The ‘Existential Fabric’ of War: Explaining the Phrase of War in the Laws of War

Abstract

Across the texts constituting the laws of war, the word war is one of the most frequent lexical items, its dominant lexicogrammatical environment being in the phrase of war. While this combination seems unremarkable, given the durability of organized violence and the significance of this register for attempts to regulate the violence of war, the paper explores the ideological work of this phrase, including both the effects of the dominant pattern and its lexicogrammatical ‘opportunity cost’. The paper argues that the patterning of war in the laws of war shows a naturalizing of war in which the category is taken for granted, despite its context being the construction of law. In addition, the patterning reveals a paradoxical aversion to putting war at the centre of the laws of war. We argue this ‘decentring’ of war in the laws of war is a token of Malešević’s ‘ontological dissonance’ at the heart of modernity, a profound inability to reconcile our abhorrence of violence with the killing that is tolerated and defended as the ‘legitimate’ price of war.