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Dismantling the master’s house: War and peace in Aceh and East Timor – the limitations of the language we use

Siapno, Jacqueline Aquino
June 4, 2015

Source: (2001) In Thinking peace, making peace, eds. Barry Hindess and Margaret Jolly, 45-55. Occasional Paper Series 1/2001. Collection of papers presented at the Academy of the Social Sciences annual symposium, 5 November 2000. Canberra: Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

In this paper, Jacqueline Siapno looks at conflicts in Aceh and East Timor over independence from Indonesia. Efforts to resolve those conflicts and make peace, according to Siapno, must also address issues of justice in each context. In particular, thinking and making peace require re-imagination of language and space for a new kind of politics. A new kind of politics is required to reckon with the structural roots of war, inequality, and violence in their many forms, including patriarchy, colonizing practices, state terror, misogyny, class conflict, poverty, and racism. Siapno tells the stories of many who have suffered from these injustices and many who have sought to overcome them with new structures of language and politics.

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AbstractAsiaPost-Conflict ReconciliationRJ in Schools
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