Opening Workshop: “Cultural Interventions on the Im/Possibilities of Reconciliation”

Our first workshop in Munich explored how cultural interventions aim at establishing sustainable ways of dealing with social injustice, proposing pathways to inclusive collective futures. We consider the study of literary and artistic productions actively engaging with the lack of social and political reconciliation initiatives a promising path toward understanding the centripetal and centrifugal dynamics of reconciliation (and, by extension, social unrest). We discussed ways in which reconciliation goes hand in hand with a critical (re)-evaluation of social values in the very present and how literature and the arts allow for difference in dialogic exchange, thus creating open and flexible spaces of exploration and encounter (cf. Kerr, Jancsó & Butler).  

We take methodological cues from recently revised approaches to aesthetic forms and their complex relationship with patterns of sociopolitical practices. How do anti-racist and decolonial forms of cultural expression reconcile different perspectives, histories, value systems, notions of justice and belonging? What kinds of futures do they imagine and what kinds of engagements with the past do they propose? How do literature and culture create imaginative pathways for symbolic and material recognition? Which forms of political participation do they propose? Which emotional and affective valences do they attribute to (un-)reconciliation? Where do they locate the faultlines and limitations of reconciliation?

Two guest experts shared their insights on scholarly practice in the field with us: Tiffany Lethabo King (University of Virginia) and Renata Ryan Burchfield (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign).