War in peace : race, organized violence and the unbearable whiteness of being

Earlier this year, I was one of several speakers on a panel titled ‘Modernity Unhinged: Organized Violence in its Contexts’ where the war in Ukraine was described as “the latest, terrible example of modernity becoming unhinged, derailed, and appropriated towards violent end.” The assumption here is that modernity has become unhinged because of the war in Ukraine, or at least the war was the latest example of an unhinged modernity. I challenge this assumption and argue that modernity has always been unhinged since its creation. Modernity is deeply embedded in the idea of empire and colonialism, whose mission involved political subjugation of those it sought to empower and civilize. While European historical narratives celebrate the Enlightenment and modernity as a lib- erating and progressive force, histories of black people, people of color, and Indigenous peoples that have borne the brunt of modernity have different stories to tell: of genocides, colonial domina- tion, environmental destruction, disease, and cultural devastation (Banerjee & Arjaliès, 2021).