Purple #46: The Peace Issue

In 2026, more than 130 armed conflicts are active worldwide, reflecting a deeply fragmented and unstable world. Yet this issue of Purple looks beyond war to the many divisions shaping our lives: social, political, gender, racial, ecological, and personal. The Peace Issue asks how pacifism can become imaginable again, bringing together voices and visions that challenge polarisation and reconnect what has been divided. With contributions by Michel Houellebecq, Matt Mullican, Jenny Holzer, Gilles Lipovetsky, Mark Borthwick, Judith Bernstein, Natasha Lyonne and many others, issue 46 explores peace through art, philosophy, and culture. How do we make pacifism imaginable again – that forgotten dream of the 1960s and ’10s? This issue does not offer a single answer. It sketches a direction. Or several that already exist in people, in artworks, in images, and in the conversations gathered in these pages.