“Polite Conversation is now Undesirable”: Peace and Agonism in Georg Johannesen’s Rhetoric

Abstract

Sometimes, the voice for peace is aggressive, oppositional and agonistic to the point of violence. The Norwegian rhetorician, author and public intellectual Georg Johannesen (1931-2005) was no stranger to forceful rhetoric. Indeed, the promotion of peace by conscious and forceful articulation of agonism is one of the central and recurring motifs across his multifaceted oeuvre. In this article, I will focus on one, short, and relatively early text by Johannesen. It is an illustrative example of the rhetoric of what I suggest calling “counterhegemonic peace movements” in the nuclear age. Apart from introducing Georg Johannesen to a non-Norwegian public, the aim of this paper is to sketch out what I mean by that.