Warfare runs against the values promoted by liberal democracies. There are situations when peace falls into the same category, such as when authorities impose the
“peace of Ulysses’s comrades”, who languished in the cave of the Cyclops, waiting
their turn to be devoured. In Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Du contrat social (1762), this Homeric reference emblemizes the undignified peace that results from submission to power. This is why literary authors, despite their often pacifist convictions, have also provided the most drastic accounts of power constellations when “peace” reveals itself as “pacification”.
World Literature Studies 4/2024 Fictional realities of eternal peace (Johannes D. Kaminski, ed.)