Violence and security: two keys to resignifying peace in El Salvador.

Abstract

This paper explores conceptual tools for investing meanings in the word ‘peace’ in order to encourage a wider and deeper debate on the meanings of the 1992 Accord in the light of post war violences. Peace runs the danger of being an ‘empty signifer’ if it is not invested in philosophical and practical meanings for the society which invokes it. The paper argues that a first step is to see ‘peace’ as the opposite of violence not war or conflict. It argues that violence is a phenomenon laden with meanings and which generates meanings. All violences matter. We should not select some as more important than others. Security needs to be attached to practices that reduce violence. It should open up the space for people to build conditions to live together without violence.

Revista de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales, n° 9, january-june 2017: 27-54