Peace and the problem of violence

Most modern theories of peace presuppose a fundamental distinction between peace and violence. However, this is not an obvious presupposition. The performance of violence continues to be a part, if not of our theoretical understanding of peace, then at least of our practical doing of it. The purpose of this paper is to substantiate the former claim and to probe the plausibility of the latter. I will do so with reference to so-called democratic peace, scholarly attention to which has admittedly been waning in recent years, but which nonetheless remains a prominent theory of international peace in contemporary social science. Concretely, I wish (i) to show that scholarship on democratic peace assumes a strong distinction between war and peace and (ii) to clarify how acknowledging the part that violence plays in sustaining peace illuminates the nature of modern manifestations of peace, including democratic peace. To this latter end, I identify four ways in which peace and violence may be said to be mutually imbricated. I name these conjunctions: utopian violence and peace, structural violence and peace, pacifistic violence and peace, and regenerative violence and peace.