War and the subaltern: Voice as power in Buchi Emecheta’s Destination Biafra

In Africa, as in most other parts of the world, whenever there is war (or massive violence of any other hue), the common people are used as cannon fodder to protect the powerful upper class formulators of the letters of the war. Women and children are easily the most vulnerable. They are raped, tortured, murdered, starved, widowed, and exposed to all sorts of insecurity and depredation. In the end they are marginally characterized in upper class, male-centered war discourse. In this research, we locate the voice of the subaltern in Buchi Emecheta’s civil war novel, Destination Biafra (1982). We utilize Subaltern Studies in a qualitative approach to offer the needed agency to female subalterns as well as a few other marginalized groups. We map the trajectory of these voices and show that the subaltern woman and the other margins denounce colonial complicity in the androcentric war, and would rather the society eschewed violence as conflict resolution strategy. With this study we fill an existing gulf in the Nigerian Civil War narrative and create an alternative discourse against the largely upper class, male-centered voices that have hitherto characterized civil war novels.

The Almohads and the “Qur’anization” of War Narrative and Ritual

The Almohad movement (12th–13th centuries, Islamic West) had in the return to the direct study of the primary sources of Islam—the Qur’an and the Sunna—and in jihād, two of its most important pillars of legitimation and action. In this sense, it is an ideal period to study how both realities—Qur’an and jihād—were linked in a given historical context. During the Almohad period, the use of Qur’anic verses in accounts related to war episodes became widespread. We thus witness a “Qur’anization” of the war narrative, a resource adding greater religiosity and spirituality to the context of jihād, to its elaboration and discursive representation, and to its memory and remembrance through written testimonies. In this paper I study, through the main narrative and documentary sources of the period, how the Qur’an was inserted into and adapted to the Almohad war discourse. Likewise, this approach allows me to explore how the Qur’an came to life within the framework of the Almohad jihād, how it served for its justification and legitimation, and how it formed part of the ceremony and the war protocol of the Maghrebi caliphate, thus linking itself with other discursive and propaganda mechanisms such as architecture or military parades.

Kautilya's Views on Secret Activities of Intelligence in Arthasastra and Its Current Relevance

<em><span>Kautilya's Arthashastra is considered the best political and war discourse was ever written in prose. Dating from the 4th century, which contains views on elements of war tactics and covert activities. Political science contains law, combat techniques, attack strategy, defense strategy, including intelligence. Kautilya has outlined the principles of intelligence by emphasizing the importance of spies in securing and defending a country. This paper tries to study the intelligence aspects established by Kautilya and tries to solve modern age problems such as terrorism, internal conflict, armed insurrection, and ultimately guarantee one's safety. Intelligence activity was directly under the authority of the ruler with the formation of secret service organizations, through the recruitment of secret agents from all groups and the deployment of secret agents in two basic groups (samstha and samchār). The method of spreading secret agents in Arthasastra aims for early detection in one's own country, an enemy country, a friendly country, and a neutral country to find out the strengths and weaknesses of each element of the country.</span></em>

Civil war in Ukraine. Content, development, actors

Статья посвящена событиям Гражданской войны на Украине в период между 1918 и 1920 годами. На уровнях практической деятельности и идеологических взглядов в статье представлены основные институциональные и индивидуальные акторы, участвовавшие в данной войне. Особое внимание ориентировано на выявление внешних факторов, воздействовавших на возникновение, развитие и временное окончание активной фазы внутриукраинского конфликта после образования СССР. В то же время в статье представлена авторская концепция гражданской конфронтации на Украине как перманентного исторического процесса, элементы которого актуальны до настоящего времени. В тексте также продемонстрирован большой информационный потенциал архивных документов из коллекции «Азбука» для изучения событий, ставших объектом освещения в статье. The article is dedicated to the events of the Civil War in Ukraine between 1918 and 1920. Analyzed are the practical and ideological levels of the war discourse, anddepicted are theinstitutions and personalities engaged into the events. Special attention is given to the external factors, which contributed to the beginning, development and finish of the conflict in Ukraine after the formation of theUSSR. At the same time, the author’spersonal concept of the Civil War in Ukraine is presented. The events and the historical process behind them are shown to be permanent, depicted patterns and elements can be seen nowadays. The article demonstrates the informative capacity of archival documents from «Azbouka» collection.

Kant’s Rejection of Just War: International Order between Democratic Constitutionalism and Revolutionary Violence

Following up on Tischer’s, Becker Lorca’s and Teschke’s observations on early modern war discourse, Oliver Eberl in this chapter elaborates Immanuel Kant’s critique of the justification of the use of force in early modernity which revolutionized the thinking on international order. Kant condemned the justification of the use of force as just war since this would perpetuate the state of nature which the states still found themselves in. Kant does not link directly theory and practice but rather formulates his theory on the background of revolutionary change, which in his view opens up the possibility of a completely new approach to international order. However, in unfolding his theory, Kant had to take into consideration its possible practical consequences in the context of an unstable international constellation of power. Furthermore, he had to accommodate the practice of the French republic to identify its opponents as ‘unjust enemies’, thereby contradicting the envisaged role of the revolution as the nucleus of the new era of peace envisioned by Kant.

The Legal Mechanics of Spanish Conquest: War and Peace in Early Colonial Peru

Whereas Anuschka Tischer’s chapter focusses on the early modern war discourse in Europe, Arnulf Becker Lorca in this chapter examines the legal mechanics of conquest in early colonial Peru. Conventional and postcolonial legal histories focus on the recognition of the indio as free subject, a reaction to the excesses of conquistadores that marked the beginning of the legal regulation of conquest. In contrast, this chapter shows that conquest from the beginning was a regulated enterprise. The law offered a mechanics of conquest. But this law was not only for the Spanish, but also for natives, including Inca elites to manoeuvre. Where conventional histories see in the law a promise of peace between Spaniards and natives, postcolonial histories (presented by Mallavarapu and Chimni in this volume) see a justification of war. In this chapter, we will see a continuum between war and peace with plenty of room for Spanish violence, with some room for Inca resistance, and with a potential, although limited, space for coexistence between the two.

How Sages Taught People the Art of War: “Discourse on Armament and Food” by Li Zhi

The present article is a continuation of the research on the chapter «Diverse Writings» (Za shu) from the famous “Book to Burn” (Fen shu), the opus magnum by the iconoclastic late Ming thinker Li Zhi (1527–1602). The article comprises the first translation into Russian of the essay by Li Zhi “Discourse on Armament and Food” (Bing shi lun) accompanied by introduction and comments. The tenor of the Chinese text is the social role of armament. Li Zhi revises the saying by Confucius regarding the priority of people’s trust to the food and armament. He also strongly criticizes Mengzi’s ideas. The latter recommended to enlighten people by educating them in village schools and to openly force them to follow the righteous way of the king. Li Zhi suggests an effective alternative to such approach by following the more flexible Daoist way. Following his suggestion, one should create special conditions in which people would self-regulate in natural way and could be manipulated without being able to notice it.