The new Hundred Years Wars

Abstract

This article advances the idea that community conflicts, the resurgence of which at the present time is bringing the issue of unrealised group identities to the fore, seem to produce a fiction of never‐ending war. The whole of their internal structure appears to induce the protagonists to settle in for the long term and to perpetuate confrontations by constantly re‐enacting a sort of primitive and ageless conflict. These new Hundred Years Wars would seem to be generated by three main contributing factors: first, the ritualisation of violent practices which bind enemies together in a pact of reciprocal cruelty; next, the adoption of a rhetorical stance proclaiming that negotiation is impossible and unthinkable, thus enabling each party to present its own struggle as part of the unshakeable defence of the honour of the threatened community; and, lastly, the extension of conflicts by making a habit of division, of hate‐filled exhortations and of memory games which cut across each and every kind of social activity, creating a sort of spontaneous apartheid society. It is to be asked whether this shared fantasy of the impossibility of peace might not also ultimately stem from a painful need for recognition.