Chapter 3 examines a double paradox with regards to ISIS and fear: first, that ISIS beheadings are a spectacle, while at the same time, there exists an image ban on viewing these images, and second, that ISIS is both inherently known as a threat, yet also fundamentally unknowable. It uses the framing of the Bilderverbot, the secularized image ban of biblical origin, to examine how beheadings are represented as unrepresentable, and how this paradox enters into normalcy. The chapter tells the story of two beheadings: one of an Iraqi head and one of a Western one. The first is shown but not seen, and the latter is seen but not shown. A micro-level examination of the severed head image allows these stories to emerge. The first account, concerning the severed head of an Iraqi man working as an informant for American soldiers, allows for an examination of how beheadings are often depicted in the language of horror, or as an example of “body horror.” The second story, the story of ISIS beheadings, is one in which the severed head has become a fact of international politics and in which fear of ISIS beheadings is taken for granted.

The editors and Frauke Ohler conclude the book by reflecting on what the insider accounts teach us about the negotiation of the Paris Agreement. The first part provides a comprehensive examination of the combination of factors that led to the adoption of the Paris Agreement. It discusses the relative contribution of the multitude of factors identified in the previous chapters, ranging from the structural context set by geopolitics and macroeconomics, to how non-state actors reshaped the normative landscape, to the importance of individual personality. The second part of the chapter distills practical lessons learned. It identifies seven key elements of effective negotiation management, including the importance of transparent communication, good handling of informal dialogues, and leveraging non-party stakeholders. Finally, the chapter concludes by contemplating some risks and opportunities that mark the discussion about global governance in the post-Paris era. Next to a discussion about the implications of regionalization and digitalization of negotiations, it argues that, while some may be tempted to view the Paris Agreement as an end-point, climate negotiations will continue.

There exists a vast body of scholarship, written from multiple disciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspectives, exploring the complexities of resilience. It is striking, however, that resilience has received only limited attention in the context of communities and societies that have experienced conflict, violence and large-scale human rights abuses. It has similarly attracted little attention within the field of transitional justice. The book’s introduction sets out how and why this unique volume, which includes eight case studies, seeks to address these gaps. It proceeds to outline and discuss the three central strands that run through the book and weave the different chapters together, namely resilience (which the book approaches as a systemic and social ecological concept), transitional justice and de Coning’s adaptive peacebuilding. What this edited volume ultimately seeks to demonstrate is that thinking about resilience as a multi-systemic concept opens up a space for developing new ways of theorizing and operationalizing transitional justice that are more responsive to the wider social ecologies that link individuals and communities to their environments – and to the broader systems within which transitional justice work takes place. Responsiveness to these social ecologies and systems, in turn, is a crucial part of adaptive peacebuilding.

The use of rape was common during the 1971 war in Bangladesh. Six days after the war ended, the new government publicly declared that any woman raped in the war was a birangona or ‘war heroine’. There exists a public memory of wartime rape through various literary, visual and testimonial forms, ensuring that the raped woman endures as an iconic figure. However, women’s experiences of wartime sexual violence are often explained through the limited lenses of silence, voice, shame, honour, gender, patriarchy, stigma, trauma and ostracisation, which help to create the figure of the horrific raped woman – meaning that birangonas are often assumed to have a horrific life trajectory. This can undermine the very resilience that characterises many of the women who were raped. In contrast, this chapter focuses on generative resilience, as offering a different narrative of sexual violence that emphasises women’s abilities to continue to live with and pass on the experiences of sexual violence in ways that are uniquely relational. It is this contextualised and social ecological understanding of resilience that needs to inform adaptive peacebuilding, in order to foster a nuanced understanding of the effects of rape as a weapon of war.

Chapter 2 describes the theoretical approach to the concept of obscenity by examining what counts as “horrifically graphic,” a term drawn from the coverage of American soldiers burning dead bodies in Fallujah, Iraq, and the release of these images by the entertainment website TMZ. Drawing on a variety of theorists, it uses the framing of the taboo to articulate the idea of an obscenity norm that functions towards a particular politics. It situates the contributions of this work more substantively in terms of how it speaks to constructivist work on norms, the growing literature on emotions in global politics, and the visual politics literature. Specifically, this chapters theorizes three main ideas related to the obscenity norm and its functioning: (1) the existence of the taboo itself as something that plays with our perception of whether images depict the real, (2) the functioning of regulations on images such as trigger warnings or image bans, and (3) the relationship between the obscenity norm and the larger dynamics of security and securitization.

Chapter 5 examines the tensions between obscenity, dignity, and evidence in the context of contemporary humanitarianism and humanitarian intervention. It explores images of torture victims in Syria, which acted as evidence of the atrocities of the al-Assad regime. These images illustrate how obscene photographs must justify themselves as sufficiently obscene to be seen, reinforcing the taboo in its rupture, as a means to spur humanitarian awareness about an atrocity. This is contextualized in the wider context of atrocity images, and the chapter takes up the published photographs of Aylan Kurdi as a shadow case to tease out the dynamics of the functioning of the obscenity norm. The chapter also explores the use of bodies as “proof of death” and the dilemmas this raises about the ambiguous evidentiary value of dead body images. The chapter examines the various ways death images and dead bodies themselves act as evidence, raising questions about how and when the dead are too obscene to be viewed, and when they are situated within a logic about what must be viewed.

Which elements of tyranny are paramount wax and wane across eras, but tyranny itself remains a consistent concern. In Western political thought, defining tyranny in one or two sentences is rare, and when undertaken, it is often embedded in a specific political context. Defining tyranny may appear straightforward; nonetheless, diagnosing and remedying it, enabling recovery and inoculation, requires more than a rigid definition. All governance orders display a range of features. For instance, no two democracies are alike, and the political, economic and social realities they serve must always be considered; the same is true of tyrannies.

Chapter 4 examines how obscenity is used as a regulatory mechanism by focusing on dead enemy bodies, using the cases of Muammar Qaddafi and Osama bin Laden. Images of violently dead bodies have been circulated and mobilized in the service of the war-on-terror. This framing shapes the understanding of what war is, via which images of war are deemed legitimate grounds for visual consumption. In considering the technologies of erasure in the war-on-terror, images of Qaddafi reinforced the notion of the inevitable failure of dictatorship. The dead body image of Osama bin Laden, on the other hand, was not publicly released despite widespread demand to see it, but its visibility was characterized as a security risk. The chapter elucidates the visual grammar of images that are overtly related to foreign policy actions such as counter-terrorism or democracy promotion. These larger policy discourses are supported and reinforced by the production and circulation of images of dead enemies in particular ways. By the rupture of the dead body taboo, viewers are instructed to engage with images in specific ways, and thus to engage the policy subjects of those images in particular ways, sustaining a larger narrative of security.

The perspective of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) and the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) is provided by Tosi Mpanu Mpanu. United around key demands including enshrining the principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibility in the Agreement, recognizing the impacts of climate change already being experienced by developing countries and the need to adapt as well as to respond to the losses and damages inflicted, these highly vulnerable groups were able to sign on to a deal in Paris with confidence thanks to a number of carefully crafted political moments that took place in the run-up to COP 21, including the funding of the first projects of the Green Climate Fund and the launch of a number of African initiatives. Mpanu Mpanu draws on his considerable chairing experience, to share some tricks of the trade for brokering consensus. He compares the “staircase of Paris“, which all countries climb at their own pace, to the elevator of the Kyoto Protocol, which only carried a limited number of passengers. Agreement in Paris was contingent on a more consultative French Presidency learning process lessons from Copenhagen, and on the right global political momentum.

James Fletcher tells the story of the battle for the Small Island Developing States (SIDS). The former St Lucian Minister for Sustainable Development and Energy played a unique role in Paris that required switching between a number of different hats. On the one hand, St Lucia was an active member of SIDS, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and de facto head of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) negotiating group. His role involved uniting these island delegations around key demands including for a long-term temperature goal of “1.5 to stay alive” and a five-year review cycle. On the other hand, Fletcher was invited to join Fabius‘s inner circle as one of the ministerial facilitators selected to identify consensus on the most contentious elements of the Agreement during the second week of COP 21. In this capacity, he was tasked with chairing cross-cutting negotiations on ambition, and therefore with maintaining an objective and dispassionate stance while overseeing difficult talks on issues that spoke to the very survival of the constituents he represented.

Stephen Howard, who served at Chief Sustainability Officer at the IKEA Group and co-founded the “We Mean Business” Coalition, describes how the role of businesses has evolved and how businesses created positive dynamics for COP 21. In the 2000s, well-organized business lobbies were pushing against climate action, and COP 15 left Howard frustrated. Trying to change things, in 2014 Howard and others formed the We Mean Business Coalition and major companies made commitments to 100 per cent renewable energy. The events, Howard assesses, created a new dynamic, as policymakers understood that some businesses considered climate inaction a danger to jobs and growth. At COP 21, businesses pushing for climate action used a high level of organization, clear policy asks, and repeated messaging to create a context that made it easier for negotiators and politicians to reach agreement. Howard assesses that such context was critical, and he doubts that the deal would have happened without the business community. Going forward, Howard’s advice is to differentiate the business community into separate groups and work with each of them in different ways.