Cracking peace: divesting from the coloniality of peace through decolonial memory activism

This article argues that the coloniality of peace is sustained through selective memory and denial that detach modern-liberal peace discourses from colonial violence. While critical peace education has repoliticized peace by foregrounding power structures and structural forms of violence, it has not extensively addressed the colonial foundations and the ontological dominance of Eurocentric peace knowledge. Drawing on decolonial analytics and memory studies, this article identifies decolonial memory activism as counter-pedagogy that invites to historicize, repoliticize, and affectively divest from dominant peace narratives in the Global North. Through concrete interventions in public memory – such as counter-monuments, walking tours, and artistic interventions – decolonial memory activism unsettles the peace/violence binary, challenges white innocence, and invites audiences to reconsider subject positions of complex implication. These efforts, which combine political demands and epistemic critique with the inherently affective aspects of memory and identity, offer a way to divest from the coloniality of peace, especially within the context of whiteness. By viewing decolonial memory activism as a form of peace activism, this work draws implications for scrutinizing colonial influences on peace and reimagining peace education, both theoretically and practically.