New Philosophy of Social Conflict

Mediating Collective Trauma and Transitional Justice

A New Philosophy of Social Conflict joins in the contemporary conflict resolution and transitional justice debates by contributing a Deleuze-Guattarian reading of the post-genocide justice and reconciliation experiment in Rwanda -the Gacaca courts. In doing so, Hawes addresses two significant problems for which the work of Deleuze and Guattari provides invaluable insight: how to live ethically with the consequences of conflict and trauma and how to negotiate the chaos of living through trauma, in ways that create self-organizing, discursive processes for resolving and reconciling these ontological dilemmas in life-affirming ways.

Hawes draws on Deleuze-Guattarian thinking to create new concepts that enable us to think more productively and to live more ethically in a world increasingly characterized by sociocultural trauma and conflict, and to imagine alternative ways of resolving and reconciling trauma and conflict.