The Cultural Politics of Reconciliation

The research network “The Cultural Politics of Reconciliation'' investigates literary and artistic engagements with reconciliation in the USA and Canada. It proceeds from the observation that “reconciliation” has become a frequently used key term in North American public discourse. The network’s goal is a first stocktaking of the ways in which reconciliation is imagined and critiqued in cultural representations in Canada and the United States. While reconciliation efforts have traditionally been aimed at so-called transitional countries, whose political, legal, and social institutions are fundamentally transformed, this network focuses on nontransitional societies in North America where institutional structures persist as social and political actors are trying to find ways to overcome the legacies of historical injustice and institutionalized inequality. The network’s aim is to break new ground for American Studies by exploring the aesthetics and poetics of reconciliation and its discontents with respect to slavery, abolition, imperialism, settler colonialism, and decolonization. The network examines how literary and cultural interventions complement institutional, economic, and legal approaches to reconciliation and seeks out critical debates about the meaning of and possibility for reconciliation as a comprehensive project for civil society. Members place these representations and debates in conversation with theories from critical ethnic studies, Black-Indigenous studies, and decolonial studies to gauge the depth and meaning of their engagement with the structural production of social inequality.