Entertaining Peace: Conclusions and Thoughts on Future Research

Abstract

This chapter explores possibilities for future research. Militarism and processes of militarization shape the international political system and the lives of people around the world, and popular entertainment is a part of those processes. But complex notions of peace and resistance exist in children’s entertainment and are given new life in youth subcultures, including in fan activism, and fan fiction communities. Through a ‘profanation of apparatuses’ (Agamben) and with ‘a tolerance for ambiguity’ (Anzaldua), some forms of pop culture may operate as a third space of a ‘new consciousness’ of peace. The formations of peacebuilding located in pop culture stories and practices include sanctuary peacebuilding, ethico-political narrative peacebuilding, embodied peacebuilding, neoliberal peacebuilding, colonial/charitable peacebuilding, and thresholder/bridging/‘borderlands’ (Anzaldua) peacebuilding.