6. Disobedient Peace: Non-cooperation with Inhuman Orders

This categorisation is linked to the idea of ‘negative peace’, in the sense that it “ascribes a dynamic and important role to war” (Lederach 1986: 21) and is the one which the Mexican government has favoured, putting all its emphasis and power behind the national construction of a militarised peace imposed by the armed forces and the police, including legal recognition to do so, a unique clause of the recently enacted Internal Security Law.

“While fear is the form in which subjectivity organizes its defenses for self- preservation, terror knows what it fears but has no way of protecting itself from what it fears” (Bleichmar 1995).

The title of Gandhi’s autobiography – a fundamental book to read, along with Mandela’s autobiography – has been a lifelong guide for understanding the construction of a social identity: My Experiences with Truth (some colleagues have translated experiences as “experiments”). I believe that approaching actions of peace and non-violence from the logic of an experiment is very helpful in building peace without fear of being mistaken.

This idea was coined initially by Dr Juan Carlos Marín, a noted Argentinian epistemologist and social activist, (Marin 1995: 25–26) and taken up in the Final Declaration of the XXII Congress of the Latin American Association of Sociology (ALAS in Spanish), carried out in Concepcion, Chile, in October 1999:

We unanimously express that, in the ethical practice of our profession, social scientists cannot restrict themselves to diagnosing their societies, without knowing and facing the multiple dimensions in which the legal monopoly of violence is inhumanly and arbitrarily practiced in our Continent. We therefore propose urgent collaboration in the construction of a moral judgment capable of enabling the rupture of all forms of uncritical obedience to authority, making observable and promoting lifelong a due disobedience to any inhuman order.

Clearly, non-violence is not the only way to build peace; I respect and have supported many others, but I believe that this culture is a millenarian tradition which has contributed to the long process of the humanisation of our species. However, in order to avoid prejudice, stigma or ‘anticipated defeats’, it is crucial to distinguish between the end points and the starting points.

This concept was adapted to sociology by Juan Carlos Marín, taking it from Freud and others; it has subsequently been applied to and enriched with new experiences and conceptualizations. In this case, for example, it is being applied to the culture of peace, education and civil resistance.

The important part here is the logic within and without the discourse, not the empirical-experimental correlation according to some type of objectivised register of the material reality observed. Power constructs ‘discourses on reality’ permanently, and ‘operates’ them on bodies with enormous strength, as if they were ‘truthful’ or ‘real’, because whoever accepts them does not observe reality, but limits his/her attention to the entity which pronounces the discourse, in obedience with an ingrained attitude of deference previously constructed by the ‘authority principle’.

“…discussion and reflection, that is cooperation in the field of thought, increasingly override unsupported statements and intellectual egocentrism” (Piaget 1985: 37). ‘Proof’ and ‘data’ are what really enable co-operation, or really ‘operate’ with others in the intellectual and epistemic spheres.

The ‘installation’ of knowledge is one of the most complex, unobservable and accepted as normal arts in epistemic work, and it is also a core task in any process of constructing peace and autonomy.

The ‘social observables’, according to J.C. Marín, are qualities and traits of social events and actors which can be observed at first glance; the ‘unobserved’ can be discerned with the help of some adequate theory or conceptualisation; on the other hand, the ‘unobservables’ cannot be observed directly and require the application of indirect observation instruments to bring them to the surface. An example of this could be ‘fear’, which, to be observed, requires us to ask the individual about certain behaviours and practices.

‘Rupture’ is a fundamental epistemic and moral category which must be built permanently in us and in others, both individually and collectively. It is indispensable for casting doubt on previous knowledge with the aim of creating new knowledge concerning a determined social event, based on an increase in awareness. This text is based, to a great extent, on how we have been able to advance along this epistemic axis, from theory – acquired and built upon – to experiences-experiments in which we ourselves participated. Returning to Fracchia (2018), we can see how, for Bachelard, scientific rupture is that which “contradicts common experience”, and in which, as Bourdieu points out, “familiarity with the social universe is the primary epistemological obstacle”. In other words, for a rupture to exist, it is necessary to cast doubt upon accepting as normal much knowledge drawn from “common experience” which, as we will see, is really the installation of part of the dominant heteronomy in social order, based on some “authority principle”. Thus, wherever knowledge is catechistic, voluntarist and dependent on absolute values, there cannot be “fissures” or autonomous ruptures. A rupture is, therefore, a prerequisite for the construction of acts of disobedience, because it is an “opening towards what is new”.

Ignorance – which is among the principal causes of violence – is associated with lack of knowledge concerning a fact or a trait of some social identity, and not intelligence or intellectual identity. It is counteracted by building and installing greater knowledge.

“The whole adult can be found in the child, and all the child survives in the adult” (Piaget 1985: 70).

Foucault adroitly describes the effects of corporal ‘discipline’: “…the more obedient he is, all the more useful… Thus, discipline makes submissive and well trained bodies, ‘docile’ bodies. Discipline increases the strength of the body (in terms of economic usefulness) and diminishes that same strength (in terms of political obedience)” (Foucault1976: 160). Antón and Damiano round off the idea: “Thus it seems to be the ‘target’ of power: to correct bodies to obtain more docile and useful individuals, incapable of reflecting on their own actions” (Antón/Damiano 2010: 24).

“How is it possible that the practice of democracy is so advanced in a game of marbles between boys from 11 to 13 years old, and is so unfamiliar to adults in many fields?” (Piaget 1985: 62).

The whole social order is built, in Juan Carlos Marín’s words, on “anticipated obedience to exert a punishment when an authority demands it, where the punishment, in reality, masks a confrontation and is presented as an act of justice” (Ameglio 2002: 129). More in Piaget (1985: 167–272), Martínez (2012: 109–118) and Glover (2013: 448–561).

In his research, Milgram claims that, for a soldier in Vietnam, “It is enough hard work to get through the present day alive; there’s no time to think about moral problems” (1980: 169). The aim is to transform individuals into “a pure state of agency [in which] moral judgments are to a great extent suspended” (1980: 146). For different reasons, this construction of the “soldier” and “beings in agency state” is in some ways similar to the “Muslim” described by Giorgio Agamben in Homo Saccer.

“…the historic construction of what is called a citizen, and if we wanted greater precision we would call it a soldier-citizen. Because we must not forget that before being a citizen, one must be a soldier” (Marín 2009: 68).

Among the causes of obedience, Milgram (1980: 20) pinpoints a fundamental one: “…to be able to consider oneself as not responsible for one’s actions. The individual is free from any responsibility when he ascribes the initiative to the experimenter” who gave the order.

Moore (1989: 97) analyses this issue when he compares the experiments of Milgram and Asch.

For Piaget (1976: 255) “…the factors of maladaptation would be the triggers of the achievement of awareness… what triggers the achievement of awareness … is the fact that automatic regulations… are no longer enough… and it becomes important to seek new means for a more active adjustment”. For Marín (2014), ‘discomfort’ is something from previous knowledge that does not agree with the new action we are being asked to perform.

“Civil resistance is a method of collective political struggle based on the primary idea that governments depend ultimately on the collaboration, or at least the obedience, of the majority of the population” (Randle 1998: 25). Some profiles of civil resistance actions can be found in Randle (1998:25–32), Sharp (1986) and Ameglio (2002: 117–18).

Thoreau is very clear on this point: “The only obligation I have the right to shoulder is to do at all times what I consider proper”, and he adds: “Thus, in the name of order and civilian government, we are made to honor our own baseness, and even to uphold it” (1997: 25, 31).

See: https://​es.​wikisource.​org/​wiki/​Discurso-del-subcomandante-Marcos-%22Mandar-obedeciendo%22.

More in Negri (2006: 40–82) and Rabinovich/Magrini (2011).

These were reinforced in 12–22 May 2017 by an International Caravan for the Search of Disappeared Persons. More at:  https://​aristeguinoticia​s.​com/​0709/​mexico/​suman-1307-las-fosas-clandestinas-halladas-de-2007-a-la-actualidad-cndh/​.

The Nochixtlán massacre, which involved the murder of teachers during demos, the jailing of leaders, and mass firings.

The construction of epistemic and moral ‘frontiers’ in a dynamic, collective or individual way, and in permanent evolution according to new knowledge and reflection acquired, is fundamental for defining one’s own identity and the degrees of ‘disobedience’ or ‘obedience’ one is prepared to face. In preparation for peace (which includes education, culture and construction) this is one of the most complex tasks to install, in oneself and in others. The difficulty is directly related with the degree of knowledge available concerning inhumanity –establishment of violence as a normal state of affairs—contained in the social order. See more on this in Ameglio (2002: 197–210).

“The way to fully interpose a body is to make it a thinking body, so that the strength of this body is multiplied, because each part of it is going to behave according to what the environment, as defined by reflection, requires. It will be hugely consistent: the moment of reflection and action coincide. … Everything works. This is a moral weapon” (Marín 1995: 26).