Scenarios of Intractability: Reframing Intractable Conflict and Its Transformation (original) (raw)

2019, Genocide Studies and Prevention

Reframing Intractable Conflict In the fields of atrocity and conflict prevention, certain cases continually serve as counterpoints for those advocating for the potential of bringing an end to cycles of violence. They are the cases where the divides among relevant groups seem particularly engrained, where the possibility for true peace (and not only the absence of violence) seems specifically unlikely. Some refer to these cases as deeply divided societies, 1 but more often, particularly in the conflict prevention literature, they are referred to as intractable conflicts. In these cases, societies are divided into specific identity groups, which serve as predominant organizing features in their lives and their senses of belonging. Each group tends to have its own distinct understanding of the past, which serves as a foundation for continued division. These understandings of the past are also used to legitimate continued acts of physical, institutional, economic, and social violence. Although each has its own particularities, there are similarities present across the cases. I argue, however, that by referring to these cases as "intractable conflicts," their intractability becomes somehow naturalized, appearing as an essential and immutable quality of these conflicts. In other words, the very way that the field describes and understands these specific instances of conflict is already foreclosing options for engagement and prevention, just as it is serving to obscure interventions that may have already emerged from within these conflicts that can transform the way they play out. Moreover, the language of intractability is frequently used to justify outside intervention, often in the form of trained and supposedly disinterested parties from the conflict resolution/mediation field, reinforcing a notion that the answers to transforming conflict come from without, not from within a society. To change the way one conceives of such conflict, I advocate turning to the analytical tools of performance studies, a field based on the idea that our lives are often guided by certain scripts-predetermined behaviors that play out at all levels of society, from daily interactions with individuals to the policies initiated within the halls of government. Within these scripts, we all play certain roles. 2 Certain actions are acceptable for each role, while others seem "out of character." Furthermore, history and our interpretations of it have a significant impact on these scripts. What has occurred in the past shapes what seems possible and desirable in the present and future. The past, in other words, also performs. That is, it does things. 3 Nowhere is this multi-level performance more evident than in post-atrocity societies, where the past is one characterized by large-scale, systematic violence against certain identity groups. And within this pool of societies that are, in some way, post-atrocity or post-conflict, there exists a smaller subset of societies in which conflict based on identity seems especially dogged and prolonged, and the hope for social cohesion and an end to identity-based discord seems particularly unlikely. This article applies a performance studies lens to illuminate the various ways that scenarios and historical narratives inform understandings of the present and influence visions of the future in post-atrocity societies. In particular, I focus on cases of so-called intractable conflicts. Daniel Bar-Tal writes that intractable conflicts "are characterized as being protracted, irreconcilable, violent, of a zero-sum nature, total, and central, with the parties involved having an interest in