Fracturing the insularity of the global state: War and conflict in Moira Buffini's Welcome to Thebes

Conflicts have always played a role in human society, but the recent global and local economic conditions have led to an increase in their intensity, and complexity. States are under siege from marauding powers whose intention is to impose their political will for economic benefit. These invading powers sometimes metamorphose as mercurial peacekeepers, impatient to humanise their plunder and present a passionate view of justice, even as they supplant the legitimate authority of the ‘colonised’ state.

Moira Buffini’s Welcome to Thebes is a contemporary re-presentation of Thebes as an African country emerging from a ruinous internal conflict into a chaotic and disordered peace. Weaving the classical Greek past with recent modern African historical perspectives, Buffini explores the dislocation of power and the disjunction between reconciliation and revenge.

In this paper, I investigate how war and conflict resolution contribute to demythologising the authority of the global state, in the way they infiltrate the complacency of the ruling powers, and expose their insularity.