Ethics, killing and dying : The discursive struggle between ethics of war and peace models in the Cypriot independence war of 1955-1959
Abstract
The chapter deploys a discourse-theoretical framework to better understand the relationship between ethics, war and death, and more particularly, the ethicality of killing. Ernesto Laclau's work will be used to articulate the ethical not as a given, but as a social construction and an object of political struggle.
In a first step, three competing normative models will be developed: the legitimization and the celebratory ethics of war models and the ethics of peace model. In the second part of the chapter, the workings of these models (and their struggle) are analyzed within the context of the Cypriot independence war of 1955-1959.
The analysis will make use of British and Greek-Cypriot (EOKA) wartime leaflets, the memoires of EOKA leader Grivas and two contemporary memorial sites, showing the articulations of the ethics of war and peace models in their specific context.