Manifest

Images of war flood our screens and public spaces. These wars that in Europe we thought were distant now seep into our daily lives, becoming increasingly close, elsewhere, they are part of everyday life. The hate speech that feeds and participates in this violence is also present in our social networks and daily interactions. It infiltrates our neighbourhoods, our streets, our spaces of socialisation and learning, materialising in forms of discrimination against people who come from abroad or those who transgress social norms to exist. Armed conflicts multiply across various regions of the world and, when decision-makers speak of peace, they actually impose upon us a pacified social order through arms. Agreements thus carry ephemeral hopes that are unable to challenge the social structures that produce violence.

Faced with this reality, peace becomes blurred and seems difficult to achieve. But is peace a state that is achieved? And furthermore, is peace the opposite of conflict? We believe that plural senses and practices of peace exist everyday. They emerge in the midst of conflicts and allow us to glimpse transformative dynamics, horizons of meaning, and desired futures. These plural peaces do not oppose conflict but transform it: they make visible and challenge what oppressive social structures conceal. They also respond to the escalation of violence and contribute to a better life amid war and conflict. They open spaces to reweave bonds from which to build fairer paths. To identify these plural peaces, let us be attentive, let us look at one another to grasp the power of small things and everyday gestures. Altogether, we can sit and discuss while actively listening to the voices of those around us to make the words we use every day an act that transforms and impacts our daily lives. To make peace-s we can begin by working on words and listening. Peace, more than a state, is constant work where multiple and dissonant experiences interact, a work full of tensions in dialogue.

We invite you to become part of our constellations for plural peaces and propose you to walk with us on a journey toward horizons that, although they seem distant, are not really so. On the contrary, the experiences you will find here are hints to give depth to peace and to imagine together more just and productive representations of this word that we now think of as plural.

We propose that you participate in our endeavour. Thinking about peaces, like looking at stars, requires effort, especially in the skies of our cities today, which are saturated by light and colonised by artificial satellites. But diverse societies throughout history and still today see in the stars signs to orient themselves and to imagine worlds that they translate into constellations. Creating constellations means being attentive to unions and conjunctions, to possible relations and imaginaries. Creating constellations for peaces means taking a step aside to fight against indifference and hatred: to create together, as the stars do, future horizons.