Actants, Actors, and Combat Units. The problem of conflict revisited: a semio-cultural viewpoint

The aim of this article is to discuss the question of conflict and war from a semio-cultural point of view. Starting from a tentative definition of war and conflict as the“borders” of a culture (even if in a paradoxical way), I shall discuss the specific links between war, conflict and narrative models. Secondly, the paper discusses diverse positions on the “polemogenic” mechanisms operating within cultures, along with their conflictual processes, such as the escalades. Starting from the work of Lotman, and intertwining his thought with concepts deriving from social systems theories, I shall discuss some hypothesis about “symmetry” and “asymmetry” inside cultures, and related questions concerning the growing of conflictual identities as perceived by the involved actors. This last point is tackled through case-studies from recent wars (such as civil and ethnic wars in former Yugoslavia) and the examination of their discursive devices.