Where Does War Begin?
Gleb Napreenko
Let’s ask this question again, repeated regarding Ukraine: Where does the war start?
Neither a declaration of war nor an act of violence serves as a universal definition.
There are wars that have not caused any casualties, which have been fought on the level of diplomatic declarations and threats: The Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years War,[1] for example. There are wars that have caused many casualties, but that have not been recognised by the state that conducted them: the Algerian War, which the French National Assembly only recognised as a war in 1999. There is the war in Ukraine: Russia has made the use of the word “war”punishable and has substituted this official name: special military operation. In addition, there are currents of thought which posit that war never ends: the class war or the war of the sexes. Are the metaphors of war in our language merely metaphors?
But when a particular war occurs, the question arises: “Where did it all begin?”
The Sarajevo assassination has become symbolic because it seems to be the defining point of the beginning of WWI –here attempting to substantiate the original question.
This question is necessary to make sense of the current war, and to know how it might end. The famous counter-question that Russian propaganda addresses to those who disagree with the current aggression – “Where were you for 8 years?” –is an attempt to plug this problem. It provides an “obvious” version of history. But what exactly happened 8 years ago? The unannounced appearance of Russian armies in Crimea? The first murder in the emerging conflict – the murder of MP Vladimir Rybak?
What began on February 24th, 2022?
This insistent question about the origin, where all versions turn out to be fictitious, indicates that there is a Real in war – a Real outside of meaning. It is impossible not to read a particular war as a symptom of the social situation from which it originates.
War is the point where discourse touches the Real – and this point concerns the question of life and death. War implies the possibility of the act of killing. It becomes an issue of discourse that is not at all metaphorical; it is a necessary element in the justification of the idea of war. War reveals that there is already something in the discourse that is able to demand your willingness to kill or to be killed, even if it was not explicit before. Mobilisation reveals that all citizens are potential soldiers, even if they do not know it: this discovery is agonising.
War triggers a production of semblances – also however, the fall of these semblances – which have supported the discourse: the semblances are pushed to their limit in an attempt to grasp the Real.
It is the mystery of the origin.
Translation Joanne Conway
Revision Raphael Montague
References
[1] “[A]n alleged state of war between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly, is said to have been extended by the lack of a peace treaty for 335 years without a single shot being fired, which would make it one of the world's longest wars, and a bloodless war.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Hundred_and_Thirty_Five_Years%27_War