The Ramparts of Peace
For this first issue of the year, AA has chosen to confront the inevitable reality that is shaking up our contemporary societies: that of wars, conflicts and struggles. Rather than glossing over the foundations of war, which would have led us down the dreary path of the excesses of an individualistic and tyrannical humanity, AA chose to identify the conditions for a possible peace. Against violence and the systems of domination that have permeated our entire societies, two attitudes are possible: defence or struggle. Culture plays a key role in the fight against modern tyranny, because it possesses an extraordinary power: that of dispelling the shadow and its despair, of inciting those who have been struck down to rise again, to lift themselves up and become one body. Clémentine Roland and Anastasia de Villepin outline the focus of AA’s latest issue.
Clémentine Roland and Anastasia de Villepin
The founding of the United Nations and, 44 years later, the end of the Cold War, seemed to spell the end of a century of conflicts by bringing together Western democracies and emerging economies, who wanted to hear the symphony of prosperous strategic cooperation in the trio of diplomacy/neo-liberalism/ market economy. Yet the international economic context is faltering while humanitarian needs keep growing. Even the UN is struggling to contain conflicts and condemn the resurgence of authoritarianisms – a failure that would not have escaped the notice of the American economist Immanuel Wallerstein, who argued back in the 1970s that the UN was first and foremost an instrument of international order1. Recent events have reminded us of the disproportionate power of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the United States, Russia, France, China and the United Kingdom) when they use their right to veto,2 a major obstacle to the exercise of justice in the face of alliances created between nations – especially when we know that these same countries are also the biggest arms dealers in the world3 .
Violence is omnipresent, whether it is carried out in the name of belief or expansionist ambition, or stems from recent or atavistic antagonistic interests. The world’s major powers sometimes even brandish the banner of freedom, culture and human rights to justify their interference or interventionism. ‘What they’re doing is reconciling their hegemonic interests with their sense of moral superiority – in other words, flaunting their virtue and their awareness of the hardships endured by the marginalised populations of the states they’re trying to help, while at the same time greasing the wheels of the war machine,’ explains Christopher Mott, a research associate at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, in the pages of the French magazine Manière de voir4. This new imperialism of virtue is perhaps even more destabilising because, as well as reorganising the political structure of the countries it targets, it aims to secure their total cultural submission.’
Against violence and the systems of domination that have permeated our entire societies, two attitudes are possible: defence or struggle. The first can still be seen in the citadels of Vauban, but also, before them, in the fortified villages of the Haraz mountains in Yemen; their high-perched constructions, extended by steep terraces, have for more than a thousand years reconciled civil security with the culture of the land. Today, the architectural response to invasion is less ‘set in stone’ and, more importantly, less often vernacular – as it is generally distributed by the countries of the Global North to those of the South. However, there is a feeling among architects and members of NGOs working in the humanitarian field that the answer to the crisis must be developed alongside, if not by, those who are affected by it 5 . This attitude, which has long been championed by thinkers in depedency theory, 6 proposes a shift from the realm of defence to that of struggle through reconstruction, both literal and figurative 7.
Such resistance through consideration, understanding and education reaffirms the role of culture in the fight against modern tyranny. Fortunately, culture is not just a pretext for imperialist designs; it can also motivate ceasefire summonses, as shown by the international mobilisations to safeguard the architectural, archaeo-logical and intangible heritage endangered by conflicts8. But there is perhaps one more thing that of which we are reminded by the sharp verses of poet María Mercedes Carranza and singer Vivir Quintana. Culture not only remains but it also possesses an extraordinary power: that of dispelling the shadow and its despair, of inciting those who have been struck down to rise again, to lift themselves up and become one body – not a military one, but a hybrid entity, wounded or armoured, armed with the lights of hope and memory. Some of the women, children, men, all the silenced people who are its members, inhabited and irrevocably bound by their past, have agreed to tell us the story of their fights and their quest for re-enchantment. Whether expressed in roars or, sometimes, in whispers, these struggles preclude comparisons of scale: because in Gaza, in Lviv, in Khartoum, as in Charleroi, a life is worth a life.
Notes
1. Back in the 1970s, Wallerstein explained the persistence of global inequalities by theorising about the ‘world-system,’ whereby the world economy would be an interdependent system between politically and economically dominant countries, countries exploited for their resources and intermediate countries, dominated by the former but capable of exploiting the latter.
2. Most recently, Russia used it in September 2022 to oppose a UN plan to condemn the invasion of Ukraine, while the United States used it to oppose a proposed ceasefire in Gaza in November 2024.
3. Source: ‘Top 100 Defense Companies,’ DefenseNews, 2024.
4. Christopher Mott, ‘Au nom de la vertu,’, Le Monde diplomatique. Manière de voir, no. 192, December 2023 – January 2024.
5. On this subject, read our article on emergency architecture in AA n°464 « War & Peace » available in our online shop.
6. Developed in the 1960s by the Argentinian neo-Marxist economist Raúl Prebisch and the Brazilian sociologist Theotonio dos Santos, it examines the subordination of emerging countries to industrialised countries, and denounces the exploitation of human and natural resources suffered by the latter.
7. On this subject, read our article on the Rohingya refugee centre designed by architect Rizvi Hassan in AA n°464 « War & Peace » available in our online shop.
8. On this subject, read our interview with Andriy Sadovy, Mayor of Lviv, and architect Martin Duplantier, in AA n°464 « War & Peace » available in our online shop.
To find out more, pick up the latest issue of AA, available in our online shop.
See also
