencies of subjects in local–local (meaning the local social, customary, identity and historical contexts as opposed to the externalized and liberal version of civil society) (Richmond, 2011), transnational and transversal contexts. This, after all, is where political legitimacy arises from, without which state, international organizations, democracy, law, the market and civil society appear part of a global imperium, rather being contextually legitimated by an increasingly equitable distribution of rights and for material needs.…”

“…This incorporates a range of institutions, processes, voices and actors aimed at social justice and emancipation, producing empathetic responses from local and international processes. These mediate each other to maintain their legitimacy in terms of both international discourses of peace and everyday conditions and praxes (Richmond, 2011). Power is not met head on by forming similar counter-structures via political institutions or society, but instead is subtly circumvented and set off course.…”

“…It will be unaccountable, closed and unable to engage across disciplines or across context, theoretical, methodological or empirical, because its internal explanatory power and legitimacy will appear to external observers as epistemic hegemony. Thus, even a partial theory of resistance would aim at bringing everyday capacities, rarely seen or valued, to the attention of the discipline of IR as well as those it draws upon, and illustrates their integral role in developing a fuller representation, accountability (Richmond, 2009, 2010). It would make peace-making, peace-keeping and peace-building a more plausible prospect than the current strategies of pacification and compliance.…”

“…First, this article examines the phenomena of critical agency and resistance. Next it turns to an examination of how critical agency emerges in IR before discussing various implications for the ‘civil peace’ and civil society (Richmond, 2005, 2011). It concludes with a discussion of what critical agency means for conceptions of peace.…”

“…This illustrates how Foucault, with his later reference to agonism as a process whereby new forms of subjectivity might emerge though a tense struggle with power, was constructing the grounds for a reconceptualization of agency, legitimacy and of peace. This represents a post-liberal peace, where the local and the liberal interact creating hybrid processes and outcomes through the social practices and discourses associated with both compliance with liberal peace frameworks and resistance, representing a critical agency (Richmond, 2011).…”