Perpetual Peace Lecture - Prof. Gregg Lambert

I particularly want to thank Rosie rotate who she says so has been a co-conspirator of mine for many years in many different ways and projects mostly on a theoretical variety of philosophy that were done both in a certain kind of implicitly in the way that we approach questions are both the politics and the philosophy Rosie came last year to New York participate in a very particular kind of session that took place in the international peace institute in the UN properties where we attempted to bring together in a very unique way as part of this project and I'm going to outline the different both the conceptual philosophy behind in its origins as well as what parts of its failures and a futures in the Senate also the molten this moment being one of its futures but that's not its end Rosie caiman participated in a in a conference that included working diplomats in the UN legal theorists political scientists and a few assorted philosophers who were allowed to attend most mostly to listen the idea behind the project and I'll get into that in a moment it was really conceived and before that though I want to say a special thanks to the Center for Humanities here at Utrecht under Rosie's leadership to the incredible staff that she has to Nina 1.1 very difficult component this this project comes kind of in a box or in a cartoon so you have to assemble it and Nina who was a member Rosie staff as well as corner e and s their words / been bringing across the Atlantic so to speak but with the different various shards and pieces of this project and putting it together and you'll see one part of the project is an exhibit that actually has taken its inspiration from the exhibit the rental last fall in the new museum in new york and included an installation of some video segments done by the directors who have introduced in a moment that were also part of the project as well the project included many different components film component the exhibitor installation component that you'll see a version of or a new creation of vaniya in the library here you turn also several texts a publication project which included a reprinting and kind of pamphleteering of the original text by Conte in a way to in a sense move different kinds of conversations about the academic cultural political in different kinds of institutions so so in as well as workshops that have taken place in Pakistan in Beijing this summer in Rwanda in Philadelphia and in New York now in Utrecht a workshop that will take place here tomorrow that will bring students and faculty together thinking about a more activist way of thinking about how to actualize some ideas of this project and different kinds of collaborative projects that will occur over the course of the next year or two years just as an introductory way about what I'll call the conspiracy of peace because peace is very much a conspiracy in many different ways meaning that in some ways it is an idea whose reality we do not proceed in any way not unlike other ideas like equality or freedom you can always measure the degree of the reality by of the idea by its lack of reality and that becomes the critical nature of the idea of the content I think that the idea of peace was regulated or theoretical or speculative at best but it is an important speculative idea that had a practical place and a practical function both in the legal in the juridical world particularly on but also in the place of philosophy peace is often the critique for the idea the concept of peace from the very beginning has been contributed conceived as being too abstract to unrealistic unworkable impossible and so the idea of perpetual peace was a bit of a provocation that comes from the 18th century to some degree as well as a challenge based upon const belief that what was possible to think that is what was possible in theory should be possible in practice in a certain way he reversed the old adage they'd be more cynically apply in our lives what works in theory doesn't always work in practice contact said in fact what works in theory should work in practice and so the proposal of peace or the idea of peace was something that he proposed in this small text that was written right on the wake of the treaty of possible on which he called a fail or chimera a failed treaty a cynical document a document that was forged or formed only because the powers of war were anchor upped at that moment and needed to sue for peace in order to rebuild their armies again so in a certain way context is a critique of the very notion of the peace treaty of the legal entities of the state actors and so forth involved at that time now let me talk about the beginning of the project because of course I have to to let's say I have to run off at the pass several misunderstandings that always are preliminary to the two beginning to talk about this project one certainly the biggest FS is why would you propose again an eighteenth-century white male philosopher who we thought we were done with finally okay so so so why would you use this as a basis of proposing again are bringing in many different actors many different participants in many different cultural institutions legal asst dishes so forth why would you choose this text in particular so i'll tell you one okay about two or three years ago i had a conversation with a curator of an art museum or on our Philadelphia who is known for doing fairly activists and radical installations and exhibits Aaron Levie of the slot foundation he's I had been partners on many projects previously and we were trying to consider conceive of what we felt would be an important project for us the practice was always as rosy as rosy noted is to open the university to its outs many outsides because the university tends to refer to the outside many fields in the university particularly the humanities I'm talking about Naaman certainly and the fields that are immediately related to professionalization to training legal theorists of the local politicians and so forth that those those disciplines that are called more academic they tend to represent the outside they tend to want to say that they have some authority of representing the outside but they never include the outside they never seem to address the outside or those institutions that are at the periphery of the University and a direct-dial what when I noticing what I was very concerned with an interest in with was the turn after nine eleven and two thousand in the early 2000 2001 was a term in the critical theoretical discourse that occupied continental philosophy in my field two more and more discussion of war a more and more discussion of that's a perpetual war or or concepts of basically the discussion of violence the discussion of terror and an increasing thats a alliance of that description with theories that were in a sense being espoused by the state format that which was questions of security questions of that the quad the concept of legal theory even of Human Rights was being replaced by issues of security territory populations migration issues like that what was conspicuously absent from this theoretical discussion I get name names but I won't a discussion that became born or popularized the more became more spectacular in this proclamation of an internal terror that we live in today was a complete absence of any possible discussion of peace peace had become not only this reputable idea but a derogatory and sarcastic and cynical idea that one would never seriously proposed as a political concept today at the same time I noticed or through discussions that I had with another partner who is at the origin of this project Martin wash bomber who was an active cultural attache a diplomat in the UM in New York and now at the Deutsche hausen at New York University was that legal theorists and practitioners particularly state actors let's say in a sense now have not for many years utilize the concept of peace as a credible and technically legal definition to input to negotiate in terms of the issues of human rights of security and so forth in fact it was highly suspect term that had been amused so often to conceal actual interests of states from non-intervention from using the concept of peace to as an alibi alibi in a certain way to to pillage resources from other countries and nations during a time of Civil War stroke that incumbent and fallen into such district disrepute that it's still there was a cinema air or an error the possibility that surrounded in those institutions as well so let me just say the original the origin of the project was in trying to seek out why this has come to pass why is peace not usable not credible not not of not employed as a critical vocabulary or language date in both of these discourses the discourse of political science of politics of the legal practitioners the government promised that employer as well as an academic philosophy and theory today I tried to go back to the genealogy of the word and when it thoughts started falling into disuse or disrepute and I found that in fact it began in the early 18th century then the word peace was already at a state of disrepair and this is addressed in the very opening of contest that in fact it's a it's a term or a concept that is so unrealistic that it is not used by the statesman who appears as an actor in his text but in a sense it can never be used by the Statesman because it would lose the Statesman lose credibility if or as a conflict of interest if the Statesman would use the term apiece so in other words what compo saying is that woman the statesman who pronounced his piece already opens himself at this time himself to the charge of being self contradictory because the state at this time and the rights of nations of this time pursued the interests of war in the building of the interests of the war as a condition of national right so a sense piece would be contradictory to the very constitutional notion Nation national right is at the beginning of the 18th century this because the basis of one of the terms or one of the arguments that cognates the second source so let me read a little passage to to talk about the source of this project the second another unusual source that this project came from was an essay essay by Jeremy Bentham not known to be a darling of the left so to speak but her provocative text anyway who wrote a text later on called a plan for universal and perpetual peace also in the context of the British colonial empire and he writes also concerning the idea of peace as to the utility of such a universal and lasting peace supposing a plan for that purpose practicing and likely to be adopted can there be can there ever be but one voice the objection and only the objection to it is the apparent impracticability of it that it is not only hopeless but to such a degree that any proposal to that effect deserves the name of visionary and ridiculous this objection I shall endeavor in the first place to remove for the removal of this prejudice maybe the necessary beginning to procure a plan for first hearing it so this is the proposal for the perpetual peace project was initially conceived as a route as a way of enacting between two actors principally philosophers and political theorist theoreticians practical philosophers and theoretical philosophers the possibility of enacting a kind of discussion that would never take place in reality for very different reasons so our conception was using art particularly not just art using a curatorial intervention that involved film that involve later on the new museum exhibit as a way of mediating an encounter that could never have taken place in reality meaning an encounter between academic philosophers and a discourse or language game of academic philosophy around the concept of peace and practical politicians particularly those working politicians in the UN diplomats legal theorist and so forth they were belong to that institution in order to engage a virtual conversation that took the place virtually in the media of film because we realized that there was no possibility in in any way to ever bring these two parties together in the same room no why is it because there have been conferences that say or symposia at the UN that engaged philosophy okay and certainly that's the case however the practice I found in my discussions with many of the diplomats that we took up the practical politicians would always choose the Philosopher's with which to engage with so in other words they would choose philosophers that were already in some ways part of their institution political philosophers theorists legal theorist they were already within the School of Law are already in a certain way already related in providing and speaking with the same discursive framework set of themselves they wouldn't be necessarily addressing according to their own interests they wouldn't be addressing their own another outside so here you have an image of outside that is those philosophers who are always associated it called purely theoretical academic crazy you know those philosophers that define themselves as political now on the other side of this you have the academic philosophers those that may or may not be located and usually not located in the Department of Philosophy they may be in the Department of the literature they may be in the department of cultural studies they may be in other sectors including the law school but they themselves a sense of spouse a discourse that is more radical and more political philosophy that's political and yet they themselves are predisposed to be prejudiced to never speak to the practical politicians because the politicians the practical politicians by definition are already contaminated corrupted by the relationship to state power so in other words they themselves don't often times address their on outside but enlist the politicians that incense already agreement so the basis of this project was to draw together a conversation like I said they wouldn't that took the form of a medium of film in which with the directors we went into the UN as well as it and we asked the question about peace and how what peace means within that institution but we use the content text as a bit of a provocative provocation or framework that at least minimally or historically belonged to them at one point that they could about even though in the act of allowing that they would disavow so in other words well the content of text is very long ago and we don't relationship to it anymore but it doesn't really relate to the new work and yet the perpetual peace document outlines what is the basis of a steam attic for the League of Nations at that time he calls it and as well as in a sense it kind of lays the foundation of an idea of what will become the European Union has a ideal or cosmopolitan ideal at the same time we brought in many academics including what we call academics not in the pejorative sense but including professor Brundle tea Elaine 6 ooh Richard Sennett sassy ass askin a shield men may from Duke University this is the unlisted somewhat arbitrary we brought in anybody who would agree to participate in anybody who would agree to be able to have a discussion with us about this we put it before them the same text that they also put about one point at least they have a reddit precaution text so the middle criteria why we use come as we try to find a text that was in common between these two very different groups even though that each group would inevitably disavow the very texts that we asked them to one read to to respond to and three to depart from in their comments in order to critique it in order to talk about why it's not relevant to today but I want to stay is just a bit about now more about excuse me more commentary on before I introduce Laura and Alexander more of a commentary on the text itself because I would say there's an irony in bringing this project including the re edition of the Rio publication of the addition that we originally published as part of the art exhibit of the new museum as part of the project that we used basically we published we re printed and published context and then we would send it to the people that we were going to interview and safe in case you can't find it in your library which most of the people said that they they couldn't find it was in a box downstairs in the basement the they said we reprinted this and we're sending it to you have to read and to come now this has been reissued or re-edited and reissued for for this conference and hopefully for some of the workshops that make clear after here also is that as a common text as a text that we want to begin with in order to depart from it the ultimate end of this project two or three years from now Rosie and I have talked about this ultimately from the very beginning I imagined at the end of the project would be creating a volume of different contributors and authors from many different fields legal practical philosophical cultural as well as artistic to completely erase context and replace it with a text that might have relevance for today and would include not only the initial actors that we addressed there were only two the state actor and the full of the philosopher as a as an actor but then in the contemporary situation there are many different actors and multiple actors that all have an interest and all engage including public activists advocates for including the majority of the population globally that were excluded from the European idea as well as from the initial conversation that can't have in mind and this became a glaring part of the project was to realize that it was based upon the discussion even the conflict between these two original parties but their conflict doesn't read it wasn't relevant today because it excluded many other actors that were never at the table including globally those actors that did not in a sense did not belong to Europe and did not dream the European idea but also the social actors today that in a sense do not belong to either the institutions of the UN or the University and that need to be part of this project this has been something that Laura and Alexander have been engaged in bringing other voices and as well as the project as in a certain way of bringing other actors into a conversation with this text so the last thing I'll say is to point out an irony that that this project the cultural peace project which began in New York and Philadelphia and now finds its place or its way here under the management of Rossiter Doty finds its way here to Utrecht and to the Treaty of Utrecht commemoration in some way because in some way I would say that it finds its way home the actual origin of this text begins in Utrecht when comp refers to at the very beginning a sign above a Dutch in somewhere and I imagines he's to referring to an actual anecdote of an occasion that Cynthia just pointed out of somebody of the Treaty of Utrecht of the people being put up in an in here that somebody must have had the grill an idea naming their in perpetual peace vegas vegas plata I think I've image in Dutch right I forgive me for because that already i mean this marks the kind of irony that wanted returns already to the very place that it began with but to i want to point out that tongue begins the text by saying that perpetual peace is already at the beginning of the 18th century or at the end of the 18th century already a joke not only a joke but a piece of gallows humor but someone would in a sense named there in perpetual peace already outlines the very sarcastic pun that he begins with that the only piece possible that we can imagine it as perpetual is death and he begins with this plum or this anecdote in order to frame the problem in order to frame the problem that i was trying to address in the beginning how is it and what is the causality that makes piece of that joke that not only that but not only a bad joke but in a sense and evil joke we then become many so many contexts the piece is it is used or misused in such a way that it cannot be taken seriously so let me read a bit to talk about this notion then of the conspiracy between these two original actors retirement he turns into sarcasm after he announces in the sense that the only place where perpetual peace is the grave when he outlines that the politicians and statements who hold such an idea with such contempt that they public publicly make a mockery of it and he writes as a childish and pedantic idea fit only for the schools from which it takes its rise and so here is the the instigation of the con with philosophy or with the concept of velocity this immediately leads to the basis of Kant's argument in order for a positive system of international law to be established first the nations must transform the ideas of international right but before this can happen we must change the mind of politicians themselves the idea of perpetual peace is therefore not an object of sarcasm and ridicule to be condemned as completely impractical the final and perhaps great irony of crown so treatise is to set forth the only secret article contained in a second supplement where he says it is detached from the main body of the public treatise that outlines the preliminary and definitive articles and is offered as a secret pact between politicians and philosophers from the 18th century onward that secret article was that even though the politicians will never publicly declare themselves the originator or incense having anything to do the idea of peace because they prepare constantly for war that at least that they guarantee or that they promise to consider the idea privately that is in their private bedrooms at night so this is a very funny moment in context because in a certain way it's also a sad moment because he says that the only way that even at this moment that we can he can imagine that the guarantee of the continuation of the concept of peace which is at that point because it is so contra institution so against the interests of the state and of a concept of national right and the first formation of international laws at that time the only guarantee of the existence of persistence of the idea of peace was that it be consigned a place of sarcasm and derision and assigned to a purely abstract and philosophical faculty that exists only University so in other words it could only exist or persist as a negative idea in a world that continues to prepare for war this is kind of provocative if we think about that the comment was preparing for the survival of the idea of peace for some future time or for some future generation or for some future set of interests in states of the state or international law that in a sense were not constitutionally opposed in their interests to in a sense making giving the idea any reality because peace is a concept is a positive construction and we need institutions therefore to begin building the idea of peace positively rather than representing it only as negatively as a limit or a lack as something that is not practicing under the conditions of the current legal and political and philosophical frameworks that we have today so in some ways this is a provocation of the challenge of the project it's settling for each institution to get outside of its own authority of its own concepts and to begin to open a space and a possibility for proposing the idea of peace as something that has at least a theoretical than a theoretical reality it may even be something that is practicing with it has a reality for the society we want to imagine through the future now I'll conclude by just saying the limitations of contexts is that it was only an idea that the loan to Europe and would remain in Europe / country in some way it was not an idea that he would ever consider to belong to the arrest of world this becomes a limitation in some way at a critique of the county and text within the framework of lot critiques of caught the post-enlightenment critiques of God but I think that one of the fundamental limitations is that it only involves two players two actors and he was only concerned as a philosopher he was only come to was always self concerned about the future of philosophy and its relationship to the state its demotion in the university as a lower faculty its will it's the fact that it was being defunded already in his time and is continuing to be defunded today which means there must have been a lot of funds at one point because continue to run out of funds for the humanities and you never see the end in sight there's always more money to lose but at that time there was a conflict as you know in a text that he wrote within five years of this of the conflict of the faculties of conflicts between the philosophers and theologians and the lawyers that is the faculties of law theology and the philosophy that at this time but we need to keep in mind that content is highly selfish and self interested he was only interested in what was in it for the philosophy and only for the European philosophers of course and therefore his greatest nemesis in his enemy was always the practical politician of the lawyers who were being prepared for by the state to serve the interest of the state and so the state always gave them a lot more money in order to build up its own knowledge so the content picture again is reduced to a discussion that all included two participants philosophers lawyers and politicians two faculties today that's not a reality that we can live in anymore and therefore we need to include more actors who also read the conversation piece those that are already in a sense participate and call forth its possibility but not within the spaces of the UM that has a highly specialized and very restricted access to it or in the place of the University which is equally of some ways restricted but in the streets also in the cultural institutions in aesthetic and artistic practices in other places globally and locally we're in a sense the idea of peace could be something that is not reserved only for the specialist with something that can be the very practice of everyday relationships so it's in this sense that I want to introduce the directors who are themselves have been very concerned one of the first initiatives that we undertook we were invited to participate in Geneva this was in the beginning phase you know kind of our early days you know like the early Beatles albums of this project was we wanted to get into the UN in order to kind of let enact our provocation so we were invited by the Human Human Rights Council to Geneva in order to participate in that event and we brought the perpetual peace project which everybody looked at it a thought well this is not human rights and this is not this is not on something that we can see really take seriously but we're trying to pose the question within framework of that institution on Laura and Alexander Alexander came with us in buganda used that as an opportunity to begin filming the different segments that you will see in the exhibit layer as well as in New York and other places there where they went they went to Paris during this period of time and filmed also the segment with an 86 ooh I went to Paris and filmed the segment professor of herbal tea two summers ago I believe but it was that time that they brought a real new dimension of including other voices and other actors into this project which is the people in Geneva they were living in Geneva including those migrant workers the workers that were coming in transitionally including the voices of those that were not in any of the institutions that we were trying to address and doing so they really enlarge the project and brought a consciousness to us to me at least and to the other curator and loving that we needed to constantly expand to represent and to bring into contact all the different actors that were any discussion of piece takes place today they need to in the sense not be part of the perpetual peace project but they need to have a conversation or have a possibility conversation so they have continued in that effort to in a sense to bring in public the voices of very vocal public advocate's particularly on the market economy today which is also if remember one of the most interesting passages that cost has in his text in some ways tradition is where he said that the money in addition to the army money is also an instrument of war the problem with money is that nobody knows how it actually works so it's not a very good weapon because it can always fall back on the one through holds it so in some way if we perfected the idea of our market economies to a degree in which we can really utilize it as a weapon I think we'd all be in trouble as a species but there's something interesting about the fact the market economy continues to to elude those who feel that they are most in controlling so they will in a sense introduce some more recent footage that's not included in the exhibit but some interviews with an activist from recently in New York as well as the occupation of Wall Street and they'll talk about the work that they did and bringing petrol Peace Project to those other sectors so let me introduce you to the directors is Laura Hana to sitting nearest to me is in New York city-based filmmaker she directed a housing urbanism made of waste from Omaha James a 30 minute clemency film for death row inmate James Rome and the commons in animation for new press in 2008 2007 2008 she produced short films to the Venice Biennale the nation art review and collaborated with slot foundation of course to create a series of DVDs including the DVD for the perpetual peace project Verner Hertzog vito acconci acconci simon critchley and on about you she has worked for such greats as Joe Berliner Derek s apparently somebody wrote this that got this off your website okay so it's very old okay so in any case she's brought a lot of skill and technique and also vision to this to her right is Alexandra Norman who is a partner and also has been very much the basis of all of the filming of the perpetual peace project as well as many of the conceptual elements that were talking about today she's currently a film student at Columbia University has her academic roots and arts very much interested in the world of art film and film in the arts but also very interested in they cover the role of art and film particularly documentary in contemporary activism activist politics she has a new short film called on its political economy dummy or stupid okay as well as a film which it sounds very interesting to me about the notion of empire in Georgia so related to also Russian immigrant populations that 17 Georgia so I want to introduce them in their to come up and show some their new footage and also share their ideas with you about

Channel: Centre for the Humanities Utrecht University

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Length: 35min 39sec (2139 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 10 2015