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First 'Intergalactic' Resistance Studies Conference

University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA

June 18-21, 2026 

Peace Beyond Order: Solidarity and Resistance Against Sta:st-Brahmanical Hegemony

Zeus Hans Mendez
Affilia:on: PhD Candidate, University of Innsbruck, Austria
This paper intervenes in contemporary debates on peace by reorien:ng the concept of peace through resistance, epistemic disobedience, and acts of protest, proposing that peace must be understood as the labor of libera:on rather than the maintenance of order. It challenges dominant frameworks that equate peace with stability, ins:tu:onal control, or the mi:ga:on of visible violence, and specifically intervenes against the no:on of “peace as a state of harmony within the established order” (Maldonado-Torres 2020). Recent scholarship demonstrates that dominant frameworks oYen naturalize violent racialized, sta:st, and colonial hierarchies as neutral condi:ons of peace (Lazic & Stavrevska 2024; Azarmandi 2023; 2018). Extending these cri:ques to India, the paper examines how casteist-sta:st hegemony, majoritarian law-and-order regimes, and developmental na:onalism define peace as obedience, silence, and social acquiescence while criminalizing dissen:ng communi:es as disorderly or an:-na:onal. Against these epistemic and material configura:ons, the paper argues for a conceptualiza:on of peace as a situated ethical prac:ce that emerges both in shared infrastructures of resistance and in the sustained efforts of specific movements to resist structural violence. Peace is enacted through solidari:es across an:-caste, Adivasi, Muslim, and leY movements, but also through sustained acts of collec:ve refusal, self-asser:on, and resilience against systemic oppression by these movements. Drawing on ar:cula:on of maitri (conviviality) as a poli:cal ethic (Ambedkar 1936; Omvedt 2011), Dalit feminist analyses of collec:ve care and rela:onal interdependence (Paik 2014; Rege 2014), and decolonial feminist work on coali:on and world-traveling (Lugones 2003; Roshanravan 2014), the paper treats these solidari:es and resistances as produc:ve of alterna:ve social rela:ons and horizons of coexistence. Empirically, shared spaces of dissent, protest infrastructures, mutual protec:on networks, and joint poli:cal declara:ons are analyzed in demonstra:ng how oppressed communi:es collec:vely 2 sustain dignity, safety, and rela:onal jus:ce. By foregrounding both inter-movement solidari:es and sustained movement-specific struggles, the ar:cle posi:ons resistance movements as a genera:ve interlocutor for peace studies, expanding the field beyond sta:st, developmental, and juridical paradigms toward approaches aeen:ve to race, caste, gender, coloniality, and uneven vulnerability. It argues that meaningful peace cannot be analy:cally or materially decoupled from struggles against domina:on; it is sustained through rela:onal contesta:on, collec:ve survival, and enduring commitments to libera:on. In doing so, it demonstrates that both the everyday and strategic prac:ces of resistance cons:tute a form of peace as libera:on, challenging conven:onal epistemologies that equate peace solely with order.
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