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“Peace is the state of differentiation without domination, with the differentiated participating in each other” — Adorno, On Subject and Object 1. What Does It Mean to Establish Peace? The absence of war does not necessarily mean that peace has been established. Hostilities may cease while the conditions that made conflict possible remain unchanged. Two States, for example, may maintain formally peaceful relations while their coexistence depends on military threats and unequal distributions of power. A society may likewise avoid open conflict while remaining organized through relations of subordination. In both cases, the absence of direct confrontation leaves an important question unresolved: what makes a relationship genuinely peaceful when the parties involved do not meet on equal terms? This question goes beyond the distinction between war and peace. It asks whether the absence of open conflict is sufficient when relations between different factions remain structured by dom...

Fauna of Mirrors. AI image   “Both kingdoms, the specular and the human, lived in harmony; you could come and go through mirrors.” — Jorge Luis Borges, “Fauna of Mirrors” 1. Borges: Two Worlds, One Mirror In Borges’s “Fauna of Mirrors,” the human world and the world reflected in mirrors were once distinct, yet their inhabitants could move between them. The two kingdoms lived in harmony: their differences did not prevent contact, and the mirror provided a passage between realms that remained separate. That relationship came to an end when the inhabitants of the mirrors invaded the human world. After a bloody conflict, the Yellow Emperor defeated them and drove them back into their mirrors. His victory, however, involved more than military subjugation. He deprived them of their powers and forms, forcing them to reproduce human gestures and actions. Borges describes the result as their reduction to “mere slavish reflections.” The mirror creatures remained present, but their ca...