Post-Conflict Reconstructions brings together specialists in diverse fields in an attempt to foster dialogues across disciplinary borders, spanning four continents within a comparative framework. It covers Geography, Urban Planning, International Relations, Social Sciences, Semiotics, Law, Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Aesthetics, Literary and Film Studies, highlighting the dislocations and de-territorialising effects of the geopolitical dimensions of past and present conflicts, at a time when political discussion is increasingly reduced to engineered bureaucratic and technical policies of consensus, albeit presented as apolitical and post-ideological. The volume addresses a supposed new world order and crises in legal, political and diplomatic stances, focusing on the singularity of events and on the specificity of different theatres of conflict and reconstruction. It addresses acts of testimony, witnessing and cultural representations, including conditions of possibility for reconstruction both at a material (e.g. urban planning and distribution of natural resources) or at a discursive level (e.g. historical representations, political reform). Analysis of colonial cartographies and post-colonial contestations, urban reconstruction, water and nature preservation policies as well as varied artistic and cultural media (visual art and photography, literature, film, cartoons and popular songs) draws attention to the persistence of conflicting agendas, motivations and tensions which are an inescapable dimension of negotiations leading potentially to post-conflict reconciliation.
